Entrepreneurship

The First Year from Hell

May 21, 2012
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Continuing on with the saga that was my life as an entrepreneur, we come to the end of 1999 and the dreaded Year 2000 (Y2K). Suddenly it was nearing Christmas in 1999 and Y2K hype was everywhere. According to analysts and experts the world was about to end. I had my doubts, but it was fun listening to everyone think on January 1st everything computerized would just stop. Sigh. But we were busy in our own little world. We had product to finish and problems to resolve. We had a company to grow and, most of all, customers to hunt down and satisfy. Growing the company during the dot com mania wasn’t difficult. It was trying to convince everyone we shouldn’t that got you no where. Our VCs, like all VCs, were saying we had to grow big; grow big and grow fast. The bigger the better. And money was thrown around to assist in this. We were told to grow to 100 people in 2000 or else we’d miss out. We couldn’t and wouldn’t be a player if we didn’t have a fully staffed professional services, a marketing department pushing our wares, sales offices here, there, and everywhere. We

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The Move and the Big Start

May 17, 2012
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Returning to my recollections on Texar, we come to the latest installment on the aspects of being an entrepreneur at Texar. An investment from VCs in the bank and visions of grandeur. That’s where we were in the Spring of 1999. We needed office space and found 3500 sq. ft. of it in the west end of Ottawa. Nice space, nothing fancy, but nice nonetheless. There’s an old rule of thumb that says 120 sq. ft. per person is adequate, unless you’re using cube farms in which case you can crunch that down to 64 sq. ft. Not being a believer in overcrowding I stuck with the old belief of 120 sq. ft. of space per person, preferably with a door and a window. That meant we could cram in about 30 people in the space we’d rented, less in reality as the boardroom was to remain off limits. As we were moving from my basement to the new digs all it required was getting phone and Internet service. That took some doing but soon enough it was done. We had our domain moved over, we had FreeBSD boxes up and running our mail and web services, and we were

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RIM No More?

March 30, 2012
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RIM No More?

Although I’ve never wanted a RIM device I’ve appreciated what they offered way back when, mainly the 90s when it was a very handy device for sales people or those on the road. An easy way to stay connected. But I could never own one because the device made little sense to me as a techie. It always seemed to be nothing but a bunch of compromises structured around upselling various other services. The constant and only focus on the business user may well have been warranted early on, but as consumer sales of handheld devices eclipsed business sales RIM stood around, hands in pockets, hoping that it didn’t matter. And when they tried to do a consumer product it always seemed halfhearted. Like the Playbook. I was looking forward to that, but when it came out it seemed some “genius” at RIM figured it had to be tethered to a Blackberry to operate fully. Why? Who the hell knows. All I know is that it pushed many people I knew to an iPad. I doubt that was RIM’s intent, but that’s what they accomplished. I also never fully understood their idiotic notion of having so many devices. I even

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The insanity of “shareholder value”

December 29, 2011
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I’ve been saying this for years. Many times those with “MBAs” have told me I’m wrong. Yet, deep down, I knew something was remiss. Something was just absolutely, 100% wrong. Why? Because it made no sense to have a company focus on guessing what their balance sheet was going to look like a year from now when every person I know would not be able to hit a personal target within 1% if they tried. Life just has too many variables. And the total focus on guessing is detrimental, as I’ve personally experienced in certain large firms where senior executives run around “managing expectations” as opposed to pleasing the customer. The irony is that there’s this insane hire/fire mentality that goes with it, removing talent and thus impacting long-term viability. It’s simply maddening. One of the things I liked about Steve Jobs was his total disregard for Wall Street. He focused on pleasing his customers and proved that an insane focus on the consumer was all that really mattered. The pity is that so few have comprehended this fact even while they try to “replicate” Jobs’ success. I’m hoping well abandon the “dumbest idea in the world”, as Welch puts

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Thoughts… on plans

November 30, 2011
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I’ve been having discussion regarding plans with some folks recently. It got me thinking and I’ve come to the conclusion that you should keep Eisenhower and Powell’s Axioms in mind, namely: Eisenhower’s Axiom: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Powell’s Axiom: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” To this I’d like to add my own: Eugen’s Axiom: “The foundation of a good plan is to rely on those you trust.” It makes the planning quite useful if you know that when the plan becomes obsolete you can move forward with conviction.

