The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer DevelopmentbyBrant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits was published last July. It isa short sequel to a part of Steve Blank‘s The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2005) and is prefaced by him. It starts with a truism that can’t be repeated enough, and that every single entrepreneur should display on a banner in his/her office: “Startups fail because they didn’t develop their market, not because they didn’t develop their product.” In short, if you have created a product that people don’t need, you are doomed to fail. So create a product that people actually want, and you’ll have a better chance of succeeding. That’s ultimately what “customer development” means: it “is a four-step frame- work to discover and validate that you have identified the market for your product, built the right product features that solve customers’ needs, tested the correct methods for acquiring and converting customers, and deployed the right resources to scale the business.”
So get out of your office, test your “core Customer-Problem-Solution assumptions,” and check if users are willing to “pay” (otherwise forget about what you have in mind). Sell something: not the ground-breaking shebang you fantasized about before putting your neck out there, but what the authors call a “Minimum Viable Product (MVP),” a product with the fewest number of features. In the end, the more systematic you are in customer development, the more likely you are to minimize the risk of chasing rainbows, misspending your credit line or your VC’s LPs money.
This is a useful book. A little bit too jargony at times to my taste, but if you feel too terrestrial in understanding that the minute you start a company you must be sales-oriented and trying to make it clear to your development team, the book will make you feel better. Regardless of the words, though, one thing is clear: don’t try to create windmills with wigs, as I said in a former post. Continuously test what you are doing with real customers to continuously improve — and remain “lean” i.e. mean and frugal, until you have analyzed, defined, and segmented the market that will materialize your dreams of success.
From the science of automata to love stories with androids: Think about Wilhelm Schickard‘s “calculating clock” in 1623 and, almost two hundred years later, of Charles Babbage’s first mechanical computer, the difference engine, and about the many inventions in between: Pascal’s Pascaline (1642), Leibniz’s Stepped Reckoner (1672), the dozens of mechanical calculators that were built during the 18th Century, or Jacquard‘s automatic loom. Starting in the 17th century the word “automaton” (which means the ability to act or move of one’s own will in Greek) became a household term among scientists and philosophers, as well as entertainers throughout Europe – and a cause for endless marveling in the 18th century. While Leibniz, inventor of calculus, described the soul as an admirable “spiritual automaton” in his Théodicée, Jacques de Vaucanson (1709 –1782) and Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721–1790) fueled the imagination of kings and queens as well as of laymen with their humanoid automata. Few of them still work, but you may want to take a look at the tympanum player by clockmaker Peter Kintzing (1746-1816), or take a few minutes to watch Pierre Jaquet-Droz‘s marvels: the Musician, the Scribe and the Draftsman (start at the 6th minute if you are in a hurry). Automaton fantasies spread throughout the 19th century, inspiring countless writers and composers, until Villiers de l’Isle Adam popularized the term “Andreid” in his story Tomorrow’s Eve (1886). In it, a love-sick aristocrat, Lord Celian Ewald is close to committing suicide at the time he visits an American inventor called Edison — who exhorts him to wait for twenty-one days and meet the ideal artificial woman.
2010: The most complex android automaton today: Alexander Pushkin: Forget about all the computerized predictable robots of today and take a look at an amazing, non-computerized, and non-predictable piece of art, Pushkin:
Almost 37 inches tall and weighing 122 pounds, Pushkin blinks and breathes as he hand-writes and signs one of 1,458 poems with his Caran d’Ache pen. Here is an automaton in the grandest tradition, with extremely smooth and refined movements, yet considerably more complex than all historical automata combined. It’s also an android in a most beautiful tradition, as the founding father of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin (1799-1827), now writes for eternity illustrated love verses. That’s where the innovative uniqueness of Pushkin lies: while all automata so far have only offered predefined sets of words and drawings, Pushkin composes hundreds of different, sensical poems (with a drawing corresponding to the theme of each one) — a level of combinatorial intelligence hardly imaginable in mechanical computing.
No wonder the project took seven years to complete! It’s not a surprise that it propels its designer, François Junod, an already celebrated automaton maker from Sainte-Croix (in the heart of watch-and clock making country between La Chaux-de-Fonds and Geneva) to the top of the automaton artistic medium. François has pushed the limits of the genre thanks of his outstanding knowledge of micro-mechanics, his deep personal artistic creativity and culture, but also his ability to attract talents, such as Thomas Ortlieb, Nicolas Court, Fabienne Roth and many others, who were indispensable to complete such a daunting project. It was not only a huge task to custom-create almost 4,000 components (along with some of the instruments to build them), it was even more challenging to address a host of application issues, ranging from the size of these components to the impact of their mass with a 2 micron precision requirement.
