It Is All About the People
Over the weekend, The Globe and Mail (National paper in Canada) had an article by Avner Mandelman talking about the great people vs. business debate. This is the argument where some will tell you 'B' team with 'A' business plan beats the reverse. Others, of course, bet on the opposite, i.e. give me 'A' players with the 'B' plan.
While never black and white, people do matter as a top priority. Avner's article is a good read (here until gone behind a firewall).
Disclosure: Nstein is mentioned and is a JLA investment.
It was a timely story because of the shifts happening at other JLA companies.
Butch Langlois who was the CEO of Truition, moved over to take on PlanetEye as the CEO. He was instrumental in helping Truition get where she is and then proactively worked with me as well as other board members to get a guy who can move Truition to the next phase of her growth.
When Butch determined that PE needed some additional talent and business relationships with blogging and community systems, he turned to Jeremy Wright, the CEO of b5 networks. Presto. The two companies launched some biz dev plans and agreed to have Mark Evans keep doing blogs for b5 while at the same time join PE to help get that puppy launched.
No weird agendas, just smart CEOs in our JLA talent pool working together, sharing ideas, and getting the jobs done.
After watching all the people activities these past few months, I'm solidly in the camp of: It's all about the people.
For JLA, we have truly solid people.
A company with good team can learn to create a strong business plan. But a good business plan doesn't (by itself) create a company with a strong team.
Posted by: fewquid | July 16, 2007 at 13:16
Do you think this may be why Ning was valued so highly, because of Andreessen's involvement?
Posted by: Farhan Lalji | July 16, 2007 at 16:16