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How Google and the cloud changed my company
2009-12-23 00:22:00
December 22, 2009 ol li {list-style-type: decimal;margin: 5px 0 5px 40px} ol {margin-bottom: 20px} A couple of years ago, I made one of the hardest calls I have ever had to make as a CEO. Was it around a RIF? Nope. Was it around a new strategic direction? Nah. Much scarier. I asked my employees to pull the Microsoft feeding tube out of their noses and move to The Google . For some employees (engineers, etc.) this was no big deal. But execs...wow...a whole other ball of wax. Execs have Stockholm Syndrome. Even though they will vociferously announce how much they hate Outlook (resource hog, crashing, etc) that very same Exec will get wild-eyed when you ask them to switch. I get it. I was a 10 year prisoner of M$FT myself. Well, I am proud to announce that, by force of paycheck, I did get them to switch — or nearly all of them. We have one dinosaur left, but that’s just fear of change talking. Kami, wake up and smell the sky! What does “s...
More About: Company , Cloud

Work harder, play harderest
2009-11-06 23:05:00
hr {width: 95%;text-align:center;clear:both;margin:2 0px 2% !important;} ol.rick {margin: 0 20px 20px} ol.rick li {list-style: decimal;margin: 10px 20px} .halloweenpics {margin-bottom:20px} .halloweenpics .col {float:left;text-align:center;width: 48%} .halloweenpics .col h6 {height:50px;line-height:100%} .halloweenpics .col a:hover {text-decoration: none} Fonality, like so many of your firms out there, is a deadly serious company. As much as it would be a gas to make video games or holiday gag jokes like our long-time Fonality customer, JibJab, that's *just* not what we do here. We make mission critical business phone systems. Our product, akin to my last company which provided commercial web hosting, is as core to a business as is their electricity or internet service. If your phone system is not working right, your business is not working right. And, we get that. We have worked every day for the past six years to make our product more feature-rich, our support more helpful...
More About: Play , Work

Fight Club :: AfterMath
2009-10-07 23:10:00
I had intended to get this blog back on the business bandwagon. There are a myriad of external topics to choose from: the economy, the future of communications, our health care situation, and more. Then, there are a bevy of internal business topics I could write about: our incredible growth rate (recession?), the fact that we are finally a profitable business (yes, putting money in the bank) -- no small feat for a venture backed startup that still has 50% of its lifetime capital raised in the bank! But, noooooo. People don't wanna hear about these things, do they? Despite my best efforts to move on, I continue to receive a plethora of pesky inquiries about our Fight Club results. It seems like rubber necking has finally made its way into Telecom! What exactly is Fight Club ? What does the Wall Street Journal think of it? So, I have tried to ignore these queries. But now even the blogosphere is demanding a follow-up. Well, here goes: in a nutshell, it was a smashing success. Most p...

And you think the economy is tough...
2009-04-25 01:55:00
So, it's been a pretty crappy economy. And, at Fonality we have felt some of this pain. Our primary product is a phone system and companies tend to buy less of these when they are firing their staff. 2009 hasn't been devastating but this certainly doesn't look like the first half of 2008. Has it been all bad news? No. We have used this time to: make ourselves more efficient, invest heavily in R&D, and analyze areas of the business that don't get noticed when you are doubling in size every single year. But, sometimes when things are down, you just really need to hit someone. So, why not hit your boss? As such, the Fonality employees have decided to have some fun...at each other's expense. They have launched their own official FIGHT CLUB. Our first rule of FIGHT CLUB is: tell everyone about FIGHT CLUB! So, what does this all mean? Well, it means that in six weeks a bunch of tech geeks, with no previous fighting experience, will be getting into a ring and attempting to knock out...
More About: Economy

There is no such thing as good hiring, only good firing
2009-04-11 04:42:00
.node ol.decimal { margin:6px 0; padding-bottom:10px; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; } .node ol.decimal li { list-style-image:none; list-style-position:outside; list-style-type: decimal; margin:6px 0; } .node ul { padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; } I realize that the title of this article: Contradicts a legacy of hiring books with titles such as Hiring the Best and Stop Hiring Failures. Amazon has 17 pages of such while Barnes & Noble clocks in with 224 titles. Potentially puts a gaggle of managerial consultants straight out of work. Makes me look like the grim reaper of CEOs. <!--break--> ...but bear with. What I am about to say has been learned, on the job, in a 15 year career of hiring...and firing...the better part of 1,000 people. Ugh, that made me feel old. <!-- If what I write makes me look like the grim reaper of CEOs.--> What I have learned is, despite all the cute tricks of the interviewing process (which I will blog about later and ...
More About: Good

