one last london thought on joost

Yesterday I met with a slew of people who are close friends with Niklas Zenstromm and Janus Friis, aka the Skype guys, and I had a pretty frank discussion about Joost with one of them (although I won't out who).

Mr. X is a big believer in the guys' talent and judgment and was understandably a little defensive about the recent criticism. He noted how challenging it is to build out a completely new television paradigm-- both technically and in terms of negotiating and managing endless partnerships. (I'd argue no one has gotten it right yet.) Indeed, the guys got to build much of Skype totally off the radar and with no expectations-- venture capitalists wouldn't even touch it in the early days. When you are trying to build a company that's already hyped before it launches it's considerably harder to exceed expectations.

But when pressed, Mr. X admitted the guys had clearly taken their eye off the ball, gotten a little cocky and started to believe some of their own press. I can imagine how-- in the London scene they are the Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs all rolled into one, or rather, two. You can't have a meeting without hearing their names in reverent tones, exhibit A in the case that you don't have to leave London to build a game changing multi-billion dollar Internet company. Mr. X felt the Joost struggles were a good wake up call for them. He said, like anyone else, they've got egos and he expects they're going to re-engage heavily in Joost now that those egos have been bruised and that the company will be better for it.

In other words-- they want to prove they weren't just a fluke with Skype. That they have the chops to do it again. It's the central theme to much of my book (hence the title!). The internet world can move so fast and when things hit they can hit so big, it's always unsettling once the champagne has been popped. How much of it was really you, how much was the market and just hitting on one good idea at the right time?  It's part of the reason that people don't just go sit on a beach, why you need to start two companies worth more than $1 billion to prove you are good. It's a concept that's seemingly incomprehensible to people on the East Coast, so I'd assumed it was some sort of uniquely Silicon Valley trait. But I guess that's one entrepreneurial quality that crosses national lines.