This blog, "What A CEO Does" by Fred Wilson, A VC really resonated with me.

Maybe it is the picture he used in the blog of my former boss Larry Ellison that sparked a rush of flashback memories that replayed through my head.

Before I joined OpenView Partners, a Boston Based Venture capital firm that invests growth capital in expansion stage software companies, I spent 27 years as an operational executive in the software industry. Thirteen of those years were at Oracle. During the last 5 years I ran North American Sales and was on the Oracle Executive Committee and reported to Larry directly.

During those 13 years Oracle accomplished some amazing things.

I was there in 1990 when the company's revenues exceeded 1 billion dollars, and I was there a quarter later when they had to restate their revenues below a billion dollars and had their first loss since they went public.

I was at the company when Sybase was an actual competitor, and when the industry transitioned from character mode to client server and later to thin client web based systems. I was at Oracle when Larry hired Ray Lane and when Larry fired Ray Lane.

I was in the room when Larry stood up in front of the financial analysts during the .COM boom and predicted that some day real customers, real revenues and real profits would matter again... and the analysts did not get it. I was also in the room when Larry predicted the consolidation of the software industry ... and again the analysts did not get it.

I was part of the executive team that helped transition Oracle's business from a historical 22%-23% EBITDA to greater than 40% EBITDA in less than 24 months, making Oracle the second most profitable software company in the world... and the most profitable software company in the world that does not hold a monopoly. This was when Larry told the analysts that Oracle was going to save 1 billion dollars and again they did not get it... and 6 months later when he got up and told them he was wrong and that we were going to save 2 billion dollars, they just shook their heads. By the way, if anyone wonders how Oracle got the 34 Billion dollars to fund their acquisition strategy, this was what started it all.

As I look back on those 13 years and the time since, the 3 things that Larry has always done as CEO that Fred Wilson mentions in his blog are...

1. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders.
   
2. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company.
   
3. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.

As a CEO, you could do a lot worse than focusing on these three things.

By the way, I am still a shareholder and, as long as Larry is there, I always will be!

All the best!

G

We are now over half way through the year, so 2011 is just around the corner when it comes to putting together your strategy, budget and, in the end, the commission plan to drive the behavior of your sales teams to help you achieve your economic goals for the year.

As a former Executive Vice President of North America at Oracle, I have had a little experience in structuring compensation plans to drive sales force behavior to achieve the Oracle's revenue and margin objectives. Now, as an operationally focused venture partner in Boston based venture capital firm OpenView Partners where we invest growth capital in expansion stage software companies, I still spend a fair amount of time with the founders, CEOs and management teams when it comes to structuring compensation plans.

I was doing my weekly reading when I came across a blog by Jim Keenan (writes a blog called "A Sales Guy") discussing how to build Killer Compensation Plans that I thought did a really nice job of simply explaining the process you should go through to build your commission plans for the upcoming year.

The killer commission plan starts with two critical questions:

1) What do you want to sell?
2) How do you want the sales team to behave?

The questions Jim Keenan states that your team needs to answer are:

• Where do we need the business to be? 
• How much revenue do we need?
• How much margin do we want? 
• How many new customers do we need?
• How much growth are we looking for?
• How do we define success at the end of the year?

Once you have theses questions answered, you then need to build a plan to align and incent your sales team to do exactly that.

A few things Jim says to remember

• Make the plan "simple stupid"
• Don't cap the sales plan
• Include accelerators
• Once you put them in place, don't mess with them

So file this nugget away and pull it out at the right time when you need to build your plans for 2011.

All the best!

G

OpenView is a Boston Venture Capital firm that provides growth capital to expansion stage software companies. The operational partners and OpenView Labs provide strategic consulting services to help founders, CEOs and Management teams develop strategy, focus their resources and execute their operational plans in a capital-efficient manner to maximize their leverage and reduce the amount of venture capital needed to build great companies.

One area we spend a lot of time with our portfolio companies on is in planning, managing and measuring the effectiveness and ROI of their lead generation efforts. When I came across the Hubspot blog titled "5 Lead Generation Tools: Just In Time for 2011 Planning", I wanted to share it with everyone.

