If You Are Looking For Something More Entrepreneurial
Adam Lashinsky wrote a post this past week titled "Where Does Google Go Next" in which he outlined the exodus of many well known Google engineers and business execs. Here is the line that kind of sums it up for me.
But the Ooyala founders say what they lack in institutional backing
they make up for in speed and the ability to communicate with one
another by turning around in their chairs and talking. Google was like
that too, about eight years and 18,000 employees ago.
I can’t think of a company that I am more impressed with than Google, but they are coming to grips with the fact that "startup energy" can’t be faked. There’s nothing quite like going from five people to fifty or a hundred.
We have a couple dozen companies going from five to fifty and we are looking for great software engineers, killer bus dev talent, and experienced internet sales people. So if you are at Google (either here in NYC or in the Bay area) or any other large internet company and are looking for something more entrepreneurial send me an email or an @message on twitter and I’ll tell you what we’ve got. My email address is linked to on the lower left sidebar of this blog and here’s my twitter account.
Comments (Archived):
Surely the smart thing for Google to do would be to encourage such entrepreneurialship and stay close to those who leave to pursue their own ideas. The truly innovative can rarely survive once an, albeit necessary, “corporate” culture and structure has been introduced. This is visible in 500 person companies let alone 18,000 person companies and no amount of free massages or laundry will change this. Trying to keep such people onboard by offering them free reign to develop their ideas screams of last ditch middle management attempts to try and stop the leak of their bright sparks. Does anyone really believe that they will be masters of their own destiny for more than 5 minutes after that destiny starts to disagree with that of the check writers?The behemoth’s all acquire in areas they have been too slow to innovate in directly, I don’t see what is wrong with them acknowledging that they become not so much centers of innovation but rather centers of smart acquisition, integration and customer reach. Encourage break always, maybe offer a token early stage investment as a helping hand, surely this would help to build earlier relationships with innovative startups and help to sure up first option on proven ideas that return.
Man, was that an elegant plug 🙂