Yet another view on company culture.

Is it just me or is everyone blogging about culture these days? Charlie O, B Horowitz (is that how you spell it?), and Hubspot homeboy Darmesh (sorry about that one, BHorowitz got Izzo stuck in my head). How fitting that I decided to leave Zipcar primarily due to the culture of the company which in my opinion had become destructive. I mentioned it briefly in my moving on post with the intent of expanding on my observations and thoughts on how to build a world class culture. To start, lets state the obvious as expressed by all 4 of these posts (I can include my own, right?):

Beer, food, foosball, swanky office furnishings, flexible working hours, unlimited vacation, yoga, and even daycare are all part of your style as Charlie O puts it. They in no way define your culture. The best companies are people centric and everything else is just frill. A kegerator won't do anything to keep me at the office until 9pm but the people I work with will. I'm not talking about talent management, core competencies, performance reviews, or even NPS people centric. I'm talking about treating employees like they're teammates and not simply labor. Economists look at people as labor. Accountants think of people as expenditures. Managers see people as liabilities. I tell my rugby guys that the best teams act like families and that holds true for a business.

-Courtesy of 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Flow charts like the one above make great points but they are simply overkill. As my most recent resignation letter quite clearly stated: "After much consideration, I've come to the conclusion that we are no longer following our core values or mission." Could I have been anymore blunt? I was advised to reconsider putting something so strong in text and knew I'd have to back it up. I broke down my thoughts on culture into 3 key features in my exit interview:

1. Communication
2. Passion
3. Drive

All 3 are equally important to building and fostering a corporate culture that brings the best out of your entire team. I can really only speak from my experience at Middlebury but I think college's nail this well. If you look past the bureaucracy of the administration, you'd see a sea of students all able to speak freely to any administrator, teacher, "authority" figure as long as they did so respectfully and with legitimate concerns. Everyone in the community whether they be faculty/staff (management) or students (employees) bleed Blue & White from the hockey arena to their dorm rooms. Finally everyone was so driven to achieve personal success but more importantly to make Middlebury the best place on earth...period. If a 2,500 student academic institution can nail this recipe, why can't a business?

I hope the day comes when a young, up and coming generalist at my third company walks into my space (I will never have an office) and isn't afraid to call me "a fucking asshole" followed by "you are single handedly ruining this company. That's communication, it's passionate, and if backed by data and a plan to fix the mistakes, drive. I would even promote that gentle-lady if the company had positions of authority to be promoted to.

While extreme, this example emphasizes that autonomy and respect are key to building a winning culture. You can't have either without the freedom to express ideas which is the basis of communication. If your teammates can't be frank because they fear retribution then you aren't building the right culture. Hubspot is spot on by being data driven because data provides you with the ability to take an opinion and make it a fact. A culture of finding and expressing truths will foster sharing and innovation rather than squelch it.

You can't have love without passion and you certainly can't be successful without either. Passion for the product or helping your client is fine but you need to find people who eat the dog food (drink the champagne if you will). It can be infuriating to have people say "Obsess About the Member" when they are hardly a member themselves. When you're trying to disrupt transportation and the majority of your employees drive to work in their personal cars every day...you have a problem. I don't see how you can build a productive culture without a passionate team and that's what we do at Brandeis. We weed out the people who aren't fully committed to the team but more importantly the game of rugby. That way we don't have people dragging us down because they don't want to put their body on the line or sacrifice study time for practice. Same has to go for employees (especially management) of a company. If the people leading you into battle aren't truly passionate about the product or lifestyle you're selling, your company is toast.

The final feature is Drive. The drive to be successful and to want to not only win your market but smoke the competition, incumbents and upstarts alike. The drive to always be improving yourself and your processes to squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of your efforts. This comes from being competitive which I'll cover soon in a post about sports and business but more on that later. It's not just competing with the competition as you should feel compelled to push your colleagues to always be the best they can be.

This brings me back to the family analogy. Families must always communicate, they are clearly passionate for each other, and most importantly they always have the will to improve their fortune as a collection rather than as individuals (drive).

What comes of my next venture will be determined by how we decide to build the culture of the team. It starts with the values and traits I set out above but is and always will be a moving target because the team sets the culture.

