Archive for the 'Software' Category
Aug 11, 2008, post by Randall
As an investor, the most important lesson I’ve learned over the years is that great companies are built by great teams. Furthermore, great teams rarely are one superhuman “A” player surrounded by a supporting cast of “B” players. And unlike the Borg Collective which seeks to “… add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own”, great management teams need to have a set of complementary, yet overlapping, skill sets.
Most of us know the example of how Steve Wozniak the brilliant hardware designer teamed up with the uber-persuasive Steve Jobs to create Apple, an iconic Silicon Valley startup success story. While that partnership didn’t last forever, it’s pretty clear that the fusing of the talents of these two brilliant individuals directly led to Apple’s early success. I encourage you to read more in a “must read” book I’ve recommended earlier, Founders at Work.
Jim Balsillie
Mike Lazaridis
Here in Waterloo, Research in Motion (RIM) would not be today’s superstar company unless Jim Balsillie joined engineer, founder, Mike Lazaridis. Until Jim joined Mike in the early 1990’s, RIM had long remained a typical engineering oriented company doing about $500 000 annual revenues from 20-odd products. Although Jim could never have built the products, his introduction to the management brought the marketing and financial drive and focus that ultimately led to the Blackberry led success story we know today. Rather than the cult of the individual, once again it is the power of this amazing duo that built RIM.
What is unusual about this case is that both Mike and Jim share the title CEO, billing themselves as co-CEOs. Perhaps more companies should consider this approach?
Reed Hastings
Back in 1995, as MKS was starting to look to the capital markets, one of my personal inspirations, Reed Hastings CEO of Pure Software (and now Netflix), observed that “Pure Software has built a team where any of the senior management team could be CEO”. I certainly took that approach to heart when building MKS’s great team and it has been an important insight ever since.
For example, Chuck Bay, who was Pure’s CFO at the time has subsequently gone on to be CEO Broadbase Software (acquired by KANA) and President and CFO of Spatial Technology. Rob Dickerson, who was VP & GM of Developer Tools for Pure, a key operationally focused executive, subsequently became CEO of Faves and President, CEO of Pacific Edge Software (acuired by Serena Software) and EIR at Ignition Partners. These are just two data points illustrating the calibre of the team Reed built at Pure Software.
At MKS, we managed to build an amazing team, especially in the mid-late 1990’s with superstars like Ruth Songhurst, Eric Palmer, Tobi Moriarty, Michael Day, Frank Pfeiffer and Paul Laufert. It was a great mix, with stars from Canada, US and Germany. As well, almost uniquely, we had a balance of the genders. It is a big disappointment to me that I continue to see how rare that is.
To round out our discussions, anyone wanting a deeper grounding in this important topic should read the book Co-Leaders: The Power of Great Partnerships by David A. Heenan and Warren Bennis, John Wiley & Sons, 1999. With the thesis that great organizations need “more than a visionary CEO”, the bookoutlines the rare, but critical, role building a strong management team takes in building exceptional companies.
To summarize this book, in the authors’ words, “Co-leadership . . . is a tough-minded strategy that will unleash the hidden talent in any enterprise. Above all, co-leadership is inclusive, not exclusive. It celebrates those who do the real work, not just a few charismatic, often isolated, leaders who are regally compensated for articulating the oranizations’ vision”. Although, like many it has taken me years to learn this valuable lesson, I couldn’t say it better myself.
There are lots of detailed case studies, from companies in many industries, with a few key lessons for co-leaders, including:
- Know thyself
- Know thy leader (check your ego at the door)
- Avoid titanic clashes (!)
- Find out what the enterprise needs and deliver it superbly
- Lead as well as follow
- Know when to stay put (control the temptation to star)
- Know when to walk away (learn when to say no)
- Define success on your own terms
To reiterate, great companies are almost always built by great teams. As organizations and markets get more complex, I believe co-leadership will become increasingly the norm. For smart and successful people to control their egos takes a lot of maturity. Furthermore, the ideal team depends, in large part, on the stage and growth of the company. As I’ve learned, great teams take a lot of work to build, but can also dissipate over time. Indeed, they are a rare and fragile flower, to be cultivated constantly.
Nonetheless, it is definitely worth any entrepreneur’s full time and attention to unleash the power of the team - whether a gestalt of two, three or even more remarkable individuals.