Pushkin, who died after challenging Georges d’Anthès to a duel, has resumed a new life in Sainte-Croix. People came to admire the latest Swiss marvel evolve and improve; many journalists sent him emotional goodbyes as he left the country, carefully dismounted. Gerald Cordonier, a journalist for 24 heures even followed to the “virgin woods of young America.”
A major European philosopher, Michel Serres is also a mathematician and is famous for his courses on the history of thermodynamics, as well as a number of other sciences. A real “Troubadour of Knowledge” (to use the American title of his 1991 book called Le Tiers-Instruit in French) is a staunch proponent of inter- or cross-disciplinarity in education, because the fusion of traditionally separate domains often fuels innovation (think of the very concept of biomedical engineering, for example). An encyclopedic mind, who can tell you better than just about anybody else in the world why music is at the origin of sciences in his lecture about the education of Orpheus, Michel lives in sync with today’s realities and trends. He is able to comment on small events with humor as well as discuss the value of alternative currencies within local communities.
I can only advise that you read more about Michel Serres. There are dozens of great resources on the Web, in French of course, but also in English. I am lucky to have been one of his students at L’Ecole normale supérieure. He is an amazing mentor who cared for his students — and one who actually believes in what he advocates. In the mid-eighties, at a time when it was downright odd for a woman in Academia (in France for sure, but also in the US) to start a high-tech company, he was one of the rare persons who thought that it made sense. But then again, few people have the wisdom and instinct that comes from understanding so many facets of knowledge. If you understand French, listen to this very interesting conference he gave in 2007 for the 40th anniversary of the INRIA: “Les nouvelles technologies nous ont condamnés à devenir intelligents!” (“New technologies have compelled us to become intelligent”).
Last Friday, Marian Scheuer Sofaer invited a few friends for a breakfast in Palo Alto, CA with Gloria Feldt, who presented her now famous book, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think about Power. A great intimate setting early in the morning that did not diminish Gloria’s energy and determination to fight for the cause of women: “Women today,” she said, “are in the midst of an unfinished revolution.” While it is true that women have come a long way (“maybe”), parity is still not here – women’s salaries are still lower than men’s, and as of September 2010, the United States ranks 73rd among 186 countries in its percentage of women serving in national parliaments (not to mention the dismal percentage of women in the boardrooms, etc.). “Women need to lead their own way forward.”
Gloria Feldt states the problem unambiguously: “By far the most confounding problem facing women today is not that doors aren’t open, but that women aren’t walking through the open doors in numbers and with the intention sufficient to transform society’s major institutions once and for all.” The former president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (who had given birth to three children by the age of 20), Gloria Feldt offers a relevant flashback on Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), who opened a birth control clinic in 1916. Not only did she transform her convictions into actions, she did not ask for permission: she did it.
The book evolves around a very interesting analysis of the relationship of women to power. Most of the time, “power” boils down to being a demonstration of force, through attitudes, rhetorical means and the like; in other words, the word denotes a “power over” things, situations, or people. This is a vision of power with which women are traditionally uncomfortable, as it reeks of centuries of servitude and bullying. Implicitly getting back to the actual etymology of the word, Gloria Feldt exhorts women to understand the term as designating “the ability to,” and speaks of a “power to…” This means: the capacity to accomplish things, and before anything else, the faculty of ridding oneself from the fear of coming across in an unfeminine fashion or a sort of “bluestocking.” This latter is a term that ended up being used derisively to stigmatize educated women in the 18th century, targeting the members of the Blue Stockings Society, an important educational and social movement created in England by Elizabeth Montegu (and to which the first woman-programmer in history, Ada Byron Lovelace belonged!)
“Power-to” is the new responsibility of women. They have the responsibility to take advantage of what the fight of other women has granted them over the course of the 20th century and pursue the cause by resisting fear and speaking up — especially as results already speak for them. Catalyst, Ernst & Young, the World Bank and McKinsey have clearly acknowledged an improved efficiency in organizations including at least 30% of women at the top.
The book provides a wide range of tactical tools and ways for women to overcome recurring demons (such as the feeling of not being “quite ready” to apply to a given job, for example) and ends up with a forceful exhortation: “Don’t follow your dream — lead it.” While it may be true that women often do not have the same “track record” as men, often because the road has been more difficult for them, it’s also true that they can make up for time lost efficiently.
