Evan Williams has a list for us to drive up on memeorandum :
10 RULES FOR WEB STARTUPS - EVAN WILLIAMS
#1: Be Narrow
#2: Be Different
#3: Be Casual
#4: Be Picky
#5: Be User-Centric
#6: Be Self-Centered
#7: Be Greedy
#8: Be Tiny
#9: Be Agile
#10: Be Balanced
#11 (bonus!): Be Wary
“Overgeneralized lists of business “rules” are not to be taken too literally. There are exceptions to everything.”
In contrast, Jim Collins (who) spent 6 years writing ‘Built to Last’, which if not the highest selling business book ever, is close, and actually well written and excellently researched (Stanford ironically, vinteresting here) more importantly. (which as Rupert Murdoch says is rare amongst business books) : Jim’s research is longitudinal and nicely contrasts with the here today gone tomorrow Web 2.0 principles. Collins’ focus is on “how to separate out real timeless principles that make something great versus just happenstance or luck.”
BUILT TO LAST COMPANIES - JIM COLLINS
#1: Be clock-builders, not time-tellers
#2: Embrace the “and”, reject the “or”
#3: More than profits
#4: Walk the talk
#5: Preserve the core ideology while stimulating progress
#6: Never-ending process
#7: Build the vision.
The only analysis I would make is that Williams Rule #8 ‘Be Tiny‘ seems incongruous with Collins’ Rules 1 + 7 : ‘Be Clock Builders‘ + ‘Build the Vision’. I think focus is a great rule, but ‘being tiny’ as a mindset/rule, so you can flip the company for less than $50M to get around accounting issues with your true valuation is just the anthesis of entrepreneurship to me. evhead did sell his first company to Google and get his second podcasting one substantially funded, which I didnt, so The Farmer may be right, or lucky. Time etc
And the final speaker in this Mash-Debate is Jim Collins who will recite, thanks to Jeff Bezos, The first page of his book, Built to Last, which starts with a quote from The Founder of Hewlett Packard, who I dont think would have flipped a Burger Co’ before;
