Posts Tagged ‘vision’

As part of my role at SoftLayer, I have the opportunity and privilege to mentor numerous entrepreneurs and startup teams when they partner with us through our Catalyst program. One question I hear often is, “Should I join an accelerator?” My answer: “That all depends.” Let’s look at the five lessons entrepreneurs should learn before they decide to join a startup accelerator or incubator program.

Lesson 1: The founders must be committed to the success of their venture.
Joining an accelerator or incubator comes with some strings attached — startups give up between 6 to 10 percent of their equity in exchange for some cash and structured program that usually lasts around three months. Obviously, this kind of commitment should not be taken lightly.

Too often, startups join accelerator programs before they are ready or mature enough as a team. Sometimes, a company’s idea isn’t fully baked, so they end up spending as much time “creating” their business as they do “accelerating” it. As a result, that company isn’t able to leverage an accelerator’s resources efficiently throughout the entire program … The founders need to establish a vision for the business, begin laying the groundwork for the company’s products and services, and be 100% committed to the accelerator program before joining. If you can’t say with confidence that your startup meets all three of those requirements, don’t do it. Take care of those three points and proceed to the next lesson.

Lesson 2: Be prepared to leverage what you are given.
Many startups join accelerator and incubator programs with unrealistic expectations. Participation in these programs — even the most exclusive and well-known ones — by no means guarantees that you’ll raise additional money or have a successful exit. These programs provide startups with office space, free cloud services, and access to mentors, investors, recruiters and media … Those outstanding services provide participating startups with a distinct competitive advantage, but they don’t serve up success on a silver platter. If you aren’t ready work tirelessly to leverage the benefits of a startup program, don’t bother.

Lesson 3: Take advice and criticism well; mentors are trying to help.
“Mentorship” is very tough to qualify, and criticism is difficult to take … Especially if you’re 100% committed to your business and you don’t want to be told that you’ve done something wrong. Mentors in these startup programs have “been there and done that,” and they wouldn’t be in a mentorship position if they weren’t looking out for your best interest and the ultimate success of your company.

Look programs that take mentorship seriously and can provide a broad range of expertise from strategy to marketing and business development to software architecture to building and scaling IT infrastructure. Then be intentional about listening to the people around you.

Lesson 4: Do your research and make an informed decision.
With the proliferation of startups globally, we’re also seeing an evolution in the accelerator ecosystem. There are a number accelerators being positioned to help support founders with ideas on a global, regional and local basis, but it’s important to evaluate a program’s vision with its execution of that vision. Not all startup programs are created equal, and some might not offer the right set of resources and opportunities for your team. When you’re giving up equity in your company, you should have complete confidence that the accelerator or incubator you join will deliver on its side of the deal.

Lesson 5: Leverage the network and community you will meet.
When you’ve done your homework, applied and been accepted to the perfect startup program, meet everyone you can and learn from them. One of the most tangible benefits of joining an accelerator is the way you can fast track a business idea while boosting network contacts. Much in the way someone chooses a prestigious college or joins a fraternity, some of the most valuable resources you’ll come across in these programs are the people you meet. In this way, accelerators and incubators are becoming a proxy for undergrad and graduate school … The appeal for promising entrepreneurs is simple: Why wait to make a dent in the universe? Today, more people are going to college and fewer are landing well-paying jobs after graduation, so some of the world’s best and brightest are turning to these communities and foregoing the more structured “higher education” process.

Even if your startup is plugging along smoothly, a startup accelerator or incubator program might be worth a look. Venture capitalists often trust programs like TechStars and 500 Startups to filter or vet early stage companies. If your business has the stamp of approval from one of these organizations, it’s decidedly less risky than a business idea pitched by a random entrepreneur.

If you understand each of these lessons and you take advantage of the resources and opportunities provided by startup accelerators and incubators, the sky is the limit for your business. Now get to work.

Class dismissed.

-@gkdog

Think of the many components of our cloud infrastrucutre as analogous to LEGO bricks. If our overarching vision is to help customers “Build the Future,” then our products are “building blocks” that can be purposed and repurposed to create scalable, high-performance architecture. Like LEGO bricks, each of our components is compatible with every other component in our catalog, so our customers are essentially showing off their Master Model Builder skills as they incorporate unique combinations of infrastructure and API functionality into their own product offerings. Cedexis has proven to be one of those SoftLayer “Master Model Builders.”

