I’ve written about intrapreneurs quite a bit in my life. For a few years, I was one.
In this article, I’m going to outline the single greatest challenge to any entrepreneur: managing the intrapreneur, he or she can add the greatest value in your company, but if he can also be a disruption. But if you learn to manage one, you can ensure that the next great company is built within yours.
An Honest Admission
I make no contentions about it: my former employer - both as in the individual and the company - were utter idiots with how they handled intrapreneurs, and that’s just not me. I’m talking about half of the company who could be seen as the intrapreneur or entrepreneur type who were shown the door as a result of my former employer’s greed and dishonesty.
This is not a personal diatribe launched at them, rather, it’s me learning from their utter stupidity, envy, pettiness, jealousy and “peasantness” to ensure that I don’t repeat the same mistakes at my company, where I’m the entrepreneur, when I encounter intrapreneurs.
Definitions
An entrepreneur is quite simply a person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture. The first time I saw the term was one my dad’s business card ages ago. It’s in my blood, I guess, though it struck me as odd that someone would put it on their business card.
Alas, an intrapreneur - not to be confused with intrepreneur, apparently - is a person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation.
[An intrepreneur, apprently, is one who sets up, maintains and assumes the financial risks of an Internet business venture.]
Greed Killed the Intrapreneur
From 2000-05, I was taking risks in linear and exponential areas of my employer’s business. We were a men’s online lifestyle magazine, we wrote on sex and dating, primarily. I joined and added to the breadth of content by researching and penning over 1,000 articles on Top 10s, History/Military, pop culture, etc.
Two articles, of note, got picked up by MSN and AOL within a month and read by well over 1M readers. This in part helped galvanize our main growth strategy for the years to come as the leading portals ended up driving 50%+ of our traffic growth.
I also extended the range of features by conducting exclusive interviews. While these were clearly linear areas of growth, it was extending the boundary of what we were doing. It required hard work, creativity, hustle and risk-taking.
The business side of me then looked at adding to revenue, so I took on online ad sales. The point is, these were all traits of an entrepreneur, and these duties were clearly within the realms of what we did. In other words, I was not doing the company any favor by doing them, since they were roughly part of the job description, albeit not mine when I joined the company.
Do you see a Pattern?
> Book Publishing
In 2002, I decided to write a book. By then, people knew that online was where the growth was, but since I wanted to try something different and my Web-based employer was adverse to risking anything in print, I asked, got permission (though I did not need it according to my employment agreement) to write a book. That turned out to be my first book, called Course To Success. It was on everything you need to survive and succeed beyond school. I reached out to McGraw Hill, and Jeffrey Krames gave it a read. He seemed to like the book but ultimately, I think, my anonymity killed their interest. The deal - if they were to offer me on - was for tiny dollars and the book would maybe, maybe hit bookshelves in 18 months.
Impatient as I was, I self-published it. The book went on to sell over 2,500 eBooks and 1,000 paperback versions, with very little offline distribution at the time.
> Radio
In 2003, I decided to venture into [terrestrial] radio. My unimaginative boss did not understand how radio and Web could mesh, despite the fact that we were a lifestyle brand and Web Radio and Satellite Radio are injecting much needed excitement in terrestrial radio’s blandness. It should be noted, that our competitor Maxim since launched a program on Sirius Radio, but we were no Maxim when it came to brand awareness and my boss was no Felix Dennis. He was Felix the Cat at best if you catch my drift.
After first asking my employer to venture in radio and being rebuffed by my boss and the other two partners, I got their blessing and did radio myself. Again, I did not need their blessing, but I was delivering more than what was expected, and I was not going to limit my ambitions for anyone, certainly not a handful of peasants who could not see beyond the tip of their nose.
Why am I so bitter? I’m not, I’m smiling and in fact gloating!
Here we were reaching 5M readers online, and I had - oh I’d say 5,000 listeners each 15 minutes on a good Saturday afternoon - and before long my partners were bitter, upset and petty about the matter. Since I recognized that the Web was where the growth was, I decided to be the bigger man and went back to my colleagues at work and offer to fold the radio operations within the company.
By then, my boss took me to launch and told me how much he “got what I was doing.” I asked him if our Venture Capitalist, Mr. Stephen Ip, would object to the company going into radio. How would he feel about the online magazine suddenly backing the VP of Sales’ part time radio venture. “Oh, he’s behind the idea, too.”
Mind you, a month before I approached my boss, he actually sent me a link to an etailer’s product page showing the price of the gift he had given me at Christmas.
That’s right, after a) generating 90% of the company’s revenues in 2002, b) bringing the company into the black and c) basically getting the VC off his back, my boss got me a nice gift come Christmas. That was nice. Of course, four months later when people in the city would talk about my radio show and his envious side began to show, he thought it would be appropriate to awkwardly send me a link to a page listing the product, its price, and mention in the email how hard it was to find it. It was the strangest thing that I ever saw in my professional career.
All to say, half the reason I approached them was because it was the prudent business thing to do, the other half was basically because he was crazy. I don’t mean Ozzy Osbourne crazy, I mean crazy. I also don’t care for any of my former colleagues or partners because they’ve proven to be lying and ungrateful backstabbers.
My Misplaced Loyalty
So, by May 2003 - four years ago - I killed the entrepreneur in me and even though I took all of the risks in the venture, I decided to fold the project into the company. It was awkward, it was experimental, and even though it had potential and I went on to do a lot of cool things with it, by December of that year, my boss decided to kill the project. I did not really care at the time, cause I continued to do radio anyway. But the point was, he lacked the imagination to get into print and radio, and each time he did, he fumbled the ball like a bumbling jackass.
