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I know nothing of pedagogy nor of the American educational system, so this may resonate or it may not. I met recently with a friend who’s a founder of a prominent VC firm. I’ll just call him “Steve” to protect his identity. He’s intimately involved in philanthropic work focused on education in this country. Whenever I see him he’ll always bring up the kind of activities he’s involved with, and the challenges this country faces.

Of course the main challenge in this area stems from just how little this country invests in educational infrastructure, and that breeds a host of follow-on issues around attracting, retaining, and continuously improving the base of educators in the K-12 arena.

As Steve and I spoke, I told the story of my upbringing and my experience with the public school system where I grew up. It was a bad scene, not helped by the fact that the friends I chose were not exactly great role models. I told him a story about how I never did homework during my entire K-12 experience, and I furthermore told it with a great deal of pride. I thought that this must be what Steve is dealing with, but perhaps to an even greater degree.

It occurred to me that there was a single defining moment that I must have latched onto that changed me and set me on a less destructive and more prolific track. Oddly enough, the Hippie era came along, but for me it worked. You probably think of things like “dropping out”, “peace”, “love”, “drugs”, and “acid”, but there was something about this prototypical model to emulate that was a good thing, or at least better than what we have today.

Let’s think about this. The Hippie era came along and what did it mean to people like me, and to a good number of my peers across the country? The part we grasped onto was the intellectual dimension of the era. It was good to be smart, well read, and intellectual. My model wasn’t Ringo, but Lennon. It wasn’t The Beach Boys, but Dylan. We were reading books like Tom Wolf’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and Ken Kesey. We spent time studying Kurt Vonnegut and modern philosophers like Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Hanna Arendt, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and of course Nietzsche (a favorite of Carly Fiorina when asked what books she read – she obviously was forced to read this in college).

I wanted to study German just so I could read original works. I clearly remember when I picked up Emmanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” in German. There’s a sentence on the first page (THE FIRST PAGE!) that’s 113 words long, containing 17 punctuation marks. Man – you had to be smart just to read it. (I don’t think I understood much but I tried damn hard).

I didn’t actually want to be these people – I just wanted to acquire their knowledge. What an inane and futile aspiration, but it was much loftier than being a brainless high school dropout. This is what must have really changed my life and turned me from a horrible K-12 delinquent with horrible grades and questionable behavior into someone who valued education and intellectual pursuit.

My role models were different than what I see today. Part of the problem is our lack of investment in our educational system, part must be due to parents’ general lack of ability to enforce discipline and foster regard for the value of education, but a bigger part has to do with today’s role models. Think about the role model comparison. Here are some of my role models:

I guess I wanted to be more than I was – but it’s probably better than being less. Now think about real significant role models of today. Here’s a couple from our last presidential election.

Now, to begin with, this guy is a moron – yes, a simple moron. How anyone might look at this guy as someone to model or emulate is one of those sweet mysteries of life. Do you think I’m kidding about this guy? Take a look at this:

Do you see the satirical juxtaposition of two images that couldn’t be more antithetical? It’s comparing the model of today to one of my models. Does this mean that were I a high school teen today that I would aspire to be Joe the Plumber? That is a depressing thought.

Take a look at some of our other modern role models: Peter Griffin, Patrick from Sponge Bob (Bob l’éponge in French), Homer Simpson, Cartman.


These guys are cool, and I’m sure there are many young people who’d like to be just like them. Well, to get off to a good start, just get stupid. Amazingly, the only intellectuals depicted in any of these shows are Stewie Griffin and Brian – an infant and a dog.

Even Peter’s son Chris is an idiot, but generously graced with an even more impoverished IQ.

Check out this role model – and I think he’s genuinely talented (I mean it): you’ll remember him from “That 70’s Show”:

We know his persona in the show is that of an airhead kid. Given that he’s such a cool and good looking kid it’s no wonder that he’s a role model. After all, if I’m in high school and I act like him, despite the fact that I’m basically not very attractive, it may help me meet girls. Therefore Ashton Kutcher is the model for me.

Take a look at the grown up Ashton in “No Strings Attached”. In one scene he brings his “no strings attached” girlfriend a balloon the morning after they have great sex, and in another scene he tries to impress her with a bouquet of carrots – you know this is cool.

So, even as we grow up it still makes sense to be semi dumb as long as it gets you what you want.

The question is what’s the incentive and motivation today to be smart? I don’t know. All of these idiots that I’m talking about, with the exception of Joe the Plumber, are all characters that I enjoy watching. I really liked “No Strings Attached”, and I have to admit that I watch Sponge Bob every morning before work and Family Guy every night. Fortunately for me, I’m not influenced by this nonsense – it’s just fun. However, I’m sure glad I was not impressed with such characters in my teens.

My VC friend Steve really has his work cut out for him. Unfortunately, I don’t think a few bucks given here and there to some much needed educational programs will work. The problem is far too deep. It has something to do with how brains are shaped. That’s a tough one.

I hope to blog again.

You’re probably wondering what I’m getting at here. It’s actually very simple – it’s something I’ve given a lot of thought to and a brand of common sense that is overlooked, ignored, or minimally disregarded. Take a look at this graph:

It depicts the classic abyss between first impression and actual performance. The project lead pitches a new development effort. Expectations are set high, but delivery is far below. An entrepreneur pitches the VC on a new business, describing market opportunity in the hundreds of billions, revenues of hundreds of millions a year, and liquidity of billions, only to find that after three years just staying alive is a challenge.

This is an old graph but it tells the story:

Do you see the red and green dots? These represent VC-funded investments. This is what happened pre- and post-dotcom bust. The green dots are IPOs and the red ones are VC-funded companies that went out of business. We all know that when these companies/ideas were pitched the representation was high as a kite. So what happened? The delta between initial representation and performance delivered.

