Race, Gender And Tech Entrepreneurship

When you are in the political mindset, you are trying to add your little energy to the larger collective energy which, you hope, is trying to move towards a more perfect union. You look at the large arcs of history.

But in the tech entrepreneurship mindset, you don't have the luxury of time, you have to execute, you have to move, you have to play the hands you are dealt with. I think for the most part it is about innovation and hard work, mostly just innovation. If you can take yourself to the cutting edges of innovation, you will, for the most part, win. If you have the stomach to take the risks, to make the jumps. But you don't really have the privilege of theory, or at least not as much. You don't have the privilege of the monk option, where you choose to live on little to give a larger push to the historic arc towards a more perfect union. You have investors, you have team members, you have customers to please. Money is as good a metric as any. You have to make the moves that make the money. Maybe there is not time to watch a change of heart unravel.

You have to move. For the most part you rely on innovation and hard work and charisma. But there are times when you just have to hit back. You might not be black, or Indian, or female, but maybe you are dumb, and fat, and lazy, and ignorant. And being dumb, you need to be called on it. Or maybe you just have a funny face. How about ugly?

You hit back hard and fast. You sting a quick sting. You take a quick bite. Everybody but everybody is at the receiving end of something or the other. You do that to clear up the deck a little so you can quickly go back to innovation and hard work. Innovation is its own sexy. A relentless push to the cutting edges of innovation allows you to wallow in the high clouds of the post-ISMs individuals. Because, we are relentlessly trying to move towards a meritocracy.

The best ideas could come from anywhere. The talent pool is global. If you don't cast your net wide, you lose.

Even without race and gender issues, tech entrepreneurship is plenty of fights. You have to take down an old building to build a new one in its place. That takedown process can feel like violence to some people. Feelings are going to get hurt. But that is how progress is made. The old has to make way for the new. And the new has colorful faces.

Be bold. Take the risk. Sting.

Vivek Wadhwa On India's Success

The Movie Industry's Non Innovation

Image via WikipediaSteve Blank has a great blog post cross posted on ReadWriteWeb.

Why The Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the Result is SOPA

This year the movie industry made $30 billion (a third of it in the U.S.) from box-office revenue. But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. Where did the other $57 billion come from? ..... From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: Pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads. ..... Today it's the Internet that's going to put the studios out of business. Sound familiar? ..... Why was the movie industry consistently wrong? And why do they continue to fight new technology? ........ But why does the movie business think their solution is in Washington and legislation? History and success. ...... when they hired Jack Valenti, who ran the studios' lobbying efforts for the next 38 years. Ironically, it was Valenti's skill in hobbling competitive innovation that negated any need for studios to develop agility, vision and technology leadership. ....... The incumbents tend to have short-sighted goals and often fail to recognize that more money can be made on new platforms and distribution channels. ...... Ironically, the six major movie studios have a great technology lab in Silicon Valley with projects in streaming rights, Video On Demand, Ultraviolet, etc. But lacking the support from the studio CEOs or boards, the lab languishes in the backwaters of the studios' strategy. Instead of leading with new technology, the studios lead with litigation, legislation and lobbying. (Imagine if the $110 million/year spent on lobbying went to disruptive innovation.) ......... The fact is piracy is rampant in all forms of commerce. ..... Grocery and retail stores euphemistically call it shrinkage. ...... SOPA gives corporations unprecedented power to censor almost any site on the Internet. ...... What the music and movie industry should be doing in Washington is promoting legislation to adapt copyright law to new technology- and then leading the transition to the new platforms. ..... Studios are run by financial managers who have no corporate DNA to exploit disruptive innovation

I think of the Internet as one big farm. It is the farm that feeds you mindfood. Movies are mindfood. Of all technologies that were ever invented for the creation and consumption of mindfood, the Internet is the best by a wide margin. The movie executives fighting the Internet is farmers saying keep me away from the farm. What kind of farmers are these people?

Truly Disruptive

Of all the blog posts I have done at this blog, this has got to be my favorite: My Web Diagram.

I keep thinking in terms of the red circle.

What after the infrastructure has been built? Then what? That has implications. When people in tech talk about disruptive, it is about shifts in the way the technology operates. Digital disrupts the music scene, for example. Disruptions can be to business processes.

But the web is not one technology, just like white is not one people, Indian is not one people. There are many peoples. Africa is not one country.

Startups And Immigrants

Thomas Friedman, New York Times: Start-Ups, Not Bailouts

“Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were 5 years old or less,” said Litan. “That is about 40 million jobs. That means the established firms created no new net jobs during that period.” ..... “Roughly 25 percent of successful high-tech start-ups over the last decade were founded or co-founded by immigrants,” said Litan. ...... What made America this incredible engine of prosperity? It was immigration, plus free markets...... “We ought to have a ‘job-creators visa’ for people already here,” said Litan. “And once you’ve hired, say, 5 or 10 American nonfamily members, you should get a green card.”

Voices like that of Friedman are important because we are about to embark upon the great national debate on comprehensive immigration reform. The success on health care will make it easier to wade through this new debate because success will be a foregone conclusion, but some of the debate is going to be nasty. We have to brace for that. Free speech can try you sometimes.

Fred Wilson: Immigration Reform And The Jobs Bill