Daniel Lyons's Blog, page 2

An apology

Like so many others, I find myself responding to comments that I made in private emails a few years back that I very much regret. I wish I had not made remarks that are derogatory and hurtful to many, which was never my intent. I’m sorry and extend my apologies to all.       — Dan Lyons

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What’s wrong with startup culture: A video

Last winter I was invited to give a talk at the Open Source Leadership Forum, which was held at a very nice resort at Squaw Valley. The audience were hardcore techies, but I talked about my book and about dysfunction in startups and venture capital. Recently the organization put the talk up on YouTube, and much to my surprise it has been getting some attention.

The biggest challenge of the talk was that I wrote it thinking I had 40 minutes but arrived to find I had only 20 minutes. But having to condense the talk actually made it tighter and better. I’m giving the talk again in September in Los Angeles at another conference hosted by the same organization, and I’m hoping to polish it up a bit.

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Tech Bros and the Start-Ups They Ruin

I was fortunate yesterday to have an op-ed piece published in the Sunday New York Times. The headline was, “Jerks and the Start-Ups They Ruin.” My basic argument is that the problem with tech bros is not that they’re jerks, it’s that they don’t know how to run companies. They’re not very good at business. Some privately held venture-funded tech unicorns (eg Uber) now have presumed market valuations bigger than the market value of companies like Ford and GM. But the people running these companies are not in the same league as the people running traditional corporations. Not even close. Why do VCs keep handing over hundreds of millions of dollars to people who have no experience in business, have never successfully run a company or even a division of a company?

The piece received some good feedback on Twitter, mixed in with some grumbles, some from tech bros insisting there is no tech bro problem, and some from women saying a bro shouldn’t be writing about the bro problem and should leave this topic to women.

I’m always wary as I wade into any conversation on diversity except when the issue is age — on that topic I’m safe. (Sigh.) But I’ve come to believe that all forms of exclusion (on basis of age, race, and gender) are related and that all of us should be linking arms to talk about it and raise awareness and push for change.

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God I hate it when they send the wrong dog pillows

Ever since I published Disrupted, people have been writing to tell me their own stories about kooky workplace culture. Here’s one that just came in over the transom, from a person who works in a tech company in San Francisco:

I ran into our office manager in the elevator lobby today and she was all upset. I asked “what’s wrong?” She says: “It’s dog day tomorrow, and the pillow cases I ordered for the dog pillows aren’t the right size.” Dog-pillow pillow-cases are an actual line item at a successful company. It’s baffling. Thought you’d enjoy that.

The thing is, who doesn’t hate it when the pillow cases for the dog pillows are the wrong size. That kind of thing would drive me crazy too. I mean you try to run a first-rate organization and then shit like this happens.

 

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On Bros and Unicorns

I want to share one image that I showed during my talk at SXSW about “Ending Bro Culture in Startup Land.” It’s a simple graphic. I made a list of the top 16 tech unicorns in the United States, and grabbed a photo of each company’s CEO, then put them on a slide. VCs swear they’re not “pattern matching” when they make investments, that they’re open to diversity, that Silicon Valley is a meritocracy. I think it’s a case of, Everyone’s equal, but some people are more equal than others. And they all happen to be dudes. Purely coincidence, I’m sure.

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How to End Bro Culture — my latest speech topic

I’ve been on the road a lot lately giving speeches. In late February I went to Squaw Valley and spoke at the Open Source Leadership Forum, more or less about “Disrupted” but also on the new economy business model — “grow fast, lose money, go public, cash out” — and the implications that has for society. Yesterday I was in Orlando talking to AIIM about my book but also about startups and personal reinvention.

Between those two was one I was nervous about but really wanted to do — a talk last Friday, March 10, at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, about “Ending Bro Culture in Startup Land.” (See photo above.) The talk was well-received and got written up in The Austin American Statesman, the Dallas News, The Next Web, Silicon Hills News, LightReading. People seem to find this topic interesting. I’m hoping to talk about it more in the future. My basic argument is that bro culture exists to serve a business model, and that if we’re going to fix bro culture, we first need to fix the business model.

