iinovate has a great podcast with accompanying YouTube videos of an interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.  They have broken out one segment where a luminary, in this case Andy Grove of Intel fame, asks a question.  Grove queries: 

“From the outside it looks like Google’s organizational structure is best described by . . . Brownian motion . . in an expanding bottle.  Does [Eric Schmidt] think it will work forever.”

I find Schmidt’s answer to be revealing.  It’s so convenient to think of Google, its inner workings in particular, in some uniform, consistent way.  I know that I’m certainly guilty of this.  The stories of days off to innovate, corporate massage therapists at everyone’s disposal, cappuccino machines in every closet and Guitar Hero duels whenever employees feel the urge are captivating.  It’s also easy to let visions of this environment overtake the realization that real work gets done in spades within the company’s walls.  Schmidt states that legal, finance, M&A, investment and even sales are all run in “a very traditional way.”  Further, he says that it’s only the “creative side” that gets all the attention and can be described as Brownian motion which, he thinks, is a reasonable description. 

Doh!  Of course.  That makes complete sense.  There goes my fantasy about the insides of the company being in some kind of total, but managed chaos.  I guess there is no tooth fairy after all.  Next, someone’s gonna tell me there’s no Santa Claus.

Check out the iinovate post for the other, longer part of the interview.

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for pointing it out.

Popularity: 24% [?]

A while back, I did a post titled Work:Life Balance - It’s a Perspective Thing in which I talked about my belief that everyone needs to find their own version of balance and that biasing that balance to the work end of the spectrum is not a bad thing.  That post turned out to be one of the most widely read posts that I have ever written (thanks to both my readers for reading it) and I got a load of email asking more questions.  I’m afraid I’m just now getting back to it.

I suppose that this topic is more personal than most, so people are less comfortable spilling their guts in the comment section of someone else’s blog.  Understandable, of course.  Since it’s my blog, though, let’s see if I can address the questions I received by sharing some aspects of my own situation.  Keep in mind that I’m certainly no expert at this.  I can just call ‘em as I see ‘em and tell you what worked for me.

For most of my career, I was sure I hadn’t figured it out and I was screwing it up.  I loved my work and I sacrificed most other aspects of my life to excel at it (or, at least, to try to excel at it).  Sure, there were times that I longed for a life outside of work and even dabbled at it once in a while.  Although, infrequently and mostly when my wife made me.  My relationship with my kids is what really hung over my head.  My dad wasn’t around much when I was growing up and as my kids got older, I saw that they were getting the same experience (or lack thereof) that I had.  That thought haunted me constantly.

I had a tape of Harry Chapin’s Cat’s In a Cradle running in my head for years:

“… when you coming home dad, I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, son, I know we’ll have a good time then.”

Shit.

Fortunately, I’m married to a wonderful woman that I met after already finding my heavily biased balance.  She knew what she was getting into and, for the most part, made her balance fit with mine - she, being the better person, made more concessions than me.  She is a fabulous mom and did everything she could to fill in for my parental absence.  My kids were born into a world with limited access to their dad so they thought dinner without him was the way all kids lived their lives.  For sure, I still coached soccer and baseball teams once in a while, attended plays and recitals (frequently running into the auditorium late) and attempted to help with homework, but these activities were secondary.  When you’re on the road 100+ nights a year for business and working until double-digit hours every night, there’s just not much time for anything other than sleep.  None of that rationalization relieved the guilt or anxiety about not being around though.

OK, I think you get the idea.  Perhaps you find yourself in a similar situation . . .

So, here’s how I now see things.  Keep in mind that I’m a 47 year old guy who has been “retired” for more than four years now.  My kids are thinking about college and my wife has gone back to school.  Funny, it turns out that I’m the only one at home any more.  Strange how things change.

As I see it, kids and marriages are both pretty resilient, to a point.  There are no absolutes and there’s no rule book or even a guide book for relationships at any level.  For the most part, though, people want to make things work.  Even kids.  I think there is some point with every relationship that is sorta like a point of no return.  If you cross that line, or cross it frequently enough, you can’t recoup what you had before.  At the very least, it’s fairly difficult.  If you’re going to burn the candle at both ends (and maybe in the middle at the same time), you need to have a total understanding of where that point lies.  You can push the accelerator until the needle almost hits it, but the cost of the ticket for exceeding it is more than you can afford.

