One of my dubious claims to fame is that I believe that in my youth I may have created the world’s first ten-set Venn diagram.
Not single-handedly, of course. As with most of my endeavours, there were a few convenient giants’ shoulders in the vicinity.
Here’s the story, if you’d like to know more.
On Friday, Business Weekly (a small local publication not to be confused with BusinessWeek) published a most unfortunate article about recent changes at DisplayLink, entitled ‘DisplayLink Chairman Says Company Needed to Grow Up‘. Here’s an extract:
Founders Dr Andrew Fisher and Tim Glauert left the company after what the chairman described as an amicable discussion about the future direction of the business.
A number of battle-hardened industry veterans were drafted in, among them Paul Murphy as European managing director.
and
O’Keeffe said: “I am always a little nervous about jettisoning founders of a company because they can be very passionate about the business and you have to look at various angles.
“It’s often the nature of startup companies to involve themselves more with the R & D than hard commercial sales and both Tim and Andy are bright, creative engineers. To put it simply, we needed to become a proper grown-up business and get away from the research cycle. We had a discussion and felt it best to part company.
This is, to put it bluntly, outrageous.
It is hard not to read between the lines a very strong suggestion that the company has had difficulties up to now because of a couple of recalcitrant founders, and, now that they have gone and the investors and battle-hardened veterans are in control, everything will be OK.
Now, I have been interviewed a couple of times by Business Weekly in the past, and have considered them as a bit better than your average local rag. And I have reason to believe that Graham O’Keeffe is an honourable man. So I will do them both the favour of suggesting that this is a tragic breakdown of communication tied to a single rather irresponsible journalist’s reporting, which could, if unchallenged, do great damage to the careers of two of the nicest, smartest, most inventive people I know, who have poured many years of their lives into creating a company for the benefit of these same investors.
So let me try to set the record straight here.
Martin King and I founded DisplayLink, and I was the CEO for the first couple of years. Having hired an excellent replacement CEO, we moved on to our next startup project. Tim and Andy were there right from the start, and built the core technology on which DisplayLink still depends, and have been with the company ever since. DisplayLink would not be what it is today without them, and a considerable number of people have them to thank for their jobs and livelihood.
Company and investor press releases are, however, an interesting branch of mythology which is worthy of closer literary study. One theme which can often be traced in this genre is the idea that founders single-handedly make or break the company. So it’s very convenient for the VCs to be able to tell the right story about them.
And so it was that, after Martin and I left, Andy and Tim were given the title of Founders, and Martin and I were expunged from the record. I was consulted about this – at least about the first part – and readily gave my approval. Andy and Tim rightly deserved that status from the start, and the company website could proudly boast the ongoing enthusiastic involvement of the Founders.
At least while it was convenient for them to do so.
In this article, however, we see another rather different clichéd plot theme in high-tech startup mythology, about how everything turned for the better after the company finally got rid of those difficult Founders. I would have credited even Business Weekly with a little more imagination than that. You can read the history of Cisco and others to see earlier examples of this theme in the literature.
However, I am in the interesting position of still having many links into DisplayLink at all levels of the company, and yet am under no contractual obligations to toe the party line. So I can clearly state, when others might find it more difficult, that nothing I hear from inside the company would in any way suggest that Tim and Andy are at all responsible for the somewhat rocky ride it has had recently and the budgetary constraints that have forced the company to let them, and a lot of other good people, go.
Some may consider the very difficult market conditions at present. And others may notice a rather surprising fact: that the article completely fails to mention the recent departure of the latest CEO: a disastrous appointment forced on the company by the investors some while ago and yet, despite his departure at about the same time as Tim and Andy, mysteriously absent from the latest press releases….
I shall point no fingers at anyone, but leave the reader to ponder whether it is really likely that Tim and Andy’s enthusiasm for forward-thinking R&D has been the source of any difficulties. Or whether, for example, people who were actually on the board of directors might have considered doing the honourable thing and shouldering some of the blame, rather than finding scapegoats.
Sigh.
Well, DisplayLink has many very good, very smart people remaining, and some great technology, and I wish the company all the best for the future, even though it has lost some of its brightest stars.
And let me state for the avoidance of any doubt that if I ever have the chance of working with Tim & Andy again I will jump at it. And I would strongly recommend any other technology company to do the same.
And people, please remember that wise old saying which you should repeat to yourself every single morning while brushing your teeth…
Note: I have consulted none of the people mentioned before writing this article. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own – though I have reason to believe they are echoed by many.
Update, just a few hours later: Good! The contents of my inbox this morning confirm that I am indeed very far from being alone in these views.
