I'm an operator-grade peer to CEOs of post-PMF software companies when the work cuts across more than one seat at the table - when the standard functional moves keep widening the gap rather than closing it. The problem isn't function-shaped. There's no seat at the table exactly shaped for it.
Across CEO, CPTO, CPO, and CTO seats over six platform shifