Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

I read a post by Nic Brisbourne entitled ‘Small boards are usually better’ and it reminded me of numerous, frustrated conversations I had with a few Founding CEOs over the past couple of years. I’ve often heard them say “I think it’s a brilliant idea and I really want to do it, but my board isn’t sure because they don’t get it”.

I tend to hire people who are much smarter than me, mainly because it makes my job much easier, the team much stronger and the company more likely to be the best in its field. And naturally, they’re much more motivated. So, I get the importance of listening to the team and going with the majority. Most of the time anyway.

But, when you feel very strongly about something, I personally believe that as CEO, you should go with your gut feeling and ‘just fucking do it’. I make no apology for swearing by the way - I recently heard that it’s the same motto held by one of the few people I look up to, Richard Brandson. So if he can say it, I can say it.

Meanwhile, back at the Brisbourne ranch and his thoughts about the size of an ideal board…

I was on a call yesterday with a subset of one of the boards I am on and one of the directors was talking about how difficult it is to add value on boards.

I agree with that. It is definitely difficult. Also definitely possible, but it usually requires a lot of care and forethought.

I should add at this stage that the director in question has been brilliant for us, and that he has an awesome track record of entrepreneurial success behind him.

One of the reasons I favour small boards is exactly because it is hard for NEDs to add value. Despite their best intentions many fail, and it is also common to see people destroying value by chewing up management time precisely because they are trying to help.

Read his full post here

I totally agree with Nic. ‘Decision by Committee’ for everything just doesn’t work. You either get very little done or you’re too late to deliver. That’s why we created working groups in BIMA. By creating working groups, appointing a Chair of each one and importantly, giving them the responsibility to make decisions without reverting back to the 12 Executives, it means the ship is much more productive. There are lots of other benefits but I don’t want to go too far off topic.

Instead of having 12 Executives making decisions about everything, it now has 9 working group Chairs with teams of no more than 5, making the decisions. Moreover, each team is focused primarily on areas in which they truly specialise. Not only does this mean they’re likely to deliver based on their expertise and experience, they’re less likely to cause delays where they’ve got less experience than others.

What are your thoughts?

It took just two days for HSBC management to resolve this issue. They were extremely helpful and apologetic for the miscommunication and misunderstanding.

It’s not company policy to refuse bank account applications from social networking or mobile related companies. However, there’s a little more to it than that simple statement - look at my vblog if you wish to learn more.

Download the video to your iTunes (2:77MB; 01:42 minutes)

To be clear, I didn’t do this as a way of ranting about my situation with a particular bank. I brought attention to this subject to help ensure some change, however small, took place, so that others would benefit.

Congratulations to my friends Michael Smith and Tom Boardman. Their extremely sucessful company, Firebox, is 10 years old today.

What were you doing 10 years ago? I had just left AOL after joining it as a startup, to head for the shores of the UK, where I am now.

To have started a pure online company back then, is truely amazing. It’s one thing for people like me to conjur up great ideas back then, but it’s another to have had the experience and guts to execute them.

Well done guys!

Check out their interview with the BBC, when the company was run from their flat.

I found Tom’s comments regarding the site possibly crashing with 100 concurrent users hilarious. The guy is a genius.

If you’re a Top Cat and coming to the event on the 12th, make sure to say hi to Michael.

I suppose it should come as no surprise, that some people have either been a little confused about what I was saying in my original vblog, or they assumed it was me who had a problem opening up a business account and that it wasn’t HSBC’s policy.

The fact is, I’ve been told by HSBC staff, that they are not permitted to open business accounts for companies that have anything to do with social networking or mobile. I’ve posted this second vblog in the hope that it clarifies what I was trying to say previously.

Download the video to your iTunes (6:43 MB; 04:05 minutes)

I’d like to emphasis in writing that I’m having the conversation in the hope that, however small, some change takes place. HSBC clearly supports startups in these fields through its sponsorship of numerous initiatives and projects. So, either it’s company policy or serious uptraining is required.

I read a scary quote on Joe Drumgoole’s blog today. It’s from Director General of the IVCA. (original article can be found on Silicon Republic),

Most of our investments would be in software firms that can grow to scale, not in dot.com companies or because someone has a nice widget … Funding in Irish companies is at its highest now since 2001, but much of these are follow-on investments in existing companies. There is still a lot of work to be done in raising money to seed new start-ups. Venture capitalists are currently raising money but it’s debatable how much of these funds will go into new plays in the next five years.

This is one of the few reasons why wubud, my latest venture, is based in the UK and not Ireland. Not every dot.com company is based on a widget. Follow-on investments is much less risky than investing in few startups. I’m pretty sure the Irish VCs removed ‘venture’ from Venture Capital.

This is my first ever video post so please forgive the fact that it’s very rough around the edges. Please feel free to provide tips and feedback.

Download the video to your iTunes (4.2 MB; 02:43 minutes)

Links

• Official Web Mission Web site
• Coverage of the Web Mission on TechCrunch.com and TechCrunch.co.uk
• Some information about wubud on TechCrunch.

Just read a post on TechCrunch which inspired me to write my thoughts on this subject.

