Zero to Tesla Page 4
“It was only two days ago,” Kabir said. “Of course I’m sure it was Tuesday.”
I told my wife about the conversation that night, and she immediately reacted. “You have to fire him! This business is in trouble because of him, and you have to fire him right now!” I thought perhaps the blame should be spread around a bit more evenly, but I certainly wasn’t happy about the situation. The problem was that Rich and I were part of the same crowd, and firing him would divide our friends, with my reputation taking a huge hit. Victor told me to do what I thought was right, so I asked Rich to meet me at the store for lunch the next day.
Rich was nonchalant as I walked in. I started with, “Rich, were you negotiating contracts on Tuesday?”
“Yes, of course I was,” he said.
“I heard that you were playing golf on Tuesday.”
“Sure, I took part of the day off after meeting some suppliers and went to play golf. What’s the big deal?”
I was upset. “Jesus Christ, Rich! This business is in serious trouble, and you’re out playing golf?”
The business was in trouble, and Rich was standing there unconcerned. I had my wife’s histrionics in my immediate memory, but I couldn’t just fire him—it would be too painful having to face my friends. So I executed what I thought was a brilliant compromise, “Rich, you don’t seem to care about the company as much as you should. I’ll keep paying your salary, but I’m taking away your stock options.”
That didn’t work out so well, though. Rich said, “Screw you, I quit!” Then he walked out the door.
I stood there, wondering what I had just done. I found out soon enough. The next morning, Rich’s brother, Jerry, called me and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be your lawyer anymore.” One of our call center staff didn’t show up. Friends started being unavailable for drinks. I told everyone I could that Rich had goofed off and lied, and soon there was a complete fracture in a social circle that was important to me—one that I had spent so many years building.
Victor and I fought on for another month. We hired a great manager, Alex, who was good with the staff and who had video store experience. He was great with customers on the phone, upselling and answering questions. For a while we thought we might scrape by as we tried to get some free PR and raise more money. But the day came that we couldn’t make payroll, and despite promising we’d get him the money soon, Alex didn’t show up the next day. And our office VCR was missing.
That night Victor and I got together at midnight with our wives to discuss what we would do next. He was game to put in another $15,000 and see if we could turn it around, but by then I’d had enough. His salary was at least double mine, so it was easier for him to invest more, but I was through. He agreed to wrap it up if I wanted to wrap it up, so that was it. I wasn’t going to make it big, and my social life was in a shambles. It had taken only six months for me to drive the company into the ground. But at least I still had my job at Nortel.
---
The next day, I was late coming in to work. In my peripheral vision, I saw Ralph check his watch, but I didn’t have the energy to make an excuse. I was staring at my cubicle wall, ignoring the steadily growing pile of assignments on my desk, when Ralph stormed over, pointed to his office, and said, “Now!”
Ralph started and ended the conversation in the span of one long breath. “What the hell is your problem? I’ve seen you distracted and moping around ever since you started here, and now you show up at eleven o’clock acting like you don’t have a care in the world? I don’t care what business school you went to and how many people told me you were a star when I hired you. You’re a screwup is what you are! Don’t bother telling me you have personal problems. I. Don’t. Care. When I was going through a divorce, I didn’t let it affect my work, and I didn’t ask for sympathy, I just showed up every day and did my damn job. Do your damn job, or I will fire you. Now get out of my office!”
APOLOGIZE, AND MOVE ON
When I was in Vancouver, I’d met Roman, a young entrepreneur who had sold a small software business and bought himself a Porsche. He was the first person I knew in real life who had started and sold a business, and I valued his advice. I called him and said, “Roman, the business failed.” He asked me what happened, and I said, “Everything went wrong. I lost $15,000, and my life is a train wreck.” His response was, “Well…$15,000 isn’t that expensive, if it taught you some humility.” Feeling crushed and humiliated by my failure, I said, “Yeah, I’m definitely humble now.”