Hubspot has created a "Lead Generation 5-Pack" of free tools to help your marketing execution teams. You can read more about it here or just got to this link and sign up for the free set of tools... anything that helps your marketing team plan, execute and measure results can't be all bad!

All the best!

G

I was reading the Wall Street Journal last week and came across an article in the small business section titled "Start-Ups Grumble About Directors Too Busy Too Help" which I wanted share with you.

As a founder and/or CEO of an early or expansion stage company looking for investors to provide growth capital -- to build out your management team and scale your company -- there are criteria to consider beyond the capital. Things like;

• Venture firm focus
• Partner experience
• Deal Terms
• Alignment with your vision for the company

And the list goes on and on.

But one area many founders and CEOs often overlook when raising venture capital is does my potential partner really have the time to spend helping us grow a great business so you reach a successful exit. Or if things get tough, will they still be there by our side, helping us right the ship.

At OpenView not only are we committed to being engaged as a board member (we attend in person and our phones and blackberries are turned off and in our bags), but also as an active advisor to the CEO and his management team -- leveraging not just our operational software industry experience, but also OpenView Labs and its business development strategies (you can check out some of there case studies here).

So remember, if you decide to raise venture capital... make sure that they bring more than money to the table and have the time to actually help you realize your dreams!

All the best!

G

This was the title from the guest post written by Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.net on TechCrunchIT that caught my eye this morning since I am an old enterprise software executive out of Oracle.

Enterprise Software is Sexy Again

I enjoyed reading it since it reminded me that everything moves in cycles in the software industry and too many times people proclaim that certain markets are dead only to be proven wrong again.

If I were an entrepreneur looking to build a great software company, I would look for a segment of the market with older, larger, established players selling complex products with good profit margins. These companies remind me of Hal the deer in old far side cartoon by Gary Larson.



Then I would build a disruptive business model that offers products or services that solve a serious business problem -- one that is a 'must have', not a 'nice to have' at a better cost to ROI model -- align the revenue with customer success so you win when they win with a much simpler user experience and user interface, and continue for focus on innovation in everything we do so we that 'out-execute' the traditional enterprise software companies.

This is the stuff that makes being an operational venture partner at OpenView Partners, a venture capital firm that provides growth capital to expansion stage software companies, fun. Once we provide expansion capital to software companies raising venture capital, we then jump in with both feet helping the founders, CEO and management teams improve their strategy, focus and execution to build great companies and achieve great exits.

While this sounds easy, it is a lot of work and means you have to show up everyday with your A game. That is exactly how today's large players like Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and other big software companies beat the big guys when they were starting their businesses.

By the way, I don't know whether you picked up on the WSJ article today, but Larry Ellison topped the list of the top paid CEOs for the last decade and he still owns 23% of Oracle.

Maybe one of you will be the next Larry Ellison if you get it right... and we hope OpenView will be there right next to you for the journey!

All the best!

G

Last week's blog was around an article in the WSJ that explored a problem that founders, CEOs and management teams of early and expansion stage companies sometimes experience when they are not careful about who they raise growth capital from.

They find out after they take venture capital that their VC does not have time to help them with their business... imagine that. As a follow-on, I came across an article in The Business Insider War Room by Roger Ehrenberg titled "5 Signs You're Talking To A Good Investor" that I thought I would share with you.

Roger's points are below:

As an operationally focused business executive with over 30 years in the software industry (many people find it hard to believe that software has been an industry for 30 years) who now works for a Boston based Venture Capital company, I spend a lot of my time working with founders and CEOs of expansion stage software portfolio companies after investing expansion capital.

As an advisor, I spend a tremendous amount of time coaching people on how to lead, manage, nurture and grow management teams and individual contributors. Last night I was catching up on my reading when I came across an article in the USA Today Money section about Eli Lilly's CEO John Lechleiter. What grabbed my attention in the article was the section about John Lechleiter's Tips as a CEO.

They were the same rules I lived by when I managed my first team of 30 people in 1986 at ADR and later when I managed over 2,000 people running North American Sales for Oracle corporation form 1998 through 2003.

