Inside the Cult of Kibu

Baldwin Louie — Mon, 18 Dec 2000 14:00:00 -0800

When I signed on with a high-profile Internet startup last spring, I couldn't believe my good fortune. The gig came with a VP title, 70,000 stock options (pre-IPO, natch), and the promise of "influencing an entire generation." Three months later, though, I walked out with nothing but an overwhelming sense of disillusionment, a box of glitter nail polish and a video entitled An Intimate Guide to Male Genital Massage.

If my story sounds familiar (except for the massage part), there's a good reason. Like thousands of young, ambitious hopefuls lured by the digital gold rush, I discovered the hard way that this brave new frontier promised nothing more than fool's gold.

It's no accident that the modern-day gold rush was centered in the San Francisco Bay Area, where previous generations had flocked to secure a seat on Ken Kesey's bus or tap into their human potential with EST. Just as these movements expanded the frontiers of consciousness, the dot-com movement was supposed to expand the frontiers of commerce. And loftier still: It was supposed to shape our very Future. By the beginning of this year, the startup world was hailed as the grooviest show in town, the "be in" of the millennium. No wonder it was irresistible, even to me.

I was, at that time, a medical student at Stanford who'd left a career in Hollywood. In the benighted pre-dot-com era, medicine had been considered virtuous and moviemaking cutting edge. But suddenly nothing seemed as noble as connecting the world via the Internet, nothing as cutting edge as exploring the limits of cyberspace. Along with so many others who happily chucked stable professional endeavors, I yearned for a place on the dot-com bus.

And then I got my ticket: I'd just published a book based on my teen diaries, and a venture capitalist put me in touch with the CEO of a startup described as a "digital hangout" for teen girls. Her company's mission was to "empower" girls while grabbing a piece of the highly coveted teenage demographic. Each of the Web site's so-called channels - ranging from Wellness to Beauty to Adventure - would be run by an adult mentor/guide, called a "Face" (there was a Face of Wellness and a Face of Adventure, for example), whom the CEO described as "a cross between a big sister and an MTV veejay." The Faces would produce their own channels, write smart, inspiring content and interact with teen girls in cyberspace. When I was offered the position of vice president and editor-in-chief, I eagerly jumped aboard.

The bus was called Kibu.com. So what if it was a name that no one could pronounce or even clearly define? I was joining the party, to the tune of a $22 million first-round investment. But what I forgot was this: Eventually the party ends, and you always come down from the acid trip.

Month 1: Warning Signs
Even before I showed up for work the first week, there were signs that my bus might have some mechanical problems. Consider:

> Kibu didn't check my references before offering me the job. Not one. I doubt that they had checked the references of the other 50-plus employees already on staff. Which makes sense if you consider that the trendy twentysomethings hired to produce their own channels included a hair stylist, a Saks counter makeup artist and a former fashion model. I mean, whom could they call for a reference, Eileen Ford?

> Mere moments after I was told that the CEO's management style was about "total openness," I was asked to keep information that a current editor was leaving a secret.

> At the prelaunch party the Friday before my start date, several of the Faces hailed me as their "savior." "We can't write content!" they bleated. "We're about to launch and have no idea what we're doing!" Given that there were 20 Faces and only one of me, I warned them that change might be slow. "That's OK, we love you already!" they said. "Well, you may not love me next week," I joked. "If we don't, we'll just replace you," replied the Face of Adventure. I wasn't sure if she was kidding.

Despite these ominous signs, I gushed to friends about how I couldn't wait to take leave from medical school to start my exotic new job. Sounds crazy, I know, but I can explain it in two words: Jim Jones. It was like everyone in the dot-com world - from board members and investors to employees paid in soon-to-be worthless stock options - had imbibed from the same keg of Kool-Aid. The result: mass delusion as sweeping as that at Jonestown. In order to join a dot-com, you had to completely suspend your disbelief. We were, after all, "venturing into uncharted territory," "breaking away from conventional paradigms" and "tearing up the old rules."

