Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good

I just have to say—I love that title! Wish I could take credit for it myself, but it comes from a fascinating book by Sarah Lacy along with the subtext ”The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0.”

I read it when I first got to Fresh Consulting and the guys were throwing new Web 2.0 terms at me like “social networks” and I was left wondering what in the world was “Yelp” and “Digg”?. The whole thing left me at the time…well…utterly confused. Honestly, I thought Yelp and Digg sounded like what you name a dog– the big kind who catch frisbees in the park.

But it’s not that I was a complete novice to the new technologies happening. I mean, yes, I read blogs. Didn’t write them yet, but I certainly read other people’s. Yes, I watched YouTube videos. Yes, I posted reviews on Amazon.

But it’s also fair to say, at the time, not so long ago, I just didn’t get it. Didn’t get the fact that a internet revolution had happened exactly during the years when most people (myself included) thought “dotcom” was a dirty word. Before I read this book, as far as things like Twitter went —well let’s just say I didn’t get why people needed to know about my peanut butter sandwich for lunch that day. Twitter is not really about that, but that was the impression I had at the time.

But then I read this book, filled with the stories about the founders of Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, and Digg. From the flap of the book it says, “…It was the era of paper millionaires, eight hundred dollar office chairs, and Super Bowl ads for dotcoms that no one had ever heard of. Then in 2000 the bubble burst: The NASDAQ lost 75 percent of its value and hundreds of companies closed up shop. It was all written off as “irrational exuberance,” and everyone moved on. OYLTYG is the story of those who never gave up on the Internet dream. Instead, they learned their lesson from the bust and in recent years have created groundbreaking new companies…”

Once it was put to me in those terms, I started to understand. Technology—now that I don’t always get. But a great story? Okay, now we’re talkin’. So it occurred to me that Web 2.0 is simply the next generation of the new web. Part 2 of the internet revolution. Nothing too weird or scary about it.

And once I was able to see it in those terms, I was able to (mostly) happily embrace the changes going on. So after reading this book– which I recommend for anybody in technology aged 32+– I’m now on board. Twittering, blogging, the whole shebang.

One thing that is most striking to me about this new Web 2.0 generation is the absolute emphasis on collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. It’s more than technology, there have been cultural shifts. This was shown by the story in the book about Max Levchin–founder of PayPal who made sure his company IPO’d at a staggering price (in the heart of the dotcom slump!) simply because he wanted to make sure the engineers who worked underneath him became millionaires too, the same engineers he collaborated with. Somebody had drunkenly challenged him at a party by saying it wasn’t possible, not with the way the stock options were structured. So he wouldn’t rest until his company went for an astronomical price, and everybody ended up with seven figure paydays. Ka-ching.

This reminds me of Fresh Consulting where everytime I say I want to feature a post about a certain person, the founder winces, shake his head and says, “No, the group. The group is what is most important.”

Okay, so I’m learning. Sometimes on my lunch hour I pull out this book. Because what writer could resist being fascinated by a tale of the phoenix (Web 2.0) rising from the ashes of the old (DotCom) world, just when all seems lost? I mean–how cool is that? And Fresh Consulting is part of the wave of new companies using the mistakes of the past and the success of the next generation to create something even more extraordinary for their clients. Can’t wait to see the sequel!