Preface

People get involved in startups for a variety of reasons with many different goals. It usually starts with a good idea that someone is passionate about. However, deep down, I believe that many people that get into startups are looking for fame and fortune. What drives and motivates individuals is that recognition or money that you were unable to achieve when you worked for a larger organization. The goal is to get out from under the stifling environment of a larger company and be able to do something with a new freedom and flair that you couldn’t otherwise try.

When I think back about what motivated me, there were a lot of factors. At the time, I was working for Sequent Computer Systems, which was a large computer hardware manufacturing company that was eventually acquired by IBM. I started with Sequent as an information technology resource, employee number five hundred. Because of Sequent’s size, there were many opportunities for individual growth and reward, and I certainly took advantage of those opportunities. My specialty was getting finance and accounting software, known as Oracle Applications, to run fast on the Sequent hardware platform. While my primary function was an internal resource, supporting Sequent’s internal implementation of Oracle Applications, I also spent a lot of my time traveling to customer sites to help them do what we had done at Sequent. Additionally, I spent a lot of time traveling around the world to help sell Sequent hardware for customers that wanted to run Oracle Applications.

Like any other company in the hardware technology market, there was a lot of risk, but also a lot of reward. Between stock options, bonuses, salary increases, and even two employee excellence awards that involved very nice vacations for my wife and I, I had done well for myself. I had a fantastic reputation and a good career. On top of that, I had a great family, which included a wife and two young children. However, even with all of that, I kept having the feeling that there was something missing. From a career perspective, I wanted more. Sequent had grown a lot in my time there, and I had moved on from being an information technology resource to being more focused on helping Sequent’s sales force sell more Sequent hardware. As Sequent grew, like any company, it began to lose the qualities of a company that I enjoyed. There was less freedom, more rules, and more bureaucracy. As many will tell you, I’m not the best bureaucrat, and I’m too honest and blunt to be a good politician, so I began to think about my next steps.

Those next steps would be DecisionPoint, the company I founded, which is the center of the story for this book. While the book has information about what DecisionPoint was, and its evolution, I believe the real value was the lessons learned that I took away from the experience. That’s what I hope to share with other folks that are thinking about starting a company or becoming part of a startup.

Often, the people that get involved with a startup do so thinking that they are prepared for the challenge, but after getting involved, realize that the situation was more than they bargained for. In a startup, the stakes are high and there is quite a bit of personal risk in the form of salary, benefits, etc. Additionally, everyone involved in the startup is faced with a series of many highs and many lows in the quest to make the startup viable. In many cases, the goals of the individuals that founded the startup are never met, or fall short of the dreams these individuals had when founding the startup.

The chances that a startup either goes public or gets acquired is very small. Most startups die somewhere along the process, and that’s just a fact of life. When the startup fails, can you answer the question “what happens when my best was not good enough?”