Finding harmony between advice and self-interest
I just wrapped one of those calls where I had the opportunity to give advice to an entrepreneur that runs counter to my short-term interests. In this case, it is a story of a first-time entrepreneur who has built a $7 million revenue business and is wrestling with the decision whether to take growth capital […]
5 Ways Email Makes Your Employees Hate Their Jobs
It can sound like a gentle wave, an eager ding, or perhaps a vibration on our phone felt from a pocket. It’s email, and regardless of how much we talk about the future of work and collaboration, we cannot ignore this blaring reality of all employee lives. Email keeps us handcuffed to our phones and […]
Enterprise software marketing: Sell the value, not the box
Many enterprise software startups view success as a simple equation: build a great product and the world will line up to buy. There are two problems with this logic. First, it assumes that great product always drives great success; and second, this thinking leads to feature-oriented, rather than customer-centric, decisions. The tendency to focus on features […]
You can be a dick and be right
Venture Capital legend Tom Perkins stirred up quite a bit of outrage with his letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1aGMGJy In this editorial (which Perkins presumably dashed off without showing it to any competent public relations professional), he criticizes what he perceives as a rise in unfair criticism of the wealthy. […]
A Solution Sale Can Capture 3-20x the Revenues of A Tool Sale. With Almost the Exact Same Core Product.
Recently, I caught up with two great entrepreneurs/CEOs, both doing a few million in ARR and growing quickly. Doing well. Both had a roughly similar make-up of customers, split between: Big Customers (Fortune 500 / Global 2000 types) — not many, but each paying a lot; Small and medium-sized businesses, each paying four or five […]
Conflict of Interest: common sense or witch-hunt?
People in this business get quite worked up about the conflicts of interest faced by ‘influencers’; analysts, prominent bloggers, and the rest. That concern is understandable and reasonable. We do need to know when the advice, guidance and opinion we’re being given is influenced by external factors (both positive and negative). But the vehemence with which a very […]
Decision flow for customer feature requests
If you manage a product or service in the business-to-business (B2B) market, customer requests for features will be a regular part of your work. Requests come in through the sales team, service reps, and senior management, as well as directly from customers themselves. It’s a disruptive insertion of new items for your agenda. That disruption […]
Podcasting again… with StorSimple’s Marc Farley
I used to podcast pretty regularly, on this site and elsewhere. Then other things got in the way and, before I knew it, almost two years had passed since my last podcast here. Well, it’s time to put that right. I’m podcasting again, and I’ve got a nice pipeline of guests lined up over the […]
CMO strategy session: The new discipline of ‘social lead management’
The relationship between IT and marketing is symbolic of larger changes taking place in enterprise technology. The proliferation of sophisticated end-user software, often based in the cloud, has created deep technology expertise in functional areas such as marketing. I asked the Chief Marketing Officer of LexisNexis, Steve Mann, for a snapshot of marketing innovation that intersects […]
What is an entrepreneur to do when restrictive covenants become restrictive
Restrictive covenants are standard features of venture capital, growth equity and private equity transactions although each investor type has its own standards. Restrictive covenants are the actions a company cannot take without investor approval. A short list of typical restrictive covenants includes: A sale of a Company or sale of a majority of the Company’s […]
SaaStr’s on NBC’s Press: Here on Sunday: “Deal or No Deal? When — and If — To Sell Your Company”. (Or Just Watch it Here Now).
I had a great session on NBC’s Press:Here Yesterday together with The New York Times and TechCrunch on when to sell, or not. We touched on a lot of SaaStr themes, including a personal favorite of mine — “If You Sell Your Company, You’ll Either Feel Like a Used Car Salesman — Or Like Hugo“. […]
Putting Tom Perkins Comments into Context
Tom Perkins is one of the founding members of the venerable venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins. He just had his Mitt Romney moment and his name will forever be etched in the collective consciousness of the tech community for this terribly insensitive and tone deaf letter to the Wall Street Journal. The headline of Mr. […]
What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Peyton Manning
I’m not a huge football fan. But I do marvel at the drama of professional football. In particular, I admire what Peyton Manning has done for the Broncos the past two years. His individual contributions are well documented. But what I’ve been most impressed by is the positive impact he seems to have had on the […]
Research: CIOs and the ‘digitalization’ of business
New research from Gartner and CIO Magazine describe the shift from infrastructure to digital transformation. But, not all organizations are ready to change.
The fallacy of averages
A discussion with a portfolio company CFO reminded me that statistics are a dangerous thing and averages are misleading. “There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Most businesses analyze their performance using overly simplistic tools. For an extreme example, imagine a scenario where the average customer produces monthly recurring revenue […]