As you might remember from their Technology Partner Marketplace feature, Cedexis offers a content and application delivery system that helps users balance traffic based on availability, performance and cost. They’ve recently posted a blog about how they integrated the SoftLayer API into their system to detect an unresponsive server (disabled network interface), divert traffic at the DNS routing level and return it as soon as the server became available again (re-enabled the network interface) … all through the automation of their Openmix service:

They’ve taken the building blocks of SoftLayer infrastructure and API connectivity to create a feature-rich platform that improves the uptime and performance for sites and applications using Openmix. Beyond the traffic shaping around unreachable servers, Cedexis also incorporated the ability to move traffic between servers based on the amount of bandwidth you have remaining in a given month or based on the response times it sees between servers in different data centers. You can even make load balancing decisions based on SoftLayer’s server management data with Fusion — one of their newest products.

The tools and access Cedexis uses to power these Openmix features are available to all of our customers via the SoftLayer API, and if you’ve ever wondered how to combine our blocks into your environment in unique, dynamic and useful ways, Cedexis gives a perfect example. In the Product Development group, we love to see these kinds of implementations, so if you’re using SoftLayer in an innovative way, don’t keep it a secret!

-Bryce

General George S. Patton once said, “A good plan vigorously executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” This statement sums up the SoftLayer philosophy (well some of it anyways) – decisions are made and then quickly executed against – no paralysis by analysis here. Given the speed that the market is moving at, I think this is a good thing.

The events of the past few weeks are great evidence of a market that is moving at a rapid pace with little signs of slowing down.

• SoftLayer opened our second DC in Dallas at the end of September. In ten days we were pushing 10 GB of traffic. Yesterday we hit 15 GB of sustained traffic.
• Rackspace announced that they are already hosting 2 million paid users of its hosted email solution.
• 1 million servers have been announced as registered in Cloudkick.
• Siemens has revealed that they have 400,000 employees that interact with the HR system for a number of functions including compensation management, performance management ad career development planning via the cloud.
• The Android version of Angry Birds was downloaded an astonishing 2 million times on its launch day. (Angry Birds publisher, Chillingo was purchased by EA for under $20 million in cash plus other “undisclosed considerations”. I keep thinking that I am in at the wrong end of this business…)
• The US General Services Administration has announced that its Apps.gov cloud solution is going to add storage, virtualization and hosting to its portfolio. This will impact federal, state, local and tribal governments across the county. This works out to over 19 million employees, spread across thousands of departments (federal, state and local) and tens of thousands of municipalities. (SoftLayer is a part of this with strategic partners, Computer Technologies Consultants, Inc. Check out the PR stuff here.)

My suspicion is that you can pick almost any month over the previous 6 and you would find similar announcements and I suspect that they are going to continue over the next 6 months and beyond as well. The sign post seems pretty clear to me – we are in a rapidly growing market with little signs of a slowdown ahead. I don’t think this is going to be a market for the timid, companies that have a clear vision of what lays ahead and possess the ability to quickly execute against that vision will succeed. The rest will falter and miss the turn ahead. Guess where SoftLayer is going to be?

-@quigleymar

After separating from the military about a year ago, I was sure I was in for a bit of a culture shock. As you may very well know, the military is very different from life in what we liked to call the “real world”. 24 hour duties, life on ship, the awful food, I was ready for a slight change of pace. Soon thereafter I stumbled upon a golden opportunity here at SoftLayer.

Little did I realize at the time that I would be on board with one of the fastest growing and most innovative companies in the industry. Looking back, I can see that one of the ingredients for our explosive growth is the culture that SL has… one as idiosyncratic as the military itself. Coincidently, the culture shock I prepared myself for seemed to be more of a shift in verbiage.

