Hiring well is one of the most difficult – and in my opinion critical – tasks for any tech CEO and his management team, especially in the early days. There are a lot of different approaches and opinions the optimal hiring process. There are a lot of software companies out there these days promising to […]
Great Leaders, Followers and the Importance of Team Players in Tech Companies
The personalities of tech company organizations is considered by many to be a “soft” management topic, resulting in it often not being given the attention it deserves. Traditional management education focuses on the numbers, not interpersonal relationships. But great leaders and an overall positive corporate culture is VERY IMPORTANT to long term corporate success. And […]
Can You Do an Internal Startup Within a Large Corporation?
This is an interesting question. For the purposes of this article, we will define an internal startup as a new business unit which doesn’t fit neatly within the confines of larger, mature company’s existing business activities. The general answer seems like it should be “yes”! But in practice, there are many unique “gotchas” which can […]
Do You Have The Startup Support System To Go The Distance?
Sometimes what seems like the smallest of things can actually be the most important. I find this particularly true in a tech startup environment, where the margin of error for success is very thin almost by definition. When starting up a software or hardware company the focus is rightly on critical topics like product strategic […]
6 Egregious Habits of IT Company CEOs
When I got my first job in the IT industry at HP way back when, the enlightened management style that I encountered was a revelation. I had worked early in my career at large, “old-school” industrial companies where “top down”, authoritarian management approaches (and other practices much worse) were still the norm. The management style […]