And I was willing to drink the sickly sweet punch - if only because everyone else was. I'd never worked at an Internet company, or a startup of any kind, and frankly, these people seemed to be doing well. They drove $60,000 cars. They thought nothing of spending $20 on lunch each day. Our CEO had started a company that sold to Mattel for $26 million. Our investors included former Netscape guru Jim Clark and the most prestigious backer of all, the valley's VC firm of the moment, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Who was I to question their wisdom?

I didn't panic. Then on my first day on the job I learned that Kibu's business model was just that - a model. Our plan was built on something called "online integrated marketing," but no one seemed able to explain what this meant in practice. According to our CEO, it had something to do with girls getting redeemable points for responding to surveys furnished by our sponsors. Never mind that we had neither sponsor surveys nor an audience of teen girls. Apparently, we would also make money through e-commerce. The only problem was, we didn't have any products to sell. As far as I could tell, the only thing Kibu actually produced - and quite successfully, thanks to our savvy publicist - was an avalanche of splashy press releases promising both a unique Web community and a revenue stream. It was genius: from the Wall Street Journal to the Hollywood Reporter, the PR blitz spawned dozens of fawning articles. Over time we began to believe our own hype. In fact, we became our own biggest fans.

Which is why I still wasn't particularly worried when on my second day, the weekly companywide all-hands meeting consisted of singing "Happy Birthday" (no one broke 30), complimenting a staffer on her "hot" red leather pants, sharing "your most embarrassing story" (most had something to do with wrap-around skirts falling off at inopportune times) and congratulating ourselves on how great we were. It reminded me of being in a room full of cheerleaders. No matter what someone said ("It's Tuesday," "That's Shannon's sushi"), it was always followed by a cacophony of high-pitched whistles and applause. This was our company "culture." And according to our CEO, the culture was as important as the product. As a result, we accomplished nothing at these weekly meetings, but boy, did we love ourselves.

So I was surprised when the editorial meeting I called the next day turned out to be not another chummy lovefest, but the most frustrating meeting I'd ever run - and this includes the time I volunteered to lead a group of troubled teens in prison. After some witty introductory remarks, I handed out proposed deadlines and production schedules for each channel, which were met not with appreciation or relief ("We need structure!" the Faces had beseeched at the prelaunch party), but with dead silence and blank stares. The only noise in the room came from a dropped metal hair clip that the Face of Hair was using to style the Face of Books' hair.

I explained that I would help the Faces brainstorm, generate ideas and refine their pieces, but it soon became apparent that the Faces thought I'd be writing their copy for them. It was like an encounter group gone awry: Tears were shed. Voices were raised. Whining resounded. I went from savior to devil in 30 minutes. Still, I thought, everything would be OK. We'd just launched; people were understandably anxious. To calm everyone down, I decided to meet with each Face one-on-one to discuss his or her role.

But first, I wanted to check in with our CEO, who had pre-emptively declared that she didn't like to get "bogged down with details." I gave her the big picture: We didn't yet have the budget, staff or sponsors to support 20 channels. I suggested consolidating some channels and discarding others - like Animals - that seemed doomed to unprofitability (most 17-year-old girls are more interested in penises than in pandas).

That meant some Faces would have to be fired. "OK, you can let them go," the CEO replied. I mentioned that maybe she should be the one to do that since, well, I'd barely met these people, nor did I hire them. But she was adamant that I wield the ax. "And they're not being fired," she corrected me. "They're being unhired." Apparently, "firing" was bad for the culture.

The Face of Animals took her unhiring gracefully (she had a day job at the local zoo), but the Face of Advice immediately burst into tears. This was followed by pleading ("The girls need me!"), hysteria (hiccupy sobbing), threats ("I want my image taken off the site immediately!") and although I'm no therapist, what seemed like suicidal ideation ("This job meant everything to me! It was my life!"). To make matters worse, I canceled the Face of Advice's upcoming story, "How to Deal With Rejection." A couple days later, I called to see how she was doing. "I still can't believe I'm being fired!" she wailed. "Oh, no," I assured her. "You're not being fired. You're just being, you know, unhired." It didn't sound that strange at the time.

