Cause she certainly does. And these are not my words but I hundred percent agree with that: I wish I was at least half as bad-ass as her. As far as Silicon Valley goes, she's seen and done it all: together with her brother started a software company in 1979 (T/Maker, one of the word processing pioneers); been Apple's vice-president of worldwide developer relations at the worst of Apple's times; been on the board of several public and private companies; worked as mentor capitalist for a while; signed on with Softbank Venture Capital as a general partner in 1999. She's seen companies rise during the late nineties dot-com craze and crash when the bubble popped in 2000. 52 year old now, still sharp and full of energy, seems like she's never going to stop. Because she is Heidi Roizen.Personally, it was really interesting for me to compare Heidi's interview at the conference today with the one that E-Club was hosting about a month ago featuring Ann Winblad, co-founder of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. The general message Winblad was trying to get across, or at least as it seemed to me, was "We're there for you! Go ahead and start a business.", while Roizen's was "It's tough out there, tougher than you could ever imagine.". Only 14 years after co-founding T/Maker would she become a millionaire by selling the company to Deluxe. 14 years of extremely hard work, not having much or any personal life and earning just enough to cover the rent and bills. Furthermore, life didn't get much easier for her after selling T/Maker! And that's fair enough, I'm not being dillusional in any sense, I know that entrepreneur's life is quite far from how it's pictured in Hollywood films, but really, when you look her in the eyes you don't want to even think about starting your own company! Having said this, it's just an impression I got, and she can't speak for the entire industry. In any way, this conference wasn't one of those "Hey, life in Silicon Valley is fa-a-a-antastic, let's all be entrepreneurs!" sort of things. For God's sake, the year is 2010, not 1997 and we're in Scotland, not California.
One thing I would disagree with is her belief that if you want to start an IT venture and get it off the ground, you got to do it the American way and you got to think from the very beginning of relocating to States, or at least having significant presence there. True, they have much more capital than we do here in Europe and that's a very big deal, but hey, wasn't Skype born in Estonia?
P.S.
So, really, who are entrepreneurs: freedom fighters, guys from Forbes cover, those who managed to escape the cubicle nation and change the world or are they just paper millionaires who substituted their 9 to 5 five days a week for 9 to 12 seven days a week, those who risk everything for nothing, dream big but never really see those dreams come true? I'll leave that up to you, however one thing that is undeniable: entrepreneurs are people that don't want to live simple lives.
Did you mean IT entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs in general?
ReplyDeleteIn any way, people work differently and for different reasons. My friend has a company of 4 or so people making websites, and he is an entrepreneur. Very small, but nevertheless. His life is not harder that average, even easier than most.
In your post you refer to entrepreneurs, who are ambitious enough to aim for the sky, and they are not the ones who are looking for the easy way. I guess those people just can't live in a different way. It works for anyone: entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, sportsmen, military - you name it.
Well, not only IT but I just happen to know a bit more about this industry than others. Things is, I didn't refer to just entrepreneurs, I meant the ones that aim to change the world (which, I would argue, are the REAL ones). Sportsmen, doctors, lawyers do a great job, but they don't change the world. Politicians actually do, but rarely these are good changes. Military sometimes do, but just because they were told to.
ReplyDeleteStarbucks has changed the way that many Americans start their morning
Facebook, Skype, Twitter, etc. changed the way we socialise
Apple changed, even though I'm not a big fan of that, the way we use computers, and listen music (iPods with massive hard drive space)
now you name it=) Now these are multi-billion worth companies, but back then, they were started by people who had big dreams and cool ideas, but nothing else.
Btw, thanks for comments!
Macdonalds did a great job at making the world fatter....
ReplyDeleteHave a look at this: What I've learned, by Skype's Niklas Zennstrom http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/02/niklas-zennstrom
ReplyDeleteI meant succeeding in what you do. I get what you mean now. One of the main prerequisites for changing the world is having the balls to do that)
ReplyDeleteWell, we've seen industrialization, now, lets meet informatization!
(Btw, I've tried changing the world, but did not find the sourse code=))
wow, thanks seegor, really awesome article, quite inspiring=)) Dim, yeah, that's exactly what I meant. Wish you'd been at her interview, it's just really hard to explain what you feel when you hear her talk. She was actually guest-lecturing us the day before, I talked to a few of my classmates afterwards, and everyone agreed she's among the last people in this world you'd wanna fuck with! tho quite friendly at the same time...
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