Q: "How would you describe your management style, because you have a pretty unique management style?"
Jason Calacanis: "Yeah, I would say I like people to be able to keep up with me. Uuuhm. And I don't get tired - I have only experienced being tired a couple of times in my life, it's typically from running the marathon and so I need people who are indefatigable, people who have pretty high stamina. I need people who are intense. I need people who can perform at a high level on a pretty regular basis. And I need people who are able to engage in debate. And so I need pretty strong people. I decided I am not going to work for people who are weak and who are maybe looking for balance in their lives. I do view doing a startup company like an Olympic sport. You have to qualify for it. If you don't qualify for it, then you can't be on the team. And if all of a sudden you get slower, and can't keep up, then you have to leave the team, and be replaced by somebody who can. And if you have a team of people who are all Olympic caliber, and who all are running very fast, it doesn't feel like everybody is running fast, it's just how we run, we are fast runners, or hard runners. And you just have to hire the right people. So I think I'm intolerant of average people. I am infuriated by people who make excuses. And so depending on who comes to work for me, and if you interview 100 people who have worked for me, if the person was ambitious and hard-working, they would tell you that it's the best experience of their lives, and that they learned more working for me, got more opportunity, tripled their salary. I have had people literally come in, work for me, 30 or 40 thousand dollars out of school, and then two or three years later would be making 100 thousand dollars. That's my value proposition. If you come work for me, you are going to work very hard, not harder than I do, maybe equal, but no harder than I expect of myself. But you will learn everything, and I will teach you everything I know. Calacanis MBA in 3 or 4 years. And if you do, then I will get you a job anywhere you want to work. If you have done 3 or 4 years for me, I will invest in your company if you come up with a good idea. I will come on your board, if you come up with a good idea. I will introduce you to anybody I know, give you recommendation and support you in any way I can. Take the other half of people, who maybe I've fought with, or fired. or they quit, they tended to be people who were lame, not hard-working, looking for balance, not intense, not winners, not looking to succeed, and they would say "Well, I'm just a normal person". I would say: "Correct, you are a normal person. I am an abnormal person. You normal person came to work for an abnormal person. I have abnormal expectations, that are high. You have normal expectations." It's nothing wrong with that, but that person should have gone to work at the post office, or Starbucks, or IBM, or whatever place where average people can exist without having some insane maniac like me say: "Why didn't you figure this out? Why didn't you work harder? Why did you make all these mistakes?" At a big company, no one would ever confront them. They would just hide under their desk, and maybe 9 months later somebody would say: "What do you do here? Oh cool." And for people who just want to duck down and disappear, there are plenty of jobs out there. I don't want those. I want samurai. People who come in and fight, and cut arms off and crash through stuff. If there is a barrier and a problem, I want people who can just hack their way through it, and not stop until they are dead or they have killed whatever is in front of them. And that is a different philosophy than maybe most people have about business."
Wow. Okay. I've read people complaining about this Calcanis guy a whole lot and never understood why. To me it was just a name, I never really knew precisely what he had done or what he was doing now, and I'm still not sure what this Mahalo thing does if it's not a shoe company.
Anyway, now I understand. He's a jerk. Not some kind of unique and interesting jerk, fascinating in his jerkiness, but just a regular garden-variety jerk. I know those guys. They exist all over academia.
I know it's fashionable to hate Calacanis, but must confess to not finding too much wrong with the paragraph. I have worked with quite a few people who wondered "is my name in lights yet?", while wanting work/life balance at the same time. My personal thought on it was: "we are trying to make a dent in the world, and it takes something extra, and you have to really want it, cause it's hard (and tiring), and if you would rather have work/life balance now, then maybe another job would be better".
It's not the gist of what he says that's unreasonable, it's the details and the phrasing which reveal a lot about the dude's personality.
It's the self-obsession inherent in the way he keeps referring to his own (self-perceived) good qualities as the ideals to which others should try to live up to.
It's the pointless bragging. "Oh, I've only been tired a few times in my life, usually after a marathon". Cool story, bro!
It's the way he gives the impression that the only thing he seems to value in his employees is how much they're willing to kill themselves for the sake of the company.
Above all, it's this apparent feeling of entitlement that he deserves to have the best people in the world working for him. This might be justified if he'd sold his last two companies for ten billion dollars a piece and made all his employees rich. But according to wikipedia he's sold one company for the $30 million range; presumably enough to make the founders rich but only to give a modest payoff to the employees. If the best he can say is that some of his employees make $100K after getting $30K for the first few years (compared to a big company where they'd instead make $100K after getting $75K for the first few years...) then I'm really not sure where this sense of entitlement is coming from.
Right, taken in the context of just this interview, it is not that bad, it's just a guy saying I want extraordinary people and "claims" that he is willing to compensate them for being extraordinary. Standing by itself there is nothing wrong with it. But when you contrast that, with the buzz that went around a few months ago because someone job hopped him because they did not like the environment it tells a totally different story. There is a significant sense of entitlement in that exchange whereas this on seems to contradict his position, in this he pretty much states if you don't like it you are free to leave. But it would seem that he feels it is actually, if I don't like you, you I am free to protect my interests.
I kill myself in order to see our projects succeed, and so it is only fair in my mind that the folks who join my team do the same.
It's not 80 hours a week every week, but certainly there are those weeks. The truth is it's probably not as hard as I make it seem in this video, but this video is my HR marketing.
The weak people who see a video like this go "oh that guys a jerk I would never work for him," and that's EXACTLY what I want.
Now, the folks who are looking to double or triple their salaries, grow their technical skills 5-10x in a year and learn how to run their own companies, those people see a video like that and say "sign me up! I want to be a Jedi! I want to be a Samurai!"
I then give those folks a lightsaber and teach them how to run a company from raising money, to hiring and to developing a strategy.
If you look at the folks who have joined my teams you will find a long line of folks who have becoming millionaires working for me, and then gone on to raise millions in venture capital for their companies--and in some cases make millions (again)!
The folks who don't know me, and are so weak that they waste their time throwing rocks at me, take the time to attack on a thread like this.... but they've never spent a day with me! They don't know me, but they waste time commenting on what they don't know.
I find that funny and sad, and I appreciate the attention because all it does is send more potential Jedi my way.
Jason, I respect you and your work ethic, am a massive fan of TWiST and have been a Jason Nation subscriber for a long time.
BUT, personally I don't believe this HR ethic will work long-time with the emergence of better angel funding. You're looking for the mentalities of founders to become employees, and when someone can partner with someone in university or down at the local coffee shop and apply for Y Combinator, work the same hours and put the same effort in on their own company, instead of grinding in an already established company, I'm betting the best minds will do the latter.
Correct me if I'm wrong on that, there might be a wealth of super-talented, super-dedicated workers who aren't confident to run their own company yet, but I would imagine that anyone willing to work crazy hours, solving complex online problems, with the low cost of launching a product nowadays, they're going to try that (at least first).
Certainly there are more opportunities for brilliant and talented folks with every passing day. You can apply to an incubator like YC, TechStars or The Founders Institute (all great in their own ways). You can hit up www.OpenAngelForum.com or Angel List (angel.co).You can hit up the new crop of angel investors directly (assuming they keep investing!).
Or you can sharpen your skills working for a killer entrepreneur like myself for 30 to 48 months (my minimum recommend length). All of these are amazing possibilities. Coming to work for me and lasting three years or more means I will: a) Give you a Calacanis MBA in statups! b) Angel invest in your company, join your board and introduce you to other angels--provided it's a quality product. c) mentor you for all time d) get coffee with you any time e) introduce you to anyone i know--for all time. f) give you a recommendation on the phone--for all time g) blog/tweet/etc your latest victory to my legions of follers/the www.JasonNation.com!!! These things, I'm told, provide great value. it's up to the individual to decide their path... I provide but three: Open Angel Forum, angel investing, the launch conference (www.launch.is) and mentoring/hiring. rock on Jcal
Jason, I'm a JNation subscriber, big TWiST fan and have to say that the abuse here is a bit much without knowing your contribution to the community.
That said, the quote above sounds like a Czar in early industrial Russia. I agree that you have high standards for your employees and applaud you for being upfront about expectations: your employees are adults and can make informed choices. But, that you would expect truly talented people to fall in line for that kind of industrial revolution era treatment defy's logic.
Yes, you can deliver 50x in mentorship/support post-hazing, but it is still a hazing. As someone mentioned earlier, why would a talented person want to work for you again? Truthfully, they could get similar support working at Google or Fb or any of the other successful startups in the valley.
I know that you "go for the gusto" approach has served you well in the past and has earned you the success and renown you have today. But, perhaps it is time to rethink that strategy, especially in these times and especially if you intend to stay relevant.
Wow, a Jedi and a Samurai. What a fabulous job description (for someone whose actual job is sitting in front of a computer for twelve hours a day working on a project that somebody else thinks is a good idea for thirty grand on the promise that maybe they'll get a hundred grand later on).
Anyway Jason, I'm afraid I have better things to do today than argue with you on the subject of whether you are as awesome as you think you are. Apparently this is your favourite subject, but it's not one that interests me very much.
With the caveat that Mike Arrington is not an objective third party as regards Jason these days, I recall him mentioning that Calacanis was regularly taking modafinil so as to not need sleep. c.f. http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/03/at-my-wits-end-jason-calaca...
I realize this may result in "I don't get tired" but for my two cents, chemical augmentation isn't really the same thing.
Or maybe that's a more accurate description of Olympic athletes than I'd like to admit.
> I have only experienced being tired a couple of times in my life
I would love to impart my congenitally low blood sugar to him so that he can know what it's like to have to battle chronic fatigue 24/7 with diet and exercise just so you can function and not feel depressed all the time.
Managing that is probably 50-75% of my personal effort in being a productive programmer.
Jason Calacanis: "Yeah, I would say I like people to be able to keep up with me. Uuuhm. And I don't get tired - I have only experienced being tired a couple of times in my life, it's typically from running the marathon and so I need people who are indefatigable, people who have pretty high stamina. I need people who are intense. I need people who can perform at a high level on a pretty regular basis. And I need people who are able to engage in debate. And so I need pretty strong people. I decided I am not going to work for people who are weak and who are maybe looking for balance in their lives. I do view doing a startup company like an Olympic sport. You have to qualify for it. If you don't qualify for it, then you can't be on the team. And if all of a sudden you get slower, and can't keep up, then you have to leave the team, and be replaced by somebody who can. And if you have a team of people who are all Olympic caliber, and who all are running very fast, it doesn't feel like everybody is running fast, it's just how we run, we are fast runners, or hard runners. And you just have to hire the right people. So I think I'm intolerant of average people. I am infuriated by people who make excuses. And so depending on who comes to work for me, and if you interview 100 people who have worked for me, if the person was ambitious and hard-working, they would tell you that it's the best experience of their lives, and that they learned more working for me, got more opportunity, tripled their salary. I have had people literally come in, work for me, 30 or 40 thousand dollars out of school, and then two or three years later would be making 100 thousand dollars. That's my value proposition. If you come work for me, you are going to work very hard, not harder than I do, maybe equal, but no harder than I expect of myself. But you will learn everything, and I will teach you everything I know. Calacanis MBA in 3 or 4 years. And if you do, then I will get you a job anywhere you want to work. If you have done 3 or 4 years for me, I will invest in your company if you come up with a good idea. I will come on your board, if you come up with a good idea. I will introduce you to anybody I know, give you recommendation and support you in any way I can. Take the other half of people, who maybe I've fought with, or fired. or they quit, they tended to be people who were lame, not hard-working, looking for balance, not intense, not winners, not looking to succeed, and they would say "Well, I'm just a normal person". I would say: "Correct, you are a normal person. I am an abnormal person. You normal person came to work for an abnormal person. I have abnormal expectations, that are high. You have normal expectations." It's nothing wrong with that, but that person should have gone to work at the post office, or Starbucks, or IBM, or whatever place where average people can exist without having some insane maniac like me say: "Why didn't you figure this out? Why didn't you work harder? Why did you make all these mistakes?" At a big company, no one would ever confront them. They would just hide under their desk, and maybe 9 months later somebody would say: "What do you do here? Oh cool." And for people who just want to duck down and disappear, there are plenty of jobs out there. I don't want those. I want samurai. People who come in and fight, and cut arms off and crash through stuff. If there is a barrier and a problem, I want people who can just hack their way through it, and not stop until they are dead or they have killed whatever is in front of them. And that is a different philosophy than maybe most people have about business."