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Jul 10, 2008, post by Randall
New York Times on Sunday contained an article which immediately caught my attention, as it appears to provide the missing piece pulling together all of my recent postings outlining an “Entrepreneurial Toolkit”, so far consisting of these five core skill sets:
- “Fearless Passion”
- “Don’t Drink Your Own Bathwater”
- “Embrace Change”
- “Taste the Cash Burn”
- “The Power of Two (or Three)” (coming soon)
The article, “If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow”, New York Times, 6 July, 2008, in extolling an individual’s openness to change and personal growth, really provides a common thread, weaving together the above skills.
To quote Carol Dweck of Stanford University,
“People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.”
The notion that nurture trumps talent, is an interesting one. It underscores why defining some great attributes for an entrepreneur in my Entrepreneurial Toolkit is such a good idea. For the right people, if they strive for personal growth, each and every one of these attributes is in reach.
I’ve always held an innate belief that hiring is about way more than the credentials from the best schools and relevant job experience. By finding people who value “stretching themselves”, companies are adding those who can navigate today’s complex and every-changing environment to their team mix.
It’s also a very positive and empowering message.
Good mentoring and management, like good parenting, works.
Think about it.
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Apr 19, 2008, post by Randall
The Office Goes Home
Over a short span of years, I’ve witnessed work migrate from a highly structured office setting, to home offices via telecommuting and now into the “Third Place”, a term coined by Ray Oldenberg in his 1989 book The Great Good Place.
Back in the early 1980’s, I was a pioneer of telecommuting, between Waterloo and Chicago via a state of the art 1200 baud modem, pictured above, no less. There was intense interest in this at the time, because as an extremely early adopter (too early some might say) of the telecommuting paradigm, I felt a bit like a guinea pig. In retrospect this workstyle enabled extreme concentration and productivity. At the same time, the primitiveness of the communications technologies, from network speed to the software then available, necessitated a lot of travel for in-person meetings. And, tellingly, the home office can ultimately be a lonely workplace, leading to a decrease in social interaction and overall motivation.
In that early revolution over the last 25 years, telecommuting saw work slowly migrate, or more typically intermingle, between the second place (the office) and the first place (your home). Telecommuting has changed traffic patterns, social life and, on the whole, provided an improved work experience by increasing knowledge worker flexibility.
Enter the “Third Place”
As an early adopter, not to mention beta tester, of many cutting edge mobile technologies and as a long time road warrior working on a number of geographically dispersed projects, I’ve often explored a work style that the Economist has labelled “mobile nomadism”, in their richly insightful 12 April 2008 special section on “The New Nomadism”. Always a great read, the particular Economist feature stands out, especially for those interested in mobility for social, technological, political, artistic or economics reasons. Last week, Alec Saunders ran a great SquawkBox conference call on iotum, with the podcast available on his blog here.
In The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg characterizes the Third Place as:
“the place which is neither home nor work, where you spend comfortable time in easy association with friends and a few strangers.”
He celebrates the magic of the English Coffeehouse tradition and the seductive and widespread Viennese Cafe Culture as social gathering places that have often been scenes of political intrigue and even major business enterprise. Likely few are aware that in 1698, Jonathan’s Coffee-house in London started trading stocks and commodities, and eventually evolved into today’s London Stock Exchange. Ironically, Oldenburg was lamenting the decline of such third places.
Today’s revolution of being always connected, spawned by wiresless technologies, has dramatically reversed that decline. Version one of “on-demand” spaces is, of course, the humble WiFi enabled cafe. Locally in the Waterloo area, many establishments, beyond the ubiquitous Starbucks, have innovated in this genre, including:
- A Matter of Taste which is an amazing fusion of art, coffee and WiFi hotspot,
- Exhibit Cafe another melange of art and local, organic food right in the Children’s Museum,
- Williams Coffee Pubs, a local chain with food and long hours, popular with students doing late night assignments, hackers and even those working on offering memoranda, and
- C’est Bon Cafe, with its international flair and sinfully good Chocolate Fiesta Fire, and Refuge for village cocooning are great examples in bucolic Elora.
Initially, these cafes served as venues for meetings that were more informal, more conducive to creativity, and powered by wonderful Latte macchiato creations (pictured above). Eventually, I started to do small amounts of work there to increase productivity in the dead time between offsite meetings, including planning and brainstorming, reading briefing documents and eventually emails and, truth be told, writing this blog post. The environment is pleasant, a vibrant mix of people from a wide array of social backgrounds. It is worth noting that I always have the choice how much I wish to tune in or tune out those around me, just as I choose to go there to relax, work or both.