Allow to me to submit a few specifics:

• Much like the Marine Corps loved to add “MC” before every single acronym, SoftLayer does much the same… (SLiki, SLales – you get the point).
• There is a mindset here that the mission comes first. In this case, that mission is to provide our customers with the best possible hardware, support, and applications to accomplish THEIR mission.
• The pride SL employees have of being part of the team is infectious, much like a close knit unit in the military. You can see this best when things go awry – fellow SL’ers rush to back up those in need. If you’ve read through the InnerLayer prior to reading my musings, you know that the team here takes great pride in being a part of SL’s success.
• Much like the military, you’ve got your large mix of people, from all walks of life, each with something to add to the team. Those experiences conglomerate to further enhance our ability to innovate.

Needless to say, the things that made successful units and deployments while I was in, I now realize are the ingredients to a successful team anywhere, no matter whether you use MC or SL. I guess that culture shock I had prepared myself for wasn’t as bad or painful as I thought it would be. I’ve traded my rifle for a scan gun, and my camouflage uniforms for those SL Tees.

-Matthew

The high-pitched whine of a drill sends a shiver down my spine. I jump a little in my seat at a loud bang followed by shuffling feet and mumbled voices. I involuntarily cower at the unmistakable sound of a saw blade spinning—gaining momentum—biting. Nope, I’m not sitting in a theater watching Eli Roth’s next installment in the Hostel franchise. In fact, I’m at the office.

That’s right. I’m sitting at my desk. Sitting at my desk and trying hard to ignore the plethora of singing power tools and crooning contractors who for the last two months have been busy putting up dry wall, wiring electrical outlets, installing locks, and occasionally setting off the fire alarm. It’s the sound of growth. And at the risk of conjuring up images of bad 80′s haircuts, guys in jeans way-too-tight, and shirts where the collars just wouldn’t seem to stay down– one might dare refer to the ruckus as “growing pains”.

Make no mistake about it, growing is painful. Take it from me. I think I was 19 before I managed to grow enough facial hair to require the use of a razor. Combine that tidbit of info with the fact that I had every 8-bit computer known to man proudly on display in my room right next to my impressive collection of latex Hollywood style monster masks and you’ll start to get the picture. Growing requires a lot of work and allows almost no planning as humans have a habit of blossoming in their own sweet time. Companies are no different.

So while management did everything possible to make the required building expansion as unobtrusive as possible, well, it’s still construction work within earshot of a whole team of developers, technicians, and engineers. That’s just the way it is. And while I may complain about the noise and distractions now and again, there is also something very comforting about knowing that I am working at a place that is growing. Growing phenomenally, in a time when not all technology companies are fairing so well.

When the dust settles there will be a lot of new space.

More space means a lot of new hires. More space means more opportunity for existing employees. And yes, more space means more work for everyone involved. Having worked for three failed ventures in as many years, I can tell you I am more than happy to be putting my time and effort and energies into something that is successful; something that continues to be more successful every day. It feels good to be on the winning team for a change. Hearing what some of the other engineers here are saying I don’t think I’m alone in that sentiment.

That’s not to say I’ll miss the noise when the construction is all said and done. Which in case you are interested sounds to be winding down. As for SoftLayer, well something tells me we are just getting started.

-William

Over the last two years, SoftLayer has grown from nothing to over 10,000 servers and by the end of this year could surpass 30,000 servers if growth continues on its current track. A key component in managing this growth is finding leaders with the ability to scale as the company grows. More often than not, entrepreneurs are good at starting businesses but not good at growing them. In that vein, if you are the leader of a startup, what traits does your management team needs to have if one is to build the biggest, baddest and most valuable company in an industry?

Battle wounds: We all have read the stories about Bill Gates quitting Harvard to start Microsoft, Michael Dell selling servers out of his dorm room, and Larry and Sergey leaving Stanford to start Google. It is very rare that someone can come out of college and start something that becomes the dominant player in an industry. The majority are an amalgamation of our experiences of years of operating any one of a number of businesses. Look for the managers with some scars. Even the aforementioned entrepreneurs are pretty much battle tested by now.