I thought I would share them with you.

John Lechleiter's tips:

• Listen before you speak.
• Treat others the way you'd like to be treated.
• Put yourself in the other person's shoes. And remember that there are always two sides to every story.
• Decide on the few things that really matter and do them really well. (Wrote a blog on this)
  
• Business is hectic. Find time to sit and think without distractions.
• Laugh out loud at least a few times a day. If you're doing something that matters and that you really enjoy, it ought to be great fun.

As a founder and/or CEO working hard to build a great software business, if you are looking for a few rules to live buy... you could do a lot worse than these.

By the way if, I was going to add one rule it would be:

• Lead from the front, not the office.  

All the best!

G

After I retired from Oracle, I became an independent board member of several software companies before I joined the Boston Venture Capital firm, OpenView Partners, that invests growth capital in expansion stage software companies.

One behavior that most founders and or CEOs of the companies I worked with exhibited was an unwillingness to consider raising their prices or charging for additional value-added capability they developed within their products or services. I was amazed that they lacked confidence in the value that they were delivering to their customers.

When I was reading MIT Sloan Management Review and came across an article titled "Raise Your Prices!" by By Frank V. Cespedes, Elliot B. Ross and Benson P. Shapiro, I knew I had a topic for this week's blog.

The key to being able to raise your prices as a company relies on your ability to compete on performance versus price.

The article has a list of 5 Questions You Need To Ask Yourself in addition to the 4 steps to go through to switch your company to performance based pricing:

• Identify Value Opportunities
• Set Priorities
• Align Price and Value
• Get Cooperation

Then at the end of the article it lists the Seven Mistakes Of Poor Pricers.

So if you are looking for business growth strategies that can have an immediate impact, you and your management team might want to check out the article and consider moving to performance based pricing...

All the best!

G

For those early and expansion stage software companies that have just completed the second quarter of their fiscal year now is the time to check on how your company is doing executing against its business growth strategies. This is an exercise every company and management team should go through, whether you are looking for investors, have already raised venture capital or are still boot strapping the business.

It is time to pull out the economic model that was built as you prepared your 2010 budgets and see where you are in relation to the plan.

You need to see how the company is doing half way through the year in each operational area of the business against their annual SMART goals and business KPI's/Benchmarks.

• Sales
• Marketing
• Development
• Product Management
• Customer Service
• Finance
• Consulting services (If part of your business model)

You should be celebrating what went well, identifying what did not go well and looking for areas to improve.

Whether you are ahead, behind or on target, you should always be looking to aggressively adjust the allocation of your company's precious assets,

• People
• Capital

against the areas needed to achieve the greatest return and drive the strategic growth within your business and marketplace. Being able to adjust your business model as the year progresses allows you to calibrate and tune the company's strategy and growth in the most efficient manner possible.

The top founders -- CEO's and management teams -- do this religiously as part of their management rhythm. It can mean the difference between success and failure... just an exit or a strategic exit.

All the best!

G

As an entrepreneur of an early or expansion stage software company what role do you play?

Are you:

• The Architect?
• The Storyteller?
• The Disciplinarian?

Or do you play all three roles in your company?

The June 29th, Harvard Business Review had a great blog on this topic... you can read more about it here.

As a business venture capital firm that only invests in software companies, we work with CEO's and entrepreneurs who play each of these roles and, in some cases, play all three. Regardless of what role or roles they play, in the end the successful software companies that reach great exits all have one thing in common: the entrepreneur's and or CEO's ability to build out a management team to help them scale the company, architect the product, tell the story and execute the strategy.

So whether you have raised growth capital, are looking for investors or still bootstrapping your company one question you should be continuing to ask your self as you approach the midpoint of the year is... what is the next great management team member/role we need to hire to help the company continue to grow.

All the best!

G

I came across an article this week in the McKinsey Quarterly titled "When Companies Underestimate Low Cost Rivals". The article discusses how market leaders end up losing marketshare to smaller companies. I thought this might be of interest to founders and or CEOs of early stage and expansion stage software companies looking for business growth strategies.