A.I.Gee Whiz!
2009-03-26 05:57:00
Things really suck out here. Them on Wall Street suckered us good. We on main street let ourselves be suckered. And, now our hard-earned tax dollars have to pay for the privilege of being sucker punched. Yah, it sucks. But, I really think the populous is getting a bit too nutty. This latest AIG witch hunt is just nonsense. And, if people would stop waving the smoldering torch in each other's eyes for a moment, the rest of the lynch mob might be able to realize that what they are doing is counter-productive. <!-- break --> Let's do a quick analysis of our go to market plan: ol {margin: 10px 40px 10px 20px} ol li {list-style-type: decimal;margin: 0 0 20px 20px} div#blogsig {display:none} #contentTools {clear:both} We, the taxpayer, loaned AIG $170B. Like it or not, that's what we did. You and I now own 80% of AIG. We are the new majority shareholders. Woohoo! Now, we (as taxpayers) have begun a witchunt against our (as AIG owners) executives in effort to reclaim $168M of the ...

Giving it back
2009-02-25 01:49:00
(For most of my readers who come here for general business topics, skip this blog. For the few that come here for Open Source or telephony information, you may find this open letter (verbatim below) I wrote to my employees last week interesting) Yesterday, as I was making my way to the microwave, Nathan, in our bad ass support group, stopped me and asked me "why Fonality does not give back to the Asterisk community?" This is old-school FUD created by Digium and its employees (and propagated to the media), but I was surprised to hear it coming from our own. "Give back to the community" always makes me chuckle at the power of propaganda. Thus, I thought should quickly explain Fonality's stance on Open Source and Asterisk, since some of you are new. You are welcome to share what I write with anyone including our customers, our competitors, and the media. There is nothing secretive about our position now, in the past, nor hopefully in the future. In fact, I am proud of our position...
More About: Back , Giving

Budgeting is BS
2009-01-10 01:26:00
It's that time of the year again - budgeting. <apply thumb to windpipe of nearest exec and make them commit to ridic numbers> *groan* *whimper* *gag* Budgeting in a venture-backed company is a little different than an owner-funded one. In an owner-funded company, you make some expenditure decisions based on two things: areas of the business that need investment (scale, R&D, etc.) and sales/marketing risk-expenditures in areas you think have growth potential. It's a pretty simple process. No BS. And these are generally "game day" decisions; you don't spend a lot of time looking 2, 4 or 8 quarters out. Not with payroll to make this week. But in a venture backed company it's totally different. Most of your budgeting is based on massive growth predictions. Your investors expect you to deliver outsized performance to deliver outsized returns to their investors. And, of course, most VCs invest in disruptive companies with the potential to do just that. So at budget time, you...

Let it Burn
2008-10-01 19:07:00
I say let it burn, people. While at first glance this may sound like the cavalier ramblings of a free market zealot. Actually, it's not. Instead, I think there is a sickness in America and this mess from Wall Street to Main Street (I am so tired of that term) is just an indicator of how ill we, as a nation, truly are. Folks, we are a debtor society. We exist in indentured servitude. We are serfs to our credit. We serve Lord Bank and Queen APR and we use our credit card to buy stock hoping to pay off our credit card. IT IS MADNESS. And, it has gone on for far too long. I recently found out that my mother, my incredibly smart, well read, world-traveled, pragmatic mother, lives with $30,000 credit card debt. Ug. She just corrected me on the phone. It’s up to $50K now. "Why?????" I asked with astonishment (I have never had a dollar of credit card debt in my life, even when sleeping on a floor because I couldn’t afford a mattress 10 years ago). "Because I don't feel like li...

America vs. Small Business (1-0)
2008-09-21 02:45:00
OK, this is a bit off my usual business bent, but I am, well, bent. What’s got me all bendy? It stems from the fact that I now live in a country with socialized insurance. Heck, I can't even get socialized medicine for my workforce, lol. Actually, it’s not the insurance bail-out in particular I care about. It’s *all* of these damn bail-outs. I know, I know? many of you had AIG insurance so you avoided [insert personal crisis]. I know, I know?if we didn’t bail out the airlines after 9/11 [insert portend of doom and gloom]. I know, I know? if we didn't bail these behemoths out, our economy would have [picture of Chinese army pouring down Main Street, USA]. I get it, people. I get that these bail-outs are great short term fixes to prevent nasty slumps on the “Street” and to protect our “Nation’s Interest”. (BTW, is there a secret room somewhere where a council of wizened druids decide exactly what our nation finds “interesti...
More About: America , Business , Small Business , Small