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“Hi, Earl, it’s me, Sanjay, the VideoDrive guy?”
Earl didn’t immediately place me. “Sorry, old chap, didn’t quite catch that. The international connection’s a bit fuzzy.”
“Earl, listen,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid the business you invested in hasn’t worked out. I can send you paperwork for the bankruptcy and for tax filings.”
“Oh it’s you! How are you doing?”
“I’m not doing well, Earl, and I’m really, really sorry, but I’ve lost all your money.”
Earl brushed it off. “Not to worry, keep a stiff upper lip and all that.”
That’s the conversation I imagined. Earl’s actual words were closer to, “Bugger me, really? You lost it all, then? Christ, well okay, send me the paperwork. How are you holding up? Don’t worry about the money, I said good-bye to it the day I wired it to you.”
When I’d called the investors in VideoDrive, they were uniformly more worried about me than about their money. That was a valuable lesson in communication with investors, because it was hard making those phone calls.
The only one harder was to my former entrepreneurship professor. I called and said, “Hello, Professor BenDaniel? I’m sure you’ve heard by now that I started VideoDrive, and it failed miserably.”
“Yes, I heard,” he said. “Well, congratulations on actually starting the business. Most students don’t actually do it, you know.”
I wished at that moment that I had been like most students.
“Did you learn anything?” he asked.
“I learned that I don’t really know anything about business, and I learned…” and I went on at length about all the mistakes I’d made.
To my surprise, BenDaniel called me back a couple of days later and asked if I’d like to be a guest lecturer in his class the following semester. He thought that a case study based on VideoDrive would be a great learning tool for his students because, as he put it, “You’re smart, but you still made every mistake imaginable. I can’t think of a better cautionary tale.”
So I worked with him to write the case study, and two months later I was standing in front of my successors at Cornell, proudly explaining why every decision had seemed correct at the time.
“Why did you hire all your friends?”
“Well, I didn’t realize you should hire your friends because they’re good (like Jerry, the lawyer), not because they’re your friends and they’re unemployed (like everyone else I hired).”
“How could you have been so far off on your marketing estimates for direct mail?”
“Nowhere in business school are you learning tactical items like how to run an ad campaign, get PR, or hire employees. An MBA is about strategy. It doesn’t teach you anything about how to run a business—only how to tell someone else how to run a business. It’s completely frickin’ useless in the real—”
BenDaniel stepped in at this point. “Perhaps you could be more specific about the marketing question?”
I apologized and answered again. “Um, I never took a course in direct mail marketing, so I showed my marketing plan to a friend who ran an ad agency, and he said it looked good. I guess the lesson is that advice is worth what you pay for it, and if I’d given him some shares in the company, he might have taken a more careful look.”
“Professor BenDaniel tells us all the time that most businesses fail because of cash flow. Why didn’t you start with more money?”
“We s
hould’ve started with more money. Amateur mistake.”
“Neither you nor your partner were running the business full time. Why was that?”
“It’s really hard to financially commit everything you have to a business, so we decided to hedge our bets. It was one of the worst—perhaps the worst decision I made. You can’t be half-assed about starting a company. Either you’re all in or you’re not. I should have been full time on VideoDrive.”
“Can you tell us anything else you learned?”
I paused for a moment, wondering if I should admit it. I said, “I thought I would succeed because I was smarter than all the people who came before me, who tried this business model before me. I was completely wrong. Thinking you’re smart makes you stupid. With all the research I did, it was stupid to start this business. Do your research, then don’t be stupid.”
There was more, but eventually I got the final question. A student in the front row raised her hand and smirked a little before asking me, “Don’t you think you just gave up too quickly? Quitters never win, and so on.”
I thought about slapping the smirk off her naïve face and then gave her the answer to why all that “winners never quit” bullshit is bullshit. “The reason you hear that all the time is because only winners ever get asked to speak at panels and conferences. Losers end up serving french fries or living in their parents’ basements. Because of Professor BenDaniel, you’re lucky to be hearing from a loser. The only good decision I made was quitting when I did.”
