I recently dove into the talent “pool” with some pretty amazing results. In his blog, Seth Godin poses the question: “Where have all the agents gone?”. His basic premise is that middlemen add value when a transaction isn’t transparent; they have less value when the transaction is transparent.
Prolifiq is in the midst of creating and staffing an officer-level position – that of VP Operations. Our growth rate and support model require that we scale dramatically in the coming months/years, so it’s time for this position (plus, I have to relieve Neil of much of the complexity and interdependencies of his job so he can focus on his passion for our product). We could have, and some would argue that we should have, engaged an Executive Search firm. However with the all the web has to offer, we decided to go direct.
We posted the position for 2 weeks on Monster.com and on Craig’s List – total net cost to us was $25.00. That’s right, $25.00. The results have been somewhat overwhelming (both good and bad – more later) in that we received 300+ resumes/CVs. This is a pretty good indication of the economy and what a buyer’s market it is for talent.
So, on Thursday, I spent my entire day in 30 minute phone interviews with the top candidates (as determined by the screening committee’s initial take on capabilities fit). I am stunned at what talent we can get to join us – now the challenge is to find the right “chemistry” between a candidate, our team, and what we are trying to change with this hire.
I am also a little stunned by some of what we saw. I received resumes from PURE sales folks, with absolutely no operations background, applying for the operations job; I received cover letters proclaiming “….detail oriented…” that were full of typos, horrible grammar and bad sentence structure; and I have received telephone calls claiming that our posting “…didn’t adequately state the job requirements…”. Because of my sales background, I understand how it is often the “little things” that make a difference; and, I am thankful these things occurred as they made the screening process much easier.
While I am not oblivious to the news headlines, I happen to be cautiously bullish about business in the next two years. I believe we as senior business leaders are the ones who will drive the economic recovery, and I think the most important thing we can do is to create jobs (see: “Is it just me?”). I am not talking about grabbing cheap interns, or “make work” jobs like the head parking lot sweeper. I am talking about jobs that add real value by: building new products, engineering new processes, opening new markets, selling more stuff. And, if you are like me, an opportunist, there is no better time to swim in the talent pool. There are GREAT people available, and given their circumstances, they will likely be phenomenally hard working and productive, given the opportunity.
Please let me know your experiences in the talent pool. I want to know what YOU are doing to help drive the economic recovery.
Currently rated 5.0 by 3 people
- Currently 5/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
My 12 year old son decided rather than goofing off during Spring Break, he would attend a non-credit class called: “Finding your voice through digital video”. He is in his 14th day of his new “obsession” with digital video; and has already scripted, filmed and edited three movie shorts and two “commercials”. One of these is a stop-motion Lego film trailer for the Matrix; another is a video entry for the Oregon School Choice contest.
How far things have come─in seventh grade, two of my classmates chose to videotape their humanities project. This was the early seventies, and Ampex video equipment was just coming to market, and I went to a school that could afford the equipment. My friends needed a van to haul around the equipment they used: a huge reel to reel video recorder, industrial strength tripod, high-intensity lighting, and a camera that weighed close to 40 pounds. And, they had no means to edit what they produced other than a physical tape slicing machine.
Within a matter of hours, and for a few hundred dollars ($289.00 to be exact) my son is up and running with a Flip camera (thanks to an endorsement from Charlene Li; see “Credit where credit is due” and a downloaded version of Nero digital multimedia editing software. He is a mini-production company in and of himself, and he is empowered with personal expression capabilities I never imagined at his age. Adrienne and I chuckle as we see him dash from the dinner table to his “studio” and as we hear him acting out the different characters in his movies.
Last Thursday, Cisco Systems publicly confirmed they were buying Pure Digital the maker of the Flip. This is a move that helps fulfill Cisco’s long-march strategy of their architecture for voice, video and integrated data (AVVID), first announced at Interop in September 1999.