All new technology breakthroughs require adjustment. In this case, the major downside of nomadism is that the mix of real and virtual channels can lead to socially awkward situations. One is the issue of alienation, where people are more attuned to those they are in their virtual universe than those in the real world around them. While I may return to this topic at a later time, I would expect that society will eventually evolve a hybrid, multi-tasking communications style, learning to strike a reasonable balance between isolation and the global reach afforded by such virtual, always-on communications.
Instead I will focus on the opportunities. Beyond the obvious environmental benefits of reduced commuting, I strongly believe that the next generation of third places could serve to enrich our life as we build communities of the future. In Waterloo Region, there are signs that many are thinking about this challenge and building better third places that encompass peoples’ needs from business to the arts to entertainment and fun. In short, the building of vibrant, social spaces will create healthy cities of the future.
One aspect that is immediately apparent in the best of these first generation, third places listed above is the role of the arts in their mix. The simple coffee house is just the beginning. The impact of the arts is much more than art on the walls — it is a certain style and ambience you feel when you enter. Arts is an enormously creative endeavour, and I firmly believe, has a great affinity for the natural creativity inherent in the most innovative, knowledge-based companies of the 21st century. People like Alf Bogusky, Director General of KW Art Gallery have been developing a vision to reshape our urban spaces on a collaborative model based around the notion of third place. Historically, the arts institutions like art galleries, public libraries, theatres and concerts halls have been enclaves, walled off from the rest of the city. Alf and a group of leading thinkers have been mapping out a very different future, which exploits the natural synergies between all these stakeholders. Stay tuned …
In summary, we’ve witnessed a huge transaction through several generations of societal change from fixed offices to telecommuting and now rampant nomadism which is creating new spaces called the third place. I challenge all those who are beta testing the new mobile nomadism and who interact in these new third places, to please comment and share your experiences - we truly are building the city of the future in the context of the global village.
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Mar 15, 2008, post by Randall
Today, I am excitedly watching Ottawa-based iotum‘s Free Conference Calls application on Facebook rocket through the 200 000 net installed user mark. As many of you know, iotum is a Verdexus portfolio investment of late last year when I also engaged with the company as Chairman. Note that I plan to discuss the investment cycle for global and Canadian startups in later blogs. Meanwhile, for those of you near Toronto, on Wednesday March 19th, my colleague Grover Righter of iMobileInternet will present a great keynote on the topic “The New Playbook for Venture 2.0: how to get from $0 to exit with less capital” at the Mars ExperienceTech 2008 conference.
Having invested in the company because of a great team and a deep intellectual property portfolio driving an application aimed at the emerging market for business-oriented applications on Facebook, it is indeed gratifying to witness this robust level of end user adoption. Not just a typical “light-weight” Facebook application, iotum’s Free Conference Calls is a professional grade, full featured new take on the conference call. It fuses iotum’s expertise in presence with social networks to create a new level of user experience, and mashes up many non-voice features like a live wall, full SMS/mobile enabled invitation system, recordings to allow instant podcast creation, and much more.
How good is this? Well, for the all important race to a million for Web 2.0 type of businesses, iotum is definitely a top performer. On February 27th having previously focused on the North American market with US dial-in numbers, iotum released global call-in features, like flash-based dial from computers, callback and their first European dial-in numbers (in France). This was done in partnership with some key international players like Truphone, Abbeynet and Moi Telecom. The response? In a mere two weeks, with huge interest in the media and blogosphere, the installed base of users more than doubled to 200 000 users as of today. That level of user endorsement is a direct response to the iotum team managing to deliver and refine an application that resonates with a rich user experience and which is in fact very useful. Essentially a new form of media experience, already it is being used for teleseminars, political campaigns, talk radio, podcasts, nonprofits, business meetings, and much more. In typical Web 2.0 fashion, the user community is seizing this application, and not only building content (conferences), but shaping it in ways that were not perhaps anticipated initially at the time of launch.
I’d encourage everyone to give it a try using this link: Free Conference Calls
The screen shot at the top of this blog shows one recent conference call, an installment of the daily Squawk Box conference and podcast. But, to be truly appreciated, this needs to be experienced personally. Stay tuned for more developments from this exciting company.
