Scott McNealy delivered the keynote speech at Plug and Play Expo Fall 2008.
(Credit: Sun Microsystems)If you're itching to take your struggling start-up to the big time, you could do worse than take Sun Microsystems' Chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy advice to heart. After all, in three months, McNealy and the three others of his cohort turned their start-up profitable and brought us Java, Solaris, and OpenOffice.org.
Besides, how could you not want to listen to a guy who, when flummoxed over launching a PowerPoint presentation during a keynote talk at the Plug and Play Expo in Sunnyvale, CA, sarcastically quips, "You know, this Windows thing...I use Open source. F5? That's intuitive."
Rule #1: Have a controversial strategy. Look for the counter-intuitive idea and go after it. If you're conventional, you'll do things the same way things have always been done. Differentiation is key. The hard part is, you have to be right.
Rule #2: Break the rules of business, but don't cheat, lie, or steal to do it. If you do, you'll drive off your brainiest collaborators and will lose your credibility among your once-loyal staff.
Rule #3: Get a little money, but not too much. A small funding pool will force you to be scrappy, efficient, and to find new production approaches.
Rule #4: Have a cause. "Humans are coin-operated in general," McNealy says, "But they also like a little psychic income." As an example, Sun created Curriki, an open-source cirriculum wiki, that solved a problem McNealy and his son encountered during his son's grade school project.
Rule #5: Just do it, but marry well. Pour your heart and soul into a start-up, but try to do it before you marry. McNealy didn't marry until he was 39, he said, but has since caught up with four sons. "The most important decision you make is who you marry and have kids with," McNealy advised. "Pick a spouse or significant other, or whatever you want. Just make sure you pick a good one. There's some real technical advice for you from an entrepreneur."
For more concrete products, downloads, and tips, start-ups can visit Sun's Web page for start-up essentials. Or, McNealy suggests, just e-mail him: scott@sun.com.
Before I hustled the four pitchmen on and off the stage at the Stirr event last night, Sun's Scott McNealy got up on stage and ran down his advice for entrepreneurs. Most of it was standard book-of-Scott stuff, including this peculiar bit of advice (#5): Manage through slogans.
Scott McNealy
(Credit: CNET)McNealy also reiterated Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos' statement that, "the world needs only five computers." Loosely interpreted, that is: Google, in McNealy's mind, is one really big grid-based computer. The PC on your desk? Your phone? Your kid's game console? Not worthy of being called computers.
Still, Sun was giving away servers to nongiant Web service companies at the Stirr event. One was earmarked for the best pitch from the four presenting companies, as determined by an applause meter. The honor went to Confabb CEO Salim Ismail, who cheated by promising to buy all the drinks at the next Stirr event if he won. The audience sure liked that value proposition, and he pegged the meter. But when he came up to accept the award, he said he'd buy the drinks, "once we get funding." What? Boos ensued, and one person shouted out one of McNealy's startup maxims (#4), "Don't cheat!" The rumor that Confabb was going to announce an acquisition at the Stirr event also turned out to be wrong. After Ismail's waffle on stage, one can understand how someone might interpret his words quite the wrong way.
I still think Confabb is a cool service. Salim needs to shoot a bit more straight, though.
If you want to be like Scott McNealy, by the way, here are his six maxims:
#1: Keep your eye on the ball.
#2: Hire smart people who get along with each other.
#3: Your business has "got to be controversial," otherwise everybody will do the same thing you do.
#4: Don't cheat (even if nobody's looking).
#5: Manage through slogans.
#6: Love your job.
Got that? More Stirr start-ups, plus a cyborg, in an upcoming post.
I'm heading down to the Stirr mixer shortly, where, before Sun's Scott McNealy talks with the audience about entrepreneurship, I'll be moderating pitches from four start-ups. Three of them I've covered previously:
Attendio makes a system that automatically feeds your calendar with events it thinks you'll find interesting (let's hope it gets the times right).
Confabb is a conference directory. Rumor has it the site is soon to be acquired. Maybe we'll find out tonight.
JobCoin is a hosted job board service that I think is really clever.
The fourth company is Collaborative Drug Discovery. In a nutshell: Open-source development concepts applied to drug creation. I can't begin to explain it better, let alone critique it. But if you've ever felt that you needed a more efficient way to upload your high-throughput enzyme inhibition and high-content cell assays, check it out.
On the consumer side, see also Mepath[blog post], an initiative to create public drug trials, or at least make it possible for clinical drug users to compare their experiences (efficacy and side effects) with other people.
I'll also be looking for other interesting Web 2.0 companies at the event. I often find the most intriguing start-ups by talking with event attendees, not by hanging out with presenters. Come find me at the event if you've got a good pitch.
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