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My speech at the Open Source Leadership Forum

 

Paul and Linus.

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the Open Source Leadership Forum, hosted by the Linux Foundation. The conference was fantastic. I brought my son (he’s 11) and we both got to meet Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. My son attended a talk given by Linus and I think (or hope) it inspired him a great deal. (That’s my son Paul standing with Linus, at the left, right after Linus gave a talk. Later that day we had a brief meal with Linus and his wife. A huge thrill for us!)

Here’s a picture we took on the way to the conference, standing next to Lake Tahoe. It was so beautiful, and there was so much snow! We had great skiing at Squaw Valley.

On the way to Squaw Valley.

My talk was well-received, and the folks from the Linux Foundation were kind enough to send me a link. It’s about 25 minutes long, and you might find it interesting.

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My posts for Fortune — so far

I’m posting this as a kind of placeholder where I can put links to my recent columns in Fortune magazine. I’ll update as new columns appear.

What Old Companies Are Doing to Attract Young Talent. How GE, IBM and others are trying to reposition themselves and appeal to Millennial workers. It’s not about ping pong and beer pong. It’s about purpose.

Job Hunting After a Certain Age? Erase Your Past. The CEO of Ladders says you should erase everything on your resume from before the year 2000. Just pretend it didn’t happen.

Aligning VC Interests with Shareholders’. A modest proposal that will never happen but would still be a good idea: Pass a law that says VCs can’t cash out of a company until it has posted two years of profits. That way they can’t foist crap off onto bag-holders in the public markets and run away.

Why Tech IPOs Don’t Have to Be Money-Losers. I did a roundup of all the big tech IPOs since 2011. The vast majority have never made a dime of profit. It’s shocking.

How to Master Change. A look at how chip-maker nVidia keeps transforming itself and entering big new markets. The latest one is AI.

What You Really Need to Know Before Joining A Startup. Thinking about leaving that cushy big-company gig to get rich at a startup? The trick is to pick a winner. That’s not as easy as it seems.

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Disrupted just got its 700th review on Amazon

Yesterday my book hit an interesting milestone — Disrupted got its 700th review on Amazon. That’s a lot of reviews! To put this another way I think it is 698 more than my previous book received. More interesting is that the 700th review is one that really moved me:

“This book is important to me.” I can’t tell you how it feels to write a book and have someone say that about your work. I’ve done a lot of writing, but hardly any of it has ever been something that someone would say was important to them.

In fact the most amazing thing about this whole Disrupted experience is the outpouring of letters I’ve received from people telling me things like this. Yes, they thought the book was funny, they got some laughs out of it — but also they tell me their own stories of being abused at work, or discriminated against because of their age, race, or gender, or being excluded, shunned, treated horribly, fired for no reason.

I read all the email that people send me, and I try to write back to everyone, if only to say a quick thanks. Sometimes these notes have started an ongoing correspondence.

It’s weird. I set out to write a funny memoir but have ended up connecting with so many people from all around the world.  It has been a very moving experience. Disrupted changed my life. It opened my eyes to a lot of things that now I’m hoping to write about in my next two books. I didn’t expect that to happen.

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What’s next? Two more books with Hachette

As the Boston Globe reported this morning, I’ve just struck a two-book deal with Hachette Book Group, the company that published Disrupted. The first book is called Lab Rats. The best thing about the deal, from my perspective, is that I will keep working with Paul Whitlatch, the editor who worked on Disrupted. One thing I’ve learned over a long career in journalism and writing is that a good editor is a godsend. Paul is beyond good; he’s the best I’ve ever worked with. I really wanted to keep working with him. The illustration at right is the one the Globe used with their story. I really like it!

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