Blog Yes & Know

“Outsides” building your stuff?

Recently, Yahoo announced they were letting “outsiders” build their email solution. Why would they do that, some might ask? Why would they not, is what I’m thinking. Get the best …

Two types of Advisors: those that Critique and those that Create

Have you ever had the feeling that the people around you are there to tell you how something won’t work? Those are called critiques. Having a critique around as an advisor would be like being in the middle of the country and lost trying to get to NYC let’s say, and having someone come by to say, “this freeway won’t take you to there”. Okay, fair enough. But don’t just leave me there, dude. Tell me which one does!

Even Steinways get out of tune

What’s the difference between an ethical leader and a business leader? Are they mutually exclusive, a subset of each other, or one and the same? This coming week, I’m speaking …

Carly, 2.0

Carly 2.0 was released this week. Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of HP, is on tour for her book, Tough Choices. Yesterday, I went. Are you surprised I went? I …

Live is to Choose

My firm is growing, and growing up to be something significant, and so this entry is my reflection on growth and what drives it. On a personal level, I believe …

Understanding the full impact of the web

This will probably sound crazy, but despite all the hype about Web 2.0 and web startups, the most common mistake we see tech companies making with regard to the web is underestimating its long-term impact on their businesses.
I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s a reaction to the Internet bubble — because the short-term effects of the web were oversold, people also tuned out the long-term effects. I know some companies are so settled in their current franchises that they don’t understand how vulnerable they are over time to the changes taking place in the marketplace. Others take the web very seriously in one respect, but don’t understand its full impact across their entire company.
To understand what the web is going to do to our businesses, you have to look at it as both an application development platform and a new communication medium. Either change alone would have huge impacts, but the two together are especially powerful. Here’s what we see happening in each area, followed by some ideas on what they mean for businesses.

In the Channel: VARs Put a Different Face on SaaS

According to a 2005 AMR Research study of 500 respondents representing companies of all sizes, more than 78 percent said they are currently using or considering SaaS. As ISVs push SaaS applications into the mainstream, ISVs and VARs need to consider likely changes to the channel economic model. One of these changes is likely to be a shift in the balance of power toward full-service VARs. While ISVs will find some of these changes hard to swallow, they need to keep in mind that this is the cost of extending the reach of their applications into additional market segments.

Workforce dynamics

I met with a remarkable executive this week, and she shared a painful thing going on in their management team. Two people are playing some rather competitive games. It’s causing …