Napster's business lessons - plus a few lessons of non-commercial nature

[JackSpratts]

Life after Napster
Dawn Kawamoto

Hank Barry has come full circle: attorney, venture capitalist, chief executive, attorney.

But his career has seen far more twists than these titles might suggest.

For example, his foray into the entrepreneurial realm, vis-a-vis his role as a venture capitalist, landed him the role of interim CEO at Napster. In that position, he played a part in helping define the boundaries of the file-swapping, or peer-to-peer, industry.

Q. It seems you got both [law and operations] at Napster. What are some of the key lessons learned while serving as interim CEO at Napster that can be applied to the companies you'll be representing at Howard Rice?

A. Barry: The No. 1 thing I have an appreciation for is how fast things move on the operations side. As lawyers, you're trained to reflect. But on the operations side of things, you don't have time. The marketscape map is changing on a daily basis. You don't come to appreciate it until you experience it. And that experience will make me a much better lawyer as a result.

I also have a better understanding of what is functionally important, rather than what is important in the abstract. One thing we did at Napster that I regret is having somewhere around 30 engineers to develop a filtering system. With all the delays we had, we could have had a smaller team and made more progress in the same amount of time.

Interview

WiR