Posts - Page 2

  • Please Stop Hiring PhDs as Sales Engineers

    Feb 5th, 2015 - Category: Strategy

    Graduate First, I am not part of a growing “movement” that says that higher education is unnecessary in today’s modern workforce. Education plays an important function in the development of an advanced society, but with that said almost every time I speak to sales engineers with PhDs, I have a lesser opinion of their company, not better. Something just doesn’t feel “right.” The issues can include:

  • Follow-Up to 'When Life Gives You Lemons'

    Dec 23rd, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    Slack As a follow-up to my post from August 2014, “When Life Gives You Lemons,” it ended up that Slack, a company that was the result of a failure of another company, is now “The fastest-growing workplace software ever.” According to The Verge, their market valuation is now $1.12 billion! The story is interesting, but probably not worth reading unless you have an interest in team collaboration communication software.

  • Making Tools to Make Life a Bit Easier

    Oct 30th, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    One of our primary responsibilities as engineers is to solve problems to improve the quality of life: everything from a quieter dishwasher in stressful urban environments to a piece of military equipment that helps soldiers protect a country from external threats. Sometimes however, this utopian goal get subverted by selfish interests: profit for profits sake, power plays, manipulation, avoidance of work, etc.

  • Amazon Plays with Fire and Finally Gets Burned

    Sep 23rd, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    Amazon Home Page With all the attention Apple is getting for the iPhone 6, it might be interesting to talk about Amazon for a moment. Despite what some people say, their Prime membership is incredibly convenient, Kindle is wonderful, and Instant Video has lured many away from Netflix and Apple iTunes. However Amazon has a psychological complex; they don’t realize they are an e-commerce company. It started innocently enough, the original Kindle Reader with E-Ink was a breakthrough and was released the same year as the iPhone. The Kindle provided a better way to read books before tablets became popular.

  • Part 1: Making Every Salesperson into a Sales Manager

    Sep 17th, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    Money Salespeople are sales managers by definition. Great salespeople typically manage their territories and accounts as if they are running their own business:

  • Part 3: The Sound and Vibration Market for Investors - Dewesoft

    Sep 9th, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    Dewesoft I will end this series with an example of a company that might be of interest to investors, Dewesoft. They were created almost 20 years ago to be the software development arm of Dewetron. They eventually created their own world class hardware solutions to go with their excellent software. Now they are slowly disrupting the industry with high quality hardware and software at reasonable prices.

  • Why Management Matters: Microsoft's Slow Decline

    Aug 28th, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    Why is good management important? There are many obvious reasons, but one that is not often discussed is that managers create the personality of a corporation. Who would you rather hang around with: a smart, fun, creative person who is constantly learning and trying new things or a boring conformist who never takes a risk? Management can make the difference between a company with vibrant, creative solutions and a company with boring, confusing, “me too” products. The worse offenders are managers who are just good enough. These are people who maintain their position by following the rules and delivering exactly what is expected, no more and no less. Creativity is dangerous to them. Costs are controlled, new ideas are buried, and non-conformity is punished to prevent potentially risky (and visible) failures.

  • Part 2: The Sound and Vibration Market for Investors - Summary

    Aug 22nd, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    Market: Sound and Vibration, Test and Measurement (S&V T&M)

  • When Life Gives You Lemons...

    Aug 18th, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    So you have your shiny new M.A. in Philosophy from Cambridge and the job market for philosophers is looking a bit sparse. So you begin to dabble in the hot new thing called the Internet and make a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that just goes on and on. It even has the perfect name, Game Neverending.

  • Part 1: The Sound and Vibration Market for Investors

    Aug 15th, 2014 - Category: Strategy

    BV DP Venture capitalists must be getting desperate. Over the past year, teams from several companies have called me for “an expert analysis” of the sound and vibration market. To be more accurate, these investment groups probably fall more into the “private equity” category since most sound and vibration companies have been around for awhile. Still, the big question remains, why are they interested in this super niche, typically slow-growing industry?