Many of the case studies are inspiring. Don’t try to tread a “fine line” or compromise indefinitely, as did Hillary Clinton in many respects. Lean forward. True, it’s hard for women CEO to take a long maternity leave, but at least we can decide to own our bodies, and we can decide to have kids on our own terms. It’s up to women to organize to make sure that if women retreat from the workforce temporarily, we help them come back. So let’s not conclude that parenthood and powerful careers are incompatible, or brazenly declare that “Women Don’t Want To Run Startups Because They’d Rather Have Children.”
David Cohen is the founder and CEO of Techstars, a mentorship-driven startup accelerator, and Brad Feld has been an early stage investor for over twenty-five years. Both authors are innate entrepreneurs and authentically love entrepreneurs. So Do more faster is not simply a platform to create speaking-opportunities, but the sincere expression of their desire to guide people through their journey. In this book, they do not steal the limelight away from entrepreneurs; while authoring a number of passages themselves, they also bring together a wide variety of contributors – and they do it to make sure that entrepreneurs will reap the benefits of key lessons learned by peers. This book is a must read. Even though it’s always difficult to measure how advice can really “accelerate a startup,” it’s certain that there are ways to make sure not to waste time.
The art of building a startup is analyzed through seven themes, and these are divided into key related topics.
1- Idea and vision: You start with an idea that, after prototypes and multiple iterations, might end up being quite different from what you anticipated in the first place. For your own good, be able to adapt (because no matter how much you fancy yourself as a game-changer and disruption-bearer, you have to solve a real problem for real people – see an earlier post I wrote about windmills with wigs). So beware of the “next big thing” and keep away from what David Cohen calls the “everythingitis:” offer something that people want, and if you see that things won’t pan out no matter what, close the show earlier rather than later, elegantly.
2- People: However romantic the idea of venturing out as a solo pioneer, put your ego aside, and look for co-founders – while pre-empting the disastrous impact of possible future disagreements with a prenup. Also, no matter how skilled you have become at hiding your personal flaws and insecurities, make it a principle to hire people who are better than you. Given that you are not infallible, learn to fire quickly (“Two strikes and you are out,” Brad says), but don’t turn into a tyrant: a company is a great team of complementary talents, as well as a managed network of relevant customers and evangelists.
3- Execution: That’s the nervous system of any startup and I am glad to see this very early in the book. If you are not an “execution machine,” you are just a dreamer and forget about your entrepreneurship dreams. You have to do everything faster than an established company and fall back on you feet as quickly as a cat. Trust your guts, be decisive, learn that a one-of-a-kind customer doesn’t create a market, and scale your business through replicability. You may find out that the company will not thrive. So fold it sooner than later. Learning through failures is a great reassuring American spiel (provided than you don’t start to believe that it can be a way of life).
4- Product: Another great section, often tied to section 1. Despite efficient filters (Techstars accepts just 10 of the more than 600 startups that apply), “we find at least one-third of those startups are attempting to build a product that they want, or that no one wants, instead of what the market wants” the authors say. Don’t wait until you are proud of your own product, focus on what matters, obsess over the right metrics, and never forget that customers are kings.
5- Fundraising: Most companies come to Techstars with the goal of raising money. Well, should it be really your goal? Sure, you will learn more about the art of raising money, but also find out that you may not have to. Beware of angel investors who aren’t investors, find the right ones who care about the right things (in the end: it’s results!), and realize that bootstrapping can be a very efficient way to right-size your business.
6- Legal and Structure: This is not fancy, but key: form the company early and choose the right company structure – and default to Delaware. And even (some) lawyers can tell you that “lawyers don’t have to be expensive,” which doesn’t mean that you should select your brother in law to stay on the cheap side. Cheap is cheap – and sometimes very expensive.
7- Work-Life Balance: Yes, you will work around the clock. But at some point, you need to recharge your batteries. Various ways to do that, even though it’s hard to get your passion out of your mind.
Techstars is a great mentor-driven accelerator, and has become a meaningful part of the ecosystem in Boulder, Boston, or Seattle and will soon in New York City. This is a replicable model, and the great thing about the whole initiative is that David Cohen has been very open about the results.
One day, Russell Willis Taylor, the President and CEO of National Arts Strategies told me this: “Many towns look alike. There is a Starbucks at every corner. There is a Walmart in every town. But you know where you are by the art that is being enjoyed and created — that is what gives us that important sense of place now.” Urban Arts entrepreneur Matthew Kwatinetz definitely agrees, adding that “The culture of a city is an expression of that community’s identity, what matters to them.” Matthew continues, saying that “ today we know that arts and culture also have significant economic impacts, and cutting funding for the arts can also negatively impact local businesses, amplifying the financial woes of already strained communities.”