That was my governor for balance.  I thought I knew what was important to my wife in terms of showing up at home and I felt comfortable, as naive as it sounds, reading my kids emotions and body language about my choices.  And then one day about five years ago it hit me.  I had run out of runway.  I had used up all the slack in my family relationships.  It became time to make a major change before my kids moved out of the house without knowing me.  As much as I had thought I had known about where everything stood, I really didn’t (isn’t that a shock) and I went into a sort of panic about it.

At the time, I was running a public company, Innoveda (Nasdaq: INOV), and jumping ship out of the blue almost never goes over well (unless you’re Ken Lay, I suppose).  I worked to transfer a bunch of my responsibilities to others, but it didn’t really help.  It’s just not in me to make a Fred Flintstone-like departure from work when the virtual whistle sounds at 5:00.  Within the next year, and mostly unrelated to my desire to spend time with my family, we stoked the fires of some potential acquisitions and one ignited, resulting in the sale of the company.  When I half-heartedly offered to stay through the transition, I was given my leave 6 days after the deal closed.  I was really lucky - all around.

I knew I wanted to be with my family, but that didn’t mean I was comfortably in applying the brakes after traveling at full speed for so long.  I was worried that I’d be lost and drift right back into something intensely entrepreneurial within a few months.  Surprisingly, I discovered that I actually liked other stuff.  It’s not that I could relax, which I can’t, but I like doing lots of other stuff - some geeky, some mentoring, some physical, but all pretty fun.  Of course, I have to be the best at everything (yeah, I know, I should see someone about it).  Most of all, I do a lot of math homework with my kids.  I’m pretty sure that they don’t like it, but I’m lovin’ it.

I realize, of course, that not everyone has the opportunity to make such a black-and-white move like I did.  Most people can make changes that accomplish much of the same goal, though.  I don’t want to make it sound like anything I did was part of a plan or was thought through in any sense.  I slammed into a brick wall and was fortunate enough to get out of the burning wreck before it exploded.  For most healthy people (I’m not among them), life is more analog than digital.  The 2-Speed moniker on this blog is indicative of the digital way I run my life and, therefore, is indicative of how unqualified I am to make any real determination between the right and wrong ways of doing things.  There are actually shades of gray that can be modulated over time so that a desperate change doesn’t have to happen at mid-life.

When I was younger, I saw the 1938 movie, Holiday in which Cary Grant “retires” right after graduating from college with the goal of working only later in life.  His philosophy was something like: why should I wait until I’m too old to have fun to retire?  I’ll “retire” now and have a blast while I’m young and take a job later when I’m too old to really enjoy myself.  That fantasy was attractive to me on and off through my career, but having done it my way, it isn’t so much any more.  Sure, it’s an interesting idea and might work for some, but my way has been worked out for me . . . so far.

I told my wife I was writing this post and she suggested that it might be fair if I included a rebuttal from my kids.  As she insinuates, I’m sure my kids look back on the ride and sometimes wonder if life wouldn’t have been better if dad stuck with the whole 24/7 work thing.  My view is that they have more years than me to address their issues in therapy.  In the mean time, I no longer have that 8-track tape of Harry Chapin running through my head and I’m way happier for it.

Disclaimer:  I’m just ahead of Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson in the qualified-to-give-advice queue.  You shouldn’t listen to me - it’s just one very lucky guy’s story.  I only know what I know.  Good luck with your adventure.

Popularity: 16% [?]

I always chuckle when I hear a presentation by a new or prospective startup that “has no competition.”  It’s an amazingly ignorant thing to state because it’s almost impossible to be true.  In the most basic case, inertia and manual processes represent real competition.  In the more likely case, if the idea has any merit at all, there are others trying to grab their more-than-fair share of the applicable market.

To me, the more important point is why would you even want to be in a situation where you have no competition.  While it may seem like having no competition is an advantage, in reality, there are far greater advantages to having competition than not.  Just like Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” proclamation in the movie Wall Street, competition is good.

