Monday, October 17, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
It's a very sad day, RIP Steve Jobs. Thank you for following your passion for design and for facilitating unlimited creative possibilities.
New York Times
With Time Running Short, Jobs Managed His Farewells
By CHARLES DUHIGG
Over the last few months, a steady stream of visitors to Palo Alto, Calif., called an old friend’s home number and asked if he was well enough to entertain visitors, perhaps for the last time.
In February, Steven P. Jobs had learned that, after years of fighting cancer, his time was becoming shorter. He quietly told a few acquaintances, and they, in turn, whispered to others. And so a pilgrimage began.
The calls trickled in at first. Just a few, then dozens, and in recent weeks, a nearly endless stream of people who wanted a few moments to say goodbye, according to people close to Mr. Jobs. Most were intercepted by his wife, Laurene. She would apologetically explain that he was too tired to receive many visitors. In his final weeks, he became so weak that it was hard for him to walk up the stairs of his own home anymore, she confided to one caller.
Some asked if they might try again tomorrow.
Sorry, she replied. He had only so much energy for farewells. The man who valued his privacy almost as much as his ability to leave his mark on the world had decided whom he most needed to see before he left.
Mr. Jobs spent his final weeks — as he had spent most of his life — in tight control of his choices. He invited a close friend, the physician Dean Ornish, a preventive health advocate, to join him for sushi at one of his favorite restaurants, Jin Sho in Palo Alto. He said goodbye to longtime colleagues including the venture capitalist John Doerr, the Apple board member Bill Campbell and the Disney chief executive Robert A. Iger. He offered Apple’s executives advice on unveiling the iPhone 4S, which occurred on Tuesday. He spoke to his biographer, Walter Isaacson. He started a new drug regime, and told some friends that there was reason for hope.
But, mostly, he spent time with his wife and children — who will now oversee a fortune of at least $6.5 billion, and, in addition to their grief, take on responsibility for tending to the legacy of someone who was as much a symbol as a man.
“Steve made choices,” Dr. Ornish said. “I once asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.’ ”
“But for Steve, it was all about living life on his own terms and not wasting a moment with things he didn’t think were important. He was aware that his time on earth was limited. He wanted control of what he did with the choices that were left.”
In his final months, Mr. Jobs’s home — a large and comfortable but relatively modest brick house in a residential neighborhood — was surrounded by security guards. His driveway’s gate was flanked by two black S.U.V.’s.
On Thursday, as online eulogies multiplied and the walls of Apple stores in Taiwan, New York, Shanghai and Frankfurt were papered with hand-drawn cards, the S.U.V.’s were removed and the sidewalk at his home became a garland of bouquets, candles and a pile of apples, each with one bite carefully removed.
“Everyone always wanted a piece of Steve,” said one acquaintance who, in Mr. Jobs’s final weeks, was rebuffed when he sought an opportunity to say goodbye. “He created all these layers to protect himself from the fan boys and other peoples’ expectations and the distractions that have destroyed so many other companies.
“But once you’re gone, you belong to the world.”
Mr. Jobs’s biographer, Mr. Isaacson, whose book will be published in two weeks, asked him why so private a man had consented to the questions of someone writing a book. “I wanted my kids to know me,” Mr. Jobs replied, Mr. Isaacson wrote Thursday in an essay on Time.com. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”
Because of that privacy, little is known yet of what Mr. Jobs’s heirs will do with his wealth. Unlike many prominent business people, he has never disclosed plans to give large amounts to charity. His shares in Disney, which Mr. Jobs acquired when the entertainment company purchased his animated film company, Pixar, are worth about $4.4 billion. That is double the $2.1 billion value of his shares in Apple, perhaps surprising given that he is best known for the computer company he founded.
Mr. Jobs’s emphasis on secrecy, say acquaintances, led him to shy away from large public donations. At one point, Mr. Jobs was asked by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates to give a majority of his wealth to philanthropy alongside a number of prominent executives like Mr. Gates and Warren E. Buffett. But Mr. Jobs declined, according to a person with direct knowledge of Mr. Jobs’s decision.
Now that Mr. Jobs is gone, many people expect that attention will focus on his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, who has largely avoided the spotlight, but is expected to oversee Mr. Jobs’s fortune. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Mrs. Powell Jobs worked in investment banking before founding a natural foods company. She then founded College Track, a program that pairs disadvantaged students with mentors who help them earn college degrees. That has led to some speculation in the philanthropic community that any large charitable contributions might go to education, though no one outside Mr. Jobs’s inner circle is thought to know of the plans.