Matthew is part of a new breed of business innovators that I call urban arts entrepreneurs. This group combines fervent advocacy for the arts and passionate community activism with a strong business sense; they dedicate their lives to impacting specific urban geographies, bootstrapping complex partnerships between heterogeneous entities – local government officials, businesses, institutions, financiers, artists, arts organizations, community organizers, and influencers of all types. Just like most entrepreneurs, urban arts entrepreneurs start with limited resources, and create a “product” for people to enjoy or a service that serves a specific need. It’s a huge task, and given that they can’t afford an armada of employees, urban arts entrepreneurs must wear multiple hats and show an exceptionally broad spectrum of competencies. The minute you get that, you won’t be surprised by the amazing complexity of their personal trajectory.
The making of an urban arts entrepreneur such as Matthew is by no means a linear process. It starts with a deep love for the arts and personal artistic talent. Matthew was classically trained in trombone and voice, went into musical theater and performed with high level amateurs and semi-professional troupes starting at a young age. Such experience as a practitioner is a plus if you want to directly or indirectly manage artists — individual contributors with their own strong ideas. Now, managing people requires more than just empathy. You also need leadership, a natural talent that Matthew had, yet was considerably strengthened at a college of his own choice, Deep Springs College, a small organization whose goal is to prepare its male students for “a life of service.” You also need a serious cultural and liberal arts background, something that Matthew acquired at Harvard where he selected to major in philosophy – while remaining very active as an artist.
Where do you go from there? Matthew decided to move from the East Coast to Seattle, with two goals in mind: land a day job and pursue his performance work. And he did both. His day job was at Microsoft, as a Program Manager for embedded systems (incidentally, Matthew’s hobby since he was a kid was to write code…), and he continued to work both as an artist and as a production coordinator and consultant to arts organizations… Until he felt frustrated as he kept on witnessing arts organizations facing the same structural problems over and over again. So he decided to create a business incubator for arts and entertainment groups, uniting his passion for business and the arts. He started the Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC) on 12th Avenue in Seattle in 2002, that provided a common infrastructure — “like an operating system,” Matthew adds — where people were able to share space, personnel and other commonly needed resources to lower overall costs, creating efficiencies of scale by satisfying the needs of several small organizations with a shared infrastructure. The organization presented hundreds of shows of all types in the course of the six years of its existence.
The creative economy: Arts in the City make businesses thrive
Capitol Hill Arts Center was a success. The biggest problem the organization ended up encountering is that it didn’t own its building, which placed it in a strange paradox. The existence of Capitol Hill Arts Center had changed the surrounding real estate, making it more desirable, evidenced by private developers advertising CHAC as a perk in their marketing pitch to sell commercial real estate. But when CHAC was offered an opportunity to extend its lease, Matthew tried to purchase the building to capture some of this value—but the owner of the building didn’t want to sell. That’s when Matthew realized that as an urban arts entrepreneur, he was, in reality, in the real estate business, and that the model of CHAC could be extended to be relevant for public policy making and neighborhood real estate development. There was a paradox: while arts businesses are not large money-making operations, they create opportunities for other businesses around them to make money based on their work, and public support.
This conundrum spurred him to work with the County’s cultural development organization to rally a large movement of artists, real estate developers, lawyers, companies and business owners to show up at City Hall demanding that the City start thinking of the development of the arts, entertainment and culture in a different way. At the request of Seattle’s City Council, Matthew helped form an advisory committee on urban planning and cultural districts. “It had become clear to me,” Matthew adds, “that understanding the relationship between the private and the public sectors was key, and we had to demonstrate that investment from the public sector leads to an increase in value on the private side. In this situation it becomes the responsibility of local government to channel this increased value into the public good.” While Matthew had experimented in many different industries and businesses, he commented wryly to me: “It also became obvious to me that I needed to get an MBA to learn what other people already knew about this economic relationship and what I could learn from them.”
As a result, Matthew graduated with honors from The Wharton School last May with an MBA in Real Estate and Finance, and has started his new company, QBL Real Estate. The name may sound like a cabbalistic file extension, but its purpose is to focus on the needs of arts/entertainment organizations, artists and cultural/community space developers as well as the role of the arts in enlivening business districts and revitalizing neighborhoods. His clients include, among others, the City of Ottawa, the City of Austin, the Kimmel Center of the Performing Arts (Philadelphia) and King County’s Cultural Development Authority. In the video below (about 40 minutes – Matthew being introduced after 6 minutes), he discusses the quantifiable impact of culture on the value of private real estate and the positive outcomes for communities at large.
