Scott McNealy gives billion-dollar advice to Japanese startups

Last week, at a closed meeting in Tokyo, Sun Microsystems co-founder and Silicon Valley billionaire Scott McNealy offered advice to a group of Itochu Technology Ventures’ portfolio startups. The CEOs from Whill, Crowdworks, Raksul, Tokyo Otaku Mode, Uzabase, and Fringe81 were all in attendance. Tech in Asia was invited to listen in on the discussion and engage McNealy regarding his impressions of entrepreneurship in both Tokyo and Asia as a whole.

Entrepreneurial encouragement

The first part of McNealy’s talk centered around general advice for entrepreneurs.

“If your idea isn’t controversial, you have no chance,” he said. “If everyone thinks it’s right, then everyone’s gonna want to do it. If there’s consensus, there’s no differentiation. If there’s no differentiation, there’s no pricing power. There’s no profit without pricing power, and no one will invest in a company without profit potential.”

McNealy also stressed the importance of moving fast:

There used to be a whole bunch of search engines, and all the sudden Google figured out how to make money on it – auction off every word in every language to the highest bidder everyday. Everyone was rummaging around trying to find a business model, and Google did it by going hard and fast. The better the idea, the harder and faster you have to go.

Addressing the CEOs in the room, McNealy said that decision making should take an all-or-nothing approach.

“Either make all the decisions yourself or figure out how to delegate them,” he said. “All organizations need a decision-making model that can be understood by everyone.

Some other assorted bits of advice:

“The right answer is the best, the wrong answer is second best, and no answer is a disaster.”

“Pick an enemy – that will coalesce your team, it will bring them together more than any rah-rah you can do. They are trying to take your company away, your jobs away, your wife’s vacation away, your kid’s new toy away.”

“You don’t have enough money for advertising, so use the media. Invite bloggers to everything.”

“The secret is the secret and the master of the secret was Steve Jobs. You’ve got to guard things ferociously, fire people who leak, and create an enormous amount of press frenzy around a secret.”

Japan

Silicon Valley and China

Whill