My podcast with OnBoards is live, talking with Raza and Joe about the importance of adding independence, first-time directors, and diversity to startup boards, and how Bolster helps companies achieve that quickly and inexpensively.

I’m writing a lot about Boards at the moment on the Bolster blog. We’re compiling all of those posts into a couple of eBooks. Once all of that is done, I’ll put some digests up here on StartupCEO.com as well as make the eBooks available for download.

But the gist of it is that we are working hard to break the logjam of diversity on startup boards, and we’re starting to meet with some great success with our clients.

Like Fingernails on a Chalkboard

Anyone who worked in the Internet in the early days probably remembers all-too-vividly how silly things got near the end.  Even those who had nothing to do with the industry but who were alive at the time with an extra dollar or two to invest in the stock market probably has some conception of the massive roller coaster companies were on in those years.

The memories/images/perceptions all come crashing down in the latest chapter of Tom Evslin’s blook hackoff.com in a manner that reminds me of the sound of fingernails racing down a chalkboard.  You’ve heard it before, you can’t forget it, you squirm every time you hear it, but you can’t tear yourself away from it.

I think Chapter 9, Episode 6 and Episode 7 lay out every single stereotype of the Internet’s bad old days in two easy tales:

– The CEO who says “The main reason for this meeting is to figure out how to get the stock price up again”

– The blaming of the investment bankers for the bad business model

– The head of sales who doesn’t understand his vanishing pipeline and the CEO who turns a blind eye, sacrificing future sales to make the current quarter’s numbers

– The surprisingly shocking realization that adding 30 new people per quarter costs a lot of money

– The parade of the lawsuits, lawyers, and insurance policies

– The notion that all problems can be solved with a new product, which of course must be built immediately, but with a smaller engineering team

– The struggle about laying off staff and the comment that “you can’t cut your way to growth and greatness”

If you’ve haven’t tried the blook yet, you can start at the beginning with the daily episodes, on the web or by RSS, or you can download chapters in pdf format on the site.  It’s a great piece of daily brain candy.

The Party's Over?

American party politics have had a few major realignments over the 220 years since we adopted our Constitution.  I took a class on this in school, but that was a long time ago, and I'll never remember all the details.  What I do remember is that they're somewhat chaotic.  And that they typically take several election cycles to take root.

I think we're in the middle of one now.  Arlen Specter's decision to become a Democrat is a particularly poignant example of it, though the fact that something like only 25% of the country now identifies with the Republican party is another.  With Specter, it's not that he changed his ideology — it's that his party changed its ideology.  Whether or not you view his switch as a cynical attempt to keep his job is irrelevant.  He has been a Republican for his whole public life of more than 40 years with a fairly consistent point of view and is a very popular public servant with his constituency at large, and now he believes he can't win a primary voted in mainly by party activists against Republican opponents. 

Something I read today – either the Journal or Politico – had a quote from a Republican hardliner that is further signifying the realignment:

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint and welcome Mr. Specter's defection as an ideological cleansing. "I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don't have a set of beliefs."

That doesn't say much for the future of the GOP now, does it?  That said, I think prognostications of a permanent Democratic majority are unfounded. If I remember my history correctly, a realignment occurs when one party gets too powerful and too big — its opponents are the ones who realign as a check and balance.  Examples range from the Anti-Federalists becoming the original Republicans in the early 19th century, to the rise of the Whig and then Republican Party in the mid 19th century, to the Roosevelt era in the mid 20th century, to the Reagan Revolution in the late 20th century.  American politics are streaky.  Parties usually have a stranglehold on at least one branch of government for long periods of time, then a realignment shakes things up for a while, then control switches.  With the Whigs/Republicans, once they settled down with the election of Lincoln, for example, the party dominated the Presidency for 80 years, winning 6 consecutive presidential elections, 11 of 13, and 14 of 18 from Lincoln up through Franklin Roosevelt. 

I guess my point is that Republicans as we know them today may be doomed, but Democrats shouldn't spend too much time dancing on their grave.  Realignments won't take 20 years to kick in any more.  We move too quickly, information is too freely available, and public opinion is fickle.

What's the lesson here for a business?  It's all about competition.  Having a commanding market share is a great thing, but it's unusual for it to last.  Smaller competitors attack when you least expect it.  They attack in ways that you pooh-pooh based on your perspective of the world.  And they can often combine with other smaller players, whether through M&A or just alliances, in ways that challenge a leader's hegemony.  They redefine the market — or the market redefines them.

So be mindful of market realignment — whether you are CEO of the Democratic Party or CEO of you.com, Inc.  Don't focus on what people have bought from you in the past, or why.  Focus on what they'll be buying in the future, and why.

When a group of us had dinner back in May, Brad posted that it was remarkable that 4 of the 6 people had blogs. Then Amy started a blog, making it 5 of 6. Today, Mariquita and her friend Sharon launched their blog about wine, making it a clean sweep.

There is almost a complete dearth of blog information and commentary about wine. You can tell — the URL she was able to get on Typepad was wine.blogs.com! When Mariquita and I went looking into other wine blogs a couple months ago, all we found were one or two somewhat lame ones, one not updated since February, one not updated since April, none with interesting information that helps average people learn more about how to buy, pair, and enjoy wine.

I think this will be a fun single-topic blog. Enjoy the first posting, and welcome to the blog world, Mariquita and Sharon!