MOVE WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOU
Outwardly, I was doing great at Nortel. Only one year after almost being fired, I was contacted by a director in the Information Technology (IT) division of the company and offered a full manager position in a high-profile role. I would be leading the company’s efforts to optimize all operations to meet international process standards, known as ISO-9001. It was a significant badge of honor for the company, and by extension, for me.
Brad*—excitable, slightly rounded, and wearing large black nerd glasses—was the newly appointed head of the division, and two weeks into my new job, he popped his head into my office and asked, “Hey, I think I saw on your resume that you have facilitation experience?”
“Yes, I love doing that stuff. Why?”
Brad began gesticulating at the whiteboard in my new office. “I love whiteboards…can’t write worth a damn…last minute, sorry…ideas!” I was confused, but I nodded and smiled and gave a little wave bye-bye as Brad dashed back out of my office with a parting, “My secretary will give you the details!”
I got the details, and three days later, at 8:55 a.m., I strode confidently into a conference room filled with VPs, AVPs, and directors from five offices across the United States and Canada. It was the annual strategic planning meeting for the entire division, and as I looked out over the twenty men wearing grim expressions and dark suits, I began to get nervous. Going to a table at the front of the room, I sat down and tried to look comfortable. Brad bounced in at 9:15 a.m. as several attendees glanced at their watches, made a beeline to the front of the room, and turned to beam at the audience.
“Thanks, everyone, for coming to our planning session! We have some great projects on the go, and it’s time for all of us to put our heads together to decide what to focus on to make this division successful!” He looked inquiringly at me, and I hesitated, not sure what to do next. He looked pointedly at an easel standing at the front of the room, and I slowly got up, went to the easel, and took a red marker from the tray. I looked back at Brad, and he was rolling onto the balls of his feet as he yelled out, “Okay, who wants to start? Give me some ideas!” There was no immediate response, so Brad turned to me and whispered, “Start it off.” I quickly scribbled, “1. ISO-9001” on the board and Brad smiled approvingly.
One of the participants spoke up then, “We need to let the rest of the company know how important ISO-9001 is.”
“Yes, Larry, that’s a great idea!” Brad responded. Then he turned to me and said, “Write down that I should give speeches to all the other divisions on the value of ISO-9001.”
I wrote, “2. Speeches—Brad,” and looked back at Brad, who nodded.
The suggestions started to come fast and furious after that. I had ripped the second sheet off the easel and just finished writing down “25. Create Comic Book Hero for division” when I leaned in to Brad and said quietly, “Uh, sir, isn’t this a lot of items to focus on? Shouldn’t we be prioritizing?”
Brad took the marker out of my hand, mumbling, “Yes, yes, we have to prioritize,” and then he scrawled “26. Prioritize more” in large letters across the bottom of the page.
Another participant immediately raised a hand and suggested, “I think you should start writing a book about how successful this division is under your leadership.”
With a nod from Brad, I took the marker back and obediently squeezed the idea into the remaining space at the bottom of the page. “Book—Success by Brad.”
Unsurprisingly, Brad was asked to leave the organization six months later. By then I was regularly playing Civilization on my office computer, which had a gorgeous twenty-inch monitor where I could see the entire playing field at once. My wife had gotten me the game as a birthday present, and I was staying at the office late, playing the game to avoid going home. The irony wasn’t lost on me as I hit “continue” on the dialog screen, knowing it would extend my playing session by another hour.
I didn’t know what I should do next. Should I attack the Mayan Empire or declare a truce and focus on the Russians? I decided to attack the Mayans. They weren’t around anymore in real life, so they couldn’t be that good at running an empire. Three turns later, the Mayans and Russians signed a pact and attacked me simultaneously on two fronts. The game was quickly over, and I switched off the computer, preparing the story for my wife about the important project I’d been working on all evening.
