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The Day The Comic Book Died

January 18, 2012 by 6 Comments

When I first was out raising money for Graphicly, I got to meet comic book publishers.

At each meeting, I asked the same question, “What do you think of digital?”

And each one answered the same.

“There are more people pirating my comic books than there are buying them. Perhaps as high as 5 to 10 times.”

The comic book industry, which saw its heyday in the 1990s, when highly successful books would sell in the hundreds of thousands, is now ecstatic if a book sells even fifty thousand.

Online piracy has absolutely decimated the industry.

How bad is it?

Comic books come out every Wednesday. By the time I wake up in California, I can already download most of the books that came out earlier that day on the East Coast.

Its not the big guys, Marvel and DC that get squeezed. It not even the little guys–although most will never see a publisher print their book–that are getting smashed, its the publishers in the middle like Image Comics and Archaia that are feeling the vast weight of piracy the most.

Piracy, on many levels, is helping to drive more market share to the top guys, Marvel and DC (both backed my billion dollar companies that aren’t as sensitive to the success of individual books or creative teams), and eliminating the necessary diversity required to ensure a healthy industry.

As Graphicly has grown, we have seen it time and time again. Small and mid-sized publishers struggling for consumer awareness and acceptance in a world dominated by Spiderman and Batman. As diversity dies, so does the ability for the industry to sustain growth.

Every once in awhile a great story like The Walking Dead will break out, but thats not the norm. Interestingly enough, I would say that the pressure piracy places on the mid-tier publisher has actually driven them to become more creative in order to rise out of the shadows of the big guys, but its not easy.

There is no other way to say it, but that piracy is probably the biggest single digital issue facing the comic book industry.

But SOPA and PIPA are not the saviors that “old media” companies hope it will be.

Giving the government carte blanche to censor sites and control the flow of information will cause more damage, deeper damage, long lasting damage to the industry that I have grown to love. The publishers and creators that Graphicly works to support will be hurt in ways that I personally, cannot be a part of.

There are better ways to end piracy. We can improve access. We can develop a platform that allows publishers and creators to be as creative with the distribution, pricing and promotion of their work as they are with the stories themselves. We can help fans discover great stories easily, simply — no more difficult than clicking on a link — removing the burden of surfacing great content.

We can help connect publishers and creators directly to their fans — and believe you me, pirates are some of the biggest fans in existence, as crazy as that might sound — so that those fans can show their support directly to the stories and creators they love.

On January 18, my blog will be censored. I personally am standing next to many of my friends, mentors and colleagues by doing this.

I have also decided to not blackout Graphicly.com.

I made this decision, because we have thousands of creators and publishers that are making real money distributing their stories in a “new media” style, that it would be wrong to deny that. And, more importantly, the access and discovery it provides to great stories are paramount in the fight against piracy, even if “old media” doesn’t understand it.

I am ardently apolitical, yet stopping SOPA and PIPA is exceedingly important, so important, that I have written about politics for the first time ever in the several years this blog has existed.

I want piracy to end.

I want all the story-tellers that should be discovered to be found. I want them to get paid, and I want their fans to get unending enjoyment out of supporting their work.

But, I won’t stand for censorship.

Filed Under: Micah · Tagged With: , , , , ,

I Hate Employees

January 2, 2012 by 2 Comments

Lets state for the record, not my employees.  Well, not after we hired them.

When I was a kid living in Mountain View (532 Thompson Avenue!) a rather large, but old tree fell down in our backyard during a storm.

“Geez, Dad, how are you going to get rid of that tree?”

“Remember that bike you wanted, Micah?”

“Of course”

Ive been wanting a multiple gear bike for months, constantly annoying my parents with pictures, magazine articles, strategic walks through the mall, basically anything I could do to get them to take a gawd damn hint.

“Then you’ll be getting rid of the tree.”

My grandmother was visiting from Albion, Michigan, and I turned to her and used the biggest “woah is me” look I could muster.

“Don’t worry about it, Micah,” she assured me in that special Grandmother way, and headed out of the house with my mom.

A couple of hours later, my grandmother returned, and I bounced up from the couch.

“Hey Grandma!”

