A Whole Chapter On Assholes!
Thank you, Tony Fadell, for devoting the space in your new book, Build, to the role that assholes, good and bad, play in building things and companies.
What you need to know about me is that I am the co-founder of the Silicon Valley Asshole Society, a very loose non-organization of self-proclaimed assholes that we started, mostly as a joke, in the mid-1980s. It got started because I wrote a thing in my newsletter, P.C. Letter, called The Silicon Valley Asshole Theory.
I wasn’t really intending to read Build, by Tony Fadell. I’ve known Tony for ~30 years, and I was pretty sure I knew what he was going to say about building things. But I had some time to kill before dinner last night, so I started reading the book on Kindle on my iPhone. And, lo and behold, he is enough of an asshole himself to write an entire chapter on assholes. “Plenty of people think I’m an asshole,” he says.
If he is, he is my kind of asshole, what he describes as a mission-driven asshole: People who care so much about making things better that they can’t really control their passion and feelings. Steve Jobs, whom Tony worked with on the iPod and the iPhone, was a mission-driven asshole. Since I came up with the theory 40 years ago, I have categorized many of the leading entrepreneurs in the technology industry (and beyond) as assholes, and I often talk to the founders of companies we invest in about the role of being an asshole. (It’s a lot of fun to be in the Alsop Louie Partners portfolio!)
Here’s the theory: Line up all the people you know who have started a company from scratch and then are still CEO of that company when it has more than $1B in revenue. (NOT valuation!). Forty years, the people I lined up were: Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Michael Dell (Dell). When I tell this, people will nod their heads in recognition of what I’m getting at: Greatness in business (at least) requires exceptional effort, and that often means acting like… an asshole. As an aside, I always throw in that Michael Dell is one of the nicest people I’ve known, so it isn’t a matter of being a jerk, just passionate.
So here in 2022, Tony has provided a real public service by using nuance and experience to delve into the role of passion in entrepreneurship, product design and, to be completely honest, life.
Read the book. It is worth your time.
A Whole Chapter On Assholes!
I agree. Eccentric in his own right, Marc is a wonderful humanitarian and NOT an asshole. He taught me many things in the time we worked together. Among them, the important of setting the "right" goals. He challenged me to think bigger and aspire to achieve a lofty vision. For example, he challenged me, "When you aspire and demand of yourself to create a billion dollar business (in five years!), you will be forced to think differently, more boldly, and more decisively. As such, your choices and decisions must support this aspiration. This mindset makes all the difference. Perhaps, these so called assholes are just more binary about what they must do.
One of the other notable not-an-asshole leaders is Marc Benioff. Interestingly he parted ways with one of the ones on your list- Larry Ellison. :)