"1-2-3" Creator Mitch Kapor

 

INC.: Are you -- were you -- uncomfortable with that image of yourself as somebody who holds the reins of power? Did you ever think of yourself as a boss?

KAPOR: Sure -- I mean I was. But I think that is something I had to learn -- that I couldn't pretend that I didn't have the upper hand, the ability to fire people, the power to decide which projects went forward and which ones did not. To pretend otherwise is to commit a grave injustice toward your employees. If you have that power over them, you have to exercise it responsibly -- not pretend that it doesn't exist and act all chummy. My human-resource manager taught me that. She made me understand that these are essentially power relationships, and even in a company with the kind of enlightened management that we tried to practice, power is distributed very unevenly.

INC.: Did you like being a boss? Did you prefer it?

KAPOR: No, I would prefer not being a boss.

INC.: Then why, as the founder, as the boss, didn't you set things up so that you wouldn't have to play the role -- so that you could sit at your terminal, work with the techies, and just help produce good software? Why couldn't you have found some arrangement that would have allowed you to stay at Lotus?

KAPOR: Actually, that option was offered to me, but it did not feel emotionally genuine. I really can't tell you why. Possibly it is due to some failing on my part. But possibly not. Think about it: I go off into a room somewhere and come back with a product I think is great. And the sales manager says, "Wonderful, but how am I going to sell it? And isn't it going to cannibalize the current product?" And, by george, it will -- he's not lying. And then the vice-president of corporate marketing says, "Well, how does that fit in with our long-term strategy? Is this a commitment that is going to cost us $4 million to launch and support this thing?" And that's a good question to ask, too.

INC.: You'd be in the situation of not wanting to hear all that.

KAPOR: Exactly. And what some entrepreneurs do is attempt to force it through, to dominate the company without really running the whole thing. And that's a very bad mistake. It can do great harm.

INC.: How do you know that?

KAPOR: I've watched what's happened on the West Coast. And it's happened more than once.

INC.: Any examples?

KAPOR: I think there is a reading of what happened at Apple Computer that speaks to that.

INC.: Apple under Steve Jobs. Lotus under Mitch Kapor. One thread there is the charismatic quality to entrepreneurial leadership.

KAPOR: I fundamentally don't like charisma, no matter who has it. To me, having charisma means that I can get you to do things that violate your own self-interest. And that triggers a struggle I have with myself about charisma, because I like to be in environments where everybody is at a peer level and people get to make up their own minds about whatever is at hand.

The other down side of charisma is that people will more happily follow whichever direction you are heading off in, whether it's a good direction or not.And that's very dangerous. I never liked the fact that, at Lotus, people might take temporary leave of their senses because they wanted to agree with me. Or sometimes it would happen that people would interpret a little twitch that I had as some sort of royal command -- and before you know it, they were going off and reorienting an entire department because of something that I didn't actually say.

INC.: Can you give us an example of when that sort of thing happened at Lotus?

KAPOR: I don't store examples of these things.

INC.: Are there any businesspeople who are models or heroes for you?

KAPOR: Not really. You know, there is a certain simplicity to the phenomenon these days of businessman as hero. I don't like it, but I'm pretty confident it's going to go away. It won't have to be pushed -- it'll jump.

INC.: To some so-called new-age managers, you're already something of a model, a hero. And to them, your coming to the realization that you really did have to leave Lotus -- for business and personal reasons -- is likely only to enhance that reputation.

KAPOR: You know, I'm not really sure that I had to leave. It was a choice; no one was forcing it on me. But I have a willfullness -- I knew what I was going to do, and I did it. It reminds me of when I felt that I had to start a company because, for a variety of reasons, there was no software publisher at the time I thought I could do business with. Back then, I felt I didn't have any choice but to start a company. Similarly, given the way I assessed the current situation, I felt that I didn't have any choice but to leave. I'm a bit suspicious about that -- suspicious that I may discover that that's really masking some other motivation.

But look, you could go on forever and introspect about this kind of stuff. One of the things I've learned is that you've got to get up and make your coffee, go to work, and do what you've got to do. To go down the rat-hole of introspection is very unproductive.

INC.: I wonder if we could at least look down the rat-hole for one more moment, however, and ask if your decision to leave Lotus wasn't, in fact, a luxury that came with knowing that you could walk away with $50 or $60 million in stock.

KAPOR: Let me point out that when I started Lotus I had just made about $600,000 on two programs, after taxes, which I could have easily lived on for several years, if not longer -- depending on what kind of lifestyle I wanted to have. But I didn't. I went back and started a company and put half of that money into Lotus. So there's a data point that says that the choices people make are not necessarily purely financial. I would like to think that my core values are, to a significant degree, independent of money -- that I would make the same kinds of choices regardless of the financial situation.

We'll never know, though, will we?

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