startup therapy

With the first official week of Long Tail well underway, my life has been exceedingly, overwhelmingly hectic. Though in a good way. I’ve been inking partnerships, rolling ahead towards the release of our first film (This is Not a Film, out February 1st), hiring on a team of people vastly smarter and more talented than I, and generally gearing up to take the movie world by storm.

And, frankly, I’m excited. Wet-your-pants excited. So excited that, today, mid-way through adding a few new sections to the business plan, I literally got up and did a little dance, only stopping when I realized the people in the law firm across the street could totally see in through my window.

Sure, Cyan’s a startup too. But, in its day-to-day operations, it’s been completely different from any other startup I’ve ever dealt with. In movie production, everything you do, absolutely everything, is dependent on extensive collaboration with a slew of outside individuals and organizations. Which is part of what makes making movies fun. But also all of what makes making movies so frustrating. Unlike in most startups, no matter how hard we push, the vast majority of Cyan time is ‘hurry up and wait.’

Having the ball, primarily, back in my court, with the responsibility and potential that implies, has made this week rather jarring. If things aren’t moving ahead as quickly as I’d like on Long Tail, it’s my own damn fault. Which, I realize, is what attracted me to the world of entrepreneurship in the first place: the chance to build something extraordinary, bounded only by my own ability to think of amazing ideas and then put them into action.

And while I knew, instantly, from that first night of staring up at the ceiling, running through plans, too excited to sleep, that I would feel different with Long Tail underway, I didn’t realize how much that would bubble out.

So far this week, for example, on three separate occasions, I’ve had people tell me I was the best salesman they’d ever met. And, frankly, while flattered, I know that’s not true. I’m not really much of a salesman at all. Having seen the pros at work, the people who could sell proverbial ice to Eskimos, I know I’m nowhere near that ‘coffee is for closers’ league. But, as the first of the three pointed out this Monday, it seems I’m starting to channel a Steve Jobs-esque Reality Distortion Field. By the end of our meeting, he commented, he felt ready to sell a kidney if that’s what it took to partner his company with ours.

Reality Distortion Field? That I’ll own up to. And that, I think, is what the kind ‘best salesman’ commenters really meant. I’m sure a better seller’s pitch would be more eloquent, her responses to concerns more carefully reasoned. But I have trouble believing that anyone could be more excited, more thrilled to get down to work on fundamentally changing the way the movie industry works.

Will Long Tail succeed? In rational moments, I’d give it maybe 65% odds. But, given the will I’m ready to put behind it, given the passionate, talented people and companies ready to throw their full weight into the fray, it’s a bet I’m 100% willing to take.

Starting a company: it may not be cheaper than Zoloft, but it’s certainly more effective.

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January 6, 2005

epiphany

Today, I was briefly very happy after I bought some demitasse spoons at Crate & Barrel that perfectly match my espresso cups.

Then, about two seconds later, I sobered up, and realized that if I become the sort of guy who regularly thinks about things like matching demitasse spoons, I’ll basically have to kick my own ass.

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January 3, 2005

pick me up

My friend Yoav is moving back to San Francisco tomorrow, so he and our mutual friend Colin met up for a last drink. As I stood outside the bar, waiting for them to arrive, an attractive young woman came over and started up a conversation.

A few minutes later, when Colin and Yoav arrived, Lina somehow invited herself to join us. And, when I left the bar, two or three pitchers shared between us all, I had lipstick on my collar and a phone number scrawled on my hand.

Which, frankly, struck me as more than a bit worrisome. Perhaps it’s a sign of living too long in New York, where distrust of strangers runs a close second to public urination as a grand tradition. Or perhaps it’s the the general effect of living in a society where guys are normally required to be the pursuers rather than the pursuees. Either way, as Colin’s girlfriend Carrie later pointed out, if someone came up to me on the street to offer a free pizza, I’d similarly be a bit hesitant about taking a first bite.

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escape fire

Dan Berwick, one of the most influential thinkers in healthcare, is fond of telling the story of Wag Dodge, the commander of a Montana firefighters parachute brigade:

In 1949, Dodge and his men land a jump too close to the edge of an unexpectedly fast-spreading forest fire. With the blaze bearing down, the crew makes a run for a hill nearby, hoping to clear its 76% grade, getting over the crest before the fire engulfs them.

Dodge, however, realizes they aren’t going to make it. So, thinking quickly and way outside the box, he pulls matches out of his pocket and sets the tall grass ahead of him on fire. The small new blaze quickly spreads and dies out, and Dodge steps into the middle of the burned out clearing, lays down, and calls for his men to join him.

Obviously, the men think he’s nuts, and keep running. All but two of them die in the fire.

Dodge, on the other hand, survives unharmed. He’s unwittingly invented the escape fire, now an industry standard in wildfire fights.

Most people, when asked, are sure they’d have joined Dodge in that burnt clearing. But, with the heat of the flames on our backs, I suspect we would all have had an awfully hard time evaluating such an unusual new idea. Instead, we’d panic and run, unwilling and unable to think through something that just might save our lives.

Which, essentially, is what my movie industry colleagues are doing today. Studio execs are scrambling for the crest, terrified to death of the blaze of digital technologies and innovative thinking that’s changing the film industry and threatening companies’ core businesses.

But, as you readers doubtless know, it’s far too late. We movie folks can’t put out a fire so readily embraced by our customers. We can’t even make it safely past some legislative crest. Instead, we have to use that same fire ourselves. Only by leveraging technology, by tearing down the assumptions about how the movie business works, about how movies make money, and starting from scratch, does a film company have any chance of making it through.

So, to that end, and as a fitting start at the beginning of 2005, I give you the official launch of Long Tail Releasing, Cyan Pictures’ new distribution arm. Our first film, This is Not a Film, will be released later this month. And I give you the official re-launch of Cyan itself (with corresponding new site), as we ever more tightly hone in on what sort of films we’re trying to make, and how we’re trying to make them.

Stay tuned. This should be good.

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January 2, 2005