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Darth Vader: Venture Capitalist

May 28, 2011
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I’ve been through a number of start-ups and friends of mine are still toiling through theirs. And although I have rejoined their ranks as a CTO in a research-oriented startup I don’t miss the turmoil associated with trying to please investors, customers, and employees all before you have a product. Especially when it seems that you don’t get to include yourself in that mix of who has to be pleased. Like most geeky types I’ve been watched the Star Wars series repeatedly. My kids watch the original three at least twice a year, with my son and I’ve come to notice something: Darth Vader is a venture capitalist. Now, you may think me nuts — I’ve been called that before, usually before heading off on another start-up adventure — however, hear me out. When you listen to Darth Vader motivating the troops or attempting to get the upper hand on the competition (i.e., the Rebel Alliance), he speaks like a seasoned venture capitalist. I’ll provide some examples although this may mean you can never watch the Star Wars saga in the same way again. On Deals I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further. When

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Sales, Salespeople, and Salesmanship

May 15, 2011
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In my prior entrepreneurship entry I talked about the key hires that a company had to make early on in its life. I purposely left out one of the most important: the sales team. This could be a VP of Sales, a Director of Sales, whatever, but for a company to succeed it needs to have qualified, dynamic, hungry salesmen (and women). That’s a given. The question though is not whether to have them but when! A company lives on cash. For VC funded companies the initial infusion of cash comes from VC Funds that invest a part of a given fund into a company. Obviously, if this is the only cash the company ever receives it won’t be long for this world. A revenue flow is required. To attain that flow sales must occur. But how? That’s the trickiest question of all. How do we get sales? Fortunately it’s simple: provide customers with a product or service that scratches a particular itch and one that results in a demonstrable return on investment (ROI). Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy to quantify nor to find those first customers — those “early adopters” who effectively will wish to live their startup aspirations

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Entrepreneurship: Staffing a CEO

March 6, 2011
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I tend to view things fairly simply. From coding to business I’ve found that this works exceedingly well. There are always special cases, but I tend to handle those on a case-by-case basis. I try to keep the general workings of my code, my life, and my business fairly straightforward. It’s saved me from a lot of agonizing over finding the perfect way to do a given thing. I also tend to hold specific truths to be self-evident. One of these truths is that if a CEO is required he or she should be brought in early, rather than later. Either a new CEO was required from day one or a new one wasn’t. If they always were, bringing one in early is best for the company, for morale, for logistics, and just generally. Of course finding the right CEO is no easier and may in fact be harder earlier than later, but I stand by my assertion. I didn’t always think this way.   CEO: Now or Never Jim Collins’ new book Good to Great is a prequel to his eye-opening Built to Last that discusses what it takes to get a company from good to great. From a

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Entrepreneurship: Who to Hire

February 13, 2011
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When a company is started it’s crucial to ensure that the right people are brought on board at the right time. All too often a company starts up with a slew of techies with little or no business acumen and even less understanding of markets and market drivers. And since every successful company must sell product to a customer it’s crucial that the company determine who those customers are as early as possible. After my time at Texar I’ve come to a series of conclusions as to who should be brought on early, who should be brought on at various stages of corporate growth, and who should never be brought on. Although my take is my own it seems to jive with what most other entrepreneurs see as the correct sequence. In at least one case, though, my belief is at direct odds with what investors, especially, view as crucial to getting a start-up to success. My disagreement stems from the belief of how the senior management team should be arranged, especially with regards to how super successful high-tech companies look at the senior level. Here I’m talking about companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Newbridge from their formative years until

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Entrepreneurship: Due Diligence

November 21, 2010
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Continuing on with my occasional writings on entrepreneurship, let’s move on to due diligence. As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I’m opting for entries regarding my forays into entrepreneurship by focusing on subject matter as opposed to chronological order. Perhaps at a later date and if it makes sense I’ll place these into a logical or chronological order, but for now I’m going to do them as I feel. Hope you like it! Due Diligence is that aspect of starting a high-tech venture whereby a series of investors get to examine every aspect of your organization and, to a certain extent, you. The outcome of a due diligence review is usually a set of reps and warrants (representations and warranties) that you sign off on saying that what was discovered is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as far as you know. And God help you if you lied during this phase as it will come back to haunt you ñ big time! The due diligence is typically broken down into a series of requirements: Sales & Marketing Financial Engineering & Manufacturing Materials Management I will endeavor to go into each in some level of detail. However,

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Musings

A blog of my musings. Some folks find it interesting and so I continue. Hopefully it will remain fairly interesting. At worst, it'll keep me writing orthogonally to my day job.

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