VC Cliché of the Week

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VC Cliché of the Week

Yesterday I threw out "It's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission".

I first heard that line from Tom Evslin who used it to describe the way he got things done when he was AT&T rolling out their first ISP service. I am certain that asking for permission is not the way to get things done at a big company like AT&T.

In a small company, I think asking for permission works a bit better. The maverick will always be valuable at times, but they break a lot of glass and may not be effective over a long period of time. In a small company, I would advise that you try to work as a team and get alignment early on all projects and initiatives. The lack of bureaucracy in most small companies means you don't need to work outside the management system in order to be effective.

But small companies may need to act like mavericks when it comes to the market they are operating in. I discussed how YouTube and others have taken that approach to the online video market yesterday. But it happens in many markets all the time. The upstart can get away with breaking the rules because they are too small and they get ignored. That allows them to get things done that would not be possible under the traditional ways of operating. Then as they get bigger, they can change their stripes and behave more like the other market participants and "beg for forgiveness" in the process.

A good example of this is Google. They crawled publisher's pages without their permission. Had they asked for it, many big publishers would have said "we don't want you doing that". But they did it, built a great service for consumers and drove tons of new traffic to the very publishers who probably wouldn't have wanted to had their pages crawled in the first place. Now, the same publishers employ search engine optmization strategies and even buy keywords to get more traffic out of Google.

So while I don't recommend hiring mavericks inside startups, I do recommend that startups act like mavericks in the market. It's frankly the only way to get somewhere fast, which should be the objective of every startup.

Comments (8) | Posted September 20, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

The cliche "It's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission" brings quivers to me since my wedding day. A good friend of mine went on the wedding video saying that I tought him "It's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission". Needless to say my wife wasn't happy to hear it nor lets an opportunity go without reminding me of it.

Anyways with

Posted by: Brandon McLarty | Sep 20, 2006 1:57:51 PM

continued ..
Anyways with DCI lobbyist in Google's corner now those days are over for Google.
see link to story below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/politics/28google.html?ex=1301202000&en=8d58f2770d53f9db&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Posted by: Brandon McLarty | Sep 20, 2006 1:59:48 PM

Nothing like working in a startup. Its fun. Its risk. Its tremendous learning. Rightly pointed in the blog.

Posted by: Krish | Sep 20, 2006 3:04:01 PM

Looks like the Belgian newspaper sites and Agence France-Presse won't accept an apology and prefer to litigate...they still don't get it...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/technology/19google.html?_r=2&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Posted by: P-Air | Sep 20, 2006 5:46:45 PM

I think it was Admiral Grace Hopper that is generally attributed with coining that particular phrase.

Posted by: Craig Plunkett | Sep 20, 2006 10:00:54 PM

I also thought it was Admiral Hopper to whom that line is attributed. Makes sense considering her pioneering position.

Posted by: csven | Sep 21, 2006 11:14:29 AM

Regrettably, I believe that the atmosphere of the current era makes the practice of this expression dangerous, in large companies and small. A look at the regularly conducted witchhunts reveals that every transgression, no matter how technical, redounds to the detriment of the public company. There is no doubt that major issues should be confronted and prosecuted, and I have no issue with the prosecutions in Worldcom, Enron and the like. But in many cases, the executives who believe they are acting in the interests of the shareholders are the ones who are prosecuted, and the ultimate victim is the company and the shareholder. Whether it is option timing, leak plugging (a la HP) or anything else, the consequences of mistakes have become far greater than ever before, especially with the evaporation of materiality. That says to me that the consequences of the rulebreaking approach have dramatically increased, while the benefits have not concomitantly gone up. Having spent many years trying to acheive a reasonable balance between a lawyer's natural risk aversion and a willingness to accomodate entrepreneurial tolerance for risk, I believe that the calculus may have shifted. To my mind, the increased need for risk aversion bodes ill for the very ability to innovate and be nimble that is essential to creating leading edge business, and unless the pendulum swings back a bit, will be quite harmful to the US economy.

Posted by: Ted Weitz | Sep 22, 2006 12:25:18 PM

Posted by: JEROGatch | Nov 8, 2006 10:20:13 AM

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