Would you rather work with a chicken or a pig?

This weekend I was ruminating a bit on the entrepreneurial game. 

I have been fortunate to participate in a lot of startup ventures as a founder, CEO brought in from the outside, as an advisor and as an investor.  Some have been very successful, resulting in breakout liquidity events.  Others have achieved a level of sustainable mediocrity, and a few have outright failed as businesses (but not as worthy ventures since their heart was in the right place).

Arm waving aside, this weekend I found myself thinking a lot about the entrepreneurs and cornerstone employees that I enjoy working most with, which brought me back to a Jim Clark-ism that merits repeating.  Jim Clark, as many know, is the founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape and Healtheon (now WebMD).  Breakout guy with multiple breakout successes, to be sure.

In any event, in "The New New Thing," a fun read by Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball and Liar's Poker) that bios Clark, Clark talks about the types of engineers that he likes to recruit.  What Clark says is illuminating, and has shaped a lot of my thinking about recruiting fellow entrepreneurs, key hires and assessing worthy investments moving forward.

Clark says that he likes to hire "pigs," noting that there are two types of employees: "chickens" and "pigs."  Both put food on the table, but whereas when a chicken lays an egg, he is merely engaged, a pig is truly "committed" since he has real "skin in the game." 

Brutal imagery, to be sure, but we have all worked with people who are technically getting the job done, doing quality work but when push comes to shove, they are chickens.  To be clear, most employees opt to be chickens since their career is not their lives, their job does not define them and a myriad of other very valid reasons. 

That said, when you are committing 3-5 years of your life on a startup venture, or investment dollars backing entrepreneurs you ultimately have limited control over, you will sleep a lot better at night knowing that you've got a pig working on your behalf.  I know that I do, and consider myself a big time pig. Oink-oink.

Comments

[John "Z-Bo" Zabroski]

Michael Lewis is an amazing author. His peice about Mike Leach and Texas Tech football two months ago was one of the best sports stories I have ever read. Most Texas Tech fans I know (and I know a lot of them) were amazed at how much detail Lewis got out of Leach for the story. I am not sure if you read that story, but it is a must read for sports fans.

I have to be honest, though, Mark. Your post was thoroughly entertaining. Yet, if you want to generalize the message of being a "pig" and make it less brutal, then just simplify it to "investing in yourself." People who invest heavily in themselves are making the best investment they can make and therefore maximizing their wealth spiritually, emotionally, economically, &c.

An example of investing in yourself:

My good friend Michael Sessions has been all over the news. He has been on David Letterman, CNN Headline News, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Keith Olbermann, korean radio shows, vegas radio shows, &c. Mike is famous right now because he invested in himself. He took the money from his summer job and used it to finance a door-to-door campaign. Mike went to every house in his city, alerting the citizens of Hillsdale, Michigan that he was running as a Write-In Candidate for Mayor of the City. He won the race for mayor and is an inspiration to a lot of young kids right now, including many of my peers.

[Mark Sigal]

Two thoughts, John. One is that would love the URL to the article on Texas Tech. Have not read.

Two is that investing in yourself in not the same as investing in a cause directed at more than yourself. I have known many people in business that are hard working, motivated, and have a high degree of professional pride, but when it comes to work, they are chickens.

As stated in the post, it may be because they are pigs when it comes to family or always put their needs first when faced with conflicts between "self" and "we."

It's akin to war analogies. Many a great soldier has perished investing in his/her comrades survival as much as he/she did in their own survival.

[John "Z-Bo" Zabroski]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/magazine/04coach.html

You will need a subscription to The NY Times "TimeSelect" online article database for the article. Alternatively, you can go to your library and use their article research database services and plug in the date of the article as December 04, 2005, the author as Michael Lewis, and you will probably be able to get the whole article for free. Of course, the article has also been copied and pasted in full at many internet message boards and can be brought up by searching google.

As for the difference between "self" and "we," I believe you are right and you certainly beat me to a great point. I always like to point out the obvious: that failing as an individual is very different from failing as a leader, because as an individual only one person is let down. True leaders know that their failure is more than just failure as an individual.

[Shanti Braford]

I don't think I could be a pig (the way you desribe it) for anything less than 50% of a company.

Maybe later I'll get diluted, but that's what it would take the first few years at least to keep my skin (literally) in the game.

[Mark Sigal]

Shanti, food for thought. 50% of zero is still worth zero. 5% of $1B is $50M. My only point is that a lot of this nets out as what is the value of the outcome worth to you -- financially, spiritually, professionally -- at a given stage of career?

Imagine having a teensy slice of Apple at the very start of your career, as Mike Homer did. How did that experience catapult him into Netscape mega personal success and beyond?

[Shanti Braford]

Good point, Mark.

I would love to have just 1% of Apple or Google right now. =)

Maybe it's just my entrepreneurial personality, but I've found that it can be tough to stay 100% focused on a venture that you might only have 1% of, when you have other opportunities where you'll be a 50% owner or 100% owner for the time being.

Now, if your 1% ownership project really starts taking off -- it would be much easier to just drop everything and go for it. (anti-dilution clause in there somewhere, hopefully)

An anecdote: I have two kind of side projects I've been working on for a while. One where I was 50% owner and put in about 10x as much effort. The other I was the sole owner and just knocked out over a few long weekends.

The project that I knocked out over a few long weekends is now 5x as profitable as the one that I've spent almost 10x as much time working on. Anyway, point being, sometimes you have to decide whether you can just do better on your own. :)

[Mark Sigal]

Shanti,

Thanks for the thoughts. All of your comments are valid, and your two examples capture the distinction between just being a pig for pig sake, and marshalling out the "skin" as a scarce resource that is doled based on a well formed return/risk objective.

Side thought: maybe the 50%er was truly a job in the sense that it was all perspiration without any inspiration, whereas the weekend gig was sufficiently inspiration driven that success flowed somewhat naturally. The "do what you love" addage.

[John "Z-Bo" Zabroski]

Mark, you made a good point to Shanti.

I thought of something that relates to what you are saying: If you can't serve others, they won't serve you. Insisting on having 50%+ control of something generally means you will never learn what your team members needs are since you are in a totally different world from them.