Presentation - Wisdom Business Advisors

Lessons learned…

Robert Solomon

Copyright ©
2012


Robert Solomon



•
25+ years building technology organizations,
products and companies.


Member/leader of the teams that created:




–
RDB one of the 1
st

commercial relational
dbms
’


–
AIS/NET 1 (
SaaS

in 1981!)


–
PRO350 one of the first personal computers



Member/leader of the teams that created:


–
Vistagate
, the first multiprotocol communications
gateway (computer to LAN to WAN to COMPUTER
communications)
–

Before
CISCO


–
MINX, the first video conferencing personal
computer


–
Dynamic software update for distributed systems



Member/leader
of the teams that created:


–
High performance distributed gaming
systems


–
Video Lottery Systems
–

advanced gaming
systems


–
One of the first bioinformatics
systems


–
OmniReplicator
, the first heterogeneous database
replicator


Member/leader of the teams that
Created
:



–
OmniWarehouse
, the first data warehouse engine


–
Reality, the first business rule driven search engine


–
One of the first internet ticketing companies


–
One of the first ecommerce web social ecosystems (1999)


–
Veracity of Internet information



•
All were great technologies


•
But they were not all market successes


•
We learned a lot, but…



Understand

A problem cannot be solved if it is not
understood

Engage

You and your team must be engaged/focused on
solving the problem


Listen/Learn

The team must be constantly learning and
validating what it has learned


Listen/Learn REPEAT

Motivate

It is essential for the team to be constantly
motivated

You must be passionate!

Expect/challenge

Execute

Make it happen


Set goals/expectations


Measure


Repeat

Deliver

The customer accepts what you have built and
pays you!


Unless this happens, you have not succeeded.

Iterate

Repeat the cycle using what you have learned
and validated

Doing just one thing right is not
enough

•
Technology + Marketing + Sales/Distribution +
Support

•
All functions must work together

•
All functions must constantly be learning and
validating what they have learned (e.g.,
progress against measureable goals)

•
NO SILOS!!!


People


•
People
People

People

People


•
Without them nothing is possible

•
But remember: ANYBODY is NOT better than
NOBODY

Culture

•
Culture, Culture, Culture



Communicate

•
Communicate
Communicate


IP

•
And lately,
Intellectual Property

Learn/Validate

Never stop


Customers Competitors


Let paranoia prevail