When Hemingway, Anh and Jeff F. (our three founders) initially envisioned the company, their premise was that individual’s would use rich media in their everyday communications. Continuing technology and business developments like Flip’s acquisition, increasing broadband penetration, and technologies like WiMax are making this more feasible every day, in more places and through more form factors. And, as more people become more adept at creating rich media (like my son), its use will proliferate.
So, back to my son and my conversation with Charlene: my son cannot understand, AT ALL, why Adrienne and I will not allow him to post to YouTube without us first reviewing the videos – we have the obvious concerns of any parent. But what happens to businesses as the barriers to using this technology dissipate? Charlene and I spoke at length about a “corporate voice” and “appropriate use”, and what companies will have to do to: 1) embrace and encourage the use of the newer technologies, and 2) “manage” the appropriate use in the context of a “corporate voice”. It was great conversation; and, I don’t know that we came to any definitive conclusions—other than to say: it is INEVITABLE.
I’d like to hear how you or your company found your “voice” and how you manage “appropriate use”. These are lessons we need to share and learn if we are to embrace this wave.
Currently rated 5.0 by 5 people
- Currently 5/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
A friend of mine, and former fellow school board member, Scott, is a principal in a private investment company. For community service he teaches a stock market class to 5th grade children. In December 2007 he and I were laughing as the students’ portfolios were outperforming the Dow and S&P 500.
One of the things we were laughing about was how several of the students were shorting stocks. One student, Emily, in particular had chosen to short the maker of Crocs. What was so amazing about this was her reasoning – she didn’t use P/E ratios, charts, or technical analysis – she used common sense. She looked around. Her reasoning for shorting the stock: “…everyone who will ever own a pair of Crocs owns them. Now it’s just a replacement sale.” Wow.
So today, I read that Crocs, Inc.’s auditor questions their viability as an ongoing enterprise. Oh, how times change.
This is similar to what I heard Daniel Pink saying when he was talking about the automobile industry in America. His basic premise was: THEY WON – there are more cars in the United States than there are drivers. And people are keeping their cars longer – 7 to 10 years is the new 5. So, this spells overcapacity and the need for an industry to shrink.
So, my question for today is: “How does a company determine when it is approaching the top?” I mean, how do you know that you have been so successful that you have saturated a market and start planning for the inevitable need for diversification or eventual decline?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments about success and planning for the top.
Currently rated 4.7 by 3 people
- Currently 4.666667/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
I tuned into NPR’s All Things Considered last Wednesday night and heard commentator Andrei Codrescu’s piece: “Say it loud” I’m hybrid and I’m Proud”.
Codrescu takes a high-level look at life in the 21st century and draws many conclusions about what “hybrid” means, including hyphenated last names, hyphenated nationalities, etc. Wikipedia defines hybrid as: A hybrid is the combination of two or more different things, aimed at achieving a particular objective or goal.
In October 2006 I reached out to Bill McNee, founder and chairman of Saugatuck Technology, an analyst/consulting firm that is the recognized leader in the software as a service (SaaS) industry because of his position on SaaS 2.0: the “hybrid” of cloud computing integrated with on-premises solutions—connected through the firewall.
Bill took my call, and we have become fast friends. Bill is a REALLY smart guy, and surrounds himself with really smart analysts. And, he has really good advice for companies like Prolifiq. One thing Bill tells me he likes about Prolifiq IS our hybrid model, a model we have had in place since 2002—long before the moniker SaaS 2.0 or “hybrid SaaS” was in place.
We adopted this model out of necessity and circumstances. In 2002, we made several choices (each in fact was a “bet the company” move):
• We chose to build and deploy our application in the “cloud”
• We chose to build on the .Net framework (in 2002 .Net was a purely beta product)
• We chose to NOT build any of our own client software (the last thing the world needs is another desktop application)
• We chose to use web services to integrate with applications our prospects/customers had already deployed and our target users (salespeople) were already using (messaging apps., web browsers, CRM applications, CMS apps., etc.)
• We chose not to hold any of our customer’s data; but would accept instruction data from our customer’s applications and report back to these applications.