"My Story" for Upstart...the short version

I'm currently applying to become an Upstart and was frustrated with myself because I couldn't make "my story" concise enough for their standardized application. Also verifying my SAT/ACT scores was a challenge because I took them almost a decade ago and apparently they didn't have electronic records then...both scary thoughts. Here is the short version of "my story" as I'm still working on the long one and a Ken Burns style documentary:

I grew up in Winooski, VT in a home with my mom, younger brother, and maternal grandparents. My mom went back to school so we relied on credit cards, student loans, and government programs in my early years. I am a product of the Winooski Public School system from K-12. Going to a school where the majority of kids receive free and reduced lunch can sometimes limit your potential unless you know how to find opportunities. I excelled in academics and athletics while pushing myself to take classes at night including forensic science, public speaking, and even scuba diving. I wanted to be a Dr so I took Biology courses at UVM and CCV all while being the captain of the football, basketball, and baseball teams.

I earned my way into Middlebury College and spent 4 years "discovering myself," still working on it. I switched to rugby, won 2 national championships, helped raise thousands of dollars, and captained the club. Mentorship has always been a part of my life so I was a First Year Counselor, Guardian ad Litem, and Foundation for Excellent schools mentor. I took full advantage of the Liberal Arts even though Economics, specifically econometrics, was what I gravitated towards the most. Posing questions about our environments and using data to discover plausible answers is a powerful way to see the world. Geographic Information Systems was by far my favorite class as data structures are fascinating and topo maps can be breathtaking.

I knew I wanted to get into startups and renewable energy so I faked my way into my first job at Encore Redevelopment. I helped them pivot from having renewable energy be a phrase on their website to being the core of their business. I walked away after 2 years because I wasn't getting equity and thought it was time to start my own thing. Spent time helping startups (getting fired quickly from one) and eventually landed a "corporate" job at Zipcar. I love the product (still a proud Zipster!) but hated the business and left after a year. It was great experience to be a part of a public company going through an acquisition. Now I have a better understanding of how to make one more efficient and look forward to sharing my thoughts with the world. It's time again to find my own way and that's what being an Upstart will help me do.

I'm the type of guy who would rather figure something out then be given a set of instructions and told what to do. I'm tired of sitting on the sidelines and have acquired the skills, knowledge, and ability to attack big problems. I'm a team builder and need to put my experiences learned on the rugby pitch to work in the marketplace. I just need the financial flexibility to chase my dreams without being shackled by college debt.

50 Ways to Say Goodbye

This is the second or third...maybe even 4th post I've attempted to write about this topic. I decided to throw out a few versions after soliciting advice from friends, family, mentors, etc. I even left some juicy material on the editing room floor which I'll share with those interested. My most recent title was 'I don't burn bridges...I like to blow them up' subtle, no? So here goes why I'm leaving Zipcar and what's in store:

I officially left Zipcar on March 15th (I resigned a week before the CEO, Thank You!). I'm not running away from anything. I'm running towards my future. A future where I know how to code and I stop saying "I aspire to be an entrepreneur." I don't want to be anymore, I am. I'm not learning to code to become an engineer. I'm learning how to build things and figuring out how to tell the computer what to do rather than being told. I'm learning to code to empower myself to help build the future. I've often said a startup team needs a business focused co-founder and a technically focused co-founder but that's bullshit. Everyone from the marketing team to the customer service providers need to at least understand/appreciate the technical side of the business. Yes, I'll need to build a team, but I'm starting with myself. So I'm going "All In" if you will and couldn't be happier/more confident in my decision.

So why am I really leaving Zipcar? The short answer and the one many expect is that they screwed me out of compensation. Every sales manager knows you don't screw a salesperson out of comp they earned. It just comes across poorly especially when it's planned for and budgeted. The long answer is I no longer have faith that the company is being managed by their mission or core values which is corroding the company culture. We market Zipcar to prospective employees as a public company that still feels like a startup. Beers, exceptional benefits, and flexible working hours are common within a startup but hierarchies, crippling indecisiveness, and a general lack of communication are not. I don't mean communication from the CEO to the managers and the managers to the employees. What I mean is that nothing was up for discussion and feedback was rarely taken into consideration. That creates the sense that you're expected to sit down, shut up, and tune out because you'll get chastised for stepping out of line. That's no way to foster creativity and innovation. Nor is it how you attract A type talent. For most people job security is enough even if it means a smaller paycheck than they'd otherwise expect. Others want and expect more out of their job.