The article discusses several strategies that low cost rivals have successfully used to usurp the big guys. Strategies like:

• Competing in the undeveloped segments (or fringe) of the incumbent's market while they build up capability

• Filling resource and capability gaps that the established players are ignoring

• And my favorite -- The role of second order effects where a firm competing at the low end enhances their products and services to move up in the market space while maintaining a low cost base

As a an expansion stage focused Venture Capital firm that provides expansion capital to software companies looking for investors, we are always looking to help companies and their management teams in large markets competing against established players.

Companies which deploy and execute strategies like the ones listed above -- with a low cost model with a capital efficient distribution model -- are often the companies that win big and succeed with a company exit strategy that delivers above-average returns for the founders, CEOs and management teams.

Enjoy the article. Maybe it will give you some ideas on how to beat the big guys!

All the best!

G

Anyone who knows me understands that, when not working, I spend as much time as possible outdoors -- including time hunting with my dogs. I have always been a fan of Labradors and my latest hunting companion is now 11 years old. So last year we decided to add a new Labrador puppy to the family this spring.

Some people may ask what this has to do with recruiting management teams. When choosing a hunting companion, life is too short to get a dog that won't hunt since you hope to hunt with them for a dozen years or more. As a software venture capital firm that invests growth capital in expansion stage software companies we also feel life is too short to make a hiring mistake.

When choosing a hunting dog, you need to consider the type of hunting you will do, the terrain and the characteristics in a dog you are looking for. Essentially, you have a job description that you are looking to fill.

In my case I wanted a dog that is a good family dog, gets along well with other dogs, easy to train, a versatile hunter for upland and waterfowl, a strong retriever and with an excellent pedigree or bloodlines.

When looking for a management team member, you need to create a job description that spells out what you want in the candidate for the company. One example would be a VP of Sales:

• Has experience within SaaS companies
• Managed an insides sales team
• Has worked in a partner channel-driven model
• Has built teams that have sold in the SMB space
• Has start up experience versus large company experience

This is totally different than someone who:

• Has experience in a traditional enterprise license sales model
• Managed field sales teams
• Worked in a direct sales model
• Sold to fortune 500 companies
• Has large company experience like EMC, IBM, SAP or Oracle

This is the combination of job description and pedigree or experience you are looking for.

Once you know what you want in a dog, you look for the right breeders. This is no different then when you are looking to hire the right recruiters. Experience with recruiters in the past or reference checking is critical when selecting a recruiter just like a dog breeder. Many recruiters specialize in recruiting for specific roles -- just like breeder with specific breeds. Once you have chosen a recruiter, you need to agree upon the process you will follow.

The next step is to make sure you look at the whole litter of candidates (in this case there were 7 puppies).

During our interview process we looked at the puppies together in the litter. We then separated them out individually so we could spend time with them to observe the behavior and characteristics they displayed when on their own. We followed the same process with all of them. My wife was also involved in the selection process.

This is no different than when you look at the candidate pool and sort them into high probability candidates based on your job description, or when you do phone screening and then bring in as many candidates as possible who fit the criteria. Have your team involved in the interview and selection process. The more you look the better you will get at confirming the skills and background you want. In fact don't be surprised if you refine the job description once you get started.

We then narrowed it down to 2 puppies we felt would be a great fit for what we were looking for. We were comfortable that either one would be a great dog for us. In fact, in the picture you can see they are both different looking puppies with different physical characteristics.

Now comes the hard part. We spent more time with each puppy --individually playing with them, throwing a small dummy for the puppy to retrieve and observing behavior and socializing with them.

This again is no different than what you do when recruiting management team members. You spend more time with them, your team spends more time with them and you should also do it under different settings -- in your office as well as casual settings like breakfast and dinner.

We also checked references since both the mother and the father of the litter where there with their owners. Obviously, a key to selecting is the final candidate -- be it a puppy or management team member.

Then it was decision time... we chose our puppy based on completing the process and weighing what we had observed during the time we had spent looking at the litter.



