1. Cross Dress for Less
2. How am I driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT
3. Breast Implants through your Navel – new wonder procedure!
4. Now that your Mom has a portable CD player, get MP3
5. FBI investigate Twinkie hoarding.
Eight weeks in Wonderland and the white rabbits are everywhere. Having settled into a routine with our ePredix startup (work until Friday, then celebrate that there are only 2 working days until the next week), SF has become home. Home, crazy home.
We experienced our first earthquake a couple of weekend’s ago, walking along in the main shopping district searching for food for the Sunday work shift. Shop windows were visibly moving, the air felt thicker to breathe and a rumble like 1000 distant jet aircraft filled our ears.
The quake flowed up the street getting louder, and then, just when we started to dive under a doorway we clicked that an earthquake was unlikely to go to the tune of “yo funky nigger get yor ass around…” How anyone could fit that much sound in a Chevy Blazer astonishes me. How anyone can drive that Blazer and have intact internal organs is a medical mystery.
I’m very happy to announce that the cats arrived safely and settled in immediately. They sit on the fire escape watching the world go by and saving up especially large spitwads for the stream of dogs that walk underneath with their unsuspecting owners. “$2 says you can’t land a hoyk on that Lab’s head Lulu”.
Lesley meanwhile, has been painting like a dervish, developing her style in acrylics and managing to cover a fair few walls of our SOMA offices. Bad luck we move to larger space with more walls in 3 weeks time, she has become a gold card holder at the art supplies shop.
CHAPTER 1: The Food Chain has officially collapsed.
Graphic artist MC Escher, who allegedly died in 1972 (www.worldofescher.com) is actually alive and well in the San Francisco dart carm economy. Instead of sitting covertly in Starbucks sipping whatever brew a reasonable Dutchman might find among today’s special coffees (“ja, grande orange mocha chip frappucino to go…”), his spirit has infected everything to do with getting something done in this crazy city.
The biggest complainers are the dart carmers themselves, so we’ll start the story there. Within the neighbouring 10 blocks in SOMA, there are 700 internet based startup companies. I daren’t let my staff out at lunchtime for fear they will be tempted by a BMW wielding recruiter.
To get their 700 dart carm projects up and running they needed people – the smartest young people who could be cajoled into working for sixpence and some stock options. These sort of folk used to work at Kinko’s, the global 24 x 7 photocopy and binding company.
So, the dart carms stole the Kinko’s staff.
Kinko’s, in return, stole the Starbuck’s staff. Starbucks, tit for tat stole the Macdonalds counter staff. Mackers, already at the bottom of the employment food chain drafted the bewildered and homeless behind the counter. So, Bobby Dartcarm comes in for a Big Mac and fries to go, and wonders why he ends up with a Fish dinner and hepatitis to go.
We recruit a lot of people from out of the state. This leads to some hilarious moments with the applicant’s approach to getting from the airport to the CBD for their interview. Prize winner so far is the young Java Programmer from Texas who rented a car, drove up the 101 from the airport then spent 2 hours finding a car park.
It hadn’t occurred to him that you did anything else. We didn’t hire him in the end but I’m sure the trip wasn’t wasted – he probably got 3 other job offers just driving around SOMA.
CHAPTER 2: April 10, the Gloss comes off Tech Stocks
Being in the actual center of the Nasdaq earthquake on April 10 was amazing. A fair few internal organs got pulped that day. Not that everyone in this city works at a dart carm, its just that everyone in this city seems to have abandoned any traditional form of financial management (banks, mattresses, savings accounts, bonds, balanced portfolios…) for loading all their spare cash into E*Trade and getting high on the Tech Stock juice (‘drinking the kool aid’ as the jargon goes).
Another of the Escher-like qualities of SF is that we all get to watch the balloon deflate in real time on the net – no need to wait for the papers at the end of the day, everyone’s pager is going off as their portfolio crashes! By the end of the week’s trading, most companies in our sector (human resources, recruiting) were worth a third of their Jan 1 valuation. Not being listed yet made it a little more palatable.
The outcome is some very red-faced Tech Stock gamblers, including the Vulture Capitalists. This sophisticated species (Homo Usurer), watching the millions they loaned to the ninth pet food on line startup vapourise before their eyes have become very cranky as a result (www.sonofabitch.com). Having suddenly moved from 12 Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) a year to 2-3, there is some intense competition over anyone who actually has a solid business idea.
