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Digital
Kapital
A life is many things, though to hear most people talk, it should be resolved in a single aspect, a career, an entrepreneurial company, a skill, an accomplishment against which the whole lifetime is measured. As we enter the 21st century, the diversity of life is forcing its way back in. We are trying to accommodate career, family, spirit and other interests. Just as it should be, our life is made up of many contents. We are in the midst of a deep reintegration of business and life. Business magazines wax enthusiastic about integrating personally rewarding activities into the corporate environment, claiming it is the reinvention of work. Life is funny that way, reasserting itself as it fools us - business has never been separate from life, though it, the values associated with a class of activity known as "business" do periodically become alienated from life. We are constantly reinventing life, not just business. And that brings me to the idea of content in all its aspects. "Content," the word, has been bastardized by legions of technologists and executives searching for a term that describes the stuff on a Web site. What we're talking about is a medium, one that depends on human contributions to take on a life of its own in society. In applying the word "content" merely to the stuff that flows over the Net, we neglect the real value of the concept of content and contentedness. The Random House Dictionary defines content as a noun ("something that is contained" and "something that is expressed through some medium," as well as "the state or feeling of being contented"), as an adjective ("satisfied with what one is or has") and a verb transitive (that is, "to make content"). We make, experience and express content in our work, lives and actions. Hence, "content," albeit accidentally, describes the personality of the successful Web entrepreneur, who must be a complete human being in order to recognize the many contexts in which their product or service interact with consumers' lives. Oh great, you may be thinking, Mitch is going to get mushy, he might tear up as he writes this. But I'd point to many examples of successful businesses which were the embodiment of people's enthusiasm, passion or person. Whether its Mrs. Fields' Cookies, Sam Walton's WalMart, Richard Branson's Virgin, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, or Jerry Yang and David Filo's Yahoo!, the content of these businesses reaches across all the definitions of the word. Nevertheless, the word "content" is constantly reduced to the stuff flowing over the Web, which is really missing the point. Now, as an investor or executive deciding what you need to support or invest in, the three aspects of content, the noun, adjective and verb transitive, provide the keys to the questions you should ask about a company. Last time, I explained some of the gotchas to watch for in examining the process that led to the establishment of a business. This time, we're talking about the makeup of the people you'll invest in. I'm reminded of a lunchtime discussion I had a while back with Ron Erickson, founder of GlobalTel Resources and Egghead Software. He was talking about an article, which he never did send along, that portrayed the work of the entrepreneur as the same task faced by a philosopher king. If you strip away the conceit of the philosopher kingdom, the message is clear: a business can and must create an entire world of experience and reward for the customer if it is to survive for any length of time. Otherwise, it is just a gimmick. Ron was saying success is determined by the well-roundedness of the individual entrepreneur. Although there is a period of time when a new company is all-consuming of the entrepreneur's hours, attention and passion, the longer-term success of the business depends upon the entrepreneur's ability to expand her horizon once that critical launch phase has passed. Only by seeing the big picture does the businessperson allow their company to evolve. Thus, the philosopher king, who presumably spends his days conducting business, reading, exploring, involved with culture, and involved with the community, creates opportunities for the community through the pursuit of life interests and his contentment. Likewise, the citizen, the consumer, looks for stuff that enlarges her world, benefits her family and community, and that express the values she holds dear. In a recent issue of NUA Internet Consulting's New Thinking newsletter, Gerry McGovern wrote an essay about packaging and branding on the Internet. There was a particularly important passage in the piece, I quote: "We don't drink to drink anymore, do we? We don't eat to eat. We don't drive to drive. We don't wear clothes to wear clothes. Most everything we do today - those of us in the wealthy world anyway - contains a statement." This sounds pretty jaded, but I think it so only if you view the Net through the barebones definition of content. Yes, it looks pretty bleak, if all you are doing is measuring the volume of stuff flowing over the Net. If you judged television merely by the number of advertising dollars each program generated, it would discount the value of the good programming. So, you have to ask of a Web site, a Net business or virtually anything else that depends on intense communication with an audience, what does it mean? For NUA's McGovern, it means "What makes us different is ourselves. What makes an organisation different is its people."
