Politics

Throughout his campaign, Mitt Romney has hammered President Obama for a lack of experience in the private sector, saying “he doesn’t understand how the free economy works. He’s never had a job in the free economy; neither has Vice President Biden.” In fact, Romney even proposed a constitutional amendment that would require any president to have worked at least three years in the private sector. And so it’s surprising that Romney has picked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a man who, outside of a job at McDonald’s and a brief stint at a company owned by his family, has hardly any private sector record. Ryan began his career in the public sector before he even graduated college — in 1991 as a senate intern — and then spent the mid-1990s as a senate aide to Sens. Bob Kasten (R-WI) and Sam Brownback (R-KS). After that, he worked for vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, then settled in for 13 years as a member of the House of Representatives. Obama actually worked for private companies for the sum...

Editor’s note: Joe Kraus is a partner at Google Ventures, focusing on mobile, gaming, and local services. In 1993, he co-founded Excite.com, an early Internet search engine. He also co-founded JotSpot in 2004, a wiki company acquired by Google in 2006. Follow him on his blog, JoeKraus.com, and on Twitter: @jkraus. One thing I can hear with some regularity from a small founding team is something like “we don’t think we need a marketing person” or “we’re not going to hire a product manager”. Those aren’t the only positions I hear that statement for. I hear it for PR, marketing, HR and sometimes BD. What I think is going on here, and what my guidance in general is, “If you don’t think you need a position and that position has a well-known title (like product manager, product marketer, etc), it’s far more likely that you’ve just never seen or worked with *greatness* at that position.” I have my own example that I remember vividly. When I was co-founding Excite (how could that have been ...