Just for fun, let’s look at a couple more examples. Think about the new job. Pre job, you walk in with this dynamite resume that makes you out to be the king of all interview candidates – you’re perfect, ideal, and to top it off you’re good looking! You’re too good to be true and that’s why you’re getting hired. You start work, glad hand everyone, give a great first presentation at the company meeting or customer conference, and all are impressed. Your first month you work your ass off, everyone is in awe of your work ethics and results – you’re on top of the world. Six months go by and the truth begins to emerge: routinely late for work, missed meetings, missed deadlines, sick a lot, and poor deliverables resulting in some pissed off people. The implosion is just around the corner.

What about a romantic relationship? You think you’ve found the perfect partner. Attentive, caring, patient, and whatever else goes into making one an eHarmony commercial. Then the period of decline begins to emerge as your partner reveals himself with reality being far from the initial representation. Suddenly, the perfect partner is preceded by prefixes such as “un” and “in”, and eHarmony pulls their offer to have you appear on primetime TV.

This story isn’t really that extreme for everyone and everything it’s just meant to dramatize the Expectation Theory— a simple phenomenon that ultimately, in any given situation, we can’t avoid our innate behavior and help from migrating to our natural point of equilibrium. We just can’t help being ourselves no matter how hard we try. We can improve, but we can’t escape.

I really hope to blog again.

What a world we live in! What an alignment of the stars! Nostradamus could not have had a more insightful prediction 400 years ago. Mark Hurd gets ousted from HP because he has an “inappropriate” relationship with a contractor – sounds rather Clinton-like. HP general counsel said Hurd “demonstrated a profound lack of judgment that seriously undermined his credibility and damaged his effectiveness in leading HP.” I mean, really…what do you expect a lawyer to say!  Larry Ellison thinks the HP board is inane

A while back Charles Phillips’ girlfriend put up a billboard in Times Square – a major embarrassment for Phillips, particularly since she picked Times Square – how touristy, pedestrian. Couldn’t she have picked the corner of Central Park South & 5^th or 82^nd & 5^th?  Then Phillips makes some tangential allusion to a $70 Billion acquisition budget, and the press calls it gospel. Next thing you know, Phillips is out, Hurd is in.  This is like a Greek play – a modern day “deus ex machina”, with Ellison as “machina”.

Phillips did a super job of building Oracle up from a ton of acquisitions. This was a monumental feat and done brilliantly. Poor IBM and Microsoft – they can’t pull this stuff off. Now Hurd steps in to make it all work and really shore up Oracle’s hardware business – another kick in the IBM ass, as well as to HP.

The real irony is still to come – the day when Oracle acquires HP, Hurd fires the HP board, HP general counsel is relegated to mailroom duty, and Oracle then sets its sights squarely on IBM. The problem for IBM is that they’re big, but they’re not so tough. Oracle however is tough! They have proven they can and will continue to kick ass.  Ellison is like the Clint Eastwood of Tech, but instead of a gun he packs cash and belligerence. This is the makeup of a winner – or a warrior.

So where does this leave HP (and IBM for that matter)? Well, I heard through the grapevine that Hurd told HP to put in place “Operation Nostradamus”, accompanied by the following revenue projection:

I hope to blog again.

Don’t get the idea that I know anything about the history of ideas. Arthur Lovejoy founded this field of study and I know nothing about it. I do know my rendition of the history of ideas, and my rendition tells me that most ideas are bad.

This doesn’t just apply to software companies. Across the board there are bad ideas. It’s particularly prevalent amongst “smart” people. I know this first hand because I’m generally thought of as “smart” and I have a lot of bad ideas – it’s like there’s no end to them.

The smarter the people, the more bad ideas. Look at Microsoft’s Ballmer – he’s a damn genius who comes up with tons of bad ideas on a regular basis. The poor guy can’t even say a word in a meeting without having some dolt actually think what he’s saying is brilliant and executing on it before he even knows what’s happening.

This is a lesson I learned very early on in my career when I first became a manager at IBM. I saw this picture of a bunch of gears, progressively ranging from very large to very small. The big gear takes a barely noticeable, tiny turn at the top, and at the other end the smallest gear is spinning like crazy.

This is what it’s like at large companies: the big guy comes up with some bad idea and every Dilbert in the room takes it as gospel and does it.

Some advice: just because the exec has an idea, don’t assume it’s a good one – the likelihood is that it’s bad. Most ideas are bad, and even fewer are commercially viable, so just because someone in authority or with great credentials comes up with some invention or great idea or some excellent way of doing or creating something, don’t just assume it will fly. It probably won’t.

Let’s look at examples. Microsoft has over 40,000 SKUs and some 3,000 products. How many do you think make money? I’m sure we could count them on one hand. On April 12, 2010 Microsoft announced KIN, a Windows phone targeting a youthful market – the social generation.  Less than two months after the product launch, Microsoft killed it.

IBM has twice as many SKUs as Microsoft. How many do you think make money? Did you know that the IBM tape drive business headed up by Ambuj Goyal is huge? It’s bigger than most software and computer hardware companies in existence today. What the hell did this guy do to deserve a great job like this? Did you even know that people still use tape drives? I’ll tell you right now that Google would be hard pressed to find a tape drive source today. However, if you go to the IBM site and look under products you’ll see tape drives prominently displayed under “Tape Systems”. Imagine that – a multi-billion dollar business centered around a product that in today’s terms would be called a really bad idea.

Don’t be fooled. Most ideas are bad, but some really bad ideas are very good.

I hope to blog again.

NOTE:  These facts are intentionally obfuscated to preserve the spirit of this topic.