“Here, Micah, I got you a gift!”

My excitement quickly waned as she pulled a bow saw out of a bag.

“With this, you will make quick work of that tree.”

With that stupid, gigantic tree sitting between me and the bike that I was destined to ride, I hung my head and walked into the backyard, and for the next three weeks cut branches into three foot logs with a bow saw from Sears. Finally, my dad brought out his chain saw and cut up the rest of the tree (lesson I learned? Those with the right tools for the job like to give those without “life lessons.”)

It was then that I decided that having other people do the work rocked, and in every business I ran afterwards, the first thing I did was hire strategically. (The best example of this? High school when I started a pool cleaning business I hired the star football and baseball players. Lets just say I had a very fine high school experience.)

Then as I started to work at larger companies I started to see a trend. Have a problem? Hire a person. Problem goes away? Fire the person. When I was at Kozmo.com, I hired 5 folks to help run our launch marketing. We killed it. Our output was 50-75x of any other city. Yet, once we smashed our goals, I was asked to lay off those 5 people.

Later, when I explored the idea of buying a bar (Running a neighborhood bar has always been a dream of mine), I was talking to someone who had 5-7 bars in the Denver area.

“People are cheap,” he said. “Food is expensive.” He explained that the number one downfall of a bar was serving food. Food goes bad. You can always hire more people.

Over time, as the businesses I built got bigger, and the need for employees grew, it became clear that it was good business practice to understand that people — “head count,” was to be viewed financially and strategically as a renewable resource.

I hate it.

Yes, finding good employees (read: productive — does culture fit really matter? yes. sort of. Have an amazing engineer that has to poop in his own house, so he won’t travel more than 3 days? Betcha make sure he is always close to his own toilet) is hard. Amazingly hard. So hard that an entire recruiting industry has grown up around solving that problem. Companies like BetterWorks exist to help solve that problem. Its a problem. I get it.

But on a balance sheet, employees are no more or less valuable than the rent you pay, and to truly be an effective leader, you have to understand and accept that.

Its why I hate employees.

Know a very common solution to extending your runway? Lay offs.

Know what most corporations do to protect themselves during bad economic times? Lay offs.

An entire industry has grown up around THAT.

By the way, the department of human resources tells you IN ITS NAME what corporations think of their people.

When we started Graphicly, I swore that we wouldn’t run the company by seeing our employees as human resources. I demanded it of myself.

And we don’t.

Have we fired / laid people off? Yes. Its a function of business optimization, and with startups, its often the by-product of pivoting. (Love to pivot? Better love to fire people too.)

We don’t have some ridiculous program or hidden insight, and, frankly, I don’t know if we even get it right.

What we have instituted is a very healthy sense of respect for and belief in each other, and a very open communication path.

Does that mean that we hang out, high five each other and discuss world affairs? Not every day… :)

It means that we respect that we each have ideas, a life, a work style, a high level of ability and an amazing focus on being productive. It means that we ask each other how things are going…and mean it. We treat our little company as a part of the large community we are fostering, and extend the same respect and open communication to that community.

For Graphicly to succeed, it can’t have employees that are building a company; We are just part of a larger community of artists and storytellers that is built on respect and communication.

I hate employees. I hate that we have to hire people who’s tenure with the company is based on the success and direction of the business. Its antiseptic and the opposite of how we as people build communities.

Graphicly stands on the edge of 2012 looking into a future that is filled with amazing tales spun with breath taking art, and as we help creators and publishers get their stories seen the world becomes just a little bit more rad.

We’re looking to build our team. Shoot me an email if you believe you have the technical, product or design skills to build and design the tools that make that world a reality and want join our effort.

tl;dr: Come build cool shit, own your own success, and make the world rad.

Filed Under: graphicly, startups · Tagged With: , , , ,

Taking Time For Me? Ha.

May 29, 2011 by 13 Comments

I hate the belief that in order to be successful, you have to completely sacrifice yourself to your company.

There. I said it.

This isnt the work/life balance debate. For that, go check out what Brad Feld writes. He’s a smart dude, and he has lots of thoughts on the subject.

This is about treating entrepreneurship like you are a professional athlete, and putting yourself in the best position to provide the most value for your startup.

