Marketing
This post was inspired by a recent beer with long-term colleague, friend, and fellow volleyball dad, Paul Albright, now chief revenue officer at Marketo. The question we discussed was how can a company sell current product capabilities but also market vision at the same? (For brevity's sake
Silicon Valley
The first time I heard the word "pivot" in the context of business strategy was about nine months ago. As a student of language, my ears perked up when I heard it. I remember thinking, "pivot ... interesting, haven't heard that one before, ... strong buzzword potential,
Management
Everyone’s aligned in a Silicon Valley startup, right? Give everyone some options so everyone has skin in the game and then everyone wants what’s best for the share price: one for all and all for one! Not so fast. In this post, inspired by a chat with longtime
Open Source
As a marketer, I'm a fan of open source software. After all, if you can't dislodge Microsoft from mid-range server operating systems, Microsoft Office from desktop productivity suites, or Oracle from relational databases -- and doing so through traditional means is a virtual impossibility -- then blowing
Management
I've always found business to have a fair amount of accidental, built-in hubris, largely resulting from the strategy formulation process. I remember one time at Business Objects we had a strategy offsite where, in our infinite wisdom and with a fair bit of groupthink, we came up
Strategy
Let's say you're not feeling well, so you visit the Doctor. You walk into her office and she says, "Hi, it's great to see you again. I'm going to start you on 125 mcg of Synthroid." You say, "What?
Strategy
HP today announced that they will acquire data warehouse and analytics platform provider Vertica of Billerica, MA. Cowen and Company estimated the price at 5x revenues, estimating that Vertica did $40M in 2010 revenues, suggesting a valuation of $200M which I find low. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised
Strategy
One thing they drill into your head in business school is how to make everything a quadrant. While I don't know for sure if it started with the famous BCG matrix -- which groups business into dogs, cash cows, stars, and question-marks -- I'd bet that the
Strategy
I've always loved emergent strategies for many reasons: * They're practical. You invest in what works as opposed to what leadership wants to work. * I've seen too many strategy offsite white-board, created-in-a-vacuum strategies fail. * The premise that genius is not in
Strategy
As I sit here at Palantir's Govcon 5 conference at the lavish Ritz Carlton in Tyson's Corner (Virgina), I can't help but think about the recent "fit or fat" startup debate that hit the blogosphere a few weeks back. The debate started
Marketing
I've spent my career competing, for the most part successfully, against companies from 10 to 1,000 times bigger than my own. Thus, over the years, I've developed some rules that can help maximize your odds of success when competing against giants. * Concentrate force. The easiest
Marketing
On the face of it, Benihana is a pretty simple restaurant which ought to mean just one thing in the mind of its customers: teppanyaki, the form of tableside cooking/entertainment for which they are famous. I like the notion of businesses owning one word in the mind of the
