In order to reduce commute time for everybody, Intalio has decided to move its offices from Redwood City to Palo Alto and San Francisco. I will be in the Palo Alto office, and just found some space for it in downtown Palo Alto. Our move is scheduled for the end of May. As part of this relocation project, we will try to adopt many new Office 2.0 technologies. This should be fun…
I recently got featured in an article on LinkedIn written for Business 2.0 Magazine and published by CNN. This success story was used as an example for what you can do with this great social networking tool. Pretty cool…
After 106 days of silence, I am back at the keyboard. This little party got me busy, then the gods of business decided to turn a good eye on Intalio, which got me even busier. Things are back on track now, and readers should expect regular daily posts moving forward. In the meantime, I am listening to the excellent 5:55 from Charlotte Gainsbourg, with music from Air. I love this type of collaboration. Many thanks to Arnaud for introducing me to this great LP.
May started her new job at Guidewire today. The company is developing online solutions for the insurance industry. It’s the first time May is working for a start-up, and she is quite excited about it. Congratulations for the new job! And I should also mention that our friends Arnaud and Sandy had a baby boy named Nohan today. Congratulations to the parents and welcome on board buddy!
Some days are more intense than others, and today must rank at the extreme of the intensity scale. I spent it negotiating with a stubborn entrepreneur advised by an incompetent lawyer for acquiring the rights on a piece of software that will be embedded into Intalio’s products. After six hours of non-stop negotiations, we finally reached an agreement and signed contracts. Having worked in the US for about seven years now, my negotiation style must be different from what is practiced in France, and I must say that the experience was quite painful. Nevertheless, I got what I wanted, the job was done, and the deal was so good that I could not feel any sign of buyer’s remorse. I just wish I won’t have to deal with the same people ever again. My lawyer was excellent though, and I look forward to working with him in the future. Time to catch my train to London now.
I was supposed to attend a Sheryl Crow concert organized for SAPPHIRE tonight, but a customer flew from New York to Orlando just to meet me, so I decided to take him for dinner instead. We got treated to some excellent lobster and steak (surf & turf) at McCormick & Schmicks, and exchanged stories about scuba diving. Gilles, next time you’re in the Bay Area, let’s make sure that we organize a diving trip to Monterey and get you certified for NITROX diving. Many thanks for having made the trip, it was a real pleasure meeting you!
This week, May and I found some time to watch Everything is Illuminated, a movie directed by Liev Schreiber and staring Elijah Wood. The movie tells the story of a young Jewish American man returning to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II. I do quite a bit of work with Ukraine but never got a chance to visit myself. The superb countryside landscapes shown in the movie made me want to fix that rather sooner than later.
Management books are usually boring. Most of the time, they revolve around a single idea that might deserve a press article or a white paper, but certainly not shelf space in bookstores or libraries. One exception to this rule is the work done by Patrick Lencioni from The Table Group. Patrick’s books are written like novels, can be read in two to three hours, and taught me some of the most important management rules that I am using in my work today. Most importantly, they never fail to entertain, as any good novel should. Patrick just published a fifth book called Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. I received a copy today and cannot wait to read it. Many thanks to Frederic for the heads up.
Some business people travel with their golf clubs and deal on the course. Others simply carry their pilot license and do it in the air. I’ve never played golf, so I cannot really say anything about the game, but it seems to me that I will fall into the second category more than the first. I had lunch yesterday with a customer who I had not met for more than two years. At the end of our meal, I asked him what he was doing for fun, and his answer was: “I fly”. As it turns out, the guy has a Commercial pilot license and owns half a share on a Cessna 421. With about 374 BHP on each wing, he can fly from Denver to San Jose in about three hours. Not bad… The weather was exceptionally good today, so we decided to take his New Zealander business partner for the now usual Bay tour, with a short stop at Half Moon Bay (KHAF). If only every business meeting could be like that…
I am at work and just read this Fortune article that May sent me. It explains why founders usually make better CEOs than hired ones. I personally worked with two professional CEOs and I agree with the author. Founders have a vested interest in a company’s success that transcends short-term capital gains. The interests of long-term shareholders are usually better aligned with the ones of a founder, and unless she really cannot do the job, I tend to think that no one is better qualified to lead a company on the long run than the person who started the company at the first place. At least this is what I learned the hard way.
My experiments with Office 2.0 got some coverage from Computerworld today. The idea for Office 2.0 started during our last trip to Japan, just three months ago. It’s nice to see that some ideas can get adopted so fast.
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