Matt Galligan

I’d encourage you to read the whole post by VC extraordinaire Seth Levine, but here’s an awesome excerpt:

“I’m worried that in all the hype, in all the “we launched our company” events, and “we changed our name again” parties, and “we redid our website – come celebrate!” shindigs, and the SXSW parties, and the hoodies, and everyone who is “killing it!”, that we’re losing sight a bit of the really hard work that is creating and building a business.”

I won’t lie: I’ve done this shit before. All of it. Many times. And then some. We wise up a bit sometimes but can sometimes still fall short. And while I’m still not completely to the level of maturity that Seth aspires to see people at, I’m happy to work my tail off to get there.

In all the celebration and patting ourselves on the back, I think we’ve lost sight of what we’re doing here: building real businesses. Or at least some of us are trying that. I’m a bit sick of the hype cycle myself. With Socialthing years ago, we (or most likely I) were the absolute worst at it…constantly hyping and never quite delivering. With Circa I’m trying the opposite approach. I’m happy to celebrate our new hires on our Twitter account, but that’s because we’re genuinely excited to work with them. When we’re ready to launch, that’s when we’ll tell the world. Not before. And not with some crazy party either.

He closes with:

So by all means, lets keep having fun. But let’s also remember that the goal is to build great companies.

Spot on, Seth. Thanks for reminding us, especially on the eve of the biggest nerd party of them all.

A few months ago I left SimpleGeo, a company I co-founded, to take some time off, relax, as well as explore my own new ideas in addition to advising a number of startups. In this time I’ve discovered many ways that startups can get help in various areas to better their companies. There’s design consultants, brand consultants, development outsourcing, management consultants, etc, etc. One thing that I realized is that there’s really not a lot of people helping out with the single most important thing - the product.

It’s been fun recently to advise some startups in a number of areas but the thing I always get most excited about is talking product. I consider “talking product” to be a fairly broad phrase, but that’s on purpose. “Product” itself is an all-encompasing term. To me it means conceptualizing, designing, branding, implementing, iterating, launching and maintaining an idea; seeing it through to something real.

Where I thought I’d originally jump right into planning another startup, I’ve decided to spend the next few months consulting with companies on their products. For me, it will be an opportunity to meet some awesome people and expose myself to intriguing new ideas. But for those that I’m consulting with, I’m there to listen, distill ideas, create and build some kick-ass products.

Now, I’m not looking to take on any and every project. I know what I’m best at, where I’m not great, as well as ideas that I might and might not get excited about. I’m simply doing this because I want to hopefully make an impact and help create awesome products. The areas that I’m most interested in these days are mobile, social, local, health, and education. In the past I’ve been deeply involved in product design & strategy, user interaction & experience, branding, and launching.

With all this in mind, I’m opening myself up to doing product consulting with projects that I may provide a real value to. So if you’re interested in chatting feel free to send me an email to matt.galligan [at] gmail [dot] com.

If you’d like, you can also check out my LinkedIn or tweet me.

Arrington instructs us to “work more, cry less, and quit all the whining.”

But if deep down you know that you’re part of history, that the things you are building will be written about and thought about forever, then maybe after that good cry after a short sleep under your desk you’ll pull yourself together and remember. That you are a person in the Arena. A Pirate. That you are here to make a dent in the universe.

Arrington really hits on some excellent points. We do this to ourselves. If startups were easy, everyone would be making bank and living extraordinary lives. Instead, we throw ourselves into our work and sometimes go home with the sunrise (I’ve done this on many, many occasions). If it wasn’t for that extra effort everyone would be on the same level ground. But there are some of us that aren’t content with the status quo, so we strive to provide some change. Startups drive innovation. But to create that innovation, we must work harder than the next guy or he will win.

Read more from his excellent post here.

Recently, Ben Horowitz of Andreessen-Horowitz published an article on TechCrunch entitled What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology. Here’s a select quote from that article:

A Final Word of Advice – Don’t Punk Out and Don’t Quit As CEO, there will be many times when you feel like quitting. I have seen CEOs try to cope with the stress by drinking heavily, checking out, and even quitting. In each case, the CEO has a marvelous rationalization why it was OK for him to punk out or quit, but none them will every be great CEOs. Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweat, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary founder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: “I didn’t quit.”

(via bijan)

While I agree with sentiment that Horowitz raises here, I can’t wholly agree with the statement. I myself stepped down from the CEO position of SimpleGeo last year. Ben raises some good points, but I really stand at odds with his idea that because I stepped down I’ll never be a “great CEO”. The reality is that I’m 26 years old, never went to business school, didn’t graduate college and have only been in this business for (not yet) five years. Rather than watch my business fail because I didn’t have the skills necessary to build it into the massive opportunity that it deserved, I swallowed my ego and “quit” as Horowitz puts it.

Ben’s points about not quitting because of stress, etc. are pretty valid. But as a CEO, if you simply lack the ability to make your company great, there are plenty of reasons to step down, and learn from the next guy coming in.

Personally, I couldn’t have been happier with the decision will be excited to be a CEO again someday, taking all the invaluable learnings that I’ve amassed in the last few months with me. SimpleGeo hired one of the best CEO’s in the industry, Jay Adelson, and I’m blown away consistently with how much I’m learning. I hope that I can become a “great CEO”, but don’t think that because I quit once that my chances are gone.