So, what’s so good about having competition?  I’ll give you two reasons:

1. When you’re looking for money, multiple players fighting for market share is an implicit validation of the market for potential investors.  If you’re out there all alone, even good ideas can be a scary proposition to investors.  There’s nothing like having multiple, recently funded potential competitors in the market to increase an investor’s drive to do a deal.  For one, they don’t want to be left out and, two, they assume that their due diligence is supported by those who have already made similar investments.
   • A corollary to this is that if you’re fortunate enough to have multiple investors interested in your deal, the competitive nature of your potential investors will likely drive up your valuation.  Like I said, competition is good.
2. There’s nothing like competitive juices poking you with a stick to keep you innovating and having a sense of urgency about everything you do.  Competing is part of people’s nature.  We all want to win.  When there’s no competition, we either get complacent or we lose focus.  Competition keeps us on our toes and guarantees that we will continue to try to improve and attempt to stay ahead in every important metric (sales, market share, customer engagements, ads, whatever).

Competition changes most people’s behavior.  In business, it generally changes it for the better.  It actually opens up opportunities instead of shutting them down, as most people suspect.  None of this is to say that you should try to enter markets where there is an obscene amount of competition.  But, don’t let a little competition scare you away, either.  It could be one of the best tools in your entrepreneurial quiver.

Popularity: 8% [?]

The old adage in sports is that defense wins games.  It’s one that has shown itself to be true for all time and for all sports.  Unlike many analogies that hold true between sports and business, though, this one does not.  If you play defense in business, you will lose.  It’s almost guaranteed.  There is no gentleman’s agreement between companies that your competitors will wait for you to move first.  To be successful, you need to take the initiative and move first and fast.

This has never been more true than today, when there is very little sustainable differentiation to be found in any fast-growing market.  Even in slower-growth markets, differentiation is much tougher and defensive strategies will allow more aggressive competition to catch up.  Just ask Boeing, a huge company that gave up it’s unilateral dominance of the commercial skies when it defended its existing commercial business position for years instead of advancing it at the same pace it had for decades.

To be clear, what I mean by offense in business has to do with how strategies are set and tactics executed, for sure, but even more importantly, how a company is managed.  A company or better put, its employees, are on the offense when they are aggressive, flexible, agile, fast, willing to take risks and excited by change.  A culture with these attributes will move fast and overcome obstacles and challenges quickly.  Any culture that routinely accepts people moving overly deliberately and digging in their heels will slow over time and become less competitive.  Once such a culture exists, it’s also very difficult to reverse without major organizational changes.

When I speak of taking an offensive stance in business, I’m not just referring to selling and marketing.  I believe that in order to maximize success, one needs to constantly push all aspects of business - product development and release, support, service delivery, capital formation, third-party relationships and even human resources.  Drive every part of your business further and faster and you’ll find that subtle advantages will begin to emerge.  These advantages won’t be static, either, because, over time, they will compound, making the company better and a substantially stronger competitor in the market.

Are there downsides to such an approach?  Sure thing.  When you’re driving hard and moving fast you open yourself up to the possibility that you will quickly execute a poor tactic or strategy.  If you remain nimble, though - a part of taking an offensive approach to everything - you will generally catch crash-and-burn situations before they happen.  In fact, such situations become part of your thinking and business wisdom, further enabling you to make faster decisions in the future. 

At all times, a business should think of itself as its own greatest competitor.  If the focus of a business is simply staying ahead of the outside competition it lets that competition set the standard.  Good companies work to set the industry standard and to stay ahead of their competition at all times.  Great companies go way beyond this point.  They are never happy with their leadership position and are willing to question everything and make sweeping changes in order to get even further ahead.  If you find that you compare yourself too frequently with your outside competitors and that you wait to see what move they make next, you’re probably being defensive and will ultimately be in a tough spot.  If, however, you routinely take stock of the entire marketplace and aggressively work to create success in new and unique ways, including challenging your own leadership position, you will be much more likely to have long term success.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I have never seen a board of advisors work after the initial few meetings. I’m sure there are cases where they are managed well and it works out, but for the most part, my experience is that any initial engagement and excitement wanes and the value diminishes fairly quickly.

