Valleyschwag: The Power of Schwag

I got my first package from Valleyschwag this week and it is just fantastic. What is ValleySchwag, you ask? It is just what the name suggests. Schwag from Silicon Valley -- t-shirts, stickers, pens, nail files, temporary tattoos, etc. (I’m sure it won’t all come from Silicon Valley, but Web 2.0 Schwag didn’t have the same ring to it). Valleyschwag is brought to you by the good folks at Rubyred Labs, a design shop building web and mobile applications in the heart of Web 2.0 Land (I knew South of Market was back in vogue when I found myself trekking up to San Francisco for a board meeting or two a week -- I now have 5 portfolio companies (Ebates, Six Apart, Splunk, Technorati and VideoEgg) within 4 blocks of the Giants’ baseball stadium). Rubyred Labs started Valleyschwag because, as they put it, "out here in the Valley (Silicon Valley, that is) we're well known for cookin' up a mean tech company. But our real legacy is our schwag--the t-shirts, ballcaps, notepads, stickers, keychains, and other booty blaring the slogans that create new industries (and sometimes landfill, sorry to say)."

While I fear that the half life of most schwag well exceeds its recommended period of use, I am a huge schwag fan. Sure, conference schwag is fine. It can do a reasonably efficient job of getting out the word about your company on a small scale. But the schwag that I think really matters is the intra-company schwag. I am not a VC who minds his money being spent on t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts. In fact, I encourage it. The truth is, building startups is really hard work. The typical path for a startup is an emotional rollercoaster, with big ups and big downs. There are sleepless nights and tireless days. And only those teams that truly appreciate each other, work well together and love their companies have much of a chance of succeeding. And that’s where I think schwag comes in.

Teams that love what they’re working on, want to wear their company logos. They want to have the t-shirt or the hat or the polar fleece. And the act of wearing the shirt of the company you love is self-reinforcing. It makes you love the company all the more. I remember visiting Yahoo in the late nineties and being struck by the fact that about 3 out of every 4 people I passed in the cafeteria was wearing a Yahoo t-shirt of some kind or another. It wasn’t a dress code. It was a testimony to the culture Jerry and Dave had created from the very outset of the company. The same is true of my portfolio companies. They celebrate successes with company t-shirts. They give company laptop bags for the holidays. Their employees wear company baseball hats to lunch. And I, their board member, proudly rotate through my portfolio company sweatshirts when walking in the morning.

Schwag will never replace great products, great management and growing companies. But it will certainly reinforce the energy and excitement of working hard together to create something meaningful. I'm such a believer in Schwag, I've even made VentureBlog stickers. Track me down at a conference and I'll be happy to give you one. Or maybe you'll get lucky and get one in Valleyschwag one of these days.