Mr. Jobs himself never got a college degree. Despite leaving Reed College after six months, he was asked to give the 2005 commencement speech at Stanford.
In that address, delivered after Mr. Jobs was told he had cancer but before it was clear that it would ultimately claim his life, Mr. Jobs told his audience that “death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.”
The benefit of death, he said, is you know not to waste life living someone else’s choices.
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
In his final months, Mr. Jobs became even more dedicated to such sentiments. “Steve’s concerns these last few weeks were for people who depended on him: the people who worked for him at Apple and his four children and his wife,” said Mona Simpson, Mr. Jobs’s sister. “His tone was tenderly apologetic at the end. He felt terrible that he would have to leave us.”
As news of the seriousness of his illness became more widely known, Mr. Jobs was asked to attend farewell dinners and to accept various awards.
He turned down the offers. On the days that he was well enough to go to Apple’s offices, all he wanted afterward was to return home and have dinner with his family. When one acquaintance became too insistent on trying to send a gift to thank Mr. Jobs for his friendship, he was asked to stop calling. Mr. Jobs had other things to do before time ran out.
“He was very human,” Dr. Ornish said. “He was so much more of a real person than most people know. That’s what made him so great.”
Paul Graham on the Environments that "Foster" Startup Miracles (sorry, couldn't help myself)
October 2011
If you look at a list of US cities sorted by population, the number of successful startups per capita varies by orders of magnitude. Somehow it's as if most places were sprayed with startupicide.
I wondered about this for years. I could see the average town was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no startups came out. But I was never able to figure out exactly what happened inside the motel—exactly what was killing all the potential startups. [1]
A couple weeks ago I finally figured it out. I was framing the question wrong. The problem is not that most towns kill startups. It's that death is the default for startups, and most towns don't save them. Instead of thinking of most places as being sprayed with startupicide, it's more accurate to think of startups as all being poisoned, and a few places being sprayed with the antidote.
Startups in other places are just doing what startups naturally do: fail. The real question is, what's saving startups in places like Silicon Valley? [2]
Environment
I think there are two components to the antidote: being in a place where startups are the cool thing to do, and chance meetings with people who can help you. And what drives them both is the number of startup people around you.
The first component is particularly helpful in the first stage of a startup's life, when you go from merely having an interest in starting a company to actually doing it. It's quite a leap to start a startup. It's an unusual thing to do. But in Silicon Valley it seems normal. [3]
In most places, if you start a startup, people treat you as if you're unemployed. People in the Valley aren't automatically impressed with you just because you're starting a company, but they pay attention. Anyone who's been here any amount of time knows not to default to skepticism, no matter how inexperienced you seem or how unpromising your idea sounds at first, because they've all seen inexperienced founders with unpromising sounding ideas who a few years later were billionaires.
Having people around you care about what you're doing is an extraordinarily powerful force. Even the most willful people are susceptible to it. About a year after we started Y Combinator I said something to a partner at a well known VC firm that gave him the (mistaken) impression I was considering starting another startup. He responded so eagerly that for about half a second I found myself considering doing it.
In most other cities, the prospect of starting a startup just doesn't seem real. In the Valley it's not only real but fashionable. That no doubt causes a lot of people to start startups who shouldn't. But I think that's ok. Few people are suited to running a startup, and it's very hard to predict beforehand which are (as I know all too well from being in the business of trying to predict beforehand), so lots of people starting startups who shouldn't is probably the optimal state of affairs. As long as you're at a point in your life when you can bear the risk of failure, the best way to find out if you're suited to running a startup is to try it.
Chance
The second component of the antidote is chance meetings with people who can help you. This force works in both phases: both in the transition from the desire to start a startup to starting one, and the transition from starting a company to succeeding. The power of chance meetings is more variable than people around you caring about startups, which is like a sort of background radiation that affects everyone equally, but at its strongest it is far stronger.
Chance meetings produce miracles to compensate for the disasters that characteristically befall startups. In the Valley, terrible things happen to startups all the time, just like they do to startups everywhere. The reason startups are more likely to make it here is that great things happen to them too. In the Valley, lightning has a sign bit.
For example, you start a site for college students and you decide to move to the Valley for the summer to work on it. And then on a random suburban street in Palo Alto you happen to run into Sean Parker, who understands the domain really well because he started a similar startup himself, and also knows all the investors. And moreover has advanced views, for 2004, on founders retainingcontrol of their companies.