Yes, I’m Gloating
If you are wondering why I am so hard on them, trust me, I’m not. I’m easy on them given everything that has transpired. But much the same way that May 2007 marks the sad anniversary of me folding my radio gig into the company, it also marks another important, significant and happy anniversary. We won’t get into the details of that today, and instead focus on why I did what I did when I left those losers in December 2005.
The Rise of the Entrepreneur
By 2004, I published my second book, this one on Alexander the Great, called The Confessions of Alexander the Great: 33 Lessons in Greatness. Random House showed interest but said they would publish it not when Colin Farrell’s Alexander’s film would come out, but rather, when Leonardo Dicaprio’s Alexander would be released. When would that be? Who knew…
By now I set up Granicus Publishing, as a backup in the event I needed something else to do after I left my former employer, and published it on the imprint. This book went on to sell over 4,000 eBooks, and 2,000 paperback copies. In 2004 I signed up with Bookworld to get some distribution, figuring that it would at least get into some bookstores that way.
Never Manage With Your Emotions
By 2004, my old boss got the publishing bug, so he launched a crude and crass 1,000 page (it felt like it, if it wasn’t) sex guide. It was essentially 500 or so of our “find the women’s you-know-what” or “increase the size of your you-know what” type of articles packed in one thick book that made anyone with a three digit IQ embarassed of it. But to three guys who were eager to show off that they too had a book, this was gold.
My boss then managed to make a couple of mistakes.
For one, he did not ask me for any advice despite the fact that I had published two books and had studied the publishing landscape quite a bit. Second, he decided early on not to partner with a publisher, because the terms did not seem lucrative enough.
On the former, I understand his wariness of not wanting to reward me for having the audacity to publish books on my own, but that showed that he let his emotions get in the way of business.
On the latter, it was short-sightedness and greed of epic proportions, because publishing has been, is and always will be about volume.
Until now, the company - despite its 5M reader base - has sold less books than I did, somehow.
Then, in 2005, when IGN Entertainment paid $13.5M for the company, somehow the book disappeared. The reason had something to do with… who knows, it was, once again, a lie based on a twisted view of things.
Mojo Rising
When IGN bought my former company, I was on my way out. Of course, News Corp. bought IGN in Fall 2005.
I won’t get into this right now, right here. But I try to be as objective in things as possible, and when I’m not, I will gladly admit it.
The point is IGN pushed me out because:
- Their flamboyant VP of Sales fancied my subordinate more than he fancied me.
- I was not one to suck up to the CEO of IGN.
- They told me I could start a new project or work in a new unit, but not report to my boss, which was as realistic as my boss getting anything right left to his own devices.
- I was a ham in believeing the lies the COO of IGN fed me about investing in my company if I were to leave and start a new company.
But by year’s end, I did the gentlemanly thing and took less money to leave early. I could have stuck around until May 27 2006 and collected every penny and made things hard, but I made life easy for them by integrating sales into IGN by the time of my departure.
Did I really consider doing a new venture within my old company?
No, not for a single moment. More on why below.
Shock and Awe
When I left, I took a look at what my non-compete said and took the following outlook.
If business is war, then non-compete represented a hospital or school, in other words, a target I could not strike at. But being proud, ambitious and driven, indeed I wanted to build a company as fast and powerful as possible. And I knew I could not build anything that would strike within that target. I did my best to honor that non-compete.
But the discussion today is on intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs and begs the questions: why did I not have the desire to build search products, matching applications and produce video content within my old company.
For one, the most obvious answer was that I was done with what I was doing and wanted a new challenge. My new company is in a different industry. But intrapreneurs can, like I had in the past, make a case to launch a new business within a company. In other words, while some of the initial stuff I did at the company were related, many like books, radio etc., were not.
Why did I not consider doing the search and video within my old company? That’s the question an intrapreneur asks before launching outside and becoming an entrepreneur.
Why? Because my former employer - both the individual and company - had proven time and time and time again that they were unimaginative and risk-averse. They were greedy, deceitful and arrogant about everything every step of the way. And worst of all, they were ultimately ungrateful.
Looking Ahead
Up to a couple of weeks ago, I actually sought to smoothen out the relationship between my partners are I. And frankly, when I actually heard myself talking out loud about about it, I realized just how wrong I was about that.
Why bother? Can we pretend that all is well and they’re not, well, assholes? When others who left as well say “they’re assholes,” why did I ever say “no they’re not.” Indeed, they are. Big time assholes in fact.
And much like I killed the intrapreneur in me to make way for the entrepreneur that I’ve become, I have really no reason to ever consider forgiving anyone who dared try to fuck me like they did. I never swear on this blog, so when I do, you can imagine it’s a strong feeling.
I don’t care much for vengeance and revenge or any of that nonsense, but the truth comes out.
It’s now been well over a year since I’ve left, and sometimes I look at what my former partners have done - and mainly not done - and I thank the lord for giving me the courage, conviction and cojones to leave those sack of potatoes and start my own company.
They say time heals all wounds, not sure about that. Though I wonder if it heals the sting of losing so bad, guys?
Victory is the greatest remedy of all. And there can only be one victor. To win, you have to be in control of your own destiny. If the entrepreneur in you can mage the intrapreneurs you meet feel as if they are, and I mean really feel and in fact make them become in control of their own destiny, then you can really go on to greatness.
Subscribe: