New season
Posted by Nick Mehta on Thu, May 15, 2008 @ 03:30 AM
I love football (and my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers), as anyone who knows me at all gets to know very (sometimes nauseatingly) well. The glories of the game have been documented many times over. But one of my favorite aspects of football is the blank slate and eternal optimism that accompanies the new season for every team.
I kind of feel that way about the new jobs that we take periodically in our careers. There is nothing like the feeling of walking into a company and realizing how much unknown excitement lies ahead of you.
On that note and as you may have heard, I recently (Monday) joined LiveOffice as CEO. Needless to say, I'm fired up.
Almost five years ago, I had the fortune of being pulled into the messaging industry when VERITAS Software (now Symantec) bought KVS and I was offered the opportunity to get involved with the business. The archiving product (Enterprise Vault) ended up doing very well and I was honored to have been a part of it. And for some unknown reason, I just completely fell in love with the email and messaging industry, as well as with the amazing product and team we built specifically.
Because of this, when I left Symantec in October 2007, the good folks at LiveOffice asked me to join the Board of Directors last fall. I thought it would be a fun opportunity for me to learn about the Software-As-A-Service industry that I had heard so much about from the likes of salesforce.com and to help the company in any way I can based upon my archiving experience, while I pursued my own personal dream of finding a company to join and run.
Over the past several months, I learned more and more about the LiveOffice business and company and fell head-over-heels in love again. There were three aspects of LiveOffice, in particular, that really caught my eye.
1. Sector
As I said, I am fascinated by the importance of email in our world. So many smarter people than me have written about the importance of email to businesses that it's become a cliche. Companies increasingly understand the needs to manage, archive, retain, discover and secure email effectively and are recognizing the overload employees are personally dealing with around email.
But what always struck me about email was the emotional impact it has on us: the unreturned email and the hurt feelings it can create, when the person may have just lost the message in the inbox; the "high" people get when they check their email and the addiction that this implies; the thrill of cleaning up your inbox, despite the inevitable futility of the effort.
When I left Symantec, I really wanted to start or find a business in the messaging industry with which to get involved. I looked at various startups and was intrigued with the new approaches to email productivity like what the guys at Xobni were doing. I was equally impressed with what Microsoft and Google were planning themselves to advance the industry. I knew that if I could find something in the messaging world, I will have found the next season of my career.
What really intrigued me about LiveOffice was that the needs we solve are well-understood (messaging, archiving, compliance, discovery, etc.) and that the method of delivery of the software ("-As-A-Service") was what was unique. Having been involved in in-house software for many years, I saw the great things that could be done by balancing innovation, timeliness and quality for customers. But I also saw the challenges customers faced with even the best of products if they didn't have the in-house IT staff, capital, expertise and tolerance for risk necessary to plan, provision, deploy, operate, troubleshoot and scale these systems.
Put more simply, it felt to me like messaging and message archiving are universal needs and yet not every organization was equipped to run these systems themselves.
In general, I'm a big believer that more-usable and transparent technology (which you see in SaaS, open source and appliances) is the future of IT, and this felt like a good way to mix my passion and experience while learning something new.
2. Scale
At the same time, what I love about my work is leading teams. I enjoy all of the minutia, melodrama and mania of managing people and growing organizations. I looked at starting something from scratch, but in some sense, I was thinking about that as a means to an end of running a real company. I get the biggest high out of working with people, getting them on the same page, helping them to find their professional dreams, as cheesy as it may sound, and in the process, creating an organization of positive energy, prioritization and passion. All of this matters a lot more when you have 10 or 100 people versus 1. :)
In this respect, LiveOffice's stage as a profitable company with around 100 employees was very attractive to me. There was a great base of technology and team to build on, with demonstrated history of substantial revenue, growth and customer loyalty (99% client retention rate). At the same time, there was a great deal of fun work ahead to scale it to the next level.
But even more importantly, what I found amazing about LiveOffice was how it was built. I'm from Silicon Valley and am used to the excitement and craziness typical with "venture-backed startups." Raising money and "getting VC funding" is often the first priority for any entrepreneur.
In contrast, the founders Alex Rusich and Matt Smith built LiveOffice on nothing but the sweat of the team, some money from friends and family and a few credit cards here and there. :) I'm a firm believer that a business built in this way has more staying power because of the fundamentals and loyalty that all of that hard work creates. And I was excited to learn from Alex and Matt in this regard.
3. Style
Most importantly, work is very personal for me. I work because of the feeling I get from the team around me. So the "cultural fit" (to use another cliche) is the most critical factor for me.
Having been on the board, I was lucky to have gotten a chance to know Alex, Matt and many of the employees of the company. This is truly a remarkable and unique organization in terms of the loyalty and history that all of the employees have demonstrated. I really think of the greatest of jobs as feeling like family (which is how things felt for me with my team at Symantec) and it felt like this family was one in which I'd be honored to be adopted.
Needless to say, when Alex and Matt got to know me and asked me if I'd ever consider joining the company, even though they weren't looking for a CEO, it became the opportunity of a lifetime and a total no-brainer for me. I kind of feel like new Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin in this regard. :)
I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts on the company, messaging, SaaS and perhaps some football in the coming months. Thanks for reading this.