Amazing 15 Years

Last Friday was my last day at Dell. After leaving Microsoft back in late 2009, I started an incredible 15-year journey of entrepreneurship and work at Wyse and later Dell. Last week I found myself sailing in the Gulf Islands (BC) and reflecting on the fabulous journey I have had and the smart people I have had the privilege to meet and learn from along the way. It's impossible to share everything in one simple post but I extracted some juicy anecdotes to share. Many of you here might recognize the stories and participated in some way. Thank you to all who made them possible! I could not have made it happen without your help and guidance.

Buy a Company

A tech company out of New York needed a Spanish speaking call center to better service their customers. I found an appropriate target, orchestrated the deal, negotiated the closing, and learned the ins and outs of due diligence. M&A 101 in 6 months. Thank you for the trust!

Start a Company

Some colleagues (?) and Istarted an online service for lawyers. It was a great idea. It taught me all about feature creep, double the time and double the cost, MVP's and more. It was an educational failure. The service never launched but gave us all a list of “don’t do this again" when developing a web service or doing a startup. Thank you for the patience and work!

Partnering for Innovation

Bridging tech and business across companies for a joint innovation effort is a fabulous exercise in creating a vision and negotiating with stakeholders. Nothing in tech is isolated. My two favorite discussions from the Thin Client (Virtual Desktop) time:

1)???? Question: can we use modified remote access protocols from VDI to deliver an AI generated augmented reality to a lightweight headset client? Most of you would find that discussion a total snooze but I have a geek heart hidden under layers of business ed. It was amazing to get the legal work done to protect the intellectual property, enable the discussion with 3 companies, and learning from the field experts about feasibility.

2)???? Crisis Management: at the time I was managing the relationship with Citrix and VMware and they were both technically integrated into our Wyse offerings, Dell acquired EMC which in turn owned 80% of VMW. I woke up one morning with Citrix very concerned about stopping all code sharing and joint engineering as we now owned their key competitor. It took over a year, but we maintained operational continuity (more than half the business was Citrix based) and re-structured our technical dependencies to continue product development and support for customers. It was a marathon.

Alliances – Methodology

It is said that learning really starts after college. At some point I had to explain the importance of alliances to a new boss. It came out like this:

·??????? Joint Innovation: align on next generation shared investment and product development with partners.

·??????? Go To Market: partner and invest together to sell what’s on the truck (the stuff we created last year)

·??????? Don't forget legal: enable IP protection and investments with appropriate contracts.

I later added: make executives look good by providing them with appropriate knowledge before engaging any partner. Enable them to negotiate, align, and fight for our teams’ agenda.

Size matters

Many discussions over the years have been about funding. Joint innovation on a large scale context requires years of investment. There are more 10 million and above projects than below. Aligning on the business case, the solution, the costs, is like starting a company from scratch every time. What are we selling, how many can we sell, what would it cost to make, how long would it take, what margins can be expected. I consider the product managers I had the privilege of working with best in class. I am so grateful for their dedication and driving through all the layers of details needed to get executives to approve their initiatives. Nobody signs a big check without deep scrutiny. My best one was 22M and I enjoyed every minute of the 8-month effort.

Bottom Line

Yes, the financial bottom line is important, but here I mean my final takeaway: I am incredibly grateful of all my managers and colleagues at Wyse and Dell during the last 15 years who have enabled me to grow to a well-rounded professional. I think back, and smile grateful for the support, guidance and help you all have gifted me. I think forward and am excited for the next chapter where I hope to pass it forward.