Chris Sacca's 'What is left?'

This Valley Is Small

You will hear everyone out on this coast say it – the Valley is small. I couldn’t agree more. While I believe there are still some actual geographic constraints on what is and isn’t the Valley, blogs have actually broadened the scope of the Valley to include folks outside of the Bay Area who are still deeply integrated in the tech scene, though not physically present. For me, the Valley sometimes just feels like an ethereal collective of people who are building and dealing in technology more than any one physical place.

Whatever the case, in the last four weeks, I have seen a few entrepreneurs underestimate how small this Valley really is.

It started a month ago with an email from a VC friend of mine. He forwarded me a message from an entrepreneur who noted, in no uncertain terms, that Google was a big fan of his WiFi access node technology. This VC was, appropriately, doing a reference check before investing and wanted to know why it was we really liked this equipment.

As co-lead of the Google WiFi effort it seemed funny to me that I hadn’t heard the name of this vendor before and was pretty sure we hadn’t met with them. I asked the VC to double-check with the entrepreneur about the veracity of the statement. The entrepreneur had the audacity to write back to the VC that he had met with Google a number of times. I checked with my team. Had anyone heard of this company? Sure enough, one team member says “Yeah, I bumped into them at a trade show. They have been begging for a meeting.” “But, did we endorse their tech?” I asked. “Nah. I don’t know anything about them,” says my colleague.

That was it. That was their basis for claiming our deep and passionate support for their product in a VC pitch - bumping into a member of our team and asking for a meeting. Needless to say, the VC thanked me for the heads up and presumably walked away from the funding opportunity. At the same time, this company, whose technology may have been wonderful for all I know, assured themselves of never doing business with me.

This, unfortunately, wasn’t an isolated incident. I recently watched more than one startup submit our name as their partner for a recent RFP. When asked what they intended to achieve by this, they boldly and baselessly defended the action, and yet quickly scrambled to redact all uses of our name.

On top of this, I get executives at Google telling me that they receive calls from entrepreneurs alleging that I vouch for them and using my name to get on the exec’s radar. Yikes. (First of all, if you know me, you know I think phones are wasteful and would never recommend a call.) One colleague at Google told me a company founder mentioned we were having ‘very fruitful discussions.’ When I checked my Gmail, the only communication we ever had between us was my polite “no thank you” email response to his unsolicited query. Fruitful?! Happens again and again.

I am not sure I get what all these guys are thinking. Do they think that we are not going to find out? Do they assume that because Google is now 5,000 employees we all sit in offices with doors closed and don’t chat? Do they believe that VCs don’t diligence their investments anymore? Heck, many VCs are excited to have a reason to get back in touch with an old friend and will email me right away.

In any event, the minimal upside a founder will enjoy if they pull off such a fabricated endorsement without it making back to us can’t possibly be worth the very real downside of being discovered as untruthful.

To be fair, I have been on the entrepreneurial side of the coin many times. I know the temptation, and sometimes, the benefit of being aggressive. I once asked a mentor of mine at Fenwick how you go about raising a $100 million venture fund (it was a long time ago) and he told me that his mentor said “by selling the last $5 million spot twenty times.”

I am all for posturing. You want to use the royal ‘we’? Go ahead. You want to try to convince me that you have another offer on the table or a partner who is moving faster? I am ready to play cards and sniff out a bluff.  However, one currency that should always be handled with kid gloves is the endorsement of another resident of the Valley. 

We'll be in the other room . . . talking about you

I was spending some time this afternoon reviewing the logs for my site. (Typepad's logs are not great, so I use Measuremap). I am always curious to see who is linking to me, and how folks are finding my blog.

I was intrigued to see that a new referrer had sent me many readers over the last few days. An article at Bill Myers Online entitled "Pitching Your Product to Google" had been pointing people to my post about how to help us do business together by sending a well-composed email.

However, when I went to click on it and read Bill's take on my post, I was asked to subscribe for $24.95 for three months. Yikes.

This was a little frustrating. I don't want to get into the copyright aspects, etc, because I am no real student of those laws. Nevertheless, and more importantly, I am frustrated as a blogger. I publish to start a conversation, to hear reaction. It bothers me to think that the other half of the conversation is locked behind a walled garden. Even the NYTimes allows permalinking behind their gates.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for people making a living with newsletters, etc. I love relatively independent content. I look forward to the day when Google gets so good at AdSense that subscriptions are no longer needed to monetize valuable writing. However, for as long as those works are about or are derivatives of a conversation from my blog, I think it is fair to explore ways to include my readers.

