Revolution at the Water Cooler: Corinne Maier

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Sebastian Rotella:

Maier herself has withstood her share of boring meetings. But she did something about it. She wrote a 112-page manifesto titled “Hello, Laziness: Of the Art and Necessity of Doing the Least Possible in Business.”
And France reeled.
Maier’s satiric book, which denounces corporate culture as rigid, empty-headed, avaricious and ruthless, has zoomed to the top of the bestseller lists here, selling more than 120,000 copies at last count. In urging office workers to smile and look busy while sabotaging the system from within, she has ignited a national debate about the French work ethic ? or lack thereof.
“What you do ultimately means nothing and you could be replaced tomorrow by the first passing cretin,” Maier writes. “So work as little as possible, and spend some time (but not too much) on ‘marketing yourself’ and ‘building yourself a network’ so you will have support and be untouchable (and untouched) in case of a restructuring.”

Maier is a part time employee with EDF: Electricite de France.

A Pravda View of Guild.com

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Jason Stein points to Madison’s Guild.com as an example of how “critical that [venture capital] funding can be”:

In the late 1990s, Sikes dreamed of turning her Madison art catalog and publishing business into an Internet site that could sell pieces of art directly to the public. With millions in venture money to strengthen it, Guild.com survived the dot.com bust and now has 35 employees.
“Venture capital helped build this company to what it is today,” Sikes said. “The reason most start-up businesses fail is because they’re undercapitalized. There is an enormous need in Wisconsin for more venture capital.”
Fred Schwarzer, managing director of Charter Life Sciences in Palo Alto, Calif., said most venture capitalists stay relatively close to their East and West Coast offices and don’t get a chance to discover Madison companies like Guild.com.

Rather than drinking the kool aid and simply printing Guild CEO Toni Sike’s statements, Stein should have dug in a bit and run a quick Google search and found that:

  • Local investors lost millions during Guild’s chase for west coast VC money
  • Guild was bought back from Ashford for less than pennies on the dollar

Holding up guild.com as a local vc success story would be like the folks in Silicon Valley point to their substantial VC investments in massive failure webvan as an example of why they need more venture funding. Local NBC affiliate channel 15 (now a friend of Capital Newspapers madison.com site (!)) ran a brief story on Guild a few years ago. No mention was made of their financial history. I phoned the reporter after the segment aired and asked why this was omitted. She said: “well, the local investors got to keep their [worthless] stock”.
I’m not sure we can point to any successful VC backed firm here. Rather, we can look to those firms that have built businesses brick by brick, such as Epic systems. This lack of big numbers points to the real problem, too few folks are willing to take risks…. (Sikes took some, for sure, but let’s tell the whole story).
Unfortunately, this type of hype is quickly dismissed by anyone doing their homework, which the serious VC’s will do.

Is Energy Independence a Pipe Dream?

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John Cassidy:

Although the Democratic and Republican energy plans differ widely, their underlying rationale is the same. In 2003, the United States consumed some twenty million barrels of oil a day, of which slightly more than half was imported from abroad, much of it from the Persian Gulf. By 2020, according to the Department of Energy, domestic oil producers will be meeting less than a third of United States needs, and the Gulf countries will be supplying up to two-thirds of the world?s oil. ?This imbalance, if allowed to continue, will inevitably undermine our economy, our standard of living, and our national security,? the Bush Administration?s National Energy Policy Development Group warned in a May, 2001, report. ?But it is not beyond our power to correct. America leads the world in scientific achievement, technical skill, and entrepreneurial drive. Within our country are abundant natural resources, unrivaled technology, and unlimited human creativity. With forward-looking leadership and sensible policies, we can meet our future energy demands and promote energy conservation, and do so in environmentally responsible ways that set a standard for the world.?

via Ed Cone
Read Daniel Yergin’s The Prize for an excellent “panoramic history of oil”.

Ray Kurzweil on slowing down the aging process

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Leslie Walker:

Inventor Ray Kurzweil takes 250 nutritional supplements a day in his quest to live long enough to reap the benefits he expects from biotechnology. He says he’s trying to reprogram his body, as he would his computer.
“I really do believe it is feasible to slow down the aging process,” Kurzweil told Technology Review magazine’s Emerging Technologies Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here last week. “We call that a bridge to a bridge to a bridge — to the full flowering of the biotechnology revolution.”