(I wonder if this becomes my suicide-post, as criticizing Marc Andreessen is a fairly risky move … )
Marc’s new blog has been a smash hit: day by day he’s been pumping out amazingly good content:
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 2: When the VCs say “no”
- The truth about venture capitalists, Part 1, Part 2, Part3
- How to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with
- Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks in
Seriously good thinking; great posts one-by-one. VC/Blogger Fred Wilson says:
“I know this blog is dangerously close to a Marc Andreessen linkblog. But he’s just killing it right now”
He can’t help but link to him again and again. The guy is good. Fred’s partner, VC and fellow Enterprise Irregular Brad Feld says: Awesome Blogging From Marc Andreessen. The ultimate compliment comes from startup Founder and blogger Dharmesh Shah:
“If you are a busy startup founder and don’t have much time to read, you should probably read Marc’s stuff instead of mine.”
But something happened yesterday. Marc ventured onto new waters, handing out his turnaround plan in 9 easy steps for large companies.
Ouch! This one hurts. His wonder plan is highly simplistic fluff. The kind of cookie-cutter plan you’d expect a freshly minted MBA pull out of his folder, drop off the CEO’s desk and walk away thinking he just saved the business.
Actually, I wonder if he really means what he says here – or is this post a parody? Step 2 could be the giveaway:
But first, throw your predecessor completely under the bus.
As for Step 9: You don’t exactly “re-launch” a major corporation from scratch.
The more I read it the more I think Marc is just testing us, this is a satirical post. Either way, I really hope he’ll return to technology, startups, entrepreneurship – something he is great in doing and writing about, and has the credibility for.
Update: ZDNet’s Larry Dignan finds the list comical, too.
I think this post by Marc is all hype and very little substance.
I don’t think this plan would work for either Sun or Yahoo! by way of example. In Sun’s case, Jonathon is already doing something remarkable in my opinion and results will show but he is talking and blogging not going dark. Nor did he fire 1/3 the people or acquire a lot. In Yahoo!’s case, I think they need a leader with a clear crisp vision backed up by actions – some of what Marc says is applicable (like promote new leadership, get rid of old layers) but others are not. Lay off 3000 Yahoo! engineers and Google & Microsoft will send you a personalized hand-written thank you note.
I think his post is not good advice on turn around of companies. But it gives very good advice (by way of example) on creating buzz by: say obvious things, say them in 9 or 10 bullets, have a big name attached to them, and let the buzz build.
Though I still stand by my original comment regarding the quality of Marc’s startup articles — I’ll have to grudgingly admit that the recent article on turnarounds wasn’t as good as his prior stuff.
But, having blogged for a while, one thing I’ve come to learn is that you have your good days and your bad days.
I’m continuing to hope that Marc has some great content still to come.
Dharmesh, I agree 100%. Every single post except this one was right to the point, 5-star quality. Which is why I hope he’ll stay with what he’s really good at.