John McArthur’s New Venture Blog

At the very kind invitation of my former IBM rep (I mean former as in two companies and 13 years ago, when I was an IT buyer spending multiple tens of millions of dollars on mainframe computers and storage each year and her youngest son wasn’t yet riding a bicycle, much less driving a car), I went to a seminar today hosted by Mainline.  I’ve been told Mainline is IBM’s largest value-added reseller.  I think it was someone at Mainline who told me that.  Anyway, the topic was VMWare’s Virtual Desktop. 

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I received the following message this weekend:

I received a failed delivery message because your mailbox was full. Here’s the email again. 

Mike

The failed delivery message to my potential client was courtesy of my internet service provider that provides my corporate email. Luckily this potential client also knew my personal gmail address and forwarded his company overview to that address for my review.  Shame on me.  I had not cleared Outlook or my corporate email service from the last 3 months of emails.  Yes, that’s right, 3 months. (more…)

I just finished re-reading “The Challenging Road, Nidec Policy and Nagamori-ism.”  Unfortunately, you probably can’t find a copy, at least not in the U.S.  I’ve checked eBay, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, and there are no copies available.  I got my copy from Crawford Del Prete, who befriended Yoichi Ichikawa, the former Executive Advisor to Shigenobu Nagamori, the CEO of Nidec Corporation, over the course of numerous trips to Japan. I assume that Crawford must have received several copies of Nagamori-san’s book,  because I know Crawford kept at least one, and I and several of my former colleagues each received a cherished copy from Crawford.  As I’ve started my own company, many of the policies and much of the philosophy have been very helpful.  But I would also like to share the ideas with the founders of some of the startups that I meet. So, Nagamori-san, if you are reading this, please let me know how I can get additional copies. (more…)

There are no hyperlinks in this posting, because it’s sensitive.  Some people might get a little touchy.  Or hurt.

I had the opportunity to meet this month with the head of storage planning and management at a large, global corporation.  Just in case I happened to meet with you this month and you are reading this, let me answer the question.  I meet with a lot of people, and no, I’m not writing about you. It is someone else.  I’ll call him Guy #1.

“So, if it isn’t me, how large is Guy #1’s company?,” you might ask.  Let me answer that in storage terms by saying that deploying 50 terabytes a month of new storage capacity is well within his stretch goal for the year.  See, I told you it wasn’t you.  You barely exceed 45 terabytes a month.  Guy #1 probably won’t even break a sweat getting to 50 terabytes a month.   (more…)

In all of my excitement about Facebook, I forgot to mention Xing, to which I was introduced by Billa Bhandari, who is CEO of Akoura.  Akoura offers some interesting security software.   If you use Akoura’s DataSecure product, you get a perfect excuse to use the word “obfuscation” in polite conversation.  DataSecure is a software product that, in the company’s words, “protects information through the use (of) unique obfuscation technology and strong authentication that transforms any sensitive information into plausible covers.”   Personally, I’m interested in both obfuscation and plausible covers.  I have a feeling that there are some government agencies similarly interested.

I first met Billa, when he and I worked at State Street Bank.   I’ve posted a profile on Xing, and I like the way in which it visually shows you how you are connected to other people, but I am a long way from being a heavy user.  OK, I only have one connection, which is Billa.  But Billa is connected to over 2000 people at last count, so Billa’s a good person to know.  Which reminds me, I owe him a call.

Are any of you using Xing?

I was an early user of online business-networking sites, but have until recently avoided the social-networking sites.  So what exactly would induce a 50-something, former storage analyst to join Facebook?  To hang out with some storage geeks, of course.  Turns out there are several storage-related groups on Facebook.  Here are a couple: 

• Storage Gurus, which includes members like Steve Terlizzi and Joel Reich 
• Fans of High End Storage, which includes members like Barry Burke, Marc Farley, Steve Kenniston, Dave Vellante, and Roland Bavington

The names are pretty familiar to those of us who have been around the storage industry.  What surprised me most about joining Facebook was to see who else was already there.  Sure, I found the storage geeks. But I also found some stoggier investor types and business executives mixed in with the edgier and younger folks I expected to find.  Finding my 20-something nephews in Facebook was not a surprise. (more…)

Back-of-the-napkin analysis isn’t good enough for some people, as one friend illustrated, when after my last post he sent me this link to an available research report on Ice Cream in the USA to 2011.  This report, which provides volume, value, share and per-capita consumption analysis across four categories of ice cream, confirms once again what my brother, Ken, has said, “If you focus narrowly enough, and study intensely enough for a few weeks, you can become the world’s leading expert on a topic.”  If the availability of this 120-page, 530 Euro report isn’t enough to prove Ken’s claim, note on the weblink the assertion that “Customers who bought this report also bought Ice Cream in Pakistan to 2011 and Ice Cream in Argentina to 2011.   Having been to Argentina and observed the beauty of the country, I had been hoping to become the world’s leading expert on ice cream consumption in the country. Alas, the job has been taken.  I guess I will need to focus more narrowly.  Perhaps I’ll focus on the per-capita consumption of 18 oz. Porterhouse steaks.  You wouldn’t believe how much meat they eat in Argentina. In the meantime, I’m wondering, if I can get a discount on a three-country ice cream report bundle. (more…)

When I was interviewing candidates for analyst positions at my former employer, I would often engage in a friendly exercise of “cognitive estimation.”  We all use cognitive estimation  to answer a question, when the exact answer is unknowable, or difficult to know without expensive or difficult measurement.  Clinical neuropsychologists use normed tests of cognitive estimation to evaluate the impact of brain injury, dementia,  and Alzheimer’s disease in patients.  Back at the market research company, I made up my own examples to assess the “common sense” and thinking process of applicants. Here’s an example: 

“How many gallons of ice cream were sold in Massachusetts in the month of July, 2007?”  

You could spend a lot of money with research houses, point-of-sale tracking systems, or field observers, and come up with some rather precise numbers.  Or you could take the total number of Massachusetts residents, multiply by some reasonable estimate of daily ice cream consumption on warm days (something more than a spoonful and less than a quart, I’d guess) and multiply that by 31 days, and get to a good-enough, back-of-the-napkin answer.  This back-of-the-napkin analysis is exactly what seems to be missing in some startups, and it’s exactly the kind of analysis that marketing needs to be doing before product development engages too much engineering talent.

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