Lessons learned… Robert Solomon Copyright ©2012

Robert Solomon 25+ years building technology organizations, products and companies.

Member/leader of the teams that created: – RDB one of the 1 st commercial relational dbms’ – AIS/NET 1 (SaaS in 1981!) – PRO350 one of the first personal computers

Member/leader of the teams that created: – Vistagate, the first multiprotocol communications gateway (computer to LAN to WAN to COMPUTER communications) – Before CISCO – MINX, the first video conferencing personal computer – Dynamic software update for distributed systems

Member/leader of the teams that created: – High performance distributed gaming systems – Video Lottery Systems – advanced gaming systems – One of the first bioinformatics systems – OmniReplicator, the first heterogeneous database replicator

Member/leader of the teams that Created: – OmniWarehouse, the first data warehouse engine – Reality, the first business rule driven search engine – One of the first internet ticketing companies – One of the first ecommerce web social ecosystems (1999) – Veracity of Internet information

All were great technologies But they were not all market successes We learned a lot, but…

Understand A problem cannot be solved if it is not understood

Engage You and your team must be engaged/focused on solving the problem

Listen/Learn The team must be constantly learning and validating what it has learned Listen/Learn REPEAT

Motivate It is essential for the team to be constantly motivated You must be passionate! Expect/challenge

Execute Make it happen Set goals/expectations Measure Repeat

Deliver The customer accepts what you have built and pays you! Unless this happens, you have not succeeded.

Iterate Repeat the cycle using what you have learned and validated

Doing just one thing right is not enough Technology + Marketing + Sales/Distribution + Support All functions must work together All functions must constantly be learning and validating what they have learned (e.g., progress against measureable goals) NO SILOS!!!

People People People People People Without them nothing is possible But remember: ANYBODY is NOT better than NOBODY

Culture Culture, Culture, Culture

Communicate Communicate Communicate

IP And lately, Intellectual Property

Learn/Validate Never stop Customers Competitors Let paranoia prevail