modifying Guy Kawasaki's Silicon Valley employment how-to...for academics
I will bet good money that the academic folks who read this blog don't know Guy Kawasaki. That's ok. The short answer is that he's a venture capitalist. But the longer answer is that he's one of the few business and technology folks
I like. Actually, I think he's pretty cool. Take that for what it's worth, or
read his "about" page and check out the
list of books he's written. A long, long time ago (6 years) when I was embarking on an ill-fated build-a-company project with a liar and a cheat, I used a significant amount of the Guy Kawasaki/
Garage.com info that was available. It's where I learned about the
elevator pitch, which has served me well
even in academia!
Let me digress and tell the story...
Briefly, an elevator pitch is an overview of a project (or an idea for one) that can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride. For instance, Jane Entrepreneur has a great idea for a business and
stalks runs into a venture capitalist
at their office in a random office building. Seizing the opportunity but constrained by the elevator ride from the ground floor to, say, the third floor, Jane pitches her idea from start to finish. The door opens at the third floor, but the venture capitalist doesn't step out immediately—instead, the VC reaches for a business card and tells Jane to call the office for an appointment. Money flows, everyone is happy, they change the world, and it's all because of the elevator pitch.
During the final class period of my lovely seminar in the American Romantics, as we handed in our seminar papers the prof said we should chat about them if we had time at the end. I said, "hey! we can do elevator pitches."
[crickets...]
[people looking at me like I have three heads...]
So I explained the elevator pitch and then made it applicable to a bunch of grad students in English: "limited to 30 seconds (or so) each, it'll only take 10 minutes and boy won't we look like experts by being able to distill our papers in just 30 seconds." My thinking was that if we bled, sweat, and cried over these essays for a semester, we damn well better be able to present our thesis and findings in 30 seconds or less!
You will not be surprised to learn that the people who ended up with As on their essays were those able to complete the elevator pitch, and those who were still talking when the elevator was on the 48th floor and we still didn't know what the paper was about...well, they didn't do so well.
Back to my point...A few days ago, Guy wrote a post called
Everything You Wanted to Know About Getting a Job in Silicon Valley But Didn't Know Who to Ask. Having spent several years in the mid-90s being a contractor, meaning every six or eight weeks I was off on an interview with someone or another, I can tell you his post is spot-on.
THE CHALLENGE...All you academics who have been through the job market, how would you amend his list for academics?
For instance,he says:
1. Love what the company does. Passion for what a company makes or does is the most important factor in getting a job in Silicon Valley. Companies here are built on passion—indeed, perhaps more passion than reality. Hence, they hire passionate people who are already in the Reality Distortion Field. The question is, How do you show your passion?
The best way is to profess your love of the company's product or service, and I literally mean "love" not "read about," "have used," or "looked at the web site." If the company is at all enlightened, passion can overcome the lack of a "perfect" educational background and work experience.
How do you do this in academia without looking like a crazy person? I'm thinking "OMG, the undergrad requirements for the major is teh r0x0r" won't go over well.
I assume Guy's point #4, "Expect the funny farm," is the easiest to modify.
Discuss.
Labels: academia, valleylife
yes, i actually do have a job
For several reasons, I don't write about my job all that much. Apparently, some people don't even know I have a job, despite the teeny-tiny link in my sidebar that says "my job"! Ok, so maybe only
trillwing didn't pick up on it. At BlogHer, I said something about my job and she said, "you have a job? I thought you just wrote books and went to school." Uh, no. If I did, I'd be a better writer and scholar! (Conversely, if all I did was work, I'd be a better employee.)
So yeah, I have a job. The company, i2i Interactive (disclosure: we haven't updated our client list or portfolio for awhile. Too busy.), has been around since 1996. [or 7? I don't remember. A long time in Internet Years, regardless.] It's my friends' company, and I've worked for them on and off for seven or so of those ten years. We've never had more than seven employees at any one time, and for at least the last five years we've only had four. As such, our titles are purely for business card purposes. Like mine—"Technical Director." What does that mean? Who do I direct? I direct myself, and it means I deal with anything technical—and believe me, that's a wide range of things, including things I don't particularly consider technical, but that's just me.
The remarkable thing about the company, besides the fact that although we've come close to killing each other on a few occassions (such as over tables vs css) we haven't, is that we don't do sales/marketing and never have. From the very beginning, projects have come from referrals, and we have the luxury (most times) of picking and choosing the projects we do. We'll do a really teeny, static website for our dentist, then turn around and build web-based products for NASDAQ-listed companies. Whatever works.
We're all self-taught in everything we do. Me? English degree, designs databases and builds web-based applications from the ground up, has since the first years of the web. Our creative director? History degree, skilled at every piece of software graphic designers/illustrators/multimedia producers have used since before the web was the web. Our prez, She Who Keeps Everything Together, knows both sets of things. You get the idea. Back in the day, everyone was self-taught because the industry and the technology were brand new. Everyone started on the same level playing field.
You may wonder why I'm writing about this, and I'm not sure myself, but if anything it's in response to this comment on a post-conference thread at the BlogHer site, in which the author (Laura Scott) says: "It was especially interesting to me to hear about the few women who are succeeding in technology within the corporate world, and how they found ways to establish themselves and their credibility. I can say I have not heard many of those stories." Here's our story: we do good work, consistently, and have for a long time. It's our philosophy, we have the people to do it, and we just do.
I realize that's not an incredibly helpful story. There's nothing about toppling The Man or breaking through a glass ceiling or overcoming sexism in the workplace, yadda yadda yadda. I think the only pushback we get when our proposals are considered in response to RFPs comes from our numbers. Because of the inflated numbers (both cost and numbers of people on teams) agencies often use, our relatively miniscule numbers often make us look too good to be true. Ironically, the majority of our work over the years has come from cleaning up other peoples' messes, often the messes of overpriced, too-many-hands-in-the-pot agencies. But that's another story.
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