My prediction is that the phrase ‘dot com’ will come to mean something akin to the phrase ‘junk bond’ which emerged with such profile in the 1980s. Like all change, people have fallen for overestimating the speed and underestimating the impact. Its not helped by everyone claiming they are revolutionizing the market that they work within (“revolutionizing on-line sales of barbecues, implements and sauces”), and when one sub-model (B2C) loses its shine quickly shifting to another (B2B). Exhibit A the hordes of consumer sites that have suddenly found a ‘business to business’ angle and rolled out more kool aid.
It might help take some of the heat off the over-pumped housing market here. Right now to get a house you have to be prepared to write a 1000 word essay saying why you should be allowed to buy the property, and bid at least 20% over the asking price. I suppose it keeps the literacy levels up in certain neighbourhoods – maybe there’s a dart carm opportunity writing essays for people who desperately need new accommodation? And so, the net spawns another new business opportunity.
CHAPTER 3: Starting up a Startup is just like … starting up.
I saw a great advert for a programmer the other day that summarized the irrational and desperate nature of what we are undertaking as we surf the industrial revolution. It read “Web Programmer with at least 10 Years Java Experience Required Urgently”. Of course, neither the job, nor the software have existed even half that time.
It reminded me of that scary statistic that 80% of the jobs that today’s 14 year olds will occupy when they graduate DO NOT EXIST yet.
Nobody likes to admit it too much, but we don’t really know what we are doing here. Its not like we can delve into a bunch of history books. We all sneak a peak at Fast Company magazine in the hope that someone can offer comforting words that the emotions we feel are somehow normal. Recent headlines in Business 2.0 (another dart carm bible) suggested startups without a UK presence were not serious about their businesses. More on that later.
The speed with which we are working is quite phenomenal. Our CEO has not had a day off since November. I’ve had 2 in 8 weeks. Building a business in the new style is quite different - remember we have virtually no customers, no products being sold (yet) and setup costs that could fund much of the national debt of NZ (IT, recruiting…).
Funding this 20th century style (bigslow) out of each month’s tiny growth in profits would be impossible. It’s a bit like driving a Yank-Tank on the freeway, foot to the floor going so fast you can watch the petrol gauge dive every mile, and if you ponder for a moment whether there is a gas station in the next five miles you’ve lost your edge. There just has to be a gas station.
Our software is coming along nicely. With the net economy the primary focus is on having a whiz bang show for the investors - to hell with customers and details like whether it works. So, spend every penny you have on making the web-site dance and sing. Unfortunately, 20 seconds after listing or gaining funding in the market its all about meeting analyst’s revenue targets. So, spend all your money on the engine room and to hell with the pretty pictures. Focus swaps every 30 minutes. Balance that little game and remain fashionable.
I’ve been pondering an outdoor training program to get people to understand how this works. Lots of changing the rules without notice, understanding risk, overcoming obstacles, limited resources etc. Next life maybe.
We have a sensational team who have without protest worked the hours required when only 25% of the crew are on board so far. My time is spent balancing customers with finances and the software developers. Much of it has been dedicated to recruiting – if you do the maths and consider that we need 60 staff across the company at full complement, and for each we might review 20 resumes, that’s a lot of time spent recruiting.
Lesley and I are off to the UK in June to startup the European operation. Our greatest potential competitor is based in London and we think it appropriate to locate somewhere nearby and wave the flag. I’m sure if their stodgy old directors reviewed any proposal from a bright young thing on the team suggesting a dart carm startup they’d fair spew their brandy balloon across the room on the financials alone!!
Chapter 4: Recruiting Americans
I give up. Everyone out of the gene pool, you Yanks have gone too far this time. Getting an American, and more specifically a Californian to work for you is an ugly experience. The average conversation with a 22 year old graduate with no work experience can be summarised thus:
Employer: so*, what did you think of our presentation on the company and what we are offering?
Applicant: it’s kindof okay, but I just want to say that this is like not about you or ePredix, it’s like about me. When can we like, get in step with each other about the stock options?
Employer: well, we did that 5 times today already. What’s not clear in your mind?
Applicant: Well, I thought it was like normal for you to give me like at least 3% of the company…
Employer: ah, no, as I told you three times before your role qualifies you for the standard allocation, which is about 1/2000th of the outstanding shares…
Applicant: okay, but, like, I can sell them the day after we list right, buy my Ferrari and then like, you give me some more?
Employer: no, that’s on the FAQ sheet under “of course you can’t sell them the day after we list, what kind of a dill-brain are you?”
Applicant: so, like, do I get my own office?
