Digital Competition - Avram Miller

You're a player at one of the most powerful technology companies in the world at a time when the PC is transforming itself into a new medium. You're responsible for millions of dollars' worth of investments every year in communications, new media, and Internet companies, overseeing a $1 billion- plus portfolio. How do you become more influential?

How about quitting your job?

This year, Avram Miller, vice president and director of business development at Intel Corp., a self-styled "activist strategist" and "corporate kook," left Intel to start the Avram Miller Co., based in San Francisco. "After working for 25 years for corporations, I thought that it would be nice to have them work for me," he kids from the downtown high-rise overlooking San Francisco's Chinatown where he now makes his one-man world headquarters. It's a notable Silicon Valley irony: Only by leaving a $26 billion global corporation and going to work for himself has Miller finally landed a spot on the lofty 20th floor of a financial-district skyscraper, far from the anonymous cubes of the legendarily austere semiconductor company.

In the shift from cubicle to skyscraper, Miller has become a human node in the global network at the convergence of the communications, computer, and media industries. Today, Miller serves on the boards of major Internet players around the globe, including CMGI in the United States; World Online, the largest independent ISP in Europe; and European Technology Fund (ETF), a major European venture-capital fund.

"I'm busy stitching together a worldwide platform by developing relationships between those companies," he says, "so that when I see an early-stage opportunity, whether it's a technology product or a service, I can distribute it all over the world."

At Intel, Miller cofounded the venture-capital arm of the semi-conductor company some 10 years ago, when venture investing was at most something that major companies might dabble in. At Intel, he was responsible for making investments in communications, new media, and the Internet, including the company's investments in CMGI, broadcast.com, @Home, Covad, and GeoCities.

Today, Intel not only boasts one of the most successful corporate venture groups anywhere; it also represents one of the world's largest venture-capital firms of any kind. In June 1999, shortly after Miller left the company, Intel held investments in 275 technology, e-commerce, and Internet companies, making its venture portfolio worth $3.5 billion. In 1998, the company did 130 deals with investments totaling roughly $830 million, including about $500 million in Micron Technologies alone.

But Miller is now convinced that the way to have the most impact on the future of communications, computers, and media is not by developing one company, or by nurturing the ecosystem of companies surrounding that company, but by knitting together a network of major companies from around the globe.

Fast Company sat down with Miller -- an Internet deal maker, future creator, and accomplished jazz pianist -- to listen to him riff on the future of business.

Deals are not about money.

To do a good deal, first you have to be a good partner. Every deal is made by adding value, not just by adding money. Money is nothing. Everybody has money. For any deal, you have to ask, "How do you add value to each other? How do you play fair? And how do you interface with many different people?"

Communication is a big part of making deals. One minute, I could be talking to three guys with pimples in a garage; the next, I could be speaking with the CEO of Deutsche Telekom. The most important thing is to get rid of all your prejudices. You have to open your mind. It doesn't matter if the people you're talking to are 22 years old or 57 years old. It doesn't matter what their color is, what their gender is, what language they speak, how big their company is, or even if they were a success before. The playing field today is a lot more level than ever before.

Goodbye, company. Hello, value.

Corporations are becoming less important. The Internet is made up of companies that pop up, live for a while, and get absorbed. Take, for example, broadcast.com, a four-year-old company that Yahoo! bought for roughly $5.2 billion.

It used to be that people would join a corporation with the expectation not only that they would spend their whole career there but also that their sons and daughters would go to work for the company, and that the company would live forever. Now companies have a shorter life expectancy than a California marriage. Not only do you not expect to spend your whole career at one company, but the company might disappear before you leave it. You don't even have to change jobs to change jobs.