If you aren?t being a parrot you aren't doing your job. If you aren?t being
2008-05-31 22:12:00
Repeating oneself is oft the grate of thine soul. We must do it to our kids, we must do it to our aging parents, we must do it to our neighbors, and we must do it to the lousy speech recognition in our nifty gadget. The last place we — the we of the coffee guzzling corporate manager horde — want to do it is…at work. Damn it, these people work FOR you. So, why don’t they listen TO you? Heck, they should know how to do IT in the first place. And, if they can’t get that right, at the least they should listen to you and remember that you have already told them how to do IT. It doesn’t matter what the “it” is — “it” could be anything. read more
More About: Parrot

The Motif of Motivations
2008-04-14 00:50:00
blockquote { margin: auto 1em; font-style: italic; } ol { margin-left: 15px; } Finding and retaining talent — true talent — is damn hard in a company. Some bosses, whether consciously or subconsciously, want sycophantic workers. They would never tell you that, even with a few drinks in them at a bar, but their private, even autocratic styles, determine the ultimate caliber of the folks they hire. read more

Dell, Inc partners with Fonality
2008-01-23 06:28:00
So, as you may have noticed, I don?t usually write in my blog about Fonality-specific business or products, nor do I take many comments about such. Rather, I like to focus on issues which I feel are broadly interesting to business owners, managers, and people who see crossovers between ?life? and ?business?. But, today, I?m going a bit off topic. I am going to write about something historic that has happened for ?my? company, Fonality. I also feel this news is quite interesting to small-to-medium businesses (SMB) everywhere. OK, maybe that was a bit self-serving, but I do think it?s true. ;) Yes, this is a *big* day for us. Actually, this would be a big day for any startup anywhere ? struggling to establish its credibility in an aggressive tech world full of behemoths. This is a day we had expressly envisioned since day one at Fonality. In fact, I can clearly remember almost four years ago ? to the day ? when we (the four of us working at Fonality back then) were sitting around a ...
More About: Dell , Partners , Dell Inc

Open Source, Closed Minds
2008-01-16 20:11:00
This Open Source world for me has been a mixed bath. I came into a complex scene with complex perspectives and ambitions. For me, I have always felt that making money and ethics were not mutually exclusive. Sure, I used to have the “Microsoft is bad and Bill Gates must die” mentality in my early 20s. But, my Orwellian rant faded over time and I began to have a more balanced perspective on the world and the technology which fuels it. Perhaps this is a natural byproduct of the pragmatism which piggybacks the aging process. Perhaps this is a natural byproduct of having to pay rent. Either way, I slowly came to see a world where proprietary software had its place *and* a world where 100% free software had its place. Naturally, I found solace in betwixt ? the world of “Open Source”. read more
More About: Minds , Open-Source

Roses Where I Walk
2007-12-07 22:22:00
A fellow blogging friend of mine gave me a hard time tonight about not blogging more. He wrote ?I would prefer more than one nugget every five weeks.? So, I decided to put digital ink to ethereal paper and talk about a subject that has been on my mind of late. This entry is issued as a warning to other employees, managers, CEOs, and janitors alike. I call this corporate disease: ?Roses Where I Walk ?. See, I have noticed an insidious little pattern that arises as your company grows. As a CEO, sitting at the top of my firm?s food chain, it affects me every day. But, I imagine that in larger (thousand+ person) companies, it probably creeps all the way down to the VP and Director level. This dastardly practice is born with no ill intention ? nay, narry a dash of malice nor a whim of Machiavellian bent. Quite the opposite in fact ? this rose is born from the desire to please ?the boss?. And with that desire to please, comes the byproduct of removing objectivism and therefore the ability...

Process Makes Perfect
2007-10-31 20:56:00
... or ?How to be a fire marshall and not a fire fighter? I am a scientist. My craft is business and my tool is process. This means that when a crisis erupts (call it an angry customer), I don?t run from it. Nor, do I rush to appease. Nor do I hurdle toward a singular solution. Rather, I immediately begin a holistic examination of the underlying process (or lack thereof) which attributed to the breakage. I then fix (or create anew) the process, and as a byproduct avoid the problem from ever reoccurring. Duh, right? Well, this is actually a lot harder that it sounds. read more
More About: Perfect , Process