What is remarkable about this video to me is how Matthew translates his unique perspective on the role of the arts into a prescription for downtown urban development as a whole — arts-related or not. He is able to apply principles from economics, geo-spatial theory, business strategy, creative economy and other diverse fields. To me, this is Matthew’s true value-add, and that of many entrepreneurs: they are synthesizers.
Cities and neighborhood can benefit from the holistic approach that Matthew brings, as well as his passion and determination to solve the recurring question of the role of the Arts and culture in our society. A brilliant speaker about the role of culture in downtown business districts, real estate financial models, cultural economic development policies and the changing face of corporate philanthropy, Matthew is also hands-on as a consultant. Ultimately, he believes that the social value of public goods such as schools, parks and (of course) cultural institutions cause a corresponding increase in surrounding real estate prices. It is clear after talking with him that culture will be a key part of future urban economic development practice, as well as an essential tool for the savviest real estate developers to positively impact communities both socially and economically.
My friend Louis Montagne, the founder CEO of Bearstech and af83, recently invited me to speak to entrepreneurs at La Cantine, a great coworking space that is part of Silicon Sentier, passage des Panoramas, a beautiful roofed commercial passageway that was build around 1800.
I was impressed by the openness of this audience of entrepreneurs and students planning to become entrepreneurs. While suggesting that they look at entrepreneurship as a journey rather than as an adventure, I focused on the main conditions for success, and especially on one: creating a product that people want. It’s great to have an idea and to be convinced that people will fall in love with your “revolutionary” technology. Yet, it’s wise to keep away from delusions and realize that if you are too “disruptive,” people will have a hard time relating to what you do – if ever. Innovation doesn’t necessarily entail big shake-ups, and is often more about the ability to create something that people want. The iPhone is not the best phone in the world, but people want it!
So how do you know if people are interested in your idea? The simplest way is to ask your future customers what they think. I constantly see entrepreneurs with “almost” finished products but with hardly any prospects in their pipeline — just ideas of large companies that would benefit from the genial solution to a problem they don’t really know they had. And when these startups try to “go to market” for real, what they offer doesn’t correspond to what customers expect – and internal dramas kick in. Given that VCs will tell you “come back when you have customers,” look for customers before looking for VCs, and before you even have a product.
Customers are the most reliable judges of the value you may bring. So engage with them at all the stages of the product creation process and from day one. Leadership is first and foremost the ability to listen.
Idea: After checking the space and who is already on it or how the problem may be addressed by a combination of products, ask people you believe might be your customers. Does your idea make sense to them? You may have a “unique” idea, but that’s not enough. Windmills with wigs are unique, yet will forever belong to a museum of curios. If no customer is interested in your idea, reconsider. The customers you are talking to can’t all be wrong, stupid or incompetent.
Prototype: Once you find a few people who are authentically interested in the idea, start your prototype. Sometimes people like the concept, but have a hard time figuring out how the product will work. So show a prototype and let people play with it. They will give you feedback and will help you refine your concept.
Alphas and Betas: Continue active conversations with customers at all the other stages, from the alpha-1 to the alpha-n, and through the beta process. While doing so, you will have a clear notion of the must-have features from day 1, and the features that you can add over time. Customers are the best guides to help you establish the hierarchy of features. Don’t dream of providing them all at once. You can’t. So be wise. Also, customers will request features that you didn’t think about. Listen carefully and check if this request is specific to one given customer or if others might also want it. If the request appears to be customer-specific, you may offer the feature as a service (and start to be paid), or you may offer an API for vertical developers to offer custom features to your future customers (in other words, start to build an ecosystem by opening your product!).
As you work with your future customers to define a product that they will use, you also accomplish two things:
1) You will know what your competitors offer much better, because early adopters are familiar with other products, or are so frustrated with established players that they will not hesitate to give more details about their pain.
2) You will refine your pitch (and usually make it much simpler); you will create more relevant slideshows and start to write manuals, interesting white papers. In other words, you will start building the company’s literature and culture that all the future customers and employees will leverage.
After preparing my speech for entrepreneurs at La Cantine, a remarkable coworking space in Paris, I ended my trip to Europe reading Proust’s Overcoat, a 124 page lovely book by Italian journalist Lorenza Foschini published in Italy in 2008, and this year in the United States. It is well translated by painter and writer Eric Karpeles.
