Bill was moving like a lightning bolt to arrange things. He corralled me into an empty conference room, didn't bother to turn on the lights, gave me the three-minute pitch, said I'd come well recommended, and asked whether I'd join him. Now. Given no time to think, I checked my gut and heard myself say, “Yes.” Without any details about the job, my title, or my compensation. As Bill marched off, I heard him say, “Great. You're the first cofounder. Let's get moving.” It turned out to be one of my best decisions ever.
We called the company Claris, and we had big dreams. We were going to beat Microsoft by employing the philosophy of the Apple computer and operating system: making the power of the technology accessible by creating great software that was easy to use, not just stuffed with complicated arcane features few people wanted or needed. A key part of my job at Claris, of course, involved doing deals. I negotiated the spinout agreement with Apple, and I negotiated Claris's acquisitions of technology and of numerous software companies, both of which were key strategies for building the business.
I barely knew Campbell, but others called him “Coach,” ostensibly because he had been the head coach of Columbia's football team, but in reality because of his dedication to mentoring his people. He was in his mid-forties, stern to eye, but warm and caring through and through. He wore his countless football scars and rugby wounds like badges of honor. You'd follow this guy anywhere.
And we did. What you noticed about Bill, after you worked with him a bit, was that he spent a lot of time talking about people. He ate, drank, and breathed people. You couldn't talk about anything at Claris without the issue coming up. I found it irritating at first, a distraction. Whenever we sat down to make decisions, somebody always asked, How is this going to affect that individual, or this group of people? What are they going to say? To feel? Will they know why you made that decision or will they think you did it arbitrarily? When we talked about product support, it wasn't evaluated as an expense line. It was a service—for people. The focus was always on the value you could deliver to your customers, employees, partners, and shareholders—and what they and others thought about it and about you. You might not hear it in the first session. You might not hear it in the second session. But, unless you were deaf, by the end of the first few months, you heard the theme loud and clear. Bill had an underlying faith that if we focused on the people issues, worked hard, and did a great job, the business would take care of itself. That was Campbell.
In the beginning, despite my respect for him, I resisted Bill's philosophy. I strongly believed in the notion of business as a manageable, predictable, and quantifiable process. I believed everything should be crisp, clear, and buttoned down. Managers made the trains run on time. Campbell's approach seemed inefficient to me. Too many soft, murky, and complicated issues to grapple with. Let's just focus on the stuff we can measure, I contended.
For some reason, Campbell, thank goodness, didn't give up on me. There were times he probably should have fired me because I was such a pain in the ass. My work brought me in contact with all parts of Claris, and I would outspokenly and constantly challenge anything that didn't appear to contribute directly to the bottom line. I was often out of step with Bill and the rest of the executive team.
But I gradually began to internalize Campbell's frame of mind, and some of my own personal values, long subordinated to the bottom line, began to resurface. I couldn't argue with Bill's results: What appeared to be a sometimes inefficient process was creating extraordinary success. Our customers liked us. They valued our products. Our partners respected and trusted us.
Our employees were highly motivated and committed. Often I would be working late, and I'd look up from my computer at eleven or twelve at night to see a crowd, all working just as feverishly. Why was I there late? Because I needed to finish my piece of a project, so I could hand it over to somebody else, so she could get on with what she needed to do, so the next person could do what he needed to do, so the company could achieve its objectives. There was an intense sense of loyalty, responsibility, and camaraderie; a locking of elbows with everybody around you.
The change in my perception of Campbell is summed up by one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” Likewise, in a short time I had learned what wisdom Campbell carried; he could do things I couldn't quantify. He had a highly intuitive sense of people. He could inspire them to be better than they already were and to work together as a whole to create something greater than the sum of the individual parts.
Still, some lessons came hard. We had an opportunity to buy a company called Quark, a pioneer in the then-new software category of desktop publishing. I stayed up all night and flew to Denver to get a letter of intent signed. It would be a great deal. But subsequently, when we entered into definitive negotiations, we stumbled on the issue of warranties. They wouldn't give me something I believed they should. I was indignant. I remember telling them, “I'm paying you good money, you're selling me the company, and you've got to agree that what you're selling me is yours to give.” They were offended. They thought they were joining the Claris team; that's what they said they wanted to do. But my focus on the warranty issues—on the cold, hard facts of business, on getting the best deal—estranged them and made them feel like outsiders. We went back and forth a bit, and then they simply refused to work with me anymore. Bill stepped in to try to save the deal, but it couldn't be saved. I had blown it irretrievably. The disagreement could have been mitigated with other legal remedies, but I had adamantly opposed them on principle, and there was no backtracking. That was a dumb mistake. Quark would have been an incredible asset for Claris.
In addition to a sense of professional failure—this was the first time I had ever blown a deal—I felt I had let down my company. I had let us down. It was our deal, and I dropped the ball for everybody, including myself, in the process.
I started to pay attention. I made a break with my old legal habits. I began to apply Campbell's thinking to doing deals. My job was to find intersections of interest between the negotiating parties—not differences, but commonalities—and to build them into a solid relationship and transaction. I started zeroing in immediately on those requirements of the other party that were consistent with my requirements, and I threw my energy into bringing them into the deal, instead of ignoring them or reactively opposing them in order to use them as bargaining chips later. My focus became less on just satisfying myself and my company and more on satisfying the other party as well. Sure, certain points were bound to be contentious, but negotiating became a creative opportunity for me to solve problems and build relationships, not to play poker.
My final Claris lesson came when we sold the company back to Apple. We had intended initially that Claris would eventually go public. But when Apple discovered in our draft prospectus that we planned to develop software for Windows, not just for the Macintosh, Apple execs decided to reel us back in rather than suffer the embarrassment of watching their offspring consort with the enemy. They had the contractual right to do so; however, the spinout agreement we had negotiated forced them to pay a multiple of the anticipated IPO price for the privilege. It was a lucrative deal for all of us.
But it was a Pyrrhic victory. With our spouses, we all gathered at the home of one of the founders to celebrate our good fortune. Together we drank the celebration into a wake. We were proud of the price we'd gotten from Apple—there was reason to celebrate—but when we looked around the room at each other, the deal's downside hit us: it was unlikely we would ever work together again. The exhilarating experience of the Claris startup made few of us eager to return to the larger Apple fold.