I think that the reason this happens is that there’s no fundamental attachment between the members of the board of advisors and the company.  Sure, there might be a small financial one, created by offering the members of the group some equity or cash compensation, but it’s very difficult to establish any emotional link that would compel the outside members of the group to put in the long term effort to continue to add value, stay engaged and work to make the company successful.

The problem is that the people who are generally targeted as advisors have other jobs and responsibilities.  After the idea of equity participation and initial interest in what the company is doing wears off - which can happen quickly - the company that they are advising becomes a much lower priority than any of their other responsibilities.  Since they are not involved on a day-to-day basis, there is no other link to keep them thinking about what their advisee needs.  Ultimately, the relationship moves from a mutual one to one driven entirely by the company until it breaks down completely.

As it turns out, while the board of advisor setup doesn’t work that well, there are other ways of achieving the benefits desired in setting up the group in the first place.

• Compensate company adviser(s) frequently - the value of any compensation dissipates quickly when the advisor isn’t thinking about the company.  More frequent grants of equity or cash payments will serve to keep their attention focused on the tasks at hand.
• Put them on the Board of Directors - if they add enough global value, put them in a more responsible position with the company, like its board of directors.  The added responsibility will keep them focused on the company. Of course, you can only do this for a small number of people and only for those who are appropriate for such a role.
• Hire them as a consultant - in this way, they have responsibility for delivering value to the company with an agreed upon income for doing it.  This arrangement has the added advantage that it’s easy to sever If and when the advisor no longer adds value.  The advisor can then be replaced by someone with different experience or knowledge.

Having outside advisors is always a good thing.  They can bring perspective to your efforts and direction.  They can also bring knowledge and wisdom into the company that may be missing in the current team.  Ultimately, the structure of such a group of advisors is critical to its success, though.  The classic board of advisors structure frequently fails because it does not establish an emotional or responsibility link between the company and the advisor.  There are other ways of accomplishing this though.  When these are used, a great relationship between an advisor and company can be established although, perhaps, not as a group.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Brad Feld has a great post this week titled, Don’t Be Casual, in which he talks about a company in his portfolio that did a “casual” presentation to a VC firm, only to realize that the company’s idea of casual didn’t match the VC firm’s.  In the end, “the meeting was a disaster.”  Brad concludes his post with the message:

“. . . in all fundraising situations – don’t be casual.  The first impression counts a huge amount and sets the tone.  This is obvious, but even after doing hundreds of financings, I blew it this time.”

The post is a terrific lesson from many points of view and, while the comments seem to focus on the failure of the presentation itself, I believe that there are some higher-level lessons that can be drawn from this experience.  Two, in particular, come to mind.

1. Generally speaking, if you blow your initial shot with VCs you’ve probably poisoned the well.
• Many of my VC pals disagree with this point, but I’ve seen it time and again.  Most VCs have a lot on their plates.  If they’re not out fundraising, they’re looking at loads of deals or managing the ones already in their portfolio.  Because they’re busy, the impression they take from their first meeting with you will likely be the one they fall back on the next time they have the opportunity to think about your company.  If it was bad, it’s highly likely that their negative memory will make it easy for them to pass on the next meeting and ultimately, any deal with you.  This remains true after you’ve gone back, having taken their advice on what would make your idea better, and refined both your idea and approach.
• Make sure that you’ve gotten all the advice and made all the changes to maximize your potential value to your target VCs before you present to them.  Find outside advisors and present to VCs that aren’t on your target list to get early feedback before you meet with the people you want to impress most.
2. Whether in fundraising situations or not, in business, always be the best dressed person at the ball.
• Until you’re the person in charge, the one making the decision or a recognized luminary in your field, always make it a high priority to do what’s important to your audience better than they expect it to be done.  That requires, of course, that you know what they expect; at least at a high level.  Uncovering expectations is usually fairly easy - ask.  If you can’t find out, do things in a way that would blow anyone away . . .
• Treat the person your meeting like they’re the Queen of England - formality never hurts
• Several readers of this blog feel differently about this, but I stand by it - stand up when you present.  It shows respect for your material and the audience.
• When presenting, be prepared to take the conversation in many directions.  Check with the audience after the first few slides to see if your guess about best path is correct, if not, go to plan B, C or D.
• Get feedback up front.  State what you believe are the expectations for the meeting as the meeting starts.  You may be surprised to find out that the person/people you are meeting with will tell you exactly what you need to do.
• Don’t use jargon, acronyms and buzzwords to try to impress your audience unless you know for a fact that they’re in your audience’s lexicon.
• When in Rome, dress like a Roman.  Wearing cargo shorts and Chuck Taylors may fly in the office and maybe even with customers and partners, but if you dress that way in a meeting with a banker in New York, no good will come of it.
• Whether your presenting to VCs, meeting with customers or presenting at a conference, prepare and be prepared.  Knowing what to do ahead of time is always the best answer.  If that’s not possible, and sometimes it’s not, then set yourself up to deal with as many contingencies as possible.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Several years ago, I was part of a team that did a slightly leveraged management buyout of a division of a larger company.  The deal was a relatively straightforward acquisition of all the assets, licenses, rights and so forth of the division for about $55M.  Roughly $35M came from a single VC fund.  Another $15M was in bank debt and the final $5M came from a small fund that an investment bank had for such deals.  At the close of the deal, the larger VC took a board seat, but the investment banker, at my urging, declined a seat at the table.

