silicon valley tool
In an otherwise
interminably boring Dean Takahashi interview, Bill Watkins, CEO of hard-drive maker and Robert Scoble sponsor Seagate, offers up this observation: "I had a discussion with a guy on one trip. I told him that the most important thing in my life was to get my daughters through high school without them becoming pregnant." This is the same guy, we'll remind you, whom we
named a "hero" for forthrightly admitting, "We're building a product that helps people buy more crap — and watch porn."
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salim ismail
Near the end of a Stirr mixer in San Francisco on Tuesday, I ran into Salim Ismail, the head of Yahoo Brickhouse and
our newest Silicon Valley Tool, though he'd yet to get the prize for being one of the Bay Area's most annoying executives when we met. I noticed he had the name of his startup, Confabb, on his nametag instead of Yahoo. When asked why he wasn't representing Yahoo, he responded he wanted to "get the $10 fee" — the price Stirr charges for startup founders, instead of paying the $20 general admission fee. (Okay, he's cheap, but you'd be cheap, too, if you'd
started seven companies without a single successful exit.) We chatted for a bit about Brickhouse. Then, when I started jotting down notes and he realized I might quote him about dodging the event's full fee, the conversation with the wantrepreneur turned downright silly.
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silicon valley tool
When you can't take market share, take credit. That's the unspoken motto of Yahoo since Google overshadowed the Web pioneer, and no one has mastered the art like Salim Ismail, the desperately unpopular VP in charge of Yahoo Brickhouse, the San Francisco incubator charged with inventing the company's future. One Yahoo insider calls him "notoriously slimy," and points to Ismail's recent announcement of
Fire Eagle as an example of how Valleywag's latest and lamest Silicon Valley Tool does his work.
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silicon valley tool
Philip Kaplan once ran the website InternalMemos.com, a compendium of leaked company missives. Now Valleywag has obtained one from AdBrite, the online-ad network Kaplan founded. AdBrite is now run by CEO Iggy Fanlo, who earns our Silicon Valley Tool award for railing at his employees about their work hours: "I continue to see too few folks here at 9 AM; and too few folks here at 6 PM." Let's leave aside the issue of whether Fanlo is
violating California overtime laws; long hours are part of the startup culture. We just want to know if Fanlo has considered that employees might be avoiding the office in order to minimize contact with the company's erratic founder. The full memo, as Kaplan himself would have run it:
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silicon valley tool
Meet Jon Staenberg, the latest Silicon Valley Tool. Here's an assessment you won't get on
LinkedIn: "Every time I meet him, I feel like I need to take a shower," says a Valleywag tipster. Why the unclean feeling? It's not clear why Staenberg should generate such visceral dislike. And yet he's a sort of Silicon Valley Everyman. He worked at Microsoft from 1988 to 1994, which means he got a firsthand education in how to scream at your colleagues and made a lot of money on stock options. He's now an "
advisory partner" — translation: not a real VC — at Rustic Canyon Partners, one of the VC firms
foolish enough to back perpetual money-raiser Visto. And he's on the board of
LimeLife, a wireless-content startup which targets women. I guess it's board meetings at that last company which drive Staenberg out into the woods to get reacquainted with his masculine side. After the jump, an email Staenberg sent to friends, casual acquaintances, and at least one frenemy, recounting his recent trips to the "Family Farm," a Bohemian Grove-like elite retreat in bucolic Woodside, Calif., close to the VC epicenter of Sand Hill Road, and to Buenos Aires.
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silicon valley tool
Reformed stock promoter Henry Blodget has a suggestion for CNET:
Take it private, with the help of former CEO Shelby Bonnie. An excellent idea. From all we hear, morale couldn't be lower at the tech-news portal. And current CEO
Neil Ashe isn't helping matters. His idea of a pep speech? "We should be more like Al Qaeda," he told an assembly of employees. You mean, hated by everyone on the planet? Judging from how his underlings feel, Ashe is getting a head start on
that project inside his own offices. Cheer up, Neil! You just won the latest prize for being a Silicon Valley Tool.
guy kawasaki
In an interview
with the San Jose Mercury News, conducted from his home office in ritzy Atherton, Calif., Guy Kawasaki drops a couple of gems. On defending the poor response to his investments while turning down Valley successes:
The only thing you can conclude is that it's a crap shoot. You have no idea what is going to succeed.
One can conclude that, if one is a self-serving, self-promoting, quasi-successful angel investor. Or rather, one can conclude that
Kawasaki has no idea of what is going to succeed. The Silicon Valley Tool's attempts to befuddle his interviewer with truisms only gets worse when he starts defending his startup Truemors.
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silicon valley tool
Meet Michael Baum, the CEO of
recently funded enterprise software company Splunk. Is he a hero for raising so much money at a splendid valuation, when all the Valley's buzz is on profitless consumer plays? Or is he deserving of our Silicon Valley Tool award for being a colossal jerk? Our commenters are leaning strongly towards the latter.
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