Jeff Maurone

Supercapitalism needs to be read

That politician calling online gambling, "the destruction of the moral fiber of our country."  The social change group calling for higher Wal~Mart wages.  The campaign idea to, "reduce or eliminate our dependence on foreign oil."  What do all of these have in common, other than the fact that they take up an increasing amount of broadcast time and purchase a growing share of online advertising inventory?

Each of these seeks to harness our ambitious American attitude toward fixing that which is broken.  But each of these also are not quite what they seem, as they're all brought about by corporations or organizations seeking to renew or extend competitive advantage in their respective markets.

Wal~Mart criticism comes from labor groups looking to grow wages and competitors looking to erode Wal~Mart's cost advantage (nearly insurmountable).  Resistance to online gambling is funded by the already-enormous casino lobbying budget.  And that "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" quote?  At first glance, this is attractive for it's intended environmental merits, isn't it?  Especially if you haphazardly ignore the word 'foreign' just as Dubya hoped you'd quickly connect the words "Saddam" and "nine-eleven."  Looking closer, this is protectionism: keep drinking oil, but only from domestic suppliers.  But I digress.

This growing trend is the basis of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich's new book, Supercapitalism.  Reich argues that by the middle of the twentieth century, American businesses had reached the apogee of competition-free business.  Margins were enormous, competition was low and managers epitomized the lifers put forth by William Whyte's landmark work, The Organization Man.  But then barriers to entry dropped, competition surged, job tenures shortened rapidly and gave birth to Supercapitalism.

Supercapitalism is an era of hypercompetition, when organizations are required to pull every lever in pursuit of competitive advantage.  When we as citizens lose our value in pursuit of our values as investors.  And, in marking an era and preparing citizens with the tools necessary to resist this growing trend, Supercapitalism needs to be read. 

As Americans we're ambitious about fixing things that people tell us are broken.  Before we fill out our volunteer signup sheets, though, we should consider just who it is that's standing on the soapbox and whether we, as citizens, care about this issue as much as we, as investors, care about this issue.

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First photo is a shot I took in Alamo Square (Link)

Photo of Reich is from Flickr user JWalsh, licensed under Creative Commons (Link)

Second photo of Reich I took when I saw Reich at Microsoft (Link)

Building a Scalable Business

Over at MIT Venture Lab, we've been ripping through the fall 2007 season quite nicely--attendance is where we want it to be, speakers have been great, and audiences have been engaged (judging by question volume).    A great set of event leads put together our third event in the fall series focused on how to build a scalable organizational structure in the months after you close a financing deal.  As usual, you'll find the official marketing text below.  If you're interested in registering, you can do so here.

Thursday, November 1, 2007
6:00 to 8:00pm
Doors open @ 5:30

"Building a Scalable Business"
(Part three of the Business Vision Series)
One Union Square Boardroom
600 University St., First Level
(Lower lobby, 6th Avenue level, behind the escalator)
Seattle, WA 98101

So what’s it really like after you get your financing?  The game has changed – you have some great new opportunities, responsibilities and partners. 
The goal is to take the capital and turn your vision into a scalable business that accomplishes the planned milestones and more importantly realizes and hopefully exceeds the planned value creation.  But it’s not always that easy.

In the third event of the fall Venture Lab series on business vision, Tim Porter of the Madrona Venture Group and Mark Mader, of Smartsheet will discuss issues faced by newly financed companies as they build their business.  Please join them as they share their knowledge, experience and perspective surrounding this exciting topic. 

Topics covered will include:

• Pre-funding expectations versus post-funding reality
• Working effectively with your new VC board member(s)
• Common mistakes made by companies at this stage and how to avoid making them
• Trade-offs between scaling quickly and managing burn rate
• Nailing your distribution strategy
• Prioritizing product releases -- which features are in and which are out?

Tim Porter – Madrona Venture Group

Tim joined Madrona in 2006 and works on evaluating and executing investments across Madrona’s focus areas of software, wireless and Internet.  In addition to serving as a Board Observer for Smartsheet, he is also actively working with Madrona portfolio companies illumita, Intrepid Learning Systems, Mercent, Schemalogic, Sourcelabs, and Triphub.  Prior to joining Madrona, Tim was a key member of Corporate Development at Microsoft where he shared responsibilities for sourcing, structuring, and negotiating Microsoft’s acquisitions, strategic investments and joint ventures. While at Microsoft, Tim focused on enterprise software, security and wireless and completed 14 transactions for over $850 million. Earlier in his career, Tim worked for broadband satellite start-up Teledesic, spending part of his time there working for Craig McCaw’s Eagle River Investments. Tim received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Mark Mader – CEO – Smartsheet

Mark Mader is the CEO of Smartsheet.com.  Before joining Smartsheet, Mark was at Onyx Software Corporation, where he served as senior Vice President of Global Services, leading the professional services and software maintenance groups.  Mark joined Onyx in 1995 as one of the early members of the team.  In addition to overseeing service operations in the Americas, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Australia, Mark was a Director of Onyx KK, Onyx’s joint venture in Japan.  Prior to Onyx, he worked at Greenwich Associates as an Associate focusing on European financial markets.  Mark graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in Geography (AB) in 1992.  

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With regard to the photo, I believe Chris Han took this photo with my camera.  Link.

Hillary comes to Redmond

If you live in Seattle and somehow haven't seen the front page of the Seattle Times, the P-I or other local rags, Hillary Clinton has graced us reliable liberals with her presence over not one day of fundraisers, but two.

Despite what pundits are calling an impeccably-managed campaign, Hillary trails Obama and John what's-his-name in fundraising in the state of Washington.  In an effort to play the catchup game, Hillary packed her schedule with events, each one fetching a solid $2,300 per ticket.  Fortunately for us paupers, the Microsoft Political Action Committee has given enough to the campaign to win a free Hillary-fest on campus.  And so, along with four thousand other camera-phone toting Microsofties, I spent one of my professional hours today listening to Hillary's "high-intellect" version of her stump speech.

All flippancy aside, Hillary was spot on.  She composed a sampling of ideas and positions perfectly aligned with the official interests of Microsoft the corporation and shrewdly dropped in ones aligned with interests important to many employees.  Though I haven't publicly stated this here, I strongly believe in what a Clinton/Obama White House could mean for this country in 2009.  I'm sure I'll be blogging more as the election draws near. 

In another anecdote I read, word has it that Hillary is sending postcards to people with whom she converses over the course of campaigning.  Perhaps mine is in the mail?

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I shot a bunch of photos of this event and shared five here.

MSNBC.com acquires Newsvine

On Monday, my company, MSNBC.com, announced that we acquired Newsvine, a Seattle-based leader in the growing citizen journalism space.

This has gotten an enormous amount of coverage throughout the blogosphere here, here, and here.  It has also gotten a ton of coverage in traditional media, including in Monday's print edition of The New York Times (link), featuring a quote from our own Charlie Tillinghast.

I am excited about what this dip into a new source of content and community represents for us in the years ahead.  Most importantly, though, there's more to come.  MSNBC.com is getting more exciting every day and in the coming months you should start seeing exciting new ways to consume content using our site.

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Image is from Saguaro National Park [Link]