The book is the description of the obsession of a highly literate entrepreneur, Jacques Guérin (1902-2000), the son of an amazing, non-conformist woman-entrepreneur Jeanne-Louise Guérin, who after separating from her husband in 1900 (a daring move at the time) became a very successful business woman. She raised capital from Theophile Bader (co-founder of the Galeries Lafayette) to revive and turn around a famous brand name in the perfumery industry, the Parfums d’Orsay, named after one of the most famous dandies of the romantic area, Alfred d’Orsay (1801-1852), and produced some of the Art Deco perfumery blockbusters, such as Le Dandy. She bought out all the investors in 1936 and appointed her son Jacques, who had studied chemistry, as the general manager. His passion for literature and avant-garde artists were a driving force, and even led him to create Divine in 1947, inspired by a drag queen in Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers (incidentally, I doubt that the ladies who bought the fragrance ever read the story).
Guérin was an insatiable collector with an acute sense of what was worth collecting and had a passion of all things Proust. He has been exposed to the Proust family when he fell ill: Marcel Proust’s brother, Robert Proust, a doctor, like their father, Adrian Proust, has been called to his bedside because of an appendicitis for which he was operated. A few weeks later, to thank the famous surgeon, Guérin paid a visit to Robert Proust’s and got a peek at a place that had turned as a Marcel Proust’s sanctuary. The brothers were not that close, but Robert had kept most of his brother’s belongings after his death in 1922. Family honor obliging.
When Robert Proust died in 1935, his widow Marthe Dubois-Amiot, who had harbored a ruthless hatred for anything Proust, was determined to destroy by fire all Proust memorabilia; however, overwhelmed by the immensity of the task, she ended up asking a Mr. Werner to send piles of paper to an antique bookshop rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, across from Hermès, and find buyers for pieces of furniture she abhorred – such as Proust’s bed from the age of 16 until his death. Guérin chanced by this place – that he had never noticed before ‑ a few minutes later and bought invaluable manuscripts, letters and photographs, putting pressure on the capricious Mr. Werner to know if there was more to buy, the latter seeming to somewhat sadistically enjoy his power over the brilliant amateur.
Lorenza Foschini’s book reads like a thriller-reportage, and it is amazing to find out how the most famous overcoat in French literature and Proust’s shield against both sun and rain ended up resisting the wrath of a sister-in-law, the waters of the Marne river, and the appetite of moths.
It all started when Lorenza interviewed Visconti’s famous costume designer Piero Tosi for a television program. He had met dozens of people who had been in one way or the other associated directly or indirectly with Proust as Visconti had had the impossible project of creating a film adaptation of In Search of Lost Time. But the story of this overcoat could definitely be the subject of an interesting camp movie.
Note: This book will be published in French by Diateino in January 2011. As a reminder, Diateino is also the French publisher of Seth Godin’s and Guy Kawasaki’s most recent books. To read my French version of this preface, please go to the Diateino blog.
In France, the word “cartoonist” generally refers to the creators of American animated cartoons. In English, the term applies to any person who draws cartoons in a variety of formats — such as editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, or animation. The word comes from the Italian “cartone” that started to designate preliminary drawings and sketches for paintings, stained glass windows, and tapestries early in the sixteenth century. Even though the Webster reports that the first known use of “cartoon” in English dates back to 1671, Punch Magazine is the publication that gave the word its modern meaning in 1843 by labeling one of its illustrations, “Cartoon, No.1: Substance and Shadow,” a satirical drawing where caricaturist John Leech (1817-1864) was deriding the preliminary drawings of the paintings that were to decorate the Houses of Parliament under reconstruction because of the 1834 fire. From then on, “cartoons” started to brand humorous drawings that often had social and political undertones. During the same period, France also has its “cartoonists”, of course, such as J.J. Grandville, Honoré Daumier, or Charles Philipon; however the French press never went into a similar intensive marketing of cartoons as its Anglo-Saxon counterpart did. As indicated by Jean-Paul Gabilliet, one of the rare French specialists of American cartoons, “the democratic mythologizing of press illustrations in France only happened in the nineteenth century and faded after WWI, with images being treated as a mere additive to writings.” Nonetheless, Gabilliet does not fail to mention contemporary notable exceptions, such as Cabu or Pétillon.