I was having lunch with the investment banker that did the deal (who is now the President and CEO of the investment bank) the other day.  The conversation was cordial enough until he brought up the fact that he felt that he was never kept in the loop about what was going on inside the company and was constantly surprised - mostly negatively - with news from and about the company.  He reminded me that at one point, the bank had threatened to pull the company’s loan.  Something that he did not learn about until very late in the process.

Needless to say, I was exceedingly embarrassed.  As hypocritical as it sounds from this situation, I pride myself in my active communication with all parties involved, regardless of the level of their involvement.  It’s not even like the guy was an asshole or anything.  In fact, he’s a terrific guy who would work to help me deal with any issues in a calm and straightforward manner . . . if given the chance.  His advice was always good and, even more important, it was given well.  Gulp!  I screwed up.  Further, I’m sure I’ve done this type of thing many times, too.  He’s just the first guy who thought it was worthwhile to say something about it.

So, what did I do wrong.  After a few days of reflection, it was clear that I made several mistakes.

1. My belief that I’m great communicator prevented me from seeing that I’m not.  Well, not always anyway.  Damn the ego!
2. I treated investors sitting at the table (the Board table, that is), different from investors less actively involved.
3. I forgot that my pool of mentors and advisors extended beyond the people I interact with on a day-to-day basis.
4. Over time, my ignorance of the problem became a permanent mental block as we took the company public, eventually selling it, and everyone made money.  Success clouds the recognition and memory of failure.

Doh!  It’s really painful rewarding  upsetting great to have a good kick in the ass once in a while to remind me that I still don’t really know anything.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Or, more simply put, more effort and concern goes into last ditch efforts to prevent failure than into planning for success along the way.  The title of this post is my very slight modification of what one of my board members, Larry Reeder of The Sprout Group, used to say: “more work happens in desperation than aspiration.”  I’m afraid to admit that I heard this from him more often than I’d like to remember as he noted how my team and I put super-human efforts forth once we had worked ourselves into a corner - a situation that could have likely been avoided with substantially less effort dedicated to the potential problems early on.

I still fall victim to this as I get excited about ideas and rush headlong into going after them.  That’s the fun part, right?  I’m afraid that I’ve never been one to fully think through things and that fact has probably cost me years of time, created untold stress and left me with a great need for therapy.  Not to say that it’s any easier to plan things out as well as possible or even that the planning process requires any less commitment or effort when done before the wheels come off, but it’s likely that all that effort would be more efficient and would probably increase the odds of success of whatever you’re doing.  While you can fix many problems late in the cycle, the likelihood of success simply diminishes the further you’re along.