The driving force for us was that we wanted to find a way to secure large company customers, serve the needs of the marketing and sales functions, alleviate any security and control concerns from IT, and do this with minimal investment capital. The good news is our strategy worked.
Over the last seven years, we have expanded on this model by developing deeper and more robust integrations through the firewall to premises based applications. Every one of our customers utilizes our hybrid model. This has allowed us to develop very deep and intimate relationships with our customers; and, our performance has garnered a high level of trust with our customers.
As a Toyota Prius hybrid is more complex than a traditional automobile, our model is more complex than a “pure” cloud computing environment; however, it provides better levels of functionality and it best serves the use case requirements of our customers.
So to paraphrase Andrei Codrescu, “Prolifiq is hybrid and we’re proud of it.”
Let me know what you think of the hybrid-SaaS model and your experiences with it.
Currently rated 5.0 by 2 people
- Currently 5/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
I had the honor of having dinner with Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell last Thursday night. I heard Charlene speak 3 weeks ago at a conference held by one of our customers; she had provided the audience her email address, and I wrote her a note. That’s how we ended up meeting face to face.
Charlene, and her co-author Josh Bernoff, had much to do with this blog and for the transparency we have as we approach the medical device market. We had been talking about blogging for over a year; but, Groundswell gave us the courage to embark on what some have construed to be a very risky strategy (see: “You’re doing what?”). There are many other things we have incorporated into our daily lives and operations that are discussed in the book; so, Charlene—THANK YOU!
The food was excellent; however, I hardly remember eating. Charlene indulged me for almost two hours allowing me to tell the Prolifiq story. It was fun to remember the last 8.5 years—both the good and the bad. What a gracious listener; at the conclusion of dinner, Charlene thanked me for MY time and then asked: “What can I do to help you?”
I said, “You can tell me what I am doing wrong.” Charlene leaned forward and said: “Well, with your legacy of rich media, I am quite surprised you don’t have any video in your blog.” Talk about the proverbial “duh” moment. Of course─why wouldn’t we use video in our blog? Very simply, because we are the barefoot cobbler’s kids; the toothless dentist, etc. Point made; point taken. We need to eat our own dog food. Charlene – look for video posts very soon.
If you are a Prolifiq customer, when I pull out my flip™ video camera and ask you to repeat something—give Charlene all of the credit.
Currently rated 5.0 by 4 people
- Currently 5/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
One of the most memorable movie lines is “Show me the money” from Jerry Maguire and it is a very appropriate metaphor for the state of today’s economy on both the buyer and seller side.
Buyers are under intense pressure because of budget cuts and are looking for hard ROI and sellers are under pressure for increased revenue in an era of drastically falling prices and overcapacity in virtually every industry.
Lisa P and I were reminded of this very poignantly yesterday in a sales call to a medical device company. We are a new technology, in an as yet undefined space (per Gartner), so almost all of our customers have no specific line item in the budget. Our application crosses functional boundaries and touches many people within an organization.
However, through active discovery using the Seven Words, Lisa P and I were able to lead the customer through a departmental “hunt” for the pain points in the organization; we discovered who was feeling the pain; we learned how bad the pain was; and most importantly, we learned that the pain was shared and could therefore be funded by multiple budget sources.
Even in an economy that has shrunk, economic activity is still happening – meaning, people and companies still buy goods and services. Maybe not as rapidly, maybe not as expensively, maybe not as simply – but they still buy. The key is being absolutely firm in your resolve as to what your product does for the customer and being able to back it up. If you can prove this, then you can show your customer the money – in either increased revenues or reduced expenses. Either way, that falls to the bottom line.
I’d love to hear from you how you’ve “shown them the money”.
Currently rated 5.0 by 2 people
- Currently 5/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
More and more teams are adding members who work from home, telecommute and who are part of offshore development. Prolifiq is going through this phase.