You can't say precisely what the miracle will be, or even for sure that one will happen. The best one can say is: if you're in a startup hub, unexpected good things will probably happen to you, especially if you deserve them.
I bet this is true even for startups we fund. Even with us working to make things happen for them on purpose rather than by accident, the frequency of helpful chance meetings in the Valley is so high that it's still a significant increment on what we can deliver.
Chance meetings play a role like the role relaxation plays in having ideas. Most people have had the experience of working hard on some problem, not being able to solve it, giving up and going to bed, and then thinking of the answer in the shower in the morning. What makes the answer appear is letting your thoughts drift a bit—and thus drift off the wrong path you'd been pursuing last night and onto the right one adjacent to it.
Chance meetings let your acquaintance drift in the same way taking a shower lets your thoughts drift. The critical thing in both cases is that they drift just the right amount. The meeting between Larry Page and Sergey Brin was a good example. They let their acquaintance drift, but only a little; they were both meeting someone they had a lot in common with.
For Larry Page the most important component of the antidote was Sergey Brin, and vice versa. The antidote is people. It's not the physical infrastructure of Silicon Valley that makes it work, or the weather, or anything like that. Those helped get it started, but now that the reaction is self-sustaining what drives it is the people.
Many observers have noticed that one of the most distinctive things about startup hubs is the degree to which people help one another out, with no expectation of getting anything in return. I'm not sure why this is so. Perhaps it's because startups are less of a zero sum game than most types of business; they are rarely killed by competitors. Or perhaps it's because so many startup founders have backgrounds in the sciences, where collaboration is encouraged.
A large part of YC's function is to accelerate that process. We're a sort of Valley within the Valley, where the density of people working on startups and their willingness to help one another are both artificially amplified.
Numbers
Both components of the antidote—an environment that encourages startups, and chance meetings with people who help you—are driven by the same underlying cause: the number of startup people around you. To make a startup hub, you need a lot of people interested in startups.
There are three reasons. The first, obviously, is that if you don't have enough density, the chance meetings don't happen. [4] The second is that different startups need such different things, so you need a lot of people to supply each startup with what they need most. Sean Parker was exactly what Facebook needed in 2004. Another startup might have needed a database guy, or someone with connections in the movie business.
This is one of the reasons we fund such a large number of companies, incidentally. The bigger the community, the greater the chance it will contain the person who has that one thing you need most.
The third reason you need a lot of people to make a startup hub is that once you have enough people interested in the same problem, they start to set the social norms. And it is a particularly valuable thing when the atmosphere around you encourages you to do something that would otherwise seem too ambitious. In most places the atmosphere pulls you back toward the mean.
I flew into the Bay Area a few days ago. I notice this every time I fly over the Valley: somehow you can sense something is going on. Obviously you can sense prosperity in how well kept a place looks. But there are different kinds of prosperity. Silicon Valley doesn't look like Boston, or New York, or LA, or DC. I tried asking myself what word I'd use to describe the feeling the Valley radiated, and the word that came to mind was optimism.
Notes
[1] I'm not saying it's impossible to succeed in a city with few other startups, just harder. If you're sufficiently good at generating your own morale, you can survive without external encouragement. Wufoo was based in Tampa and they succeeded. But the Wufoos are exceptionally disciplined.
[2] Incidentally, this phenomenon is not limited to startups. Most unusual ambitions fail, unless the person who has them manages to find the right sort of community.
[3] Starting a company is common, but starting a startup is rare. I've talked about the distinction between the two elsewhere, but essentially a startup is a new business designed for scale. Most new businesses are service businesses and except in rare cases those don't scale.
[4] As I was writing this, I had a demonstration of the density of startup people in the Valley. Jessica and I bicycled to University Ave in Palo Alto to have lunch at the fabulous Oren's Hummus. As we walked in, we met Charlie Cheever sitting near the door. Selina Tobaccowala stopped to say hello on her way out. Then Josh Wilson came in to pick up a take out order. After lunch we went to get frozen yogurt. On the way we met Rajat Suri. When we got to the yogurt place, we found Dave Shen there, and as we walked out we ran into Yuri Sagalov. We walked with him for a block or so and we ran into Muzzammil Zaveri, and then a block later we met Aydin Senkut. This is everyday life in Palo Alto. I wasn't trying to meet people; I was just having lunch. And I'm sure for every startup founder or investor I saw that I knew, there were 5 more I didn't. If Ron Conway had been with us he would have met 30 people he knew.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Conference call - Connecticut Assets Network
I have a conference call scheduled with Greg Ryan from Connecticut Assets Network tomorrow morning at 10am.
http://www.ctassets.org/ctasset_aboutcan.htm
The Connecticut Assets Network (CAN) is a private, nonprofit organization promoting strength-based and resiliency building strategies for positive youth and community development. CAN receives funding from the Connecticut State Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) to provide services to state funded organizations in local communities.