But there were no important projects. The organization was in disarray, and I was wondering about leaving Nortel to pursue other opportunities. Around this time, I heard that one of the more competent VPs in our group was leaving to take a job as CFO with a company called Qualcomm in San Diego. Wireless was a hot area in telecom, and Qualcomm was a hot young company in wireless. Tony worked out of our Nashville office. He was a thin version of an older Clint Eastwood, and I’d heard that he’d bought a ranch in a rich suburb of San Diego when he switched jobs.
Tony and I had always gotten along well, and he knew I was unhappy, so a few months after he had left, I got a phone call from him. He liked his new company and suggested I come down to San Diego to interview for a marketing job.
Qualcomm’s campus was legendary. Ten years before the Googleplex became famous, Qualcomm had a vividly color-splashed building with free food after 6:00 p.m., beach volleyball courts, and an on-site swimming pool. When I arrived, all I could think of was how badly I wanted to work there. The interviews went well, and I even had a chance to get in a sideswipe against my current boss. The head of marketing at Qualcomm, Chris, was asking me, “So, why are you leaving your current job?” I should have said, “I think this opportunity is amazing. Who wouldn’t leave their current job to come work for you?” What I said instead was, “Because my boss is an idiot, and the entire organization is in trouble. I can’t wait to get out of there.” Chris nodded, scribbled some more notes, and said we were done.
My last meeting was with Donna in HR. The subject of compensation hadn’t come up yet, and I asked her about it. She gave me a long rundown of the Qualcomm benefits program and said, “We have a great package, any questions?”
I had to ask. “The benefits sound great! And what’s the salary?” She paused for a moment, and my mind was racing. I was making $55,000 with Nortel at the time—a great salary. The Qualcomm opportunity was amazing. How much of a salary cut was I prepared to take? Donna finally spoke, nervously. Perhaps she had read my expression and knew that we were both worried I’d be disappointed with the offer.
My heart stopped.
To end the silence that followed, Donna quickly said, “Of course that’s negotiable.” She added, “I’ve already heard from a few of the managers who met you, and they’ve said good things. If you get the offer, when would you be able to start? We’ll set you and your wife up with a relocation consultant, but hopefully you can start before you actually move here?”
I nodded. “I just need to talk to my wife, but I’m pretty sure I can start in two weeks.”
I walked out of her office. I was twenty-nine years old, about to double my salary, about to work at the hottest company in my industry, and about to move to Paradise, USA—a.k.a. San Diego.
The next day I was back at my desk in Toronto, and I couldn’t stop grinning. My phone rang, and I hit speakerphone, then picked it up, hoping it was Qualcomm. It was! But Tony sighed as he began the conversation, and I got a sick feeling in my stomach.
“Sanjay, I don’t know what happened. The post-interview meeting was going great, then Chris came storming in and said we couldn’t hire you. He said you didn’t have the right attitude. What in the world happened in the interview?”
My mind raced. Oh no. I asked Tony, “Did he say I was negative about Nortel?”
Tony said, “Yes, he did say that. But who isn’t negative about Nortel? I hope you were circumspect about it, though.”
I thought, Aaaaaaagh, I am such an idiot!
Out loud I said, “I don’t know, Tony. I might have been a bit more vocal than I should have.”
He sighed again. “Okay. I’ll try to have a talk with him, but he was pretty angry.”
I hung up the phone. There would be no chance for me to recover from this.
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Stephen Howe was a fellow Canadian and had been a business school classmate of mine, writing the sports column for the student paper. After graduation, he had gotten a great consulting job at an operations and strategy consultancy, PRTM, out of their Orange County office in Southern California. He heard that I was interviewing at Qualcomm and called me up, “Hey, Sanjay, I didn’t realize you were looking for a job and that you were a wireless guy. If you’re thinking about leaving Nortel, you should consider PRTM.”