Employer: no.
Applicant: secretary?
Employer: no
Applicant: interest free like, loan for car?
Employer: no
Applicant: okay, like the salary you’re offering is just for the first few weeks right, then everyone gets like $150,000?
Employer: ahh, no, where di…
Applicant: so, like, do I pay the phone bill and gas bill and get you to reimburse me or do you just pay them direct to the utility company?
Employer: tell me about how many of your friends have packages like this?
Applicant: well, none actually. But like, this is really not about them, it’s about me - I rock… I really think we need to get one to one about the stock options?
*there you go Tom!
These people would be the worst tennis players. They are the sort of bastards who sit at the other end of the court in a game of social tennis and have to hit every single shot as a winner, every serve an ace. Serve – whack. Serve – whack. They have no appreciation that the enjoyment of the game might be based on rallies, and there is a collaborative element in there somewhere.
Silicon Fever has only made it worse. One job – whack – millionaire – whack – retire – whack. Pete Sampras you have ruined a generation.
The real Silicon Valley (south of here) is a cess-pit of greed and frustration over the simple pretext your neighbour might be making more money than you. With e-businesses sitting cheek by jowl in concrete industrial parks its commonly noted that you can easily change your job without undergoing the trauma of having to change your car pool. In fact god help you if you have to find a new car pool.
Balance this seeming madness and greed against demand for employees. Every 7 days, in the (415) dialing district (SOMA and surrounds), on one job board (there are 6000 in America), over 3500 permanent Java Programmer roles are posted. Start to wonder why unemployment is at a record low? Start to wonder why America should see the medium term challenge of leading the new economy when China will have more citizens using the internet in 18 months than America will have?
My Russian contingent have a great sense of humour over the issue (www.glastnost.com?). According to them, in New York, you arrive on the boat and soon you get the only job that will take someone who has no qualifications and cannot speak English – taxi driver. In San Francisco, you arrive and one day later you are a software QA expert.
Chapter 5: The Days Off
When you get 2 in 60, they are precious and memorable.
In Tahoe we had a day’s snow-boarding out of the text book. Zig-zagging the pine trees, café half way down the mountain, dozens of chair lifts and no queues. The locals had abandoned the field as the conditions were totally ‘end of season’ and below standard. If I ever found a field in NZ or Australia with snow as good as their ‘rejects’, I’d be bottling it and buying a house nearby.
Lake Tahoe is a bit like Taupo in New Zealand, if you could imagine half the lake being in another country. Nevada butts right up to California in the middle of the lake, and of course Nevada has … Casinos! We drove up on Saturday evening, and admiring the billboards on the way for ‘World Sumo Championships’ found ourselves at Caesars Palace ringside for dinner.
If you remember the high profile Hawaiian sumo dude in the 1990s, then you can picture what a 640 pound athlete looks like. He was there, commentating for ESPN (those of you with cable should watch for us in the audience!) and apologized for being a bit lighter than his fighting weight now that he has retired. Truth is America should be apologizing for putting on ‘Fat Guys Who Couldn’t Get into WWF’ as a sumo event.
The draw card was a sad-arsed 710 lb man-mountain. He could barely stand. Three kiwis were on the cards, and we cheered loudly for them as they shuffled uncomfortably on stage with car towing straps jammed up their substantial cracks. It was cringeful but hey, only in Nevada. Much taunting has gone on since between Ivan (6’5”)and I (6’4”) over keeping our food intake up to ensure we can compete at the next world champs.
Might be nice if they invited some Japanese sumo next time too…
Our other trip highlight was coming across the Tahoe equivalent of the neighborhood possum going through your rubbish cans in New Zealand. Get the broom out and shoo them off! Not in Tahoe you don’t - the sight of a good sized brown bear treating a dumpster like a Macdonalds drive through was something to behold. We’d been teasing each other all weekend that bears would be coming out of hibernation (we made Ivan carry the Power Bars!), and so they were.
Chapter 6: Cheese Food
It’s the little things that tell you that the USA is a different place to Australia. For example – you can buy cheese (in fact there is a fabulous cheese shop in Noe Valley where we live), and you can buy ‘cheese food’. Think that through – it says on the label ‘cheese food’. Feel good about that? You know it ain’t even a second cousin to what you call cheese, but the Americans buy it 20:1 over cheese.
