Even when it was looking likely that angels like Shawn and Wally would fund us, Jack insisted that we keep exploring other paths. He said he knew consultants who specialized in helping small companies get big funding. And then there were also the venture capitalists (VCs)...
Being unique is great. Except when you’re not like everyone else.
Even when it was looking likely that angels like Shawn and Wally would fund us, Jack insisted that we keep exploring other paths. He said he knew consultants who specialized in helping small companies get big funding. And then there were also the venture capitalists (VCs)... The unsatisfied customer is the most important customer.
One day, I was at home showing off the Neoforma website to my father-in-law. At the time, he was a dentist, computer-illiterate, impatient and prone to doing things the old, familiar way, unless the new way was unequivocally proven to be vastly more efficient... Amazon.com IPO skyrockets Businesses Find the Web a Friendly Mall Our first taste of outside investment created an almost instantaneous craving for more.
When Jack made good on his promise to connect us with potential investors, we scrambled to produce a short business plan and slide presentation. The business plan would be sent to several angels... When we entered this new society — the world of the technology start-up — we felt quite lost in some ways. It was difficult to know how to navigate the many established, yet unfamiliar channels of communication without a guide. Jeff and I were lucky.
We were referred to Jack by the large law firm he had left to start his own practice. We didn’t think that a relationship with an attorney was a big deal. We just wanted someone who could help us set up a new corporation and negotiate a good agreement with Varian, that was all... We hadn’t really expected to be in the business of helping to ease the discomfort of rats, but once things got going, there was really no way of knowing where they might lead.
In 1996, at the request of the local Varian salesmen, I had traveled to Australia to show off the software Jeff and I had written. One of the venues I had gone to was a prestigious teaching hospital... Sometimes a shove from the nest leads to flight. Sometimes it doesn’t. Time would tell.
As my confidence in Neoforma increased, my situation at Varian continued to decay... Zona Research Indicates Microsoft Internet Explorer Share Now 28 Percent We meant well. We were focused on making things better in our little corner of the world. How could we have imagined that we were causing such a fuss?
When we started Neoforma, Jeff and I considered ourselves, in part, to be champions of the small company... Department Toolkit Now Available We were going to change the world. All we had to do was let the world know.
The largest U.S. trade show for medical equipment is held every November in Chicago. I had attended, and dreaded, this show for many years... When I finished the first draft of Starting Something, the book was too long. Going into the process, I had thought that I would struggle to come up with enough words to fill a book, so this was quite a surprise. Thanks to two great editors, most of the pruning was quite painless, making the book better with each omission. However, there was one overlong chapter that I was very reluctant to trim.
The Casting chapter is about hiring. The book’s core message is that a company’s ultimate product is its culture. How could I exclude some of our most important experiences – successes and failures? But this chapter was contrary to my objective to keep each chapter as short as possible. So I ripped the following section out of that chapter, telling myself that I’d likely release it separately at some point. Over the years, many people have asked me to expand upon my hiring process. After much procrastination, here goes. This section covers a period in 1998, just after our first large funding round. The market for talent was very hot, making it essential to work with recruiters. This picks up near the end of the Casting chapter. As it was extracted from the book, this prose is told in the past tense, but I still apply the same principals and practices today… A company’s ultimate product is its culture.
We weren’t rolling in dough, but for a time we were making more money than we were spending. And the work was piling up... By day, I was a disempowered middle manager. By night, and on lunch hours, I was a respected business leader, speaking as an equal with the CEOs of major companies in the industry.
In our early days, we were still focused on the radiotherapy portion of healthcare. This was the area we knew best. In that in-between time, while I still worked at Varian but ran Neoforma, I existed in an odd, ethereal state... CompuServe, Microsoft Forge Major Strategic Alliance There is nothing more frustrating than watching someone wear their fabric of memories and behaviors in such a way as to enshroud rather than enhance the beauty that is their unique potential.
She was charming. I first met Cassandra when a very good friend and former business partner invited me to meet his new, attractive, very stylish girlfriend... Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 Beta Now Available I’d like to say that we had it all figured out from the beginning. That we knew the Internet would be the hot place to be. But it wasn’t like that at all.
Our survival would depend on how efficiently we could get our message out to a diverse and potentially hostile audience. While we had great advocates using our software, we weren’t certain how openly we would be welcomed by healthcare equipment suppliers... Neoforma opens corporate offices in Mountain View, California. Yahoo IPO closes at $33 after $43 peak There was no master plan. A series of chance encounters planted the seed that was to become Neoforma.
Neoforma’s first offices were located just a few blocks from my house in Mountain View, California, a suburban town near Stanford University and just south of the halfway point between San Francisco and San Jose. Neoforma incorporated. It was an inauspicious start.
Neoforma’s official beginning can be traced to a day more than three years earlier than our IPO filing. At the time, I would never have predicted the scale and intensity of the course we were about to take... |
About MeI am an architect, writer, and serial entrepreneur. Archives
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