My previous post marked the firing of the starter’s pistol on the design and development of Datonia a few days ago. This post looks ahead to the finish line.

In Built To Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras identified the Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) as a “powerful mechanism to stimulate progress”, and one of the key elements in the makeup of companies that will be around for the long run. And these guys define the long run as a really long run, as in generations. Our piddling 12 years in business might as well be 12 months when you compare it to a Citicorp (founded in 1812), Procter & Gamble (1837), Merck (1891), or GE (1892).

Every long run is really a series of races, and if we’re ever to consider Datonia a successful startup, we’re going to need to define a finish line for our first race, a deadline for getting a whiz-bang first release out to the world.

Like most programmers and all entrepreneurs, I tend towards the optimistic end of the spectrum, and my wife tells me I can sometimes be a little unrealistic. I can’t argue with that… and so if this post comes back to haunt me later this year, so be it. It won’t be for a lack of trying.

I got to thinking about BHAGs again this past week when Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis announced The TechCrunch20 Conference for sometime in September 2007:

Jason and I are going to do something a lot different than the pay-to-demo model. The TechCrunch20 conference will be a two day event, held this fall (more details soon), where twenty hot startups will demo their new products—and they don’t pay a dime to do this.

The startups will be invited based on the recommendation of a committee of expert analysts, entrepreneurs and journalists. Twenty companies will be invited, plus a couple of alternates. If a selected startup isn’t ready to launch ten days or so before the event, they’ll be bumped and one of the alternates will take its place.

So here’s Datonia’s BHAG… I’d like our little quintet to be one of the 20 firms selected to debut at that conference. There will a lot of other firms gunning for those positions. Judging by the 800-plus sites at Go2Web20.net, I’d guess that Mike and Jason will be looking at at least 2,000 serious submissions when they open the application process.

To the casual observer, that gives us 1 in 100 odds, a 1% chance, assuming we have our software built in time. But the truth is we’ll really have either a 0% chance (if we’re not ready in time), or a 5-10% chance if we are ready in time (because lots of other applicants won’t be, and many that are ready will not impress the review committee, which will almost certainly be made up of folks who’ve seen it all).

Whether it’s ego, optimism, blind faith, or just plain stupidity, I think we can pull this off. The starting shot has already been fired, so we might as well run. Strictly speaking, this isn’t what Jim Collins would call a Good BHAG, but hopefully knowing that distinction will be a good first step, since we don’t have the recommended 10+ years, at least not for this leg of the race.

When it comes to difficult odds, I try not to forget the wisdom of Lloyd Christmas:

Lloyd: What are the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me… ending up together?
Mary: Well, that’s pretty difficult to say.
Lloyd: Hit me with it! I’ve come a long way to see you, Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?
Mary: Not good.
Lloyd: You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?
Mary: I’d say more like one out of a million.
[pause]
Lloyd: So you’re telling me… there’s a chance!

Further reading: Built To Last and Good To Great are reknowned best-sellers from a few years back, so you could do worse than to check them out if you haven’t already. But truth be told I haven’t completely finished either of them.

Based on what I have read so far, though, I was more impressed with Peter Keen’s The eProcess Edge. Keen doesn’t get nearly the press and buzz of Jim Collins, but this book was so good that I’ll soon buy a third copy as I’ve loaned my first two out and am now without one.

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