So when hiring management team members remember:

• Create the job description
  
• Select the right recruiter
  
• Agree on the recruiting process and follow it with all candidates
  
• Start with as large a candidate pool as possible
  
• Be prepared to adjust you job description as you go through the process
  
• Have your team involved in the selection and decision process
  
• Spend time in both business and casual settings with the final candidates
• Choose the top candidate for your business
  

We are thrilled with our choice and I can't wait until this fall, when I am with Bentley in the field, chasing birds with my friends.

All the best!

G

Last week Firas Raouf, one of my peers in OpenView Partners, wrote a blog titled "In Venture Capital, Size Does Matter" which referenced a Silicon Valley Bank report discussing how smaller Venture Capital Funds that provide early stage and growth capital outperform larger ones.

This phenomenon has actually occurred across all industries and one I have always pointed to as an example is the mutual fund industry. A recent article published in the Monday USA Today business section, "Can a mutual fund be too popular", supports the logic in the SVB report cited by Firas in his blog.

The reason I am referring to the blog Firas wrote last week is this: I believe that, in addition to a fund's size, there are two other major indicators of success that all founders and CEO's of expansion stage companies need to consider.

These two key ingredients that can help expansion stage software companies reduce their risk and maximize their potential for a successful exit are:

• Operational Experience
  
• Strategic Consulting Services

OpenView partners is a Boston Venture Capital firm that is in many ways different from traditional Venture Capital firms. All of our partners have major operational experience in the software industry. Just look at the backgrounds of Scott, Firas, Mark and myself and you will start to understand why we are different.

Now take the next step and look at the backgrounds of some of the OpenView Labs team (who provide Value Added Services) like Cynthia and Brian, as well a couple of our advisors like Jeff Sutherland and Luke Hohman (Yes they actually do work with all of our portfolio companies) and you will get a better sense of how we can help you build a great business.

At OpenView Partners we believe it is not merely about the money. Rather, it is about how you leverage the expansion capital to build great businesses and reach a successful exit.

When creating competitive advantage, its all about the people at your expansion stage business

Back last December, I wrote a blog titled "People... the only strategic asset you have"  where I discussed the need for managers to frankly assess their management teams and management needs and if necessary upgrade and or expand the team. Reason being, at the end of the day the difference between the winners and losers in the world of software is the quality of the people within the company.

As a Boston venture capital firm that invests growth capital in expansion stage software companies, we spend a tremendous amount of our time working with the founders and CEO's to build great management teams as the foundation to building great companies. We have even added recruiting support as one of our business development services within OpenView Labs.

I was catching up on my reading this weekend when I came across and article that peaked my interest. The title was "Pay takes a back seat to happiness, survey finds". The essence of the article was that the results of the local survey mirror national trends. The core point they make is that while pay and benefits need to be competitive, that is not what keeps good people at a company in the end.

In a ranking of what employees value most it came out in the order below by importance

1. 78%     Direction of the organization
2. 74%     Execution of the organization
3. 74%     Career opportunities within the organization
4. 74%     Conditions within and how people are treated by the organization
5. 65%     Management within the organization
6. 53%     Pay & Benefits

If you believe that people make the difference, then job #1 is finding them then and job #2 is keeping them.

A management team's ability to communicate the company's strategy, maintain focus within the organization, and drive execution makes all the difference in the world when you are looking to build a great company.

I would be curious to know your thoughts on this topic?

All the best!

G

Before I joined OpenView Partners, a Boston venture capital firm, I spent 27 years building my skills as an operationally focused executive in the software industry. I owe a lot of my success to getting management teams to continually focus on the basics or fundamentals of the business. In fact as an operationally focused venture capital partner, I continue to do the same today only with expansion stage software companies in which we have invested growth capital.

Each year as we set out to develop our business growth strategies and operational support models, I would reinforce the need for each management team within sales, lead generation services, business development services, presales support, operational finance etc., to keep their teams focused on execution around the basics for their respective operational areas.

So when I was reading May 2010 McKinsey quarterly paper from their Marketing & Sales Practices group, I realized it would be worthwhile to share it with founders, CEO's and management teams of early and expansion stage software companies as part of my blog.

