The Faith Continuum

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

The Faith Continuum

Faith

Exceptional entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have similar DNA. 15 years ago, I read a book by Jerry Kaplan called GO about a failed pen-based computing system. It starred a young venture capitalist named John Doerr who I recall being brazen and fearless. This was the early rennaissance and Doerr was the young Leonardo before anybody really knew who he was.

I spent the day with two of Nate’s colleagues at Flybridge Capital today: Jeff Bussgang and David Aronoff. Jeff was gracious enough to offer Nate and I a free strategic whiteboard session. The interplay showed that we occupied different positions on the AnyClip faith continuum. I was the most optimistic, and then each of the other players occupied a different place on the line.

I remember my first day of entrepreneurial faith. It happened in 1995 when I read the book Road Warriors by Dan Burstein and David Kline. Told the story of something called the information superhighway. They predicted everything would change. I believed them. This was my moment of faith.

Since then, I’ve had many such moments of faith. “Companies will need Websites — Concrete Media, Teens will need their own communities — Bolt, The world needs a service where your profile is created by others WikiYou.” I was lucky enough to run Greg Barton’s brilliantly conceived MenuPages — Every Menu in a given city. All of these had levels of success or fell flat on their face for a variety of reasons. None of them would have worked without faith.

But faith is not binary.You can be in different places on it at different times. Faith hinges on your beliefs, moods, accomplishments and failures. You and your company are what you believe and you do. That’s all there is. the belief part matters greatly. Without that, you never leave the starting line. Worse -you don’t continue on.

There are probably a dozen reasons to question AnyClip’s ability to succeed. I think about them every day. But in the end, I believe in any moment from any film ever made. I believe what we are doing is great for the film industry, artists, AnyClip employees/shareholders and every film lover in the world. I believe AnyClip can be a utility and even, dare I say it, a verb. This faith sustains me. It doesn’t mean we will succeed, but without it we would have never begun.