Need to raise venture capital?
Alexander Muse , January 24, 2008
Comments (0)You can try the Venture Capital Directory, or you can just call “Jeff Williams, hottest VC in Dallas!” Have fun!
In-House IT: a cautionary tale!
Alexander Muse , January 24, 2008
Businesses who are reluctant to hire an outsourced IT support company often cite their concern about relying on third-parties as their reason for hiring internal IT support. Turns out having your own internal IT support resource isn’t necessarily safe. In many cases, your internal resource has a vested interest in your activities. They may read your email or peruse your files in an effort to understand where they stand within your company. In other cases they may get angry with you and delete all of your company’s data.
One IT employee in Florida thought she was going to be fired from a small architectural firm and as a parting shot to the owners she deleted seven years of drawings and blueprints. The truth was the owner wasn’t planning to hire a replacement, but instead find someone similar to work for his wife’s business. The company terminated Maria’s employment on Monday and she was arrested and charged with a felony. Read more about Maria Cooley’s actions here.
Do’s and Dont’s you need to know
Alexander Muse , January 22, 2008
From my blog, pay attention:
Do’s
- Do ensure for yourself (as founder or chief) that you are addressing a real market and a sustainable one; where the exchange of value is transacted and measured in US currency
- Do only hire for pre-identified expertise, operating need, and the energy to accomplish excellence; if you get more, great; don’t hire otherwise
- Do always know your cash level, weekly cash spend and receipt rates, cash-runs-out date, and close-up liabilities amounts; start finding funding choices when you hit t-minus 6 months till operating cash runs out
- Do money deals with money people (e.g. Angels, VC’s, banks, and credit unions); do product deals with product people (eg. Commercial companies); and do risk deals with risk people (e.g. Insurance companies). Don’t get these confused. If a product company wants to invest in your company, can they afford to take the whole thing? If not, then not.
- Do ensure that at least one of your early formal investors has the financial wherewithal to keep investing in subsequent increasing rounds many years down the road; do make sure your different investors are really compatible
- Do always accumulate choice; two by definition, three of four is better; then make decisions and have a back-up
- Do let the stress of overload and/or capacity strain the triggers for expansion; demand flexing the edges of the system is usually the truest sign of real growth
- Do track revenue and cost per employee; have trigger thresholds for when to add staff or subtract. Human efficiency and innovation is what creates value
Don’ts
- Don’t hire of goodness of heart or friendship
- Don’t hire anyone who you and your team are not genuinely excited about
- Don’t tolerated mediocre engineers; for that matter, mediocre anyone. An early sign of mediocrity is when you downgrade tasks and expectations to align with an employee
- Don’t count on your investors to take care of you when things get rough and/or protracted
- Don’t over interpret or count on the stated operating “value-add” from investors during their solicitations during fundraising
- Don’t build out your staff or infrastructure in expectation of rapid growth; be strong enough and tolerant of market back-pressure or order/service backlog
- Don’t keep the same sales and marketing execs if the business isn’t growing or charging for growth; no sales and marketing VP was ever fired prematurely
- Don’t over delegate to consultants, accountants, or lawyers; even the great ones are only as good as you are as an engaged client; read and understand everything; if left alone, you must have a point of view, right or wrong
Perfect Problems
Alexander Muse , January 18, 2008
Turns out being perfect is hard. Seth Godin wrote about the problem this morning in a post titled, ‘The problem with perfect‘. He explains, “When was the last time you excitedly told someone about Fedex? They’re perfect. The only time we notice them is when they screw up.”
Architel’s service offering, far from perfect, is very similar. If we are successful and our client’s network has few and fewer problems instead of heaping praise on us; often our client’s will begin to question our value. In some cases they will contact our CEO and ask if they can get a list of trouble tickets and support requests so that they can ascertain the value of our service. Ironically, it is only through our failure do our client’s perceive our value.
Our goal in 2008 is to add, what Seth calls, ‘texture’ to our service. By dividing our customers among four delivery teams our hope is that we can increase ‘interpersonal interaction’ between our staff and our customers and at the end of the day offering a perceived value built on people instead of failure. Seth suggests there is hope for companies like our or like FedEx, “I think our Fedex delivery person is interesting. I like her. I talk to her. And yes, it changes my decision about who to ship with. I also think that Spicy Mina is an interesting restaurant. So far from perfect, it’s ridiculous. But I talk about it.”
Speed up Windows XP and Vista
Alexander Muse , January 9, 2008
Did you know that you can speed up your computer by turning off unnecessary services in XP and Vista? Talk to one of our engineers and they can help you. Dennis O’Reilly has the full scoop:
The fact is, you don’t need all of the services that Windows starts automatically when it boots. Disabling the non-essential services frees up memory and processor cycles for more important tasks. The trick is knowing which of Windows’ automatic services you can do without: Disabling the wrong service can render your system unusable. If you’re careful, you can figure out which automatically enabled services your PC can do without.
Things would be so much simpler if I could just list which services to disable, but each Windows configuration is unique, so there’s no way to predict which ones are required on your system. That’s why I rely on sites such as Charles Sparks’ BlackViper.com.
First, play it safe by setting a restore point
Start by backing up the Registry (the page also describes how to restore it). Next, open the Services applet: In XP, click Start>Run, type services.msc, and press Enter; in Vista, press the Windows key, type services.msc, and press Enter. (Avoid the temptation to access your services via Msconfig, a.k.a. the System Configuration utility.)BlackViper.com’s list of XP services shows the default settings with Service Pack 2 installed. Likewise, the site’s Vista services list assumes that you’ve downloaded and installed all “important” updates for that OS.
You’ll likely find more services on your system than are listed there, most of which were installed by software you or the PC’s vendor added. You may also find services on the BlackViper.com list that aren’t on your machine (especially if you use XP Home); some OEMs choose not to install some services. Work your way through the services, disabling those enabled by default that you deem unnecessary. You can play it safe by setting a service on Manual, which starts it only when Windows decides that your system needs it. Unfortunately, some services set to Manual won’t start when they should, so you may need to reset these to Automatic.
Get more information about a Windows service by double-clicking its entry in the Services applet
To determine which other services a particular entry requires (and which other services require it), double-click its entry in the Services list to open its Properties dialog box, and click the Dependencies tab. Along with the suggestions on the BlackViper.com site, look for services relating to hardware you no longer use. Other candidates for disabling are Remote Registry, Themes (if you’re happy with Windows’ Classic appearance), and Windows Firewall (only if your system is protected by a third-party firewall). Note that changes you make here apply to all users on the system.
Critical Microsoft Security Patch ~ APPLY NOW!
Alexander Muse , January 8, 2008
Microsoft released two patches today. The first is critical and the second is important as described by Microsoft:
Titled “Vulnerabilities in Windows TCP/IP Could Allow Remote Code Execution (941644)”, this bulletin affects users of Microsoft Windows 2000, XP SP2, Server 2003, and Vista, and addresses the vulnerability detailed in CVE-2007-0069 and CVE-2007-0066. A vulnerability exists in Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) processing, and the patch modifies the way that the Windows kernel processes TCP/IP structures that contain multicast and ICMP requests. Microsoft says “an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.”
Titled “Vulnerability in LSASS Could Allow Local Elevation of Privilege (943485)”, this bulletin affects users of Microsoft Windows 2000, XP SP2, Server 2003, but not Windows Vista. The update addresses the vulnerability detailed in CVE-2007-5352. If exploited, a vulnerability within Microsoft Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) could allow an attacker to elevate privileges, take complete control of an affected system, then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.
Please note and address as appropriate.