VISION -Connecticut Assets Network envisions people living in caring communities, where everyone is a respected resource who can make a difference.
MISSION -The mission of the Connecticut Assets Network is to help communities build their capacity for mutually beneficial problem-solving by helping them discover and share the strengths and assets of all their members.
http://www.ctassets.org/ctasset_aboutcan.htm
The Connecticut Assets Network (CAN) is a private, nonprofit organization promoting strength-based and resiliency building strategies for positive youth and community development. CAN receives funding from the Connecticut State Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) to provide services to state funded organizations in local communities.
VISION -Connecticut Assets Network envisions people living in caring communities, where everyone is a respected resource who can make a difference.
MISSION -The mission of the Connecticut Assets Network is to help communities build their capacity for mutually beneficial problem-solving by helping them discover and share the strengths and assets of all their members.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Chamber of Commerce starts TimeBank to help start-ups
Published on Wednesday 28 September 2011 10:34
A unique new scheme which helps businesses to obtain the help they need to start-up, grow and thrive was launched by Central Bedfordshire Council in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce.
The new initiative called Timebank will match local providers of business services such as marketing, financial planning, sales and HR to businesses that are looking to start up, grow or move into the area. The packages on offer include a free initial consultation on a wide range of business related topics with the aim of building long term relationships between companies. Timebank will provide a local support service when Business Link East ceases operation in November 2011.
Cllr Ken Matthews, Executive Member for Strategic Planning and Economic Development for Central Bedfordshire Council, who hosted the event commented; “This is an innovative programme and one of only a few which is fully up and running throughout England.
“Timebank offers a ‘win win’ solution to local businesses. It’s a great business development opportunity for those providing services and free initial business support for those looking to set up or grow. We are committed to achieving 27,000 new jobs by 2026 and we will encourage businesses to work together to help each other achieve this.”
The key to ‘Timebank’ is that the services will be provided by senior representatives of professional firms, at no cost to the end user. This will help local businesses to launch or develop and will help create the jobs needed to sustain the economy.
Cllr Matthews added; “It was great to see around 40 businesses attend the business breakfast and we hope this new initiative will also act as an incentive to other new business, attracting potential employers to the area.”
For more information about Central Bedfordshire’s Timebank scheme and to get involved in the initiative, contact business@centralBedfordshire.gov.uk or call 0300 300 5297.
http://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk/news/local-news/central_beds_timebank_opens_for_business_1_3098320
A unique new scheme which helps businesses to obtain the help they need to start-up, grow and thrive was launched by Central Bedfordshire Council in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce.
The new initiative called Timebank will match local providers of business services such as marketing, financial planning, sales and HR to businesses that are looking to start up, grow or move into the area. The packages on offer include a free initial consultation on a wide range of business related topics with the aim of building long term relationships between companies. Timebank will provide a local support service when Business Link East ceases operation in November 2011.
Cllr Ken Matthews, Executive Member for Strategic Planning and Economic Development for Central Bedfordshire Council, who hosted the event commented; “This is an innovative programme and one of only a few which is fully up and running throughout England.
“Timebank offers a ‘win win’ solution to local businesses. It’s a great business development opportunity for those providing services and free initial business support for those looking to set up or grow. We are committed to achieving 27,000 new jobs by 2026 and we will encourage businesses to work together to help each other achieve this.”
The key to ‘Timebank’ is that the services will be provided by senior representatives of professional firms, at no cost to the end user. This will help local businesses to launch or develop and will help create the jobs needed to sustain the economy.
Cllr Matthews added; “It was great to see around 40 businesses attend the business breakfast and we hope this new initiative will also act as an incentive to other new business, attracting potential employers to the area.”
For more information about Central Bedfordshire’s Timebank scheme and to get involved in the initiative, contact business@centralBedfordshire.gov.uk or call 0300 300 5297.
http://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk/news/local-news/central_beds_timebank_opens_for_business_1_3098320
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)