Work From Home Wednesdays

I like the idea. I think it is on par with Google's 20% time.

Should your startup have mandatory “Work from home Wednesdays?”

ThredUP co-founder and CEO says prohibiting his employees from coming into work one day a week, allows his team to think big picture, and increases productivity. (Just make sure that work from home day isn’t Friday). ..... It’s easy to get myopic at a startup and become too focused on results and milestones instead of taking a step back and thinking about the big picture

I think this can be taken to work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Rent the space out to someone else those two days.

Flickr And Yahoo Mail

Those two need obvious work and are relatively easy to do.

Can Marissa Mayer turn Yahoo around?

Flickr

Make it free again. There should be no limit to how many pictures you can upload.

Give the option to embed. I should be able to embed a Flickr picture - not just mine, but of anyone who will allow it - into a blog post of mine.

Yahoo Mail

There is a need for cloud storage, like Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive. So all email attachments go to the cloud. Inboxes don't have space limits these days.

Yahoo Mail spam protection sucks. I can block email from an email address, and the next time I get an email from that address, it still gets delivered! Fix this.

Social Graph

Tap into them. Facebook has one. Twitter has one. LinkedIn has one. Google Plus has one.

Overlap these graphs onto my Flickr and Yahoo Mail.

Mobile

Go mobile on both.

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Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson: Press Up To Go Down

Notes From Chad: Funding Etsy’s Future

Etsy was quite small by today’s measures — the community sold $7.93 million of goods in that September, my first month at Etsy. We had about 50 employees and we were in an office in downtown Brooklyn with a broken elevator that famously had a sign that read, “You gotta press up to go down.” ........... four years later .. We have different offices near the Brooklyn Bridge, a working elevator, almost 300 employees, and last month alone, the community sold about $65 million in goods ......... We believe, more than ever, that Etsy can help fundamentally change the way the world works by making it possible for individuals to make and sell things to other people around the globe — a people-powered economy ........ Decades of an unyielding focus on economic growth and a corporate mentality has left us ever more disconnected with nature, our communities, and the people and processes behind the objects in our lives. We think this is unethical, unsustainable, and unfun. However, with the rise of small businesses around the world we feel hope and see real opportunities: Opportunities for us to measure success in new ways… to build local, living economies, and most importantly, to help create a more permanent future. .............. although we’ve been at it for seven years, it feels like we are just getting started. .... After a lot of discussion about what kind of company we are and aspired to be, the team defined these core values for the company:
We are a mindful, transparent, and humane business.
We plan and build for the long term.
We value craftsmanship in all we make.
We believe fun should be part of everything we do.
We keep it real, always.
We want the company to last for a very long time and clearly stand for something in the world. ...... When you support a B Corporation, you’re supporting a better way to do business. Governments and nonprofits are necessary but insufficient to solve today’s most pressing problems. Business is the most powerful force on the planet and can be a positive instrument for change. ....... There are over 500 certified B Corps but Etsy will be among the biggest, along with mission-driven companies like Patagonia and Seventh Generation. ...... becoming a Certified B Corporation is one of the most important things Etsy has ever done. It helps us keep an eye on the “mindful, transparent, and humane” values we aspire to ....... Last year, over $525 million (525 with 6 more zeroes) changed hands among people on Etsy, and worldwide GDP was over $60 trillion dollars (that’s 600 with eleven more zeros). ....... Etsy has closed $40 million of funding from a roster of investors who have been believers in Etsy for a long time. ...... we plan to grow Etsy into an economic force all around the world and we want to provide more products and services to help sellers succeed and build their businesses on the Etsy platform. ...... Every day when I walk to our offices in Brooklyn, I walk past the spot where in 1855 the printers Andrew and James Rome typeset and printed the first edition of Leaves of Grass by great American poet Walt Whitman. ..... exactly 150 years later, barely three-quarters of a mile away, Rob, Chris, Haim, and Jared were doing the the 21st century equivalent of typesetting in coding the original version of Etsy.com.

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Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson On AVC

Image by John Herren via CrunchBase

These guest posts are very impressive.

MBA Mondays: Guest Post From Chad Dickerson

recruiting and culture are yin and yang .... A great head of HR is critically important but culture and recruiting are owned by everyone if they are successful. ..... I will drop nearly anything I am doing to help close a key candidate. ...... "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." ...... the forms of communication available today mean that you can communicate the mission and vision of your company more broadly and directly than ever, which is what I did when I blogged in May about our long-term vision for Etsy. It has never been easier to tell your own story and talk about your company directly with the people you want to reach ....... you should always keep a direct channel open ..... communicating directly gives candidates a deeper sense of what your company is trying to do and they come into the process knowing what your company is all about, often self-selecting to your mission. I've found that this takes the recruiting process up a level. ....... performance metrics rise and fall, valuations go up and down, and stock prices fluctuate. Culture and values persist. ..... we at Etsy have been publishing key metrics from the Etsy marketplace in a monthly "weather report." ..... rigorous values and responsible practices ..... Diversity is one area for improvement, and we're actively and transparently working to improve our score ..... the truly great candidates can take a long time ...... In early 2010, we launched our engineering blog and named it Code as Craft, tying the mission of engineering back to the larger culture of craftsmanship in the Etsy community. ....... "If your culture isn't explicitly leaky, if it doesn't aspire to change the world beyond the walls of your business, if it isn't captured in the product you're building and your users' experience, then it probably isn't culture, it's just cheerleading and team spirit burning up expensive inputs of time and company outings. Culture is lived, and it's why generosity of spirit is such a key piece of our team culture" ........ "Management by objectives tells a manager what he ought to do. The proper organization of his job enables him to do it. But it is the spirit of the organization that determines whether he will do it. It is the spirit that motivates, that calls upon a man's reserves of dedication and effort, that decides whether he will give his best or do just enough to get by." ....... It's hard to quantify this spirit, but you know it when you've got it, and you know how painful it is when you don't. ..... a leader is mostly responsible for tending to the spirit of the organization, and for making whatever adjustments need to be made to keep that spirit strong and powerful. In the end, that spirit matters more than anything.

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