I sent an email to Bill. I will let you know what I hear.

Update: Bill emailed me to say that the link was contained in a discussion forum on his site and not one of his posts. I appreciate his quick turnaround, but still don't get why the forum would be gated. Anyway, it was nice to see someone be so responsive.

Bodelian Destiny

I have stayed out of the Google copyright debate, as there are people infinitely better informed than I am to explain why Google is doing the right thing with Google Book Search and public domain books.

That said, I had the great fortune of touring the 400-year-old Bodleian Library at Oxford University this week, as a guest of the Director of University Library Services and the  Bodleian Head Librarian, Reg Carr. Reg has so many degrees listed on his business card they spill onto a second line, and he cuts a strikingly traditional English figure as he moves through such a hallowed institution.

Add to that where we were standing. The 'Bod' is iconic. Lofty ceilings, leatherbound volumes, carved doorways, sculpted stone. The buildings literally breathe history. The directors of the Harry Potter films looked no further than the Bod to evoke the realm of the Hogwarts.

In this context, Reg caught me off-guard. As I was gaping at the overwhelming tradition of the Bod, Reg spoke with unmitigated passion about the positive impact of the Oxford-Google Digitization Project.

As he described it, the original bequests and gifts that established and refurbished the library were specifically conditioned upon the Bodleian becoming the library for the world, not just Oxford. This aim has always stood in sharp contrast to the Bodleian's well published rule that no volume can ever leave the libary nor be lent under any circumstances. (Even Oliver Cromwell was denied a request to remove a book.)

By digitizing the materials at Oxford to be shared on the Internet, Google is helping the Bodleian Library finally fulfill its mission of becoming library to the world.

I have to say, a variety of folks have written about this subject and I continue to enjoy the discussion. However, when you are standing there among the aged stone and creaky timber, in a building hundreds of years old, and one of the most revered librarians in the science tells you that the Google project is the most exciting aspect of what is going on at the Bodleian, it is hard not to be moved.

 

Aspire to be a geek?

While speaking at Oxford this weekend (more on that later) I made the assertion that, though geeks rule Silicon Valley, it is not a requirement that one have a technical degree to be a geek. Google Define produces a variety of explanations, but the predominant characteristic seems to be that geeks are passionate about computers and technology. I agree. I think the key to being a geek is possessing an insatiable hunger for technological information and thus pursuing that knowledge wherever possible.

Thus, my advice to non-techies who want to do well in tech and find their inner geek? Four things:

Read blogs - Blogs are where fresh, insightful and prescient thoughts are born on the web. When I first came out to Silicon Valley six years ago, the only way I, as a peon, could get any access to the thoughts of the likes of John Doerr, was to be fortunate enough to be a fly on the wall of one of his meetings. Today, dozens of top flight VCs regularly publish their thoughts in real time. On the other side of the coin, entrepreneurs detail the travails of building a company and lessons learned as they arise. All of this content free for each of us to digest. Rarely do I encounter a theme in today's newspapers or magazines that hasn't been well-hashed out in blogs first.

Wikipedia - Keep it close at all times. Why does the Wikipedia keep coming up in an increasing number of Google results? It is good content. Don't know an acronym? Need a definition? A quick historical context? Background on an exec? The Wikipedia is almost always good for it. The Wikipedia has allowed me to go from zero to fluent in a couple of technological realms for projects at GOOG. That said, don't be shy to contribute. It is our collective responsibility to make it work.

Best Buy/Fry's - Or whoever is your local electronics retailer. Stop by regularly. Check out the new stuff. Get your hands on it. Demo the gadgets. See what the user experience is like. Get a sense for pricing. Look at how others react to items. Play with it all. Be able to explain to your friends what makes something better or worse.

Your parents - Ask your parents about the tech they use. Teach them new things. Explain blogs, and spam and feeds. Take yourself out of the realm of the cognoscenti and see things from the perspective of the actual end users. Armed with this knowledge, dive back into geekdom and be more aware of the shortcomings of the gadgets of today.

What else would you include?

Update: Serena pointed out that I totally forgot to mention kids. Eeek! Yes. Kids are essential. They are the canaries in the mine shaft when it comes to new trends. When I am around kids, I can't keep myself from asking questions about which IM they use, where do they jot notes to friends, which sites do they think are funniest, which games are they playing. Kids evolve everything out there, and they discover it first. Kids are at the top of the geek heap.