Devin and Jim discuss the seven deadly sins of private equity -- sins that will turn a good deal into a bad deal.
Read MoreJim and Alan talk in detail about the Valley of Anguish and how to survive it. All large projects (ERP implementations, software re-writes, data center moves) start out with heady expectations and hardy enthusiasm. Inevitably, as your teams start tackling the stickier issues they slide down into the Valley of Anguish.
Read MoreWe recently had to find a home for a legacy client/server accounting application, running in a location that was far, far away.
Read MoreThere is nearly a constant stream of chatter in the venture community about fielding a product in a highly competitive market. On the one hand, lots of competitors typically indicates that you are in a hot market.
Read MoreDevin interviews podcast darling Kevin Fitzgerald on his return to private equity after two years at Harvard Business School.
Read MoreJim talks with our old friend and colleague, Dirk Shimpach about the most common mistakes we make when implementing NetSuite.
Read MoreAlan and Jim discuss DevOps -- the intersection of software development and managing the deployment and operations of software. We provide a simple layman's definition of DevOps and then address common misconceptions and fears.
Read MoreDevin and Jim spend some time talking about the Failure Mythology -- the idea that you need to fail in a big way on the path to building a great company.
Read MoreDevin sits down with Dave Will, the founder of Peach New Media,a software company he founded, bootstrapped and recently sold to AccelKKR.
Read MoreDevin and Jim talk about Unicorns -- not the mythical horse witha horn, but rather the club of billion-dollar-plus tech companies. How is this market different than the late 90s? How do Unicorns affect buyouts and smaller companies, both positively and negatively?
Read MoreDevin and Jim welcome their partner Kristina to her first podcast where they talk about how to run a good board meeting. Who to invite, what to cover, what to avoid and how to manage your PE board members.
Read MoreAlan and Jim spend some time talking about tracking events and errors in application software logs. Most companies are at least monitoring their web logs and database error logs these days -- but we'd argue that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Read MoreThis year we are starting with the Elite Eight and working our way down to one winner. It's EBITDA Multiples versus Revenue Multiples, Debt versus No Debt, Private Equity Owned Businesses versus Founder Owned Businesses and Backing the Founder versus Bringing in your own CEO.
Read MoreJim and Alan spend some quality time talking about the most common technology challenges that we uncover when we acquire a founder owned technology company. This is not a criticism of how these companies are run, but rather a testimony to how much a small team is able to accomplish when they put their minds to it.
Read MoreDevin sits down with Chris Morgan, the founder of Lantern Partners, an executive search firm focused on hiring C-Suite executives at PE-backed companies. We cover how to get in the candidate flow, what characteristics are required for the job, how much you will get paid and other lessons from our collective experience looking for and hiring management teams.
Read MoreAlan and Jim spend some quality time talking about the Shiny New Toy problem (SNTS) in software development. The tendency for software teams to pin their hopes and dreams on leading edge technology that will solve all of their problems.
Read MoreJim and Alan spend a fast hour talking about technical debt. It's everything that a CEO or Founder needs to know about technical debt -- and how to start paying it down.
Read MoreJim and Alan talk about the Cloud. Private clouds versus public clouds. Should you ditch your own server room and move everything to the Cloud?
Read More