The Guardian is running a piece under an attention-grabbing but rather irresponsible headline: The £135 university lecture – but is it worth it?.
To achieve this figure, they take the planned fees for the University of Birmingham – £9000/yr – and divide it by the rather short terms – 22 weeks/year – and the number of lectures attended by students of probably the least demanding course on offer, at least in number of lectures: English literature and philosophy.
The result is about £136/lecture.
Rosie Taylor, the journalist, does mention in passing that
Admittedly, part of their fees will go towards the university’s day-to-day running costs, from stocking the library and organising exams to getting toilets cleaned and maintaining buildings.
and then ignores this rather important fact for the rest of the piece.
These arts students who have three lectures a week – and this is not unusual – would have been a subject of great envy for me as an Engineering undergrad. While they auditioned for Footlights and explored each others’ cocktail cabinets… Well, OK, that’s a little unfair, but I think I had more than twenty lectures per week, including a full set on Saturday mornings. That was in addition to practical sessions and small-group supervisions.
Those who run and attend the arts courses would assert that lectures were only a small part of the overall educational experience, but it will be interesting to see whether ‘value for money’ becomes a part of students’ considerations when choosing a course. I’m not sure whether that would be a good thing or not. Indeed, it could lead to a sort of snobbery – who attends the most expensive lectures on the campus? Or perhaps, “this course will cost you a lot per lecture but you’ll get a degree after only sitting through a few of them!”
Anyway, it’s interesting to note that on this highly artificial metric, my Engineering & Computer Science degree at Cambridge would be around one-tenth of the price of Literature & Philosophy at Brimingham.
The coldest moment in my part of Cambridge recently was at 6.50 on the morning of Dec 19th, when the temperature in my back garden reached -10.5 deg C. Phawww!… Pretty chilly for here…
I know this interesting fact because one of last year’s toys was a Hobo Datalogger and an external temperature probe, which I bought because I suspected the thermostat on my hot water boiler of misbehaving. It wasn’t – but there are all sorts of situations where it’s quite fun to be able to record temperatures over an extended period.
The Hobo’s a lovely device, not much bigger than a matchbox, and you can configure it to capture data over a specified time period and at a particular frequency, and it’ll run almost for ever on a very small battery.
Click for a bigger version.
I hesitated for a while because I didn’t feel like paying for the HOBOware software, which, even in its ‘lite’ variety, costs 40 quid. It seemed like a lot when all I wanted was a list of numbers: why couldn’t they just let me get at the raw data? But I have to admit it does its job rather well, and it lets you configure the unit and navigate around any graphs produced. Also, I realised, the output of some of the sensor devices is not linear, so it’s doing rather more than simply recording voltages.
The unit I bought has built-in humidity and temperature detectors, and sockets where you can plug in a couple of other sensors – my external probe let me record the temperature both inside the studio and outside. I’m now trying to resist buying accessories like current clamps, which would let me record the power going to the under-floor heating system…
All in all, a fun toy.
DisplayLink have just released an iPad app!
It turns the ‘pad into an extension monitor for just a couple of bucks. Not much use to me until there’s a Mac version, but it’s a step in the right direction. There are Mac drivers for their other products, so I’m hoping it won’t be too far away…
The security group at the University here found a flaw in the Chip and PIN system, and told the banking industry about it.
A year later, the industry body responsible for such cards, whose slogan is ‘Representing, Informing, Advancing,’ sent a notice to the University, asking that they take down the thesis of a student in the group who had published further information about it, and not to do that again, please.
Unfortunately for them, universities are not companies. Ross Anderson wrote a masterful response.
Details here.
Normally, I would expect to do some post-processing of the photo to create an effect like this… but it’s much more pleasing when nature provides the monochrome for you! These intrepid kayakers were paddling peacefully past at this point, but earlier there was a dramatic and eerie sound as they cracked their way through the ice. My own kayak is inflatable, so not much good for icebreaking!
More pictures of the Newnham/Grantchester area in the snow can be found here.
Spotted this wonderfully-Cambridge sign yesterday:
I’ve never studied Latin, but I think I can make out enough; it says something like ‘Two wheels, that have been left here, will be destroyed’.
Can anyone translate the Greek? I presume it says much the same.
Actually, the first dictionary I looked at listed perimo as ‘to slay, destroy‘, and I rather like the idea that Cambridge streets are kept in order by The Slayer of Bicycles…
Those familiar with Cambridge will know the rollers which allow you to move the very heavy punts between the lower and upper river.
Last week some of us decided to ride the punt down the rollers, which I’ve done many times before, but they seemed to be rolling rather better than in the past, and you can’t steer the thing as you’re going…
Many thanks to Sarah McKeon for the photo…
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