Late last week, a friend of mine, who has founded a pretty successful startup, whose growth is accelerating, and  has really big potential (Im still waiting for my advisor shares…) called me. (Unfortunately, it wasnt about giving me advisor shares. Dammit.)

“Im killing myself.”

“Why? You have so much to live for.”

“No dumbass, Ive been busting my ass non-stop.”

(And, now you know why I have no advisor shares. Apparently, I suck at the advising part.)

“Oh. Well that sucks.”

“Yeah, dude. In the past week, my to-do list has grown to a massive length.”

“Start focusing on you.”

“Wait, what?”

“Thats, what I said. You matter more than your company. Focus on you and you will drive more success.”

“Explain.”

In the fall of last year, Graphicly was in fundraising mode. We still didnt know quite what we wanted to be when we grew up, some of our early efforts werent as successful as I would have liked, and we had completely re-hauled the team. We had gone from 22 people down to 7, and had completely shut down our UK office, which included a founder deciding to not move to the US, and stepping back from day to day operation. In many ways, we had stretched ourselves too thin, and didnt have the right team to move forward (hence the reduction in staff).

To make matters worse, I was barely sleeping (1 – 2 hrs a night), had ballooned to 363 pounds, and could barely focus on anything. It all came to a head on a call with a board member, Blair, where I, at the end of my rope, discussed if I was the right person to lead the company forward. “I understand that companies fail,” I said to Blair. “I just dont want to be the reason this one fails.”

After talking me off the ledge, I walked back into my office and slumped in my chair.

“If I could change one thing, what would it be?” I mumbled to myself.

“Me.”  If I was the problem, then I needed to correct me.

I would focus on me. I would focus on my health. I would change how I managed the business, who we hired, what we focused on. I would stop sacrificing myself.

Mostly, I would treat running a startup like I did when I coached and played lacrosse. I would make sure that I was in the best shape mentally and physically to provide the most value.

I got a sleep study. Turned out that I have severe sleep apnea (A normal person has an ‘obstruction’ 5 times a night. Me? 91.) and I got a CPAP machine to help me sleep (I now sleep 6-7 hours a night. Its amazing how important sleep is to being effective.). I started watching what I ate (and am now down 30 lbs). I took a look at the company and determined what we needed to do, and who we needed to do it.

In addition, to focusing on myself, we made a couple of changes to the company.

1) We are 100% focused on production. People know what they have to produce, and that the company has a short memory. Be awesome always, or be gone. Amazingly, it removes stress, and attracts the right kind of people. Now, there is no question as to what people need to accomplish. And having clarity around your job is comforting. And things like where you work, how long you work and how you work no longer matter. It’s the ends that matter, not the means.

2) We changed our vacation policy: “Take what time you need, but if you arent missed, then thats a problem.” Do people abuse this? I dont think so.

3) Once a month we recognize someone who went above and beyond their job (usually means they crushed their goals) with a $100 gift certificate to whatever they want.

Clarity. Respect. Recognition. It matters.

Over the next couple of months, we completely rebuilt the engineering and product teams, refocused our efforts on what our customers really want, and raised just over $3 million. Now our growth is accelerating, deals are closing, the product is coming along in a wonderful way, our team is happy, our investors are happy, our community is happy. And most importantly, I am now providing real value to the company.

And, it all came from the realization that entrepreneurs need to take time for themselves. They have to put themselves first.

Do I have a work/life balance? In the standard sense, no. I dont leave the office at 7pm and go for a hike. But, every Saturday, I give myself 12 hours to do what I want to do. I go see a movie. I sleep in. Sometimes, I read. And, occasionally, I will catch up with email.

As entrepreneurs we have this weird expectation that we should completely sacrifice ourselves for our companies, and every employee should match that sacrifice. And, as investors, we perpetrate that myth, causing our founders to focus on the wrong things, and potentially create untenable situations. (If the myth that people invest in teams, shouldnt that investment–the founders–be protected and nurtured, rather than worked to the bone?)

Take care of yourselves, founders. You will find that your companies do exceeding better, and you are happier doing it.

Enjoy your Memorial Day!!

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