SubscribeRap and Marketing, David vs. Goliath
A few insights I’d like to share about an interesting Stanford E-corner podcast with QD3 and Chamillionaire. My first thought: Successful rap-artists are much smarter and business savvy than the public gives them credit for. It’s no accident these guys make millions of dollars. Second thought: these guys really get how to market & sell their products.
Chamillionaire was great. First thing I noticed – he connected with the audience right away. It wasn’t him trying to prove he was ‘in’ with the Stanford crowd; it was just him acting naturally, like he would act at a concert. And everyone became more engaged, myself included. I have listened to a few of these talks from CEOs of successful startups, and none of them ‘hooked’ me like as Chamillionaire. It fit right into what he was saying – your product needs to be authentic. Your audience can’t connect with you otherwise. It doesn’t matter if you are selling rap records or insurance policies.
I was at a Jay-Z concert last night; after listening to this talk, I noticed that Jay-Z took a lot of time during his set to connect with the audience. Unlike some other performance art, good rappers take the time to be intimate with their fans.
Another thing that I noticed was the relative meritocracy of the rap world. I can’t say how widespread it is, but it seems there is less focus on pedigree and more evaluation based on quality. These guys get grass-roots distribution and marketing; nobody told them they needed an ad agency, so they talked to people they knew to spread buzz. They didn’t have the budget for print or TV, so they embraced the internet early. They are still quick to embrace new media as well – Twitter, iPhone, whatever. They don’t need to see a case study first – if it interests them, they try it.
Last thing – the effort they put into their work is phenomenal. As small artists working against big labels, it’s a David vs. Goliath situation, and they understand that. They understand they need to be more agile, defy social convention and work harder. When we listen to the final product it seems effortless, but it is equal parts work and brilliance that create a great album.
QD3 stated that last year, only indie labels made a profit. If indie gamemakers hope to survive against Goliaths like EA and Activision, we need to understand the lessons of the indie rapper.
Firing From the Hip: The failure of self-selection
‘Culture of greatness’
Caught this portion of Jensen Huang’s (CEO NVidia) Standford E-Corner presentation, talking about motivating employees. To summarize – he believes NVidia’s engineering culture is excellent because they have their engineers ’self-select’ high quality peers, using a ‘rigorous interview process’. He also compares their engineering team to an elite football squad.
This may be a standard ‘corporate policy’, but it doesn’t make sense to me.
Great engineers aren’t always good judges of character
The qualities that you look for in an engineer (innovation, attention to detail, technical savvy, etc.) are not exactly ‘people skills’ (as opposed to sales, where success in your position is almost directly related to people skills). I’ve seen bad engineers with good people skills emphatically convince the right people they are the right person for the job, and seen good engineers be turned down because of poor people skills (not saying people skills are not necessary for an engineer, but that’s for a different post).
When was the last time you heard about a football team selecting it’s own players? You have scouts and a GM for that. Players play football, scouts and coaches evaluate talent. Engineers should build and innovate; someone else should be evaluating your talent.
Counter-intuition: A rigorous interview doesn’t select good employees.
Examine Gladwell’s article on ‘Most Likely to Succeed’. The NFL uses a series of extremely rigorous interviews (scouting, combine, etc.) with entire teams of people devoted to evaluating future player performance, yet there is almost no correlation between draft pick selection and future performance. Are tech companies all that much better at evaluating future engineering talent?
When you depend on rigorous interviews, you are putting the incentive and emphasis at being good at interviewing, not being good at your future job.
For the Indianapolis Colts, deciding between Ryan Leaf and Peyton Manning came down to one question.
The question was, ‘What would you do the first day you were signed?’ Manning said he would ask for the playbook; Leaf said he would celebrate in Vegas. In the end, it was something completely unrelated to football that would decide between a future hall of famer and epic draft bust. I don’t claim that I can tell you what’s the right way to select employees. What I do want to point out is: since you are making football analogies Mr. Huang, did you ever consider that your ‘rigorous self-selection process’ may not be the best way to find good employees?
Some football players who failed the NFL’s ‘rigorous interview’:
Tom Brady: Round: 6 / Pick: 199 (3 time super bowl champion, 2 time super bowl MVP)
Kurt Warner: Undrafted (4x pro bowler, 2x NFL MVP, super bowl champion)
Tony Romo: Undrafted (3x pro bowler)
Wes Welker: Undrafted (2 time pro bowler, 2 time NFL leader for receptions)
Miles Austin: Undrafted (Cowboys franchise record 250 receiving yards in single game, 2009 Pro-Bowler)