Google's Gift to Holiday Travelers

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 11, 2009 @ 08:44PM PT

In a move that is sure to generate huge positive will, Google is giving holiday travelers at 47 airports around the country the gift of free WI-FI. This is on top of free in-fright wireless for the month of December on Virgan America flights. While this is clearly a marketing play, it's still worth breaking down a bit to see what we can learn.

Given that, here are four reasons this is incredibly smart business:

1. It's awesome. Unlike many campaigns that ostensibly give consumers something back, the thing that Google is providing is genuinely useful and will, assuredly, make many travelers chaotic flight cancelations just a bit less painful. People don't want stuff just because it's free, but they definitely want good stuff because it's free.

2. It's connected to the core business. Rather than giving away free coffee (although Starbucks, if you want to match Google's airport support, that would be great), or fruitcakes, or something neat but not related to Google, they are providing something that reinforces their brand as the heart of the internet.

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Using Twitter to Scale Caring

by Nathaniel Whittemore

categories: Inspiration, Leadership

Published November 11, 2009 @ 11:18AM PT

What is the real power of social media for today's enterprises? According to self-made wine guru, internet icon, and entrepreneur extraordinaire Gary Vaynerchuk, it is all about the ability to scale the way you care.

I've been a fan of Gary V. for a while. He first came to prominence by doing a once a day internet TV show where he talked about wine (and life), affectionately known as the Thundershow. But while trying to figure out what goes with fish might have brought people in the door, what really built Gary's brand was his passion, enthusiasm, and willingness to go the extra mile to engage with his viewers.

Indeed, unlike many, Gary has always refused to see engaging with his audience - whether the tool was Twitter Search or Blog search - as somehow separate and distinct from his "real work." As he tells it, every person who has given him advice has told him it's simply not scalable to engage with all the people who talk about him and his work on line, yet for him, it's a gift to live in a time where he actually can interact and engage with the people who care enough to pay attention to him.

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From Founder to Funder: New Seed Stage VC Launches

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 10, 2009 @ 01:01PM PT

The pressure on venture capital firms for big exits is tremendous. Union Squares Venture principle Fred Wilson wrote about "The Venture Capital Math Problem," in the end hoping for a return to a scenario that involves smaller funds and more focus. This week, the Founder Collective is launching, putting this entrpereneur-centric perspective into practice.

Founded by active entrepreneurs, the Founder Collective is a $40 million fund based out of NYC and Cambridge, MA that will invest in seed stage ventures. To use their words, "a person or two and an idea is our favorite stage."

From their website, it seems like they want to create a fund that focuses heavily on mentorship and advising and that works to align the incentives of funders with founders. Indeed, most of the people contributing money to the fund are active founders themselves, like Hunch CEO Chris Dixon.

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The Days of Asshole Leadership Are Numbered

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 10, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

Business Insider recently published a list of the 25 most hated CEOs. Ouch. What's remarkable is how consistent the reasons for them being hated hold across the example. Turns out, if you want to be hated by your employees, all you have to do is: not tolerate dissent, minimize feedback channels, discourage the use of personal agency and decision making and finally, make sure to be a jerk. Who would have guessed?!

In all seriousness though, the days of asshole leadership are numbered.

We've all experienced asshole leadership. Asshole leadership is leadership that doesn't encourage conversation across the company. It's leadership that fails to create a broader mission that people can actually care about. It's leadership that systemically fails to affirm and respect the contributions of the people who come together to make products and services happen. It's leadership that gets lost in the sound of it's own voice. It's leadership that can't and won't tolerate dissent, because it is leadership that is terrified and threatened by change.

Asshole leadership is all about the leader, and not about the enterprise. Asshole leadership is no leadership at all.

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Top November Books: Changing Business Edition

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: advice

Published November 09, 2009 @ 01:05PM PT

Every month, I'll be sharing five book recommendations for readers of this blog. Not all of them will be focused on social entrepreneurship, per se. Sometimes the list will have a theme - as it does this month - other times it won't. Not all of the books will be new. All that's guaranteed is that they will be good reads.

This month, I'd like to share a number of books that have the potential to shift our notions about business, and help us think about enterprise from a variety of new lenses.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price. By Chris Anderson. Following up his hugely influential 'The Long Tail,' Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson writes about the history and future of the price of free. Demonstrating how the cost of production - particularly, but not only, on the internet - is driving prices ever lower, Anderson puts forth some important provocations. This book matters for social entrepreneurs because it challenges some of the mantras of capitalism, including notably the idea that people value things they pay for more highly. In the internet era, that may no longer be true.

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The Big Holiday Switch: Using Your Seasonal Dollars for Good

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Big Holiday Switch

Published November 09, 2009 @ 11:43AM PT

Over the last ten years, the average American adult has spent between $800-$1000 a year on end of year holiday shopping. In aggregate, America spends more than $150 billion a year on seasonal purchases. For the next couple months, this blog will be providing tips for how to leverage some of those dollars to create positive social impact. We're calling it the Big Holiday Switch.

I wrote a couple weeks ago about how the biggest theme coming out of this year's Pop!Tech was the notion that excessive consumption had put us in a dramatic tailspin towards personal and environmental disaster. In some ways, one could argue that the commercialization of the holidays are one of the clearest and most dramatic symptoms of that excess.

Yet at the same time, there is often something deeply sincere about the act of giving gifts, even if it is wrapped in the tinsel trappings of holiday half-off sales. There is something deeply humanizing about taking the time to think about what someone else likes and cares about and attempt to see the connections to your own interests. The act of giving can be an act of great joy, the ramifications of which extend far beyond the act.

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Independence is the Real Reason that Entrepreneurs Start Companies

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Trends

Published November 08, 2009 @ 11:23AM PT

An interesting piece in BusinessWeek suggests that of those characteristics we associate with entrepreneurs - job creation, disruptive innovation, community rejuvenation it is the independence and freedom to work for one's self that actually drives most people to start their own companies.

Using data from the U.S. Census, Tax returns, and a number of academic studies, Professor Scott Shane of Case Western Reserve University paints a slightly different picture of the average US entrepreneur than the Steve-Jobs-ian model we perhaps have in our heads. Some of his key findings:

• The primary reason people start businesses is to avoid having a boss.
• Only one quarter of all businesses in the U.S. actually have employees.
• Only 9.4% of U.S. businesses have more than four employees.
• Only 15% of the male entrepreneurs and only 7% of the female ones want to maximize their business' growth.
• Only half of nascent entrepreneurs expect to have sales of more than $100,000 in their fifth year of operation.

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