VC Cliché of the Week

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VC Cliché of the Week

I heard a venture capital cliche today that I have never heard before.

A friend and fellow VC asked the following question about a potential hire, "does he have the clock speed we need?"

I liked it the moment I heard it. Of course, its geek speak. Clock speed is the rate at which a computer performs its basic operations. It's the speed of the CPU. You might buy a computer with an Intel Pentium running at 3 GHz, that's the clock speed of the chip.

So clock speed refers to someone's ability to keep pace with the intellectual pace of an organization. And in many startups, that's a pretty fast pace. Decisions get made in real time and implemented almost as quickly.

I have seen many really solid, talented people fail miserably in startups because they just can't operate at the required pace. They don't have the required clock speed.

When you build a system, it's critical that the parts of that system all operate on the same frequency. Otherwise, you get traffic jams. And traffic jams are death in startups.

So make sure you know the clock speed of your organization and hire people who operate at that pace.

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A while back, A VC's cliche of the week was clock speed, as in Does he have the clock speed [Read More]

Tracked on May 22, 2006 1:07:37 AM

Posted April 19, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

Does a person's "clock speed" differ from their "bandwidth"? The answer is strictly and obviously "yes." But I suspect that in practice the two terms/cliches are synonymous, or close to it.

Posted by: Andrew | Apr 19, 2006 9:33:02 AM

Fred: Is there a problem with the "Morning Becomes Eclectic" link or is it with me? Thanks!

Posted by: Wayne Anderman | Apr 19, 2006 10:30:59 AM

Andrew, I think there's a subtle difference between the two and that they aren't synonymous.

You can be able to handle a lot of work (bandwidth) but you may not be able to keep pace with the intellectual speed of decisions (clock speed).

There is a skill to being able to process and analyze a situation in real time to produce a well thought out / formed decision... and that's such a valuable skill in a start-up.

Posted by: Fraser | Apr 19, 2006 10:46:07 AM

How if at all does "clock speed" correlate to "adult supervision" in a person? Does the former perhaps diminish in relation to presence of the latter? ;)

Posted by: steve | Apr 19, 2006 5:42:46 PM

The real question may be how much the person can overclock during certain instances creating brilliance. Also overclocking can help realize the full potential of another component (person) creating synergy.

Posted by: Josh | Apr 20, 2006 9:59:46 AM

Perhaps "clock speed" is a quantifiable (or part qualitative) measure that could be added to Indeed.com's listings, or used as a matching mechanism between employers/seekers.

It could be an interesting offset to the "PersonalDNA" assessment you posted about some weeks back, and could certainly make "fits" for job searches more relevant/accurate.

Posted by: Chris | Apr 22, 2006 12:21:44 PM

But clock speed is so passe … :-)

Posted by: Zoli Erdos | Apr 23, 2006 11:53:46 PM

Since we're talking about geek-speak: Technically, you get a bottleneck, not a traffic jam, when you operate at different clock speeds.

And, I don't know about the others here, but I always thought of bandwidth as how many things you can focus on simultaneously, which is not quite the same thing as how much work you can do. Similarly, clock-speed refers to the intellectual pace (i.e. take in new information and change direction), which is not quite the same as how fast you can work.

Posted by: David Boxenhorn | Apr 25, 2006 4:45:15 AM

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