The Kool-Aid's buzz really began to wear off after I met one-on-one with the remaining Faces to discuss their respective channels. To be fair, all of them were incredibly nice and talented people. But by no fault of their own, most had been hired to do a job for which they weren't qualified. Over the course of these meetings, I learned that the Face of Horoscopes didn't "believe in astrology"; the Face of Fashion (who drove a Porsche and had a condo in Hawaii) kept forgetting that teen girls shop at Gap, not Gucci; the Face of Beauty used the word luscious so incessantly (luscious lipstick, luscious liner, luscious lids) that when I did a search for "luscious" and left "replace with" blank, her word count shot down by 30; and the Face of Guys (a Backstreet Boys look-alike) thought I was being unreasonable because I wouldn't let him wax poetic about his favorite men's magazine, Maxim, on a site that was supposed to be providing "insight" and "inspiration" to teen girls.

At the end of my first month, I attended Fortune magazine's extravagant party in honor of "cool companies." Thanks to our ubiquitous media coverage, Kibu made the cut. I worked the room and spouted buzzwords from our press releases (Fresh! Knowledgeable! Uninhibited! Empowering!). Then I drove home and stayed up until 3 a.m. editing pieces on conditioning mascaras, seamless bras and why hair gel is better than pomade. Something had to change.

Month 2: Silicon Valley, 90210
Apparently, our CEO needed a change, too. At the next all-hands meeting, she announced that, in the interest of preventing burnout, she was heading to a beach in Hawaii. By coincidence, our co-founder was already in Hawaii, as was our Face of Fashion. At a later all-hands we were treated to photos of the three perched on stools at a hotel's beachfront bar.

With our bosses bronzing, certain things about the company culture became clear to me for the first time. I noticed that everyone at Kibu looked the same (tight Lycra tops, wedgy sandals, perfect bodies), acted the same (kiss-kiss, rah-rah enthusiasm), spoke the same ("Rockin'!" "Right on!" "LOVE it!"), and had the same interests (weddings and engagements, the perfect G-string). They all sported lavender toenail polish and got regular massages, waxes and facials. They dutifully coaxed any unseemly frizzy hair into glossy, straight tresses like Jennifer Aniston's. Everyone looked like they'd just stepped off the set of Beverly Hills 90210 or Dawson's Creek. I, on the other hand, worked 80-hour weeks, broke out in stress acne, stopped exercising and let my curly hair air-dry as I returned an onslaught of calls on the way to work each morning.

Eerily, Kibu started to resemble the world of its target audience. In high school, you were either cool or you were not. At Kibu, there were also two cliques, composed of those who tried to be responsible and keep the business on track ("the studious kids," a minority that included Lisa, a savvy VP who came aboard when I did), and those who just wanted to rebel and have fun ("the popular kids," which included pretty much everybody else).

But if there's one thing I learned from high school, it was that if you wanted to exert any power, you had to be in the popular crowd. There was only one thing to do: I called an emergency meeting with the Face of Hair. The effects of the flat Iron, a hair-straightening device that allowed me to look like the rest of my Kibu kin, were instantaneous. The Faces complimented me on my sleek locks. They asked me to join them for lunch, slipped me eye shadow samples and confided their boyfriend problems. When I started dating someone new, the Face of Relationships gave me a "highly recommended" instructional video that had been circulating in the office: An Intimate Guide to Male Genital Massage. Most important though, the Faces actually showed up for most of their story meetings, appreciated my suggestions and turned in their work pretty close to deadline. I was beginning to think that there might be hope for Kibu after all.

Until, that is, the CEO returned from Hawaii. Although the Faces were doing their best, Kibu still needed a major overhaul. Engineering reported that interactivity (message boards and chat) was months away. Production said that the redesign had been delayed again. On any given day our target audience might fluctuate between ages 13 and 17. And no one could decide what Kibu's place was in the Internet Economy: Was it a community, a destination, a portal, a multimedia enterprise or a digital lifestyle brand?