Mike finished his post with

We can assume that the whole startup investing environment is going to get tougher and more competitive as the VCs mature and the startups themselves raise the bar in quality. It’s also now an international market, with some entrepreneurs threatening to move if they don’t get the attention of Euro VCs.

It’s one thing for an investor to ‘get it’. It’s another to back it. I’ve heard so many entrepreneurs complain that although the VCs to whom they’ve pitched, ‘get it’, they all expect to see ‘traction’. It’s easier to invest when a company already has traction, where’s the risk in that. We need to see more early-stage investors willing to take educated/calculated risks.

I’d consider a move to the Valley, not because I don’t feel European investors get what I’m doing. I’d consider a move because there’s an entire ecosystem in one cluster in San Francisco. I’d also consider it because to be quite frank, the numbers add up. There’s a bigger (local) customer based in the US

That said, I’ll find out for myself, exactly what The Valley is like. As I’ve posted recently, I’m heading over with The Web Mission to help with connecting/networking/introductions.

Would you consider a move to SF and if yes, why? If you’re already there, would you consider a move to Europe, or is that just a dumb question?

Original post on TechCrunch

Here’s an interesting post written by Rob Loch. I agree with everything he has to say. In fact, I’ve been calling it ‘permanent beta’ for quite some time now. Oh, Hugh McLeod and I have spent hours at a time talking about this stuff on the phone.

It’s very easy to test a product to ensure it works as designed. But what most companies don’t do often enough, is test the requirements to ensure the design is what should have specified in the first place. Listening to your customer is key. The sooner you get their opinion the better.

Rob’s post

Er, find out on TechCrunch. As you can probably tell, I haven’t had much time to blog lately. I promise to put fingers to keyboard soon.

I asked the Twitter community what their favourite search engine of all time was earlier. After having a great conversation with a few people, I got thinking about my days at AOL and companies that came and went before that.

The purpose of this post is to find out what you did, which you may not have shared with lots of people, to get a job. Before I move onto what lies I’ve told, I might as well give you a little background so you get to learn a little more about me. Skip to the end if what you already know about me is more than enough.

I’ve done just about every job presented to me; sandwich board advertising (me inside one!), washing dishes in an Indian restaurant, collecting shopping trollies, store man, potato/strawberry picking, bar tending, office junior, hotel work and so on.

I wasn’t good enough academically to get into university to study architecture, so I ended up working in a bar, something I really loved because for me, it was all about people. What became apparent from a very early age was that, not only did I always want to be the best that I could be, I always wanted to be the best at what I did, irrespective of what job I did. (I don’t expect everyone to want to be the best. I do hope however, that people strive to be the best that they can be)

I realised that working in a bar, or even running my own chain of bars in the future (that was my goal at the time), wasn’t what I wanted to do longterm. So, after managing a cocktail bar in Greece during the summery of 1993, I returned to Dublin adamant that I’d get a job in an office. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I just knew it would have something to do with computers, because it would be 9 to 5 (cough) and I was pretty handy with computers at school.

I quickly got a two week job helping a company to clear out an office. Like I said, I always did my best and it was always ‘about people’. So, they liked me enough to give me one of their old (286) computers. It didn’t even have an operating system so I sold it and put the money against the hire purchase of a brand spanking new 386 computer with a whacking 4MB of RAM. It was state of the art. I guess that was a big risk at the time because I had very little money and the computer was extremely expensive (for me anyway). I was getting myself into debt on the assumption I’d be able to pay it off later when my investment paid off. I did actually think of the purchase as an investment. Without it, I couldn’t progress.

The first thing I did was learn how to type. I purposely made it more difficult by using my girlfriend’s manual typewriter. I knew it would significantly improve my skills on a computer keyboard when it came to typing tests. I used the same books that secretaries use and within a few months I was speed typing about 120 words per minute and ready to hit the agencies for office junior positions.

Whilst all of this was going on, I must have received hundreds (literally) of ‘thanks but no thanks’ letters. Almost every company in Dublin received an application from me. I was on social welfare and living in a flat I wouldn’t give to a stray dog. I used to find slug trails on the bedroom carpet and I used cling film across the windows to block the wind.

Bending it like David Beckham

I was tired of companies expecting high grades at school, so I told lies to land my first job working for an insurance company. Life was back on track until they asked for proof of my exams two weeks into the job. My forgery skills were never great at school when I tried my parents signatures, so I wasn’t taking any chances in the real world. So, I pretended to be sick and never returned.

Balls in a wheelbarrow

I got my lucky break when the lies I told about my experience gained by working for a great insurance company (see above), amongst other things, landed me the position as Computer Operator at Bank National De Paris in Dublin.

I must have carried my balls in a wheelbarrow on the day of the interview. The role included managing the entire bank’s computer mainframe, backing up the dealer room conversations each day, transferring the daily interest rates between Paris and Dublin and supporting 12 Programmer Analysts’ in their file backup and restore procedures for the rest of BNP’s branches throughout Europe. Remember, I had no experience and no qualifications. Mistakes were made, but thankfully they weren’t too serious. As far as I was concerned I could learn on the job. And I did.

That was the last time I told a lie about my experience or qualifications. I ended up moving to another bank before joining AOL as a startup in 1995.

How did you bend the truth to land a job?