Philip Greenspun

Cofounder, Ars Digita

            Philip Greenspun was the cofounder of Ars Digita. Ars Digita is famous in the startup world both as the embodiment of a new model for software consulting and as an all-too colorful example of the dangers of venture capital. Ars Digita grew out of the software that Greenspun wrote for managing photo.net, a popular photography site.

            Greenspun was motivated to co found this startup because of his interest in multi user applications, and he thought connecting people over the network, if they were separated in space and time, was just going to be the best usage of computer systems.

            When they start this startup, they were only five and then they grew pretty quickly to ten. There was so much repeat business because costumers would be amazed that they delivered on tome and that it was more or less what they wanted and actually usable for the end user.

            What’s unique about Ars Digita is that they tried to help each programmer develop an independent, professional reputation. They had this idea that programmers could be professionals like doctors or lawyers, and, to that end, they wanted programmers to be real engineers, to sit down face to face with the costumers, find out what was needed, come up with some suggestions or changes based on the programmers experienced with similar services, and then take a lot of responsibility for making it happen.

            Greenspun and his cofounders fostered a great sense of loyalty among users and employees. Like Google, Ars Digita created an environment in which programmers reigned supreme. The company grew fast. The same year Digita took $38 million from venture capitalist. With in weeks of the deal closing conflict arose between the new investors and the founders. They marginalized and then fired most of the founders, who responded by retaking control of the company using loophole the VC’s had overlooked. The legal battle culminated in Greenspun’s being bought out, and a few months later the company crushed.

            Ars Digita was Greenspun sixth company and he found anything that he was better at. Managing programmer are very unlikable people. They’re not pleasant to manage.

            If there’s one thing Greenspun could have done differently would probably have been slightly slower growth, I guess. Not to worry so much about the competition, concentrate on getting really good people who shared the company’s vision, who could then recruit somebody else, basically, just limiting growth.