When Lisa and I raised these issues with our CEO, her response was to label us as "negative." If there was one thing she couldn't abide, it was people who weren't "team players." Kibu had to be a place of fun and happiness, and that took priority. In particular, she said, research showed that teen girls thought our Face of Guys was "delicious" and I should therefore let him do whatever he wanted. I asked if she felt comfortable letting him advise our audience that it's OK for a guy in an exclusive relationship to kiss another girl, because according to him, that's not really cheating. "Let him do whatever he wants," she repeated. In fact, she declared, I should let all of the Faces do exactly what they want. "It's in the interest of the culture."

Because our culture also espoused "totally open communication," word got out quickly that the Faces had free reign, and that their editor had been told to take a backseat. By the end of the day, I'd been kicked out of the 90210 beach house, being transformed again from golden-girl Kelly to an outcast. I should have remembered that when you were in the popular crowd, having an alternative opinion was tantamount to heresy.

That night I went home and, instead of editing, I watched the male genital massage video with my boyfriend. When the narrator kept referring to a 10-foot high replica of the male genital organ as a "magic wand," I remarked to my boyfriend that unless Kibu's management did a reality check - and fast - it would take a real magic wand to make the company viable.

Month 3: The Emperor's New Clothes
At our next all-hands, two new men, purportedly there to "observe," appeared at the conference table. One was Kibu's first (not to mention belated) VP of finance and the other was one of our investors (who didn't seem amused by our "most embarrassing story" ritual).

"Girls who get it" was Kibu's slogan, and with these two rational minds on board, I felt as though someone might finally be "getting it." Our new VP of finance convinced our CEO that things like, um, budgets, needed to go into effect immediately. No longer could we cheer on our hologram of a company, oohing and aahing at the emperor's new clothes.

Things began to change: Corporate credit cards were collected. Employees had to account for time out of the office and meet project deadlines. Our CEO even agreed to let Lisa run an offsite retreat with the other VPs to address the Big Issues that she'd dismissed weeks before (the role of the Faces, the target audience, the business model and what Kibu was, exactly). Kibu was in crisis mode, but at least our energy was being focused in the right direction. If we stayed the course, it seemed like Kibu might actually have a chance to succeed.

And then, astonishingly, our CEO eloped. To Bali. Upon her return, we presented the results of our retreat. Later that day, I got an e-mail asking if I could meet with her. I felt optimistic: I assumed she wanted to discuss the changes we'd outlined while she was away. But when I walked into the conference room, I learned that this was "a termination discussion," which meant, apparently, that I was being unhired. Why? The closest I got to an explanation was that I'd never gotten "buy in" from the Faces. Perhaps. But I think the real reason had to do with the fact that she never got buy in from me. I had, after all, violated the most important rule of the dot-com world: I'd said, out loud and in earnest, that the emperor had no clothes.

If you joined a dot-com before the bubble burst this year, you had to pretend that everything was not as it seemed. You couldn't question anything or anyone, no matter how absurd, no matter how good your intentions, because nobody - investors, CEOs, employees - wanted to get off the bus and face reality. Well, the market eventually forced them to, and Kibu, like many other startup casualties, sputtered and ran out of gas this fall - after just five months of operation. (Money wasn't necessarily the main problem; in fact, when Kibu closed, there was plenty of cash left. In a rare move, the founders decided to return the remainder of the $22 million investment capital to the investors.)

I wasn't the only person who'd been unhired at Kibu that day, and when we unhireds did our post-mortem via phone, we couldn't help but burst out laughing. Later though, sipping my Kibu-branded chai energy tea, I reflected on all that I'd learned from my brief dot-com experience: Business models matter. Trust your instincts, not the drunken herd. Create your product before you launch. Bigger isn't necessarily better. Don't place your bets on buzzwords. Hire a solid staff. If you jump on a bus, make sure you know its destination. And finally, when it comes to male genital massage, always err on the side of too much oil.

Lori Gottlieb is a freelance writer and the author of Stick figure: A Diary of My Former Self which has been optioned for film by Martin Scorsese.

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Inside the Cult of Kibu