Socrata

Often the status quo seems the safest route. When in doubt, just do what everyone else does, right? You don’t want to second guess conventional wisdom for the lesser issues, but I’d argue that winning big is often the outcome from what was initially a contrarian view. Taking a contrarian view is a big bet.

Copernicus. Gallileo. Columbus. All contrarians.

Warren Buffett. Steve Jobs. Larry Page & Sergey Brin. More contrarians.

Sir Edmund Hillary. Roger Bannister. Jackie Robinson. Yep, they were contrarians too.

Their successes are only remarkable because they had the courage and conviction to disregard conventional wisdom and take a contrarian view. Regardless of how you define success – advancing science, building wealth and creating new industries or redefining sport – immeasurable rewards often follow when you take a contrarian view that later becomes the status quo.

Hmm. This is interesting. blist only launched in beta 2 weeks ago, but others are buying our trademarked name in Google AdWords. I’m not sure how to interpret it.

Thanks everyone for stopping by blist for lunch 2.0 today. It was a lot of fun. The BBQ was great and everyone seemed engaged in great conversation. Thanks for allowing me to make a quick recruiting pitch for positions we have open at blist. Enjoy a few of the early pictures:

Don’t forget that blist is hosting Lunch 2.0 in Seattle tomorrow, February 15, 2008. Doors open at 11:30. We’re located at 101 Yesler Way, Suite 502 in Pioneer Square. That’s at the corner of 1st & Yesler. Entrance to the building lobby is between Starbucks & Subway on Yesler. From there, elevator up to the 5th floor and follow the waft of Texas BBQ. Yeehaw!

We’re looking forward to meeting everyone. If you’re interested in joining blist, be sure to introduce yourself.

Thanks to all of the University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering students who stopped by our table at the career fair yesterday. It was great meeting all of you. It was also great meeting Mary, who’s not even a CSE student but came to “crash the party in order to talk with cool companies” in her words. Lots of moxie. I love it. The nerd world needs people like Mary.

It was another great event, with a good mix of students graduating soon looking for full-time work and continuing students looking for internships and permanent part-time work.

When recruiting for an open role at blist, I like to bunch the interviews of candidates for the same role as close together as possible. Other than questions about their specific work experiences, I’ll ask the same questions as well. These two approaches allow me to calibrate candidates relative to each other, which is a great way to ensure hiring the best talent. This doesn’t mean that we’ll always extend an offer to at least one person in a group, but over time it proves to be a very consistent way to gauge talent.

A trip to the baseball field will help drive the point home. What’s easier to hit – a 97 MPH fastball after a 94 MPH fastball or one after a 68 MPH knuckleball? It’s easier to hit the 97 MPH fastball after the 94 MPH fastball because you’ve calibrated your swing.

Calibration prepares you to recognize top talent and “hit it out of the park.”

Full disclosure: I’ve never actually made contact with any baseball traveling more than about 52 MPH – on a diamond, in a batting cage or otherwise. I have on the other hand made many hires that are equivalent to hitting 97 MPH fastballs out of the park.

One of the earliest lessons I learned about business came when I was about 12 years old. My friend Chris’ dad was going to buy a sandwich shop and he asked us how much we thought the raw materials cost for a $0.99 medium soda. Both Chris and I were newspaper carriers so we already understood a little about wholesale cost vs. retail price. I guessed 40 cents. Chris guessed 60 cents. “Nope. You’re both way off. A 99-cent soda costs about 4 cents for the syrup, cup, lid and straw” my friend’s dad told us.

He then went on to teach us about how a business’ biggest hidden cost was its cost to acquire a new customer. “Getting them in the door is the hardest part of business” he told us. Free refills make customers happy and costs almost nothing, especially in that you’ve already sunk the cost of the cup, lid and straw. If the syrup costs 1 cent, it seems like a great idea to spend a penny towards customer satisfaction.

Whenever I’m at a restaurant that charges for refills, I think of Chris’ dad and the business lesson he shared with us. You don’t realize how the life lessons prepare you for life as an entrepreneur. There’s no soda machine at blist, but we’re trying to emulate the concept in relevant ways.

Once your customer is the door, what “free refills” can you offer to boost customer satisfaction? Customer satisfaction is the new marketing, especially on the web, where your customer’s contract is up for renewal every month.

When hiring for blist, we look for a trait that I think is akin to being a patriot. These folks demonstrate true passion for a much larger cause. For these wonderful, passionate individuals, their thoughts focus on having huge impact on significant causes. Patriots agonize over the opportunity cost of investing their time in something less than revolutionary.

The opposite trait is the mercenary. They are excellent marksmen and skilled soldiers. It’s natural to think they can fortify the ranks and have impact. But they aren’t interested in bigger-than-self movements. They agonize over how they can have leverage, not impact. Leverage is self-serving. Impact is community serving.

Most companies are filled with both patriots and mercenaries, battling side by side. When a company muddles along, having patriots and mercenaries is fine. But when a company starts to have real, broad, meaningful impact, internal conflicts between patriots and mercenaries inevitably arise. In those rare moments worthy of glory, mercenaries overstep their rightful claim. They want to share the glory with the patriots. But they traded all claims to glory for unconditional compensation, independent of outcome.

Fighting for a cause in which they believe is part of the patriots’ reward. As is all of the glory when the battle is won.

In a lot of ways that’s why so much of the great software in the world originates in the open source community. The compensation model almost assures that the contributors are patriots. In the software business, the corollary isn’t necessarily a given. When I think about companies which have truly succeeded at defining a new category or market, they’re the ones filled with patriots not mercenaries. You can get paid and be a patriot. It just depends on what’s the cause you’re fighting for – the paycheck or the movement.