The title of the paper "The Basics of business-to-business sales success" is what caught my eye but the content is what resonated with me. In their research they identified the behaviors by sales reps that customers identified as the "most destructive".

The top 2 (These accounted for 55% of the "most destructive" behaviors) where;

• Lack of knowledge about either their products or those of their competitors 
• Too much contact (In person, by phone or via email)   

What is amazing to me is both these behaviors are relatively easy to fix and in the paper they talk about methods and approaches to do so.

Check out the article... it may help you improve the performance of your sales teams.

All the best!

G

I am in Canada this week fishing with my father who is 84 years old and his 91 year old fishing buddy Doc Andy. I always tell everyone that I go along to keep both of them out of trouble. My dad is on the left and Doc Andy is on the right holding a 26 inch walleye he caught on Monday.

As always when we head out early in the morning for the 12 hour drive we spend time catching up on what everyone has been up to.

During the discussion in the truck Doc Andy told me that he has to be back in Madison Wisconsin this Saturday because he organized a walk to raise charity funds for Dyslexia. Doc has always been one to give back to the community his whole life and here he is again at 91 starting another event to give back even more to another great cause.

At OpenView we spend our time with expansion stage portfolio companies after investing growth capital working on business growth strategies, competitive positioning, building management teams, providing recruiting support as well as strategic consulting services.

But that is not just what OpenView is about. Our mission is to:

• Build Great Companies
  
• Deliver Top Investment Results
  
• Build Outstanding People and Teams
  
• Be Great Community Citizens

This year we created some programs to give back to the expansion stage software community by openly sharing our thoughts on what it takes to build great companies through operational execution.

To help we have started:

• A Weekly Newsletter sharing the best new ideas for expansion stage software and Internet companies. This link will take you to last weeks version (You can subscribe to our newsletter on the right side of my blog).
• Publishing case studies that demonstrate the type of operational support we provide to portfolio companies
• A company wide blogging effort where we share our thoughts on building great companies (You can check out the various blogs on the Who We Are section).

See, at OpenView it is not just about providing venture capital funding or helping define a company exit strategy... it is also about giving back to the community we all belong to.

All the best!

G

Last week I was reading the WSJ online Small Business section. They had an article that I thought was appropriate for early stage and expansion stage software companies' founders and CEO's to think about as they look to grow their businesses and ratchet up their performance.

The article was titled "Time to Reset Your Business?". When I read it I also remembered the Dilbert strip from a few weeks ago that seemed to fit the article and drive home the point. The gist of the article is that companies in search of much needed revenue consider starting new product and service lines may begin to stray and that may be the time to consider resetting your business. I actually wrote blog that is relevant to this article with an emphasis on focus as one of the keys to success for software companies.




The article is relevant whether you are looking to raise your first round of venture capital, already have venture funding, are looking to raise another round venture capital or are still bootstrapping with your own capital and/or some angel capital.

If you take the time to read the WSJ article they talk about the "four steps" to reset your business.

• Reset Step 1: Pick a single scalable product or service.
  
• Reset Step 2: Get the cash flowing.
  
• Reset Step 3: Fire yourself.
  
• Reset Step 4: Start saying no.

The above points don't just apply to struggling companies but also to successful growing companies. Management teams should always be looking to strengthen their focus versus dilute their efforts to leverage their growth capital and people resources for the greatest return possible.
In addition, companies that are looking for investors should always make sure that their business growth strategy is not to be all things in all markets if they expect to successfully raise expansion capital in today's world.

My advice to any entrepreneur is get up every morning and look in the mirror and ask yourself "Is it time to reset the business?"... not just when you are struggling but even when you are successful. These efforts will always improve the odds of not just a successful exit but a great exit!

All the best!

G

Last week in my blog I wrote about Lead Qualification as a way to support your business growth strategies. I used the example of the work OpenView Labs did with Intronis in building their lead qualification process and team and then handing the team off to Intronis going forward. This work resulted in a case study that you may have interest in reviewing.

