Ockham Technologies: Living on the Razor’s Edge
What is your assessment of the job Jim Triandiflou has done getting started and assembling key human resources?
Positive things:
- He made very effective use of his network (John Yates, Mike Meisenheimer, Greg Corgan (IBM), Ron Hardin) to get the company started.
- He was very aware of the fact that he had to find people for different roles and responsibilities (e.g. finding “the best overall athlete”). This was especially important when building the found-ing team. He was very reflective on his own strengths and weaknesses and looked for people with complementary skills.
- He had a clear picture of the company culture: performance-oriented and results-based. This is very helpful when looking for people fitting into this culture.
- He was able to get IBM as launching customer for his new software which is very useful for finding investors.
- He did a very structured approach: Finalize the specifications before starting with the imple-mentation of the software. He found a launching customer fast, so that the new product bene-fits from his ideas and know-how.
- The investment of own money was a very positive sign for investors.
Negative things:
- Although Jim was aware of the fact, that he needs different skills in the team, he found no one with experience in software development. When he outsourced it he has nobody at Ockham who steers Flex Solutions.
- A result from that was the critical presentation of the prototype at IBM which was not well pre-pared. At the beginning they started with a structured approach (see positive things) but during implementation they got more and more into “do it quick and dirty”. This is OK for a startup till a certain degree but from my point of view they overdid it.
- When loosing Ken Burows he didn’t find a replacement with the same entrepreneurial skills.
- IBM as launching customer is a great deal. But it is also a big risk in terms of reputation in the market if it fails. It’s a kind of “all or nothing”. A smaller
Positive things:
- He made very effective use of his network (John Yates, Mike Meisenheimer, Greg Corgan (IBM), Ron Hardin) to get the company started.
- He was very aware of the fact that he had to find people for different roles and responsibilities (e.g. finding “the best overall athlete”). This was especially important when building the found-ing team. He was very reflective on his own strengths and weaknesses and looked for people with complementary skills.
- He had a clear picture of the company culture: performance-oriented and results-based. This is very helpful when looking for people fitting into this culture.
- He was able to get IBM as launching customer for his new software which is very useful for finding investors.
- He did a very structured approach: Finalize the specifications before starting with the imple-mentation of the software. He found a launching customer fast, so that the new product bene-fits from his ideas and know-how.
- The investment of own money was a very positive sign for investors.
Negative things:
- Although Jim was aware of the fact, that he needs different skills in the team, he found no one with experience in software development. When he outsourced it he has nobody at Ockham who steers Flex Solutions.
- A result from that was the critical presentation of the prototype at IBM which was not well pre-pared. At the beginning they started with a structured approach (see positive things) but during implementation they got more and more into “do it quick and dirty”. This is OK for a startup till a certain degree but from my point of view they overdid it.
- When loosing Ken Burows he didn’t find a replacement with the same entrepreneurial skills.
- IBM as launching customer is a great deal. But it is also a big risk in terms of reputation in the market if it fails. It’s a kind of “all or nothing”. A smaller