So how would i fix it? I expect to be able to respectively ask questions without fear of retribution. I expect to have open conversations with my manager about the direction of the company and what I face on a daily basis. Plans shouldn't come down from above and expected to be executed without input from those they effect. That goes twice for decisions that have a direct economic impact on employees and they should never be presented as final. Finally, there should never be a C-suite and if there is, it should never be locked off from the other employees of the company.

I take some ownership for the grievances I have with the company over compensation. It goes back to communication being a two way street as I could have done more to get them to see my point of view. I could have gone out of my way to make my opinions of the culture known but what can an Inside Sales Rep really do in a year? It gets back to culture and openness. I hope this post as well as my vote to leave helps make the situation better for my colleagues and ultimately the company. I LOVE the product/service that Zipcar has created and will be a member until it falls apart or a better alternative comes along. I hope that Avis keeps it simple, continues to obsess about the member (me), and delivers a great product at a fair price. If not they'll be pissing $500M down the drain and destroying a truly revolutionary business model...unless that's the point.

To my colleagues, Thank You for the past year+. It's been a wild ride at times but ultimately it's been rewarding on many levels.

To my family and friends, be ready for an amazing journey.

To my wife, let's start kicking ass and taking names! You are the best.

Take Care and Talk Soon,

Christopher Mutty

(update: This post was written on 3/8 when I submitted my resignation. It was originally posted on my last day 3/15 and updated slightly after the events that transpired on that day.)

A simple "Hack" Burlington Free Press Edition

Being from VT it's only natural to check the Burlington Free Press (BFP), Seven Days, and any other source of information that helps me keep in touch with the homeland. The information is valuable but isn't essential and certainly not worth paying to consume. Enter the Paywall. The BFP introduced one last year which limits a visitor to read 8 free articles before throwing up this message:

Pay a subscription to read 3-4 articles per week? That sounds an awful lot like the cable business model with a whole lot of data intrusion and over targeted ads.  It's clearly not worth paying to read local sports scores, OP-eds, and the occasional renewable energy article especially at nearly the same price as the NYT. That's where old reliable, Google, comes in for breaking past the Paywall. It takes an extra step to read each article but it's as simple as copying the title, popping it into le google, and hitting enter. The pay wall gets tricked into thinking this was your last free article:

Thanks Google! This trick also works on the New York Times website:

There are plenty of other types of Paywalls to get around with Google, including my least favorite, Linkedin. More on that in my next "hack" post ;)

UX Flop: Fbook for Droid

I've always been a HUGE fan of Google but recently discovered a flaw in the Fbook app that might be the final straw...that or it's not having access to Twitter's new app Vine. Anyone else running Android 4.1.1 and notice they can't download pictures from facebook directly to their gallery? or SD card? or at all? It seems as though the book is intentionally keeping people from backing-up and possibly removing their pictures from the social network. It could also simply be an overlooked feature or a Droid SDK limitation but both are unlikely. Here's what it looks like on my phone:

A Gentleman's Bet circa 2013

These are the stakes of losing a Gentleman's Bet in the digital age:

One week of being reminded that Bernard Pollard is a genuine Patriot killer. Thanks Tom! 

At least if we had wagered beer there'd be something to drink. Enjoy your bragging rights Eli, double or nothing on the Super Bowl? 

The silver lining is I have real incentive to update my social media image. 

Unroll.me Web App Review

I first met Steve and Jojo of Conceptual.ly last summer at a BD Meetup in NYC. Their only product at the time was a service that turned your twitter followers into a T-shirt. Nothing special but they had a great development team and were looking for ideas to build. I tried partnering with their CEO, Josh, to build a contact management app but they were concerned it would be competing with Hashable who was still a SXSW darling at that point. With the rise of Brewster and Smartr over the past few months our timing could have been perfect but that's another story.

Their latest product unroll.me is something I've used since they launched last December and have been impressed by how they've improved the product. Their MVP was a site that made it possible for you to manage your email subscriptions and successfully unsubscribe from a single place. What once required the user's participation is now an automated email reduction tool that manages your subscriptions by condensing them into a single daily email. It's perfect and I came across it again by accident.

I was voting for my friend Syed's startup LetsLunch who was competing for a free intro video through SwithVideo, unfortunately they didn't win...