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Difficult is Good

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78 pointscwan22 comments

How much of brilliance/perseverance can be nurtured/injected by parents early on?

SCVNGR's Seth Priebatsch[1]

"It's an idea that a 5-year-old Seth also learned on a ski trip.

Seth's dad took him to the top of a black diamond run and skied down about 100 feet to wait for his unprepared son. Seth threw a fit, cursing up as much of a storm as a 5-year-old could muster. But then it clicked.

"He wasn't going to come get me," he said, "so at a certain point, you just start moving."

Also, Bill Gates [2]

"The future software mogul was a headstrong 12-year-old and was having a particularly nasty argument with his mother at the dinner table. Fed up, his father threw a glass of cold water in the boy's face.

"Thanks for the shower," the young Mr. Gates snapped."

"Still, they worried that [Bill] seemed to prefer books to people. They tried to temper that streak by forcing him to be a greeter at their parties and a waiter at his father's professional functions."

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/11/02/seth.priebatsc...

[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124061372413054653.html

I'm pretty sure those traits can be influenced by parents - but the real question is what the long term success rate is. I've met people who did really well because their parents provided that kind of focus, but I've also met people who were completely screwed up by it.

Our own approach has been to make sure our son has had a lot of opportunities to learn stuff (e.g. he has been skiing since his 3rd birthday) but we do try and ensure that these things are first and foremost about being fun rather than an ordeal.

I do wonder what Fred Wilson and other VCs perceive as "difficult," even from brilliant people. A founder demanding to retain control after a series A might be seen as difficult from the VC's eyes. A founder who has a great vision that's not easily understood and is strong-willed might be seen as difficult, but that's the kind of brilliance and persistence that's also seen as the means to success.

Then again, someone who just makes outrageous demands with no reason can be worthless to just about everyone.

It also makes me wonder how they evaluate "brilliant" - surely someone who makes them money is going is more likely to be evaluated as brilliant so the argument then becomes circular.

Do many people actually give up control of the company after raising Series A? I can't think of a single reason why I would do that.

pg actually wrote an essay about that:

http://paulgraham.com/control.html

How often is money made with normal people that are difficult to get along with? If it is the same as normal + easygoing (i.e. rarely), then the defining characteristic would seem to be brilliance (according to the referenced quadrant chart).

Perhaps, however, it is more likely that a brilliant entrepreneur is difficult as opposed to easygoing, so the article's point of needing to get along with difficult people makes sense in that aspect. Do VC's & angels in general find that correlation to hold true?

Reminded me of an article from Harvard Business Review (http://hbr.org/product/competent-jerks-lovable-fools-and-the..., accessible excerpt http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4916.html) about the same matrix. The authors found that team members tend to prefer "lovable fools" over "competent jerks" due simply to the difficulty of working with the latter. Of course, employees working on a team don't have the same interests that investors do.

> Of course, employees working on a team don't have the same interests that investors do.

Yes, team dynamics, especially at large corporations are vastly different than startup dynamics. Loveable fools fit right in at BigCo, as long as they are not so foolish to do their job reasonably well. The brilliant worker who fights for change and speaks their mind isn't seen as a team player and is often a threat to management. They are seen as "difficult," even when they are right. BigCo largely wants compliant workers who take orders, which is largely the opposite of what drives a startup founder.

That same brilliant worker, however might make a great founder at a startup. Smarts and tenacity can pay very well with a startup, so long as the people can understand what drives the founder and sometimes makes them hard to work with.

My experience at companies large and small is that employees prefer likable competent people over jerks and fools. Why isn't that also in the investors' interests?

Strictly comparing the bottom left quadrant (the "lovable fools") to the upper right quadrant (the "competent jerks"). Everyone would rather work with someone who is likable and competent.

In a large company, dabent's "BigCo", as long as you're getting your paycheck, an easy-to-along-with but less competent coworker may be less of an impediment to your ability to do your job than a competent jerk. It may also be that the article's authors were not using the same concept of "difficult" as Fred Wilson was.

> Everyone would rather work with someone who is likable and competent.

So it would seem, but Sequoia says they make less money working with them than they do with competent jerks.

> In a large company, dabent's "BigCo", as long as you're getting your paycheck, an easy-to-along-with but less competent coworker may be less of an impediment to your ability to do your job than a competent jerk.

The same's true in a small company. And it's easy to overlook the destructiveness of jerks; http://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Survi... started as an HBR article as well. So once again, I don't see why investors interests should be different.

I think you and Fred Wilson are talking about different things.

Being a "jerk" is about backstabbing people. That's not a good long term strategy.

Being "difficult" is sticking to your vision and not being afraid to offend people defending it. That's a good long term strategy if you're a good entrepreneur.

Here's the definition Fred was using, by Don Valentine of Sequoia: 'Along one axis, he put "easy to get along with" on one end and "hard to get along with" on the other end.'

"...most often we make money with brilliant people who are hard to get along with, but we rarely make money with normal people who are easy to get along with."

The former sounds just like Steve Jobs and the latter sounds just like John Sculley.

Could it be that brilliant people who are easy to get along with, typically dont need VCs to start with?

Wait a second, though. Team dynamics are a key factor of any startup's success (as snprbob was just saying at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208326 ). Difficult people screw that up.

So "sometimes we make money with brilliant people who are easy to get along with, most often we make money with brilliant people who are hard to get along with" may well be an accurate description of Sequoia's results, but the most likely explanation for it is that it's due to how they're selecting during their funding process and then how they're interacting with the companies once they've funded them.

Someone can be difficult from an investor's perspective, but not so with a team member. Both a team member have different personalities and motivations which might not align. Co-founders are probably more likely to have found an alignment, then moved forward together.

Also, if co-founders are friends, they've likely learned to get over each one another's difficult spots and manage to have a bond that lets them work together.

It's easy to get things done if you're a difficult bastard. People may not like it, but if you yell loud enough they'll often do it. At least as long as you're yelling.

Relating it back to Jim Collins's books (like "Good to Great"), the difficult geniuses create phenomenal successes that peter out once they leave, but the easy going geniuses build organizations that are great on their own and can generate success without all the yelling.

Inspiration is more powerful than browbeating, but it's also a whole lot harder.

"sometimes we make money with brilliant people who are easy to get along with, most often we make money with brilliant people who are hard to get along with, but we rarely make money with normal people who are easy to get along with."

You can distill that down to "we make money with brilliant people, not normal people". Seems reasonable.

It leaves out what must be the truly bad spot, normal people who are difficult to get along with.

TL;DR: We invest in brilliant people who get things done, we don't mind if they're jerks as long as they get things done.

Wahoo I have hope!

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