While attending this week's
CMO Perspectives conference, I was reminded
of Tracy Kidder's famous 1981 book, The Soul Of A New Machine. Why did
a conference of Chief Marketing Officers, showcasing brand
reinvigoration efforts at McDonalds and Dove (whose "Real Beauty"
campaign I absolutely love, by the way), remind me of a geeky cult hit
about the development of Data General's latest big iron machine?
Simply put, all the talk about brand attributes and personality reminded me of the importance of "soul" in a start-up.
Keynote speaker Charlotte Beers (who had great stories about her
experience in Washington when she was tapped by Colin Powell in October
2001 to run the US PR campaign in Arab countries after a long Madison
Avenue career running Oglivy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson)
talked about the importance of company executives, particularly CMOs,
personifying the brands of their companies. Although the CMOs of Pepsi
and WalMart, who were in the room, took her advice as very relevant to
their global branding efforts, it struck me as even more critical to
the little start-ups we VCs deal with every day in a very different way.
VCs tend to approach start-ups with cool, analytical rigor to get to
the bottom line answer: "Will this make me and my limited partners
money?". Entrepreneurs tend to approach start-ups with extreme
emotional attachment beyond any rational borders, seeking the answer to
the question: "Will anyone love and appreciate my [professional] baby
(which, by the way, I hope makes me money so I can retire and get back
to spending time with my family)?" Anyone who's been involved in
starting a company knows what an incredibly emotional adventure it can
be. The ups and downs are incredibly exhilirating yet
terrifying. One moment you're king of the world, the next you're
afraid you're going to run out of money, and then it flips again.
The tension between that emotional roller-coaster that the
founders/insiders are feelings as compared to the cool, analytical
perspective of the rational VC/outsiders is an extremely healthy one -
over-weighting one side or the other will result in a sub-optimal
company-creation process.
And it is that tension that gets to heart of the concept of the soul of
a company. You don't have to be a religious person to appreciate that
every start-up has a soul. Webster defines the word as "the immaterial
part of a person". The soul of a start-up is thus the immaterial part
of the company that personifies its unique character and culture. The
soul of a company typically comes from the founding team, although I
have also seen it come from mid-level hires, often young, who so
completely embrace the company's mission that they begin to deeply
eminate it in all of their activities.
The importance of nuturing the soul of a new company can't be
under-estimated, but can be very difficult as the start-up grows and
evolves. Too often, that soul can erode when VCs come in to start-ups
and begin to engineer the process of bringing in the "grown ups" (by
the way, how old do you think you have to be to be considered a grown
up at a start-up?). If the board and management team aren't careful
about preserving the soul of the company during growth, "grown-ups" and
founder transitions, the company can easily lose its way. Perhaps not
on a rational level (strategy, finance, products), but on an emotional
one (culture, passion, commitment).
Think of a start-up. Now picture who represents the "soul" of that
start-up. It's probably a pretty easy exercise. Now imagine that person
missing from the start-up. Ouch.
Nurturing and evolving the sould of the start-up is as critical a part
of the stewardship of the company as nurturing the product
strategy. Boards and founders shouldn't be afraid to use this
emotional language when describing what they are creating. After
all, it is how they are feeling.