It shouldn’t surprise me so much I suppose – this is the nation that brought the world ‘cheese whip’, an aerosol can that shoots out a string of gloop that could not be likened to much else so the marketing department thought cheese was good enough. Equally cheesy poofs (pronounced as in proof for the sensitive souls among you) are a real live food item. Reading labels must be good for the literacy of the nation, no doubt enabling many San Francisco families to move to a better neighbourhood through the increased quality of the essays they write during the house buying process. Escher eat your heart out once more.
Starbucks have the same range of odd-sounding items – you can have coffee, or a coffee drink. No wonder NZ could never figure out exports – they need to quickly combine the works of the dairy industry with the Taranaki petro-chemical industry to ensure healthy trade balances with America.
Toilets are another thing – the water level is set at really really high tide. Where in the history of khazis did the basic design of the pan and the water level diverge so amazingly? That would have been an interesting moment in history no doubt. “Right Thomas, let’s give the Yanks a lot of water, the Germans a little shelf to admire the impact of their muesli diets, and the rest can just squeeze it down the bit at the bottom. Oh yes, well, luckily we don’t have to worry about the French and Italians at this point…”
The Twinkie strike was front page news here before the Elian issue (the latter having dominated newspapers for 3 weeks). Twinkies are a chemical concoction (twinkie food?) enjoyed by millions of Americans as a separate food group – vegetables, protein, twinkies.... They are yellow, crystalline sponges with white creamy stuff on the inside. The plastic wrapper is the most natural component of this tasty treat, and the only one documented in a chemistry textbook. They last for weeks on the shelf.
Somebody in the twinkie supply downed tools – a twinkie rush took place and hording became a major social issue to deal with (send in the FBI!). Eventually, newspapers nationwide published a recipe for making your own twinkies at home. Ohmygod. We looked at the ingredients list and tried to find anything remote resembling a natural food. None. The white stuff is certainly not cream. Don’t ever worry that the X-Files might run out of plots sometime!
I commend the social trend-watchers among you (and anyone who has to have contact with teenagers) to log onto www.budweiser.com and view the online versions of the phenomenal advertising craze that is sweeping the States right now (the Wassup campaign). If young males live in your household it is only a matter of time before they are uttering a new jungle cry on every occasion possible.
If you don’t have a 56k modem or better don’t try this at home by the way. Once you’ve viewed the official campaign view the unofficial and even more successful web campaign that has spawned:
http://members.xoom.com/jason_post/gomez/
(Editors note: this URL is long dead!)
There is no www in that last URL by the way. It’s a 4.6mb file so again, no slow modems. The other ‘must have’ trend to come out of California will be really intriguing to watch flow around the globe. Young men of the world, raid your mother’s sock drawer, cut the toe out of a knee-high stocking and tie the end in a knot. Now put it on your head like a skull cap. Feel cool. Feel at the cutting edge of fashion. Look like you have a stocking on your skull, but feel cool. You heard it first here okay?
CHAPTER 7: Home Life
A reader of this diary might be excused for thinking that we haven’t fallen in love with San Francisco – well, they’d be wrong. There are things we can do here that bring a smile to our faces just thinking about them.
Sitting outside Martha and Brothers coffee shop in Noe Valley in the sun, drinking lattes and reading the New York Times. Sitting in the corner window at Starbucks eating a bagel and still reading the New York Times – it weighs about 3 kilos and is the source of most articles of more than 1000 words in newspapers across the country. Buying Weetbix from the Indian Bazaar on Valencia as it’s the only place in Northern California that imports such oddities. Sanitarium should investigate the possibility of a few spices in the recipe, these taste great after a few weeks in the curry section! Waking up to 3 cats who just love the mild temperatures and long sunshine hours (its raining for only the third time since we arrived) and who bully us into buying tinned cat food instead of healthy biscuits. Having an apartment with a double garage when people often park miles from home to get a space. Not having a car to park there. Living in a town where VW Beetles look relevant, and everyone has one with a flower in the vase on the dashboard. Living in a State where we estimate less than 20% of the citizens have shoes with a notable leather content. We figure this might be Escher’s final contribution to California – if we all dress like the homeless then they won’t know who to hassle for quarters. Brilliant.
We’ve attended a remarkable amount of theatre, thanks to one of the team who has tapped into the network of promotional tickets. Being the USA, there is usually someone famous on stage, which takes a bit of getting used to. Richard Chamberlain playing von Trapp in The Sound of Music for example.
Anyway, that’s enough diary. I have to get a Twinkie before I go to work, and Lesley’s not looking so I’ll just check her sock drawer for a new hat before we go out.
Nigel
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