Planning is often considered an up-front activity.  Something that’s done only at the start of the creation process.  In my opinion, this is only part of what planning should be.  Planning is something that should happen at the beginning and frequently (although not constantly) while you’re on the execution path.  Too much focus on the end goal without questioning either the path you’re on or the goal itself as you learn more is more often than not a recipe for a last minute scramble.

I see this happen with many of the companies that I work with.  Prior to getting funding, they look at every detail of how to optimize their chances for success.  They understand their valuation tipping points, the market dynamics, the competitive landscape and their core differentiation.  After funding, however, their path gets locked in and they put all their energy into executing their plans from their pre-funding efforts without looking up at the horizon once in a while and re-evaluating where they’re headed.  Inevitably, they run into a brick wall that probably could have been avoided if they just stepped back and considered the planning process an ongoing activity rather than something done only once.

It’s so difficult to have the discipline to stop, take a deep breath and question all of the assumptions that made you decide on the path you’re on.  It’s even harder to thoroughly evaluate whether the goal you have set is still correct.  Speaking entirely from the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do school, though, it’s clear that making informed, incremental adjustments to either your goal or path early and often (well, at least once in a while) will save you loads of time later as well as optimize your chances for success.

Popularity: 3% [?]

It’s about halfway through the 4th quarter for the companies I work with (all have fiscal year = calendar year).  About this time during each quarter I reach a point that I think of as the hockey stick turning point, the point at which I move from being confident that there will be no bookings or revenue hockey stick during the current period to praying that there will be one.  After all, if you haven’t already made a reasonable percentage of bookings or revenue by now, you gotta make it up in the back end, right?

A hockey stick (most often referred to as a fu*&%$ing hockey stick) is the shape of the curve representing the disproportional percentage of revenue and/or bookings coming in late in any fiscal period.  It’s bad because it’s difficult to plan around, can cause cash flow nightmares, brings about a huge amount of uncertainty and pulls the organization in more ways than it’s often able to deal with in order to close so much business in such a short period of time.

Hockey stick bookings or revenue issues happen for a variety reasons.  Some of them are . . .

1. The sales force drains it’s pipeline in order to meet the previous quarter’s financial goals, making it rebuild it’s pipeline during the early part of the following quarter and close those deals during the later weeks.
2. There are subtle and, most often, unintentional rewards built into the sales plan that encourage sales people to close deals late.
3. Customers wait for a new, late-quarter, product release because they have no incentive to buy earlier.
4. Customers wait to pay for renewals, upgrades, service, maintenance, etc. until the last possible day they can.
5. Customers wait until late in the quarter to try to squeeze the supplier for bigger discounts.

These problems, sometimes several of them working together insidiously, often result in hockey sticks rearing their ugly heads in every quarter, with the fourth quarter frequently being the worst because it is, generally, the largest quarter, financially speaking.  If you then draw a trend line through all the quarters, you see that the year’s bookings/revenues are a hockey stick as well.

I spent most of my career in an industry with a relatively small number of very large customers.  Generally speaking, these large companies had well-trained purchasing departments that knew how to manipulate the sales process of their suppliers.  As a result, I dealt with my largest customers pushing deal closings to the last possible minute of every quarter.  As such, I struggled with hockey sticks all the time. 

While I never was able to completely slay the beast, I was able to make some changes that worked - at least incrementally.  If your target market is small, big changes are tough, but some of these suggestions may help you out.

