Why The Community CEO Does Work by Jason Calacanis

Editor's Note: Last week I wrote a column titled, "Why the Community CEO Doesn't work". Jason Calacanis, Mahalo CEO had a lengthy reply on why it does work and since many of you are on the feed, I decided to turn his comment into a post as his comment is a good rebuttal to my column. I've stripped some of the pieces directed towards me for clarity.

Jason's comment begins:

Allen, I think you're wrong. I'll give you some more reasons.

First off, I can tell you that being open and transparent worked really well for us at Weblogs, Inc. and that business went VERY well as you know.

Mahalo has been doing amazing and the feedback we have from the public has really helped shape the product. We do this in many different ways every day and my open door policy is but ONE of our open techniques.

1. We have lunch four days a week with our ENTIRE team at Mahalo. That's 50 people around one huge lunch table--it's crazy. You should stop by some time when you're in Los Angeles.

2. I accept every friend on every service.... and talk to them!

3. I answer every email, IM, skype, etc. I can... it's up to about 300-500 a day right now. It takes me two hours a day to do this!

4. We ask questions on various services like LinkedIn and Facebook.

5. We blog.

6. We read and respond to people's blogs when they comment about us.

7. When I do interviews with the press and they ask questions I frequently ask the press "what would you do if you ran Mahalo?" or "Who do you think we're competing with?" or "What do you think our biggest challenge will be?"

Look at our relationship.

You've got valid ideas and they should be heard... I know that. What other CEO has given you so much of their time? If I didn't you wouldn't have written, what, like 10 posts on Mahalo? You've done so much free consulting and marketing for Mahalo I think I'm going to send you business cards!!! I love you for it, although sometimes I hate the way you say things. Try and be nice Allen. :)

Now, when I post to LinkedIn or Facebook questions I have a fairly good idea of the answers I'm going to get. In fact, I'd say 80% of the ideas are simply confirming. I've been doing this startup thing for a while now... I know what the right answers are most of the time. However, I like to start discussions and see where they lead.

These discussions do a number of things:

1. You get confirmation of good and bad ideas.

2. You get people engaged in your business concept. Again, look in the mirror. You could write a book on Mahalo! You know almost everything about our company. What company do you know more about than Mahalo?!? Exactly. You're engaged and so are hundreds--if not thousands--of other leading minds. You're wondering "will this work?" That's all i need... your attention.

3. You get ideas that you might not have thought about.

Do you really see openness as some sort of sign of weakness... I don't. I see it as the ultimate strength. I'm not some God who is all knowing. In fact, my biggest strength as an entrepreneur is that I know i don't have all the answers. I know that there are better ideas outside of my head then in it... that's just the law of numbers. So, I go find places where people can debate those ideas and try and nurture the discussion around them.

You're thinking very CEO 1.0... the all-powerful God-like CEO. That's over with the exception of Steve Jobs who is, in fact, a God.