A cartoonist, a writer, an entrepreneur, whatever! A creative mind…
Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist in the pure sense of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. He is a writer: this is clear from his book’s climb onto the Wall Street Journal’s Best Sellers list. He is an entrepreneur: in 2006 he became the CEO of Stormhoek USA that markets South-African wines in the United States. He worked in advertising intermittently until 2004, starting right after college, needing a job to pay for his bills. All such activities anchor him in what he calls “the real world,” as he deems living as an “artist” to be too unpredictable. Is this too much of a compromise when you are an artist? It’s a matter of vantage point. In fact, it’s by securing a revenue stream that MacLeod was able to do what he wanted to do as an artist – and ultimately without compromising. “The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not. It is this red line that demarcates your sovereignty; that defines your own private creative domain.”
In this book, which reads like an autobiographic essay, Hugh MacLeod shares his experience and his perspective. Whether you are an artist or an entrepreneur, your personal obligation is to protect your freedom and your sovereignty: this is what will enable you to constantly more forward, pushing you to innovate as well as find the self-sufficiency that frees you from the tyranny of others — friends who see you a certain way, always the same over the years, or colleagues who box you in categories based on what is professionally convenient to them or on what fits with the stereotypes with which they comply. So, if you are an artist, don’t get trapped into the romantic clichés of the misunderstood genius ready to starve for the sake of Art; if you are an entrepreneur, keep away from buzzwords and sing in your own voice. Your goal is certainly to be recognized, but your chances of succeeding are higher if you accept solitude and beaver away. Yes, “Ignore everybody, but also “Just shut the hell up and get on with it. Time waits for no one.”
For MacLeod, success didn’t come overnight. He crafted it. It’s a success earned through work, patience, and his ability to leverage the platform of expression that the Web offers. MacLeod could have waited to be recognized through traditional means. Instead, he chose to create his luck. His free spirit made him choose self-publication in his own “magazine,” his blog. Hugh Macleod is a cartoonist, yes, but on his own terms, and on a ubiquitous tribune.
An artist…
Ignore Everybody contains two books in one. It’s a text, of course. But it’s also a collection of cartoons to be appreciated separately, that tell a slightly different story even as they illustrate the narrative. They display a whole different dynamics, capturing the precariousness of ideas, feelings and impressions, as well as the fleetingness of viewpoints: “One of the reasons I got into drawing cartoons on the back of business cards was that I could carry them around with me (…) So if I was walking down the street and I suddenly got hit with the itch to draw something, I could just nip over to the nearest park bench or coffee shop, pull out a blank card from my bag and get busy doing my thing. Seamless. Effortless. No fuss. I like it. Before, when I was doing larger works, every time I got an idea while walking down the street I’d have to quit what I was doing and schlep back to my studio while the inspiration was still buzzing around in my head. Nine times out of ten the inspired moment would have passed by the time I got back.”
These cartoons are a world in and of themselves. While the text of the book sometimes gives the impression that words thwart the communication of the message, the vignettes express the moment with vividness and perceptiveness, instantly revealing how MacLeod sees the world around him, be it personal or professional, what he likes as well as what he detests, humorously or ironically, yet almost always with an iconoclast and libertarian resonance. While the book compulsively hammers how urgent it is to resurrect in oneself personal leadership and creative energy free from constraints and conventions, the drawings accurately reflect that impulse, as does the laconic style of the comments that accompany them. MacLeod’s drawings have something of a Lettrist Hypergraphy manner à la Isidore Isou and a situationist energy à la Guy Debord. The cartoons of Ignore Everybody, as well as some if his drawings for a number of books, such as Seth Godin’s Linchpin, Nilofer Merchant’s The New How, or Barrie Hopson’s and Katie Ledger’s And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career carry the same clear message: Get away from what Guy Debord called “The Society of the Spectacle”, take charge of your own destiny, be constructive and innovate: “The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.”
… Or follow a great tradition by making it yours and enriching it with your own idioms, as is the case for MacLeod. He calls himself a Texan, but his father is Scottish, and he has spent part of his life in Great Britain. As a matter of fact, there is something quite European about his style. At times, you will think of Paul Klee’s pencil strokes, of entanglements in the style of Hundertwasser, of postures à la Ronald Searle, or of proliferations like Sempé (for whom “nothing is simple” and “everything gets complicated”). At times, the metal-wire-like lines surmounted with a black ball, a while circle, or a spiral may remind you of the tension, attraction and repulsion effects of some of Alexander Calder’s mobiles. In all cases, though, you will still discover a very personal style and, on the minuscule area of a business card, the large space of the experiences and fancies of an artist, expressed with the insolence and the cynical benevolence of the best cartoonists in history.