1. Look at your sales compensation plan.  Yes, I know you’ve done it before, but do it again.  In my experience, almost all sales plans unintentionally encourage some behavior that isn’t aligned with the company’s tactics or strategy.  Sometimes implicit rewards in the plan (not always financial - sometimes they just allow one salesperson to brag that they’re better than another) make it desirable for an individual sales person to delay sales or consolidate them late in the quarter.  Add rewards to your plan for bringing in sales as early as possible in the period.
2. Change your fiscal year (or set it wisely at the start).  I had the opportunity to do this once and jumped on it.  It made a tremendous difference.  In my case, I moved it to February - keeping it away from the holidays and summer months when you may not have a full-staff available to deal with the added pressure.  It effectively (although not completely) dealt with the problems of the large purchasing departments manipulating our quarters while helping us balance out cyclical buying cycles.
3. Never pre-announce the delivery of a product that keeps the customer from buying today (like Microsoft shipping Vista in January, missing the holiday season AND killing XP sales).  At the very least, reward customers with a free upgrade to the new version if they buy the current product now.
4. While the common wisdom is that recurring revenue models (as opposed to perpetual models) take care of the problem, this is only true with slow-growth companies.  If you’re building on a small base of sales and you’re growing fast, you still have to bring many new customers in.  Closing those customers late in the financial period, no matter what your model is, will cause a hockey stick problem.  Of course, recurring revenue does a great job at flattening things out once your numbers get big and growth is slower.
5. Don’t live hand-to-mouth.  If you’re sucking your pipeline dry all the time, you’ll be praying for a hockey stick all the time.  A big pipeline with many prospects in play will give you the most flexibility and the greatest likelihood of reasonably being able to control the shape of you revenue/bookings curve.
6. Have a nice mixture of small and large deals.  If your sales force is encouraged to only be going after the biggest customers or biggest sales, it’s going to be difficult to predict when they will close or for how much.  This increases the likelihood of a hockey stick.  If they can close some smaller deals while nurturing the bigger ones, the business will be more healthy.

When you’re tight on cash, are goal-driven or have to report your results (like a public company), hockey sticks can ruin your day (er . . . quarter).  Life is just better when bookings and revenue come in at a pretty consistent rate throughout the fiscal period.  The business is easier to manage, the future is easier to plan and you can decrease your Maalox budget substantially.

Popularity: 4% [?]

On the spectrum of choices that has work at one end and life outside of work at the other, should you try to be in the middle?  Isn’t the common wisdom that creating a good balance between the two is required to lead a healthy and happy life and that good balance means equal amounts of both?  So-called experts are always spouting off about how successful people have figured out how to maintain equal parts work and “life” and that there is a direct correlation between their ability to do this and their success; concluding that there is a perfect formula for making it all work. 

The problem is, most statements like these are vast oversimplifications of the situation.  There is no one formula for balancing work and life - each person has their own and, like most things in life, it’s dynamic.  Therein lies the challenge.  You have to figure out what is best for you at any given time and try to make it work.  Two things that are for sure, though, your balance is unlikely to be the same as what works for anyone else and it’s probably not going to be with equal parts work and life.

If you’re like me, the more I read about finding the illusive work:life balance, the guiltier I felt about my obvious bias towards work.  From my point of view, though, and in retrospect, my mistake was the guilty feeling about my choices, not the actual balance that I chose.  Which, for me, worked out pretty well . . . so far, anyway.

I’m a great proponent of the idea that insanely hard work leads to happiness.  I’ve dedicated most of my career to doing just that, although now I’m in a different, lazier phase.  Luckily, I’m one of many who enjoys long hours, huge amounts of stress and juggling a thousand balls at the same time.  Not so much for the financial rewards such efforts sometimes bring, which can be great, for sure, but for the excitement and contentment such an effort gives me.  For me, there’s nothing quite like the exhilaration that I feel from knowing that my efforts were the root cause of the creation or success of something.  From my perspective, there is no life without that feeling.  For most of my career, the needle on my work:life balance gauge was virtually pegged on the big W at one end.  It worked well for me.

Are there tradeoffs to immersing yourself this way?  Sure.  There are tradeoffs with any balancing act, by definition.  The point is, that if you recognize those tradeoffs and enjoy what you do and how you do it, then accept it and be happy with the ride.  Scott Converse, founder and CEO of ClickCaster captures it very well in his post, Are Early Stage Startups and Normal Lives Incompatible?

In concept, you should spend equal time and energy in work and play, business and pleasure, enterprise and family.  Odds are, though, that balance won’t work for you.  If it does, great.  Go for it.  If 100% work and 0% life works for you.  Do that - no guilt, no questions.  Similarly, if your balance is 100% life with 0% work, do that instead (I hope those youth hostels are working out for you).  All formulas are cool - there is only right and wrong with respect to you as an individual - there’s no global application.  The only mistakes you can make come from trying to apply someone else’s view on what the right balance is to your life and in continuing your current balance without analyzing it once in a while to see if a change is needed to maximize your happiness.

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