One of the challenges is having a detailed technical discussion over the phone. We are learning this path of communication now. One member says something and three others on the call from three locations simultaneously start talking. How do we know if the other person has completed what he wanted to say or whether it is just a moment of pause? If we wait too long for everyone to complete what they are saying, we may forget what we wanted to say or ask. How do we intervene? How do we know if the other person on the line is thinking 'any ideas from anyone?' Did anyone have a great idea that was left unsaid because there is no face time, or they didn't want to intrude or they didn't know what was going on at the other end?
As I watched this process across different technical discussions, I see one approach helping more. One of our development team members, who has been working from a different city for many years, waits that one extra second longer to allow the others to start speaking during these calls. What do we do to learn something like this or how do we learn the other skills needed? When someone says ‘oh I see it now’ or ‘I got it’, how do you know which one they got or how do you keep everyone on the same page?
Even with LiveMeeting sessions helping everyone look at the same source code, design, or written description during technical discussions, I think we may miss getting the maximum benefit out of these meetings. I think there are many other dimensions to having a successful technical meeting over the phone when participants are in offices at Beaverton, Bellevue, San Francisco, and Singapore.
I am wondering if marketing teams face similar problems when designing marketing materials over phone? I think more and more technology teams are switching to these kind of sessions. I know for sure we are. Many of these meetings are cutting edge design and decision making meetings. How do we know we reached the best possible option?
What did you or your team members do when learning this process? Or do you have a magic team that just switched gears?
Currently rated 4.3 by 3 people
- Currently 4.333333/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
My brother, Steve, is a CEO of a software company. He and I often swap stories, compare notes, commiserate, and celebrate. He is, and has been, one of my mentors over the years. One of the topics we talk about is change, and its effect on organizations. He tells me: “The only people who like change are babies with wet diapers—and that is not always a guarantee.”
Prolifiq is going through a lot of changes right now:
1. We are wrapping up a year in which our revenues grew 52%
2. We anticipate growth of 75% next fiscal year (beginning April 1)
3. We are preparing to enter a new market – serving Medical Device manufacturers
4. We are increasing staff by over 20% this quarter; we expect to increase by 60% through the year
5. We are adding senior level (read VPs) staff
6. And, we are reorganizing our service delivery infrastructure to better serve our customers.
We are a very tight group of people; however, all of this growth is bringing with it CHANGE. Some people’s jobs will be split in two so they can more clearly focus on one task they excel at; others are being asked to stretch into new roles; new procedures are being introduced; and our DNA changes with each hire we make.
We had our quarterly all-hands meeting last week where we discussed all of this. Prolifiq has tons to be proud of in the last year with all we have accomplished. In spite of this, there was “angst” in the group. Some of this I attribute to all of the negativity in the press about the economy; much I attribute to the big C – change.
I challenged everyone, myself included, to do one of three things:
1. Grow/adapt/change
2. Stay where you are – accepting the fact that someone may come in above you
3. Maybe realize this isn’t the place for you.
I know these words sound harsh; however, they are the practical realities of any business, not just Prolifiq. They are the words every employee of every organization should be thinking of—all the time. I followed this up with the commitment we have to every employee to help them grow/adapt/change. We announced our support for Mentoring and Coaching and for employee development. I asked everyone to think about where they want to be and to step forward when they knew.
Within the first 24 hours after the meeting, I circulated a “ready to be mentored” test and within 15 minutes I had two people take the test, forward the results back to me, and ask to be connected to a mentor. I had one face to face where I was asked “…can you connect me with ______; I’d like to ask [them] to mentor me.” I had one of our engineers ask for the full set of books the management team reads in the monthly book club; the next morning there was a stack of books on their desk. BooYaah! This is exactly what I was looking for.
Whether these actions result in exactly the kind of growth/adaptation/change I/they were looking for is anyone’s guess. The key thing in my mind is: they heard what I said, they recognized the need to change, they asked for help, and they are doing something about it. I cannot ask for much more than this.
Let me know your thoughts on change and how you are helping your people grow/adapt/change. I’d like to learn from you.
Currently rated 5.0 by 2 people
- Currently 5/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5