Dear Founder,
You’re needing some inspiration right now. Maybe you’re looking for a great idea, or perhaps you need to find another way to solve a gnarly problem.
Where does inspiration come from? How do you get it? I think there are many people far more qualified than I am to talk about inspiration and its genesis. And there are certainly some great resources, including the book “Creative Confidence” by IDEO’s David and Tom Kelley, which talks about the value of having a beginner’s mind, or author Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on where genius comes from.
Everyone sources inspiration differently. Sometimes it’s the result of a eureka moment, but more often it’s the result of hard work, serendipity and having an open mind—seeing opportunities where others saw constraints (or maybe even nothing at all). Pierre Omidyar was just screwing around when he stumbled on the idea for eBay. Marc Benioff had the idea for Salesforce while on sabbatical from Oracle and swimming with dolphins in Hawaii. And he had the inspiration to incorporate philanthropy into the business from leaders he admired including Amma, the hugging saint, and Colin Powell. President Kennedy expanded the U.S. space program and set an ambitious goal to put a man on the moon because he wanted to beat the Russians who with Sputnik had leapt ahead of the U.S. in the space race.
For me, inspiration often starts with frustration. It begins with what seems like intractable problems—and then an unwillingness to accept that there aren’t any answers. I keep these intractable problems in my head and keep a lookout for answers or insights that can come from anywhere. Let me give you a couple of examples from my experience.
When I was at eBay, we had a very thorny search problem. Search experts like Google and Yahoo were unwilling to help solve our problem. We did find a vendor we were convinced could fix it, but after a year of attempting to make it work, the team came to me and said it wouldn’t work. Our search capability was degrading daily and it was costing us a fortune. The team didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. I called together our best and brightest. I didn’t have an exact agenda or assignments to dole out, but I explained the entire situation: “Here’s the intractable problem. I know we can fix it and here’s what it all looks like when we’re done. I have money, please tell me what else you need and I will make it happen.” That ignited something. The team delivered a radically better and cheaper solution in about six months.
Believe it or not, the inspiration for WIN also stemmed from an intractable problem—in this case, a personal one. My wife and I had agreed that I would not “run” anything once I stepped down as the LiveOps CEO. I had also committed that to her that I would only run LiveOps for five years. I didn’t want to retire. I knew that I still had a lot to contribute, but because of my promise to her, I couldn’t do it in a traditional way. I was pretty stuck.
One Sunday night while my wife was out of town I agreed to go to an FCC chairman dinner in San Francisco on a Sunday night. While there, Mitch Kapor, a Silicon Valley legend and the entrepreneur who started Lotus, and I started talking about what we were working on and he invited me to come see him soon. On the day of our scheduled meeting, I got in the car wondering whether this would be a wise use of my time, but I had committed so I went. Once there, Mitch shared with me what he was doing with Kapor Enterprises. I walked away from that meeting realizing that I got to choose how I wanted to spend my time going forward. Instead of hoping to be selected to someone else’s team, I could create my own. Within weeks, I built the foundations of WIN. It’s been the right solution to my career conundrum and it’s also been very fulfilling.
Even the idea for Everwise grew out of a problem. I was working on my book and bothered by the limits of the publishing world. It took so long for the book to come out, and the publisher also rebuffed my ideas to develop a companion application. I walked away pissed off. But then I took that annoyance and used it to inspire something else. I challenged myself: “I bet I can start a whole company before the book comes out.” The idea for Everwise came to me—mentoring was on my mind and a chapter in the book—and I knew the world needed a service to help match and manage mentors and mentees. We did get it started before the book came out, and now it’s much more than a fun challenge, it’s a real company.
WIN is more fun and more challenging (in a good way!) than I originally had imagined, but I knew after a few years that there was more we should be doing. We needed to engage the network in a whole new way to unlock its power, and instead of just funding great new companies, we needed to create great new ones. And so I stumbled on another problem—and a solution. WIN Labs is still a baby, but I know it will become an interesting new capability we’ll bring to the world.
Even if you don’t have the answers you need right now, I promise you that your solutions are all out there. You just need to acknowledge that you have a sticky issue, commit to solving it, and go about your journey with an air of wonder and an understanding that magic can and will happen.
But you have to start with “how can I?” instead of “I can’t.” Here’s to your inspiration journey—may it be rich and rewarding!
All the best,
Maynard