Sometimes when I go to a party or to a conference, I think of Dr. Seuss’s If I Ran the Zoo, and look for the most interesting people around, i.e. those who combine some exotic traits with an outstanding intellect and an extraordinary kindness – an endearing subspecies of “nerds.” Quite a few people in the Valley fit the bill, and one of them is definitely Harry McCracken.
The art of ethics: a sure methodology for long-term success: I first met Harry in the early the 1990’s. As disappointed as I was to see that he was not interested in a database running on Macintosh for InfoWorld Direct, I couldn’t help being somewhat appreciative of his direct, yet perfectly courteous, manner. The Mac was not his thing – it was as simple as that. In fact, I valued his straightforward honesty, along with his somewhat unruly hairdo and his musing smile. I didn’t think of this for well over a decade – until, in May 2007, I learned in the New York Times about his sudden resignation and reinstatement as the Editor-in-Chief of PC World subsequent to “a disputed article,” 10 Things We Hate About Apple by Narasu Rebbapragada and Alan Stafford.
I loved the fact that the blogosphere did care about journalistic integrity and McCracken, and the incident was a way for me to reconnect with what he was up to professionally. His review of Leopard in October of 2007 (How Leopard demolishes Vista) actually impressed me. Obviously he knew the Mac in and out. I became a regular reader of Technologizer when he started this blog in 2008, steadily admiring his ability to be a whole magazine just by himself. Clearly, he is one of the best writers in the industry: thorough, conscientious, and ethical – with the rare quality of seizing on trends without jumping naively on bandwagons. He is an influencer because he is a journalist at heart.
Smelling and feeling trends: What gives some people the ability to smell trends is complex. Yes, you have to be so immersed in a domain or so constantly exposed to novelty that you simply can’t miss what’s happening. That’s not enough, though, because you may simply be a bandwagoner. To be a meaningful influencer, make out interesting trends or, even harder, interesting products, you need more: to work hard, have the huge memory to process and cross-reference information quickly, be authentically willing to try new things yourself, and be hands-on. But you also need a deep sense of observation. This latter requirement is ultimately the most difficult to keep over the years. Few people are able to observe, or more precisely, to keep the agility and accuracy of consummate bird watchers, in a world where the tendency is to do everything in order to be looked at and become a center of interest (which influences the perception of the outside world with the wrong filters). I really like McCracken’s ability to be constantly attentive. He has the intensely scrutinizing and benevolent look of the people who have the special talent of guarding themselves from knowing it all, and instead, want to marvel at things and people.
The Harry Technologizer who used his dad’s TRS-80 when he was 14 and created a TRS-80 users’ group’s newsletter when he was 16 is really the same person as the Harry-Go-Round who was fascinated by comics and animation when he was one year old, and continues to keep an eye open for interesting details on cartoons, illustrations or Scrappy-related items. After all, great journalists/influencers are fantastic ass-kickers, always on for additional adventures: Harry is now “making time” for TIME Magazine and guess what is first column is about? Read: Where Are the Rivals to Apple’s iPad?
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits was published last July. It is a short sequel to a part of Steve Blank‘s The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2005) and is prefaced by him. It starts with a truism that can’t be repeated enough, and that every single entrepreneur should display on a banner in his/her office: “Startups fail because they didn’t develop their market, not because they didn’t develop their product.” In short, if you have created a product that people don’t need, you are doomed to fail. So create a product that people actually want, and you’ll have a better chance of succeeding. That’s ultimately what “customer development” means: it “is a four-step frame- work to discover and validate that you have identified the market for your product, built the right product features that solve customers’ needs, tested the correct methods for acquiring and converting customers, and deployed the right resources to scale the business.”
Last Friday, 
The book evolves around a very interesting analysis of the relationship of women to power. Most of the time, “power” boils down to being a demonstration of force, through attitudes, rhetorical means and the like; in other words, the word denotes a “power over” things, situations, or people. This is a vision of power with which women are traditionally uncomfortable, as it reeks of centuries of servitude and bullying. Implicitly getting back to the actual etymology of the word, Gloria Feldt exhorts women to understand the term as designating “the ability to,” and speaks of a “power to…” This means: the capacity to accomplish things, and before anything else, the faculty of ridding oneself from the fear of coming across in an unfeminine fashion or a sort of “bluestocking.” This latter is a term that ended up being used derisively to stigmatize educated women in the 18th century, targeting the members of the 
One day, 
My friend 
Idea:
After preparing my speech for entrepreneurs at 
Guérin was an insatiable collector with an acute sense of what was worth collecting and had a passion of all things Proust. He has been exposed to the Proust family when he fell ill: Marcel Proust’s brother, 
