I was describing to my rather-precocious, thirteen-year-old son the problem that companies have of getting the word out. As part of “Career Week” at his school (five different jobs for five days at the end of the school year), my son decided he would make a stop-motion Lego video for Tek-Tools, one of my clients, to promote the company. I told him that, if it was good enough, I would show it to the CEO, and maybe he would use it. Little did I know that my son was going to, upon completion, post the video on YouTube. But he did. Without permission. And my wife asked me, once again, “Why don’t we have more controls on his computer?”
Ken Barth, the CEO of Tek-Tools, was our first client at Walden Technology Partners. A lot of people in the computer storage industry know him, and beyond the fact that he has been successful in everything that he has done, everyone who meets him says the same thing: “He’s a great guy.” Ken’s company provides a superb solution for reporting, monitoring, forecasting, and profiling IT infrastructure. It’s easy to install, easy to use, and provides immediate value. What could be better? (more…)
It’s only 7 a.m., and I’ve learned something new. I woke up early (too early) and was catching up on some blog reading, including this one from Jon Toigo. There, I stumbled on his use of the word bleg, which is a term I did not know. As is my custom, I then went on a random internet walk (using the Google search term define: bleg) to find out what else I didn’t know. That led me to a blogosphere glossary from Blogossary. Have fun scrolling the list, and watch out for blogfat.
I recently had the pleasure of reading a draft of Dave Hitz’ new book (title intentionally withheld, so as not to play the spoiler). Dave is one of the co-founders of NetApp (nee’ Network Appliance), and he wrote the book, at least in part, to give current NetApp employees a view into the early days of the company. At recent growth rates, I suspect that substantially more than half of the employees have been with the company fewer than five years and missed not only the startup days, but the turnaround days, post-2001. (more…)
I recently visited the Massachusetts Office of International Trade and Investment (MOITI) with a friend, Bob Winter, who founded Robert-Louis Advisors. At MOITI, we met with Patrick (Pat) Bench, who is Director of Business Development. Patrick’s job is to get companies to open offices in Massachusetts, or rather, that’s how his success is measured. What his job appears to be is to do everything possible to make it easy for non-U.S. companies to set up shop in Massachusetts. (more…)