This is probably not the article they expected me to write. Everybody else is telling them they're cool.
Chaos seems to be a natural by-product of rapid development. Internet start-ups tend to exist in a perpetual state of getting ready to move to larger offices - everything's crowded and jumbled. Ideas and instructions are shouted out over the heads of programmers with their desks jumbled with multiple monitors, keyboards connected to CPUs somewhere nearby and constantly ringing, unanswered phones. Key personnel are yet to be hired. But is this chaos a necessary part of an Internet development effort or is it a symptom of poor management?
September 1, 1999
I recently visited a hot start-up in London that purports to sell travel-related products. They're awash in VC money, getting lots of good press and quite impressed with themselves and their future success. When I arrived the office door stood wide open with reeking garbage stacked in plastic bin liners nearby. Unanswered phones rang constantly and no one among the scurrying multitudes bothered to ask my incongruously suited figure what my business was. Someone who seemed to be named 'Gemma' was wandering around the visible part of the office with a very worried look asking the room at large "has anyone seen Ian? He has the AdCo file that has to go live first thing this morning or we don't get the ad money from AdCo!" It was late afternoon at the time. People seemed to think Ian may have gone on a much-needed two week holiday or may just have gone to the printer.
A particularly harried worker clutching a pile of manila file folders spilling paper out the ends made her way over to me whilst diving to answer the occasional ringing phone. I made it known I had an appointment to see the two Founders and she wound her way off through piles of paper, stacked up boxes of tattered-looking forms and gutted PCs dribbling their innards onto the un-vacuumed, gritty floor.
Shouts, insane, high-pitched laughter, weird twangy 'music' and the sound of Gemma still looking for Ian filled the next 45 minutes as I stood around in a crowded aisle waiting for my meeting with the Founders. Typical start-up scenario. Some work seemed to be getting done. Other work, like whatever it was Ian was supposed to be doing, was not getting done. Chaos reigned supreme.
Eventually one of the two Founders realised I was who I was, from the press and remembered that they had spent the last three weeks trying to get me to come to their office so I could write a great article about how cool their start-up is and how they are going to be making millions in the immediate future. I spent 10 minutes talking to a Founder while sharing a conference room with several other people on a conference call who seemed to be trying to tell someone in France how to save a file to a floppy and mail it to them since they couldn't figure out how to do an email attachment. I heard about how thrilled their investors are. I heard about how busy they are. I heard about how they are in desperate need of someone to organise their technical department but they had no time to actually do any interviews. The other Founder flitted in and out a couple of times grabbing phones and barking orders in a self-satisfied manner. I got the distinct impression they were happy about the chaos and felt it was a good sign they must be doing things correctly. "We're so busy we just don't have time to get organised! But that's good!" I could see the exclamation marks hanging in the air after almost every sentence they spoke.
After what can only be described as a cursory talk it was obvious I wasn't going to get any more quality time with the Founders so I made my way to the garbage-strewn entrance. Just as I was leaving, a Founder appeared with a mobile phone attached to one ear and with a sweeping gesture that included the visible part of the office and the garbage said "doesn't this look like the most fun you've ever had? We're so busy we don't even have time to take out the garbage!" Maybe.
I had asked Founder #2 if they had anyone experienced in the travel industry on board. "We don't want anyone old with old ideas. We don't know anything about the travel business so that guarantees we'll do things in a new, fresh way." I suppose this is what you could call trying to turn a negative into a positive. Hope it works.
In this kind of a start-up situation, you need to get vastly more done than you have time for. Hiring people to do the hiring and eventually the work is waaaay too time consuming when you're that busy so people are hired more or less whenever someone has a friend that has wandered into town looking for a trough to feed at. Chaos is a symptom of too much to do with too little resource in too little time. It is not a symptom of a healthy start-up or anything else healthy. It is a symptom of poor planning and poor management.
The folks I just visited were very pleased with their chaos. They were sure it meant they are doing things right. This is a typical Internet start-up dreamed up by a young guy with a bad haircut and a good idea. He immediately roped in his girlfriend (who also knew nothing about the Internet) to be founder number two. Since the idea was good and they are well-connected rich kids they got seed investment and hired some high-priced strategy consultants to help them spend it. They later got enough millions to actually hire a couple of agencies to build a site. They had no technical knowledge so hired a smart kid right out of uni who had built a site as part of a school sandwich placement. They made a few more good hires and got to work.
The consultants and agencies they hired built parts of a site that didn't work together particularly well and argued about whose fault it all was. They were too busy to keep the technical side of things under control. A confused site eventually launched and now, a year later, it works part of the time. The technical lead is still to be hired and the site crashes regularly. The consultants and agencies continue to argue. Over the last two months, 4 out of 6 tries I made to place an order on their site failed. Twice I was able to complete the transaction by phone. "We're so busy and having so much fun we haven't had time to hire a CTO yet. But we know we really need one."
Awash in VC money they know needs to be spent on marketing, the most famous and most expensive ad agency in town (and possibly in the world) was hired to use up the money as quickly as possible ("time to market is key"). Posters plastered all over the tube, outdoor advertising and banner ad campaigns convinced me that maybe they had their servers straightened out and I attempted to place another order. Surely things must be working now if they're spending all that money on marketing. No luck. The server was down when I next tried to order but I eventually managed to buy a ticket from them over the phone. It took me two days of emailing and calling. I was on assignment so had the patience to try hard to place my order. I was getting paid to figure out how to order from them. This was research for me - I needed to find out how hard or easy it was to use their service. It seems likely many people ran away from their site screaming with their hands waving in the air.
They don't have time to hire someone to fix the technical problems. But they do have time to spend marketing money on launch parties and expensive ad campaigns. Now don't get me wrong - I think launch parties and ad campaigns have a place in the scheme of things but I fear the people attracted to the site will find it doesn't work and not come back. But remember, we're in a hurry here. "We need to get that marketing done so we can get more hits so we can get more sales so we can get more investment! We'll somehow get those servers to settle down soon because we're cool, we're having fun, and just look at all this chaos around us! We must be doing it right!"
It's easier to run around glorying in all the confusion instead of sitting down and carefully considering how to do things carefully, step-by-step. This kind of start-up chaos is a symptom of inexperienced management.
This is probably not the article they expected me to write. Everybody else is telling them they're cool.
I recently visited a hot start-up in London that purports to sell travel-related products. They're awash in VC money, getting lots of good press and quite impressed with themselves and their future success. When I arrived the office door stood wide open with reeking garbage stacked in plastic bin liners nearby. Unanswered phones rang constantly and no one among the scurrying multitudes bothered to ask my incongruously suited figure what my business was. Someone who seemed to be named 'Gemma' was wandering around the visible part of the office with a very worried look asking the room at large "has anyone seen Ian? He has the AdCo file that has to go live first thing this morning or we don't get the ad money from AdCo!" It was late afternoon at the time. People seemed to think Ian may have gone on a much-needed two week holiday or may just have gone to the printer.
