A while back I attended an info session presented by James Currier, the founder of Tickle.com which ended up being sold for $100 million. His main focus was to convince us to join a startup and, specifically, his own new startup.
First of all I'd like to say that James Currier is an awesome speaker. For me, it confirms the notion that great companies require great people, not necesarily great ideas. I've been to many talks given by CEOs or founders of companies, and all of them have that common denominator: they seem to just understand people. Why is that important? Well, the internet itself is the interaction of millions of people. If you understand how people work, it goes downhill from there.
But back to the talk. James mentioned how he felt that working at a big company might not be the best option. That, in fact, it could be a hinderance. He mentioned how if you work for a large company you don't really grow much as a software engineer. You're given your little sections of code to write, and then you move on to the next block. Contrast that to a startup where the application is changing every hour, and new challenges arise that you must adapt to and conquer. That's the type of environment that breeds ingenuity and experience. And those are the qualities that lead to success.
But there are drawbacks to startups. Mainly the fact that they are volatile. Volatile in the sense that they are at the mercy of either not making it big, or being obliterated by some other company taking the same idea (i.e. Google). The best way to survive in this environment is to adapt quickly. There's the rub: venture capitalists discourage adaptation. They are investing in your idea, and your idea alone. They want you to go through with it until the very end. Then they'll be satisfied with knowing that the idea didn't work, and they can move on to another company, while your startup is applying for bankruptcy. Also, by allowing adaptation, VCs risk there being competition between the ideas they're funding. So, in the end, you're stuck with your original business plan.
This is where James comes in. His new startup,
Ooga Labs, combines the startup with the venture capitalist. What an awesome idea! Within Ooga Labs, they have a bunch of developers working on about five different ideas. They are all funded by Ooga Labs itself (well, more like, they're funded by James himself). Now, an idea within Ooga Labs is allowed to evolve and change all it wants since they are their own VCs. This allows for the developers to be riskier and venture into areas that most VCs would stay away from. And if the idea fails, no biggie, the developers can either move on to another of the projects being developed in Ooga Labs, or use their experience to come up with a whole new idea.
It's a very tempting concept. It made me second guess my decision to intern for Microsoft this summer. But I believe I need to get a good foundation in the techniques for developing software. Nonetheless, I'll be sure to send my resume over to James once I'm ready for a full-time position.
Quick note: I'll be attending the
Startup School happening this Saturday at Stanford. I'll make sure to report on how it went.
[Update: September 25, 2007]I got the job at Ooga! Woohoo! I'll be starting in January. Man I'm excited.