Visionary: As fast as SoftLayer is growing, we better have a pretty good vision of where we are going so we don’t run this Porsche off a cliff and into an abyss. We have seen many potential customer IT managers come to us in a panic upon their sudden realization that no more servers can be added to their datacenter because of inadequate planning for power and cooling. And I am not just picking on IT; this applies to the finance function as well. As the CFO, I have to have a vision for what my organization is going to look like all along the way, from the startup phase to an IPO, merger or acquisition or whatever other path this journey takes us.

Communication skills: Today’s CFO must be more technically proficient than his predecessors; however, this does not negate for the financial or any other executive to be able to communicate not only with company staff, but customers, vendors, bankers and shareholders as well. As discussed in other blogs, the internet has given all of us the ability to communicate in so many different ways than in the past. The challenge of any manager is to figure out which method of communication is the most effective in a given situation to get the job done and keep the organization moving forward.

Je ne sais quoi: It’s a French phrase we as Americans have used over the years to refer to a certain quality someone has that cannot be explained. A good manager has to have this “Presence”. While the internet and email and all forms electronic communication have made the world smaller, to have an impact a leader still needs to be out communicating, listening and understanding to keep the team on the right track. The leader who sits in his office all day can review a lot of data but needs to get out to find what is really going on inside a company. The “Ivory Tower” manager is doomed to failure in today’s fast paced business environment.

Rock in times of adversity: For all of us who have participated in startups (and I have done four now), there are going to be tough times. You can count on that. How you react in those situations sends a message about your ability to lead to your staff. As a leader, you have to be the go-to person in tough times. Are you prepared to handle the adversity?

The team: Much like a professional hockey team (I would use football but my son plays hockey and this is my blog), you can’t do it all alone. From the general manager on down, the owner/president of a team has to have the ability to attract top notch staff to who he can delegate the work of moving the organization toward the ultimate prize in hockey, The Stanley Cup. If he can’t and tries to keeps all the work for himself, he will find himself on the outside looking in.

Do we have the team to scale? So far it appears that we do. Are we going to have to add additional leadership along the way for us to achieve our goals? Absolutely. We have just added a Chief Strategy Officer to the executive management team.

We continue to be confident our management team can provide the leadership needed to grow SoftLayer into an industry leader.

Are you as confident in your team?

– Mike Jones (Who?)

Running the fastest growing hosting company in the world takes its toll on me sometimes. Other entrepreneurs often ask me how I continually seem to be ahead of the game and I tell them “it’s easy, I hear voices”.

Before the staff carries me off to an insane asylum, let me explain a bit further. A very bright man once told me to shut up and listen to those around me. As I sat in his office trying to figure out how to schedule next semester’s classes – he showered me with a ton of invaluable knowledge that I was lucky enough to absorb along the way. His words resonate in my head to this day – “If you REALLY want to know what’s wrong or right with your company – ask your employees and your customers!” I remember thinking at the time, uh yea – I paid for this? But as I progressed down the executive tracks – this notion seems to elude a lot of the top brass that I come across on a daily basis.

So just when and where do I hear these voices? Well, I hear voices at work sometimes (obviously) – but I am more likely to hear them at dinner, over drinks, chatting, texting, IMing, at a party or simply spending time with my cohorts. After spending years building relationships with both my team and my customers – I have found that nothing is harder to do and nothing provides more insight into how to improve the company and build for the future. I’m somewhat amazed at times what both sides will share with me (good, bad and ugly), but I have learned to “shut up and listen.”

My advice to other business owners out there is to parlay on my secret. It won’t happen overnight and it certainly takes a lot of time and effort on your part. My customer stable (Vik, Eric, Mark, Joe, Chris, Nick, Peter, Kevin, ….et al) has grown over the years and some I talk to almost on a daily basis. Without their input, SoftLayer would not be the company it is today. I am not saying everything they say or want is feasible (sorry guys), but for the most part their voices help shape the current and long-term vision of the company. If you manage a company and can’t pick up the phone and call dozens of customers for real feedback, I would suggest that you are severely out of touch with your customer base.

Equally important is your own employees. Your people are your greatest assets — they ARE the company. Throwing my two cents in here: hire bright motivated people, give them authority and responsibility, share your direction and vision, let them flourish and most important – “shut up and listen!!” My standing personal goal is to surround myself with brilliant people – it makes me look like a genius!!

-@lavosby