"What do you think of my idea?"
2007-09-18 18:54:00
September 15, 2007 (Sun. 4:45 am, my mind won't let me sleep) For 10 years now people have approached me with business ideas, and asked: "What do you think of my idea?" I guess they ask me because I have had three business and all three have been successful thus far. My last business had 100 employees before I turned 25. I barely finished high school, yet by the time I was 26, I had been acquired by a $3B publicly-held company and became a Vice President there and within months was acquiring other companies for $20 million dollars. So, people ask me for my advice. A lot. And I have always taken their "What do you think of my idea?" very seriously. After all, asking for an opinion on something that you have labored over is difficult - it's a moment of vulnerability as you open yourself up to a potential battery of cerebral criticism and intellectual pugilism. It's not easy ...and I know this. Thus, I listen to their pitches, I read their business plans,...
More About: Idea

The Power of "I Don't Know"
2007-09-18 18:52:00
September 06, 2007 (Thurs. 11:34 am) What a frustrating day. I spent 2 hours talking in circles with an executive in what started as a simple question. I got a confusing answer to my first question and pursued that answer with more questions. The answers back to these new questions were even more confusing, and contradictory to the original answers, which morphed into a new set of questions. Wash, rinse, repeat. Fast forward two hours and many heart palpitations later ...and I finally realized that this executive simply does not know the power of "I don't know". Do you have enough courage to say "I don't know"? What about when the pressure is on and a boss or potential investor looks you dead in the eye and asks you a question that you think you should know? Do you then have the fortitude at that precise moment to look them dead in the eye and say "I don't know"? read more
More About: Power

1+1 = ½
2007-09-18 18:50:00
August 29, 2007 (Wed. 6:14 pm) I have noticed some funny math in my startups over the years. This funny math doesn't start until after VC funding -- so to better explain it, I must first rewind the clock to our pre-institutional investor stage. See, I do funding a bit different than other entrepreneurs. I launch the company myself. I form (some of) the team. We build the product. We get to revenues ... and we even go profitable. In short: we get our ship lean, mean, and pumping efficacy from every valve. Then we go get VC funding (less dilution, more control, etc.) It's so predictable what happens next. Ya gotz some green in the bank and a newly formed HR department, replete with a salivating recruiter, brimming with job reqs to be filled. Go! Go Go! read more

CC your A$$
2007-08-29 20:49:00
August 22, 2007 (Wed. 9:09 pm, 1,049 emails left in my Inbox)   Email is ruining my company. Not because of SPAM or viruses or because no matter how many times I click I never seem to satisfy my long-lost Nigerian relative. No, I have gotten to the point where I am 1,000 emails behind. As a CEO, this is strategically dangerous for a company. You scoff at me. You chortle. Perhaps you risk a guffaw. You thought email was efficient, and when you had 5 employees it was. But now, it is killing YOU TOO in ways you don't even know. It is WASTING YOUR TIME. It is DESTROYING your accountability and STRIPPING your employees of ownership. Welcome to what I call the "CC disease" or "CC your a$$". It's a virus I tell you - spreading seeds of inefficiency through your company at the speed-of-packet. read more

the Tsunami week and the Point of the Janitor's Blog ...
2007-08-29 20:43:00
August 17, 2007 (Fri. 7:38 pm, desperately trying to leave office on Friday before sun goes down) I am intending for this blog to be more about startups and my experience as a successful entrepreneur in the tech space than about VoIP, open source, or my own company specifically. As a 33-year "old" serial entrepreneur (I hate that term, makes me feel like I store body parts in my freezer), I have come to find a lot of repeatable lessons in building businesses. See, Fonality is my third startup and third round of playing a CEO/Janitor on TV, and things are starting make more sense now ... read more
More About: Tsunami , Blog , Week , Point , Nami

My First Blog - v. 2.0
2007-08-29 01:36:00
August 12, 2007 (Sun. 10:30 pm, just finished launching, eating first meal of day) So, my company asked me to write a blog to inaugurate the launch of our new product, trixbox Pro. My first blog, oh goody - the Web needs more of these. So I sat down and banged one out. I was all proud of it and sent it out to my executive team. It was a big thought leadership muckety muck piece and I was feeling all leadership-like. Then my phone rang. It was Dan, my VP of Finance, fellow board member, and now spiritual blog advisor. read more
More About: Blog

My First Blog Ever
2007-08-29 01:34:00
August 12, 2007 These, my friends, are hybrid times. It seems as if, since the dawn of the Web in the 90s, our society has been in a 15 year never-ending digital transformation. The voracious appetite of this packet-based revolution never ceases. Industry by industry, medium by medium, the digital beast sets its sites on a new victim, and, slowly, the propriety walls crumble and new birth takes place. These transformations, while painful, have improved society by bringing us together and putting us in charge. First there was email. This literally took the post office by storm. And, despite the best efforts of SPAM and viruses, email has become the firm standard for the bulk of written communication these days. Love it or hate, that baby is here to stay. read more
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