The Startup Company Heirarchy of Needs

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Startup Hierarchy of Needs(With apologies to Abraham Maslow)

One of the most interesting elements of working as a senior executive in a startup company is that such careers are typically punctuated with long periods of time off.  This is particularly true of successful exits, which provide the luxury of time off to think about the next great invention. Some guys go back to school, while others drop from sight for a while. But my personal favorite has always been consulting – it’s a great way to stay engaged, absorb  new technology, and best of all, learn what other startups are working on.

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For Business Results, Hire More Moms

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The same year my mom started singing the famous line of Helen Reddy’s 1975 hit, “I am woman, I am strong, if I have to, I can do anything,” I was learning my first words. Surely, I was influenced by my mom’s struggle to find her footing as a career woman and as a mother. Many women in the ‘70s were going through the same struggle. This was the first decade in history, after all, in which women had viable choices in career and parenting. So I grew up believing that I could do both. Now, as a mom of young children with a marketing writing career, I’ve learned that doing both requires a lot of hard work and determination. But I also know that the perseverance, creativity, and flexibility that come from learning to succeed in both business and motherhood are the same characteristics that make moms essential to the workplace. Continue reading “For Business Results, Hire More Moms” »

It’s Not Just About Backup

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It’s a sad story, one that’s been told many times:

Important data wasn’t backed up. Then a tragic event struck. It was a drive crash on a critical server, or a lost laptop, or a natural disaster that wiped out an entire office. All data was lost, which had dire consequences for the affected business.

Data loss is absolutely avoidable, yet an astonishing 66 percent of businesses don’t have a business continuity or disaster recovery strategy. (See The VAR’s Path to Managed Services for other interesting statistics about data loss and the cost of downtime.) But protection isn’t solely about running backups. A backup is really just a means to an end for ensuring the uptime of business-critical systems.  It’s a mechanism that only partially answers the question, “Am I protected?” So, what else is needed?

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Four Principles of Personal and Professional Success

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By Justine Corella

Over the past month or so I’ve come across a number of articles that derive lessons from iconic movies and apply them to today’s business world.  The first of these I read, “Five Career Lessons from Han Solo,” appeared in Forbes on March 29 and was one of the most read articles on LinkedIn. Another was Fast Company’s “An Offer You Can’t Refuse: Leadership Lessons from ‘The Godfather’,” in which Axcient’s CEO, Justin Moore, took five strong themes from “The Godfather” and explained how each could be applied to everyday business. These two examples got me thinking about lessons I’ve learned from movies, but then I realized that some of the most meaningful advice I’ve received is from a much lesser-known source.

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True Leaders and Like-Minded People: The Ingredients to a Great Work Environment

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What does it take to create a really great place to work?  A place where people want to be? An environment in which brilliant, highly motivated people can excel?

It takes more than perfectly designed buildings and glistening new computers. It takes more than the usual things that all good companies spend a great deal of time, energy, and money on – great physical work environments, the perfect location, video games and bicycles and scooters and pets and fully-stocked gyms and cafes. The list goes on and on.

Let us be clear – these things matter. A lot. Every single employee interface matters. Work areas, furniture, tools, lighting, fabrics, colors and textures that are current, environmentally friendly, refreshing, and, above all, effective. These things make people feel comfortable. They are absolutely critical to a productive and happy workforce.

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The VAR’s Path to Managed Services

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VAR path to managed servicesThis blog by Axcient VP of Products Todd Scallan was originally published in The VAR Guy on April 13, 2012.

The cloud provides a natural, evolutionary path into managed services for IT resellers serving small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). In particular, backup and disaster recovery is a great entrée into the cloud because it provides a predictable revenue stream, it offers higher margins than the traditional product sale, and there’s a growing need for SMBs’ data and application uptime.

Best of all, the cloud has a similar sales motion as that for IT products. In other words, think of the cloud as a product disguised as a service that can complement on-premise offerings.
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From Spiral Notebooks to QuickBooks: The Accounting Software Guide for Growing SMBs

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In a galaxy far-far away (the late 1970s to be exact), there were only a few choices of accounting programs available to small and midsized business (SMB) owners. Besides the shoebox, there was always the reliable One-Write System. Of course, with One-Write you needed several different systems (cash disbursements, cash receipts, payroll disbursements, etc.) where you totaled and transferred everything to the reliable 3-column notebook that acted as your general ledger. If you did your math correctly, you would then be able to produce an income statement and a balance sheet…of course, that’s AFTER you made sure your subsidiary ledgers tied out. Continue reading “From Spiral Notebooks to QuickBooks: The Accounting Software Guide for Growing SMBs” »

Leading for Success: How to Motivate Your Team

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Motivating Teams ImageThis blog is second in the series “Leading for Success.”

Motivating a team might be compared to creating a sculpture. The artist is able to see beyond the raw material to the potential in the mass, and then carefully carve away extra material to realize a fine piece of art.  To extend this analogy into what creates a high performing, motivated team, one must first understand the raw material: Continue reading “Leading for Success: How to Motivate Your Team” »

Recruiting – College vs. The Real World

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If you’re a working professional, chances are you’ve received an email, LinkedIn message, or even a cold call from a recruiter.  As a recent college grad, I’ll admit that I ignored almost every single form of communication that I received from a recruiter during my senior year. Of course, most of these were from service-oriented programs such as Teach for America, Peace Corps, as well as the U.S. Army. I viewed these emails and the occasional letter as nothing more than a mass mailing since virtually every one of my friends and fellow classmates received them as well (and on several occasions the email addressed to me either misspelled my name or had the wrong name entirely). However, now that I’ve had first-hand experience with recruiting here at Axcient, I know that what I like to call “real-world” recruiting is nothing like my experience with recruiting in college. Continue reading “Recruiting – College vs. The Real World” »

How to Get your Business in the Cloud

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This blog by Axcient VP Sales Chris Sterbenc was originally published in The VAR Guy on March 19, 2012.

You’re a VAR, trying to crack into the cloud solutions market. You understand why the opportunity is hot but you’re not exactly sure how to make your first monthly recurring revenue (MRR) sale. After meeting with hundreds of VARs at the HP/Axcient Cloud Roadshowthis past month, I can tell you that you are not alone – about 75% of attendees were looking to make their very first Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or managed service sale. In case you missed the Roadshow, here’s a summary of the five steps we presented for how to align your business model to leverage the cloud. Continue reading “How to Get your Business in the Cloud” »