Founders at Work.pdf

Paul Graham 213
right, that would have been OK. But we were worried about what might happen
if one of these guys wanted to actually be the chief executive officer and tell
us what our strategy should be. We’d be hosed, because they didn’t know anything
about computer stuff.
Livingston: So what did you do?
Graham: We lucked out. At practically the last moment, we found Fred
Egan—or rather, he found us. Fred Egan saved us. That was a great turning
point, when we got Fred. The lowest point, well, maybe tied for the lowest
point in the company’s history, was that summer when Robert was away and the
investors were pressuring us to take some business guy as our boss. When we
finally got Fred, that ended that summer of horror.
Livingston: What was so special about Fred?
Graham: He didn’t need to be our boss. He was willing to be the COO and do
the business stuff and let us handle the technical stuff. He had worked for a
company that I had worked for, actually, Interleaf, and so he came with a lot of
credibility. In fact, he had been a big executive at Interleaf while I was just a
peon, so I was very impressed with him.
Livingston: Did he reassure your investors?
Graham: Oh God, that was so great. I remember Fred’s first day. The metals
trader was an extremely fearsome guy. He seemed like the kind of guy who
would wake up in the morning and eat rocks for breakfast. On Fred’s first day,
the metals trader called up, and Fred answered the phone and said, “Hi Alan,
are you buying or selling?” And I was so relieved. Finally I had someone to take
over that stuff.
It was such a relief to have someone who would deal with the investors,
so that we could just write software and make users happy. That’s all we wanted
to do.
Livingston: Tell me a little bit about your relationship with your investors.
Graham: I think, because we didn’t seem very businesslike, most of the
investors didn’t really have any confidence in us as a company until we got
bought. I think it was only then that they were really convinced we were doing
a good job.
We didn’t seem very businesslike for the same reason we didn’t seem very
well dressed. We just didn’t bother with that stuff. But we did concentrate on
the stuff that really mattered, which was making users happy.
Livingston: If the company that they’ve invested in was doing well, then why
was the relationship bad?
Graham: Well, I suppose they thought it could be doing better. We were getting
users at a certain rate and maybe they thought we could have been getting
users at twice that rate. I don’t think we could have. We already had more users
than anybody else. There just weren’t that many users out there to increase the
rate that much.