Top 15 Reminders I’m Back In a Startup

This week is the one-year anniversary of my return to high tech startups. I’d spent the three previous years managing SaaS engineering teams for Dell, where I met some great people, learned some valuable skills, and longed to get back to the “real world.” To commemorate, I thought I’d publish my top reminders that I no longer work in a Fortune 100 company.

• There is no water cooler talk about a pending re-org; hint: we don’t have enough of an organization to re-organize
• It’s December and none of my internal emails return with an out of office reply
• Downside: I don’t fly to Bangalore in business class. Upside: I don’t fly to Bangalore.
• I have only faint and fond memories of annual bonuses with performance modifiers
• Shhh…. I just checked my personal email from work
• Shhh… I just checked it from a Mac
• The time from product idea to customer usage is less than 30 days
• My only impediment to building more faster is time and money
• Ah, if only I had more money...
• Value to the business is measured solely by execution (no messaging required)
• The difference between correct and directionally correct is success and failure
• Organizational alignment can be achieved by shouting across cubes
• Organizational agility is where you shout to multiple people at once
• Writing code is no longer a disservice to your staff; not writing code however is
• The only compliance course I plan on taking this month is at the rock gym down the street from my house

SilverBack Technologies was acquired by Dell in July 2007. I joined cloud startup Sonian in December 2010.