I wanted go into a little more detail about the type of work we do for portfolio companies we invest growth capital in who use the business development services of OpenView Labs by going deeper into the Lead Qualification topic.

If you read last week's blog you know Intronis is a local Boston company so building and transferring the team over was straightforward. Other CEO's and founders might ask how could we help them if they are not local.

We would take the exact same approach we did with Intronis where we:

• Developed the skill set profile
• Interviewed the candidates
• Recruited the best candidates
• Trained the new Lead Qualification Reps
• Managed the team and complete process in our OpenView Labs office
• Handed off the qualified leads to the Intronis Sales team
• Iterated on and improved the process

Only in this case we would suggest that we hire people local to your market but for 2-4 weeks they come to Boston to work under our guidance and support and then we would send them back with complete write up on the personnel.

I have an actual write up below to give you a feel for the best practices processes we use and the detail we provide to your management team to ensure success. I have replaced the individuals name with "John Doe" and the company name with "Your Company" for obvious reasons.

cdn.content.compendiumblog.com/uploads/user/206a9a2b-627f-446d-b836-03b603106274/ec91f66a-ef65-40a9-8081-9d2ead807529/File/9025fd32e2f4b374279592ee6daf2d1f.docx

Then after we send the newly trained lead qualification reps back we have regularly scheduled check up calls with the new reps and their manager to make sure the transfer is smooth, everyone is engaged and successful.

By the way, we take the high quality best practices process oriented approach in all the operational areas we assist our expansion stage software companies in. Not just Sales and Marketing but also Finance, Product Development, Product Management, Customer Care and Legal etc. We can provide the same great operational support regardless of where your company is located.

So if you are looking to raise some expansion capital and you are looking for a team with more than money to help you give us a call or drop us an email and let's talk!

All the best!

G

As one of the operationally focused venture partners at OpenView Partners, a Boston Venture Capital firm, I spend a lot of my time talking to early and expansion stage software companies. We actually look to talk to software companies as early as possible so we can develop a relationship with them and their management team over time as the business grows and their business model matures.

Because our business model is providing expansion capital for expansion stage software companies we look for companies that;

• Are generating 2mm to 20mm in annual revenues
• Serve large markets
• Have an economically profitable distribution model
• Are growing 40% to 100% depending on size and business model
• Do not have customer concentration

This means that many of the early stage software companies we talk to need funding before they meet our metrics. When we run across companies that are in need of earlier funding we point them in the direction of angel investors (see this link for angel investor network) or regional venture capital firms to get them started. Then later as they grow to fit our criteria we often engage to do the first major institutional round.

In fact when I was reading the WSJ Online section on Small Business they had an article on How to Win Angel Funding that I thought would be good to share with anyone who might be too early for OpenView Partners.

All the best!

G

Many expansion stage software companies we talk to about investing growth capital don't need capital. Or if they do they can get it from any number of sources other than a Boston based Venture Capital firm called OpenView Partners. The founders and CEOs are good solid entrepreneurs and business executives who look for "Smart" money versus just money.

We just added a new case study explaining how the OpenView Labs which provides business development services to portfolio companies built and delivered a Lead Qualification Model to Intronis one of our companies located in Boston.

There is more to this story than OpenView Labs delivering an outbound prospecting plan with details about staffing, executing, tracking and managing the business development process. Because the Intronis team was already stretched thin, OpenView Labs actually:

• Developed the skill set profile with Intronis
• Interviewed the candidates
• Recruited the best candidates
• Trained the new Lead Qualification Reps
• Managed the team and complete process in our OpenView Labs office
• Handed off the qualified leads to the Intronis Sales team
• Iterated on and improved the process

After the process was refined and proven we handed the team off to the Intronis management team to manage going forward. By this time the first original lead qualification rep we hired had moved into sales and the two people we hired to take his place were transitioning in to sales and we had hired three more new lead qualification reps to take their place. In the end we were actually handing off a team of six people to Intronis.

If you are going to raise expansion capital do you want money or do you want "Smart" money... that is the question you need to ask yourself. If the answer is "Smart" money then you need to ask your potential investors what they can bring to the table besides money and a blackberry.

All the best!

G