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The content of a site, it's capacity to provide contentment to the creator, the passion of its contentiousness, these are the components of value that a good investor will measure, intangible though they may seem to be. Alas, what has evolved around the Internet is a business aesthetic that I call the Church of the Tired Cliché. You can see this in any issue of Fast Company magazine. Nifty new job titles are touted over the eerily familiar job descriptions of executives who are charged to act as a company's psychologist, to keep it centered on the important things. For instance, a company that makes a product, let's say widgets, has adopted an all-hands meeting tactic that brings the staff together for deep, heart-felt conversation; or the whole company goes to play miniature golf on Saturdays. None of that has to do with the product, per se, instead it is activity that is meant to enhance the work environment. The cryptic message in all these stories is that most fast companies are doing work that is either so dull or so meaningless that it must be supplemented with tired cliches. Are you content doing what you do? What is the content of the product you produce? Do you contribute to the contentment of your customers in a way that if you stopped both you and the customer would feel empty? In a networked business, which by definition is wholly dependent upon a robust flow of information between all participants in a transaction, the answers to these questions must be meaningful. Arie de Geus distinguishes between two types of companies in his study of long-lived firms, The Living Company. One set of companies are like drops of water collected in a puddle, a stable body that evaporates rapidly when conditions change; these are economic companies, which include most businesses in the physical economy. The other type of company de Geus equates with a river, a constantly changing collection of drops that keeps its people and values in motion. "A river company is open to the outside world: There is tolerance for a high entry of new individuals and ideas. It is, in fact, expected that new concepts and knowledge will flow though the company's stream of activity on an everyday basis." River companies survive, because they keep flowing. Does the entrepreneur who founded the Web business you are considering investing live in a puddle or flow like a river? Is her personality content with the puddle or will it pursue new views, new ideas and new opportunities as the content of a daily existence that involves all aspects of human life? I'm not advocating taking a poll of entrepreneurs to see which ones take the time to go home to dine and spend the evening with their kids. That would be missing the point, because the rules provided by anyone - me, a business magazine, another investor - will divert you from a true understanding of the true content of a company. If you take a look at the basic myth of Western civilization, the millennium story, which has come down from Zoroaster, the Jewish tradition, Christianity, Islam and even our latter-day New Agers, you see that the idea of transformation is at the center of every great civilization. At some point, the world will end and be invented anew. I believe that this same mythical substructure is at the heart of the entrepreneurial phenomenon. People want to change their world for the better. They start businesses to do it, because economic ties are the most efficacious conduits to the rest of the world, no matter where your little corner of the globe is located. This has been true since the Middle Ages, when fairs were established around Europe and the Far East; these markets became the principle meeting place for cultures that had once been isolated from each another. Now, I have to return to my own example, because it is rude to talk about other people. At the beginning of the last issue, I quoted Montaigne, who wrote that he had "an open way that easily insinuates itself and gains credit on first acquaintance…. I aspire to no other fruit in acting than to act, and do no attach to it large consequences and purposes. Each action plays its game individually: let it strike home if it can." I wish I'd written that, but I was born several hundred years too late. Montaigne's is the proscription of a man who possessed contentment and great confidence in the content of his life. Establishing for oneself what contributes to contentment, the ethical and economic rules and limits of effort to which one will go in pursuit of a goal, is the first step to becoming an entrepreneur. I think every investor who wants to know the true cut of an entrepreneur should ask "What would you do and what wouldn't you do to make this company succeed?" If the response is "I'd do anything to make this company succeed," that is a sign the entrepreneur hasn't learned enough about themselves, because they aren't prepared for the conflict between their plans and values that will certainly come. As Isaiah Berlin put it: "Some human beings have always preferred the peace of imprisonment, a contented security, a sense of having at last found one's proper place in the cosmos, to the painful conflicts and perplexities of the disordered freedom of the world beyond the walls." Ultimately, I have found, knowing one's heart is the cornerstone of a world beyond the walls. The three aspects of content, the thing contained in every action, the source of contentment, and the capacity to provide contentment to others, provides a powerful consistency that allows me to take the measure of others or opportunities very quickly. Like Montaigne, I aspire to be constant in my pursuits, to let each action stand on its own, to evolve my values and beliefs in response to what the world contains for me. Given this center, I can grow through the pain and perplexities of freedom that Berlin described. With specific reference to how this approach to life makes Web business development more successful, let me point not to the Web, but to newspapers, the last great personalized medium. I don't think that there is a great newspaper that is not made up of the passions of its editors and publishers. Whether you're talking about The Washington Post, The New York Times or the Los Angeles Times, you're talking about the people who made them. Pete Hamill's recent book on journalism at the end of the 20th century, "News Is A Verb," is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand what we will look back on as the foundations of great Web sites. He reflects on the start of the great papers, the passions of Joseph Pulitzer, the community focus of the New York Post, the importance of service in the mission of a paper. "The newspaper that is true to its highest mission will concern itself with the things that ought to happen tomorrow, or next month, or next year, and will seek to make what to be come to pass," Joseph Pulitzer said. This is a mission that transcends the narrow confines of the office and the accounting ledger. It is permeated by the flow of events, rather than attempting to control them in a well-defined channel. According to Hamill, newspapers succeed by honoring their readers as intelligent and concerned participants in their world. The reader is something contained within themselves, not a demographic or fodder for demagogues, which is, unfortunately the opposite of how many Web sites treat their audience. The product of spin-control is not content, but the absence of it. As Web sites evolve, whether they are intended to market products or simply inform, Web developers will find it is impossible to succeed without admitting the importance of their content to the audience and the recognition that the content must lead the audience to meaningful experience. This is a level of honor to the "content" of Web sites that the talk-mongers of the technology conference circuit refuse to recognize when they discuss successful entrepreneuring. If the netrepreneur can find it in herself to establish values,
to declare and pursue a goal passionately, and to grow and change
as a person, the groundwork of a successful Web business exists.
This force can be so strong that the company will likely survive
challenges that would sink a less centered firm. Taken as a whole,
the technical and human resources of a company can be reduced to
the essential values that made the founders bolt from security into
the risky world of a new venture. This is why many investors say
that they invest in people, not companies. It is certainly the reason
that almost no one invests in Web content for its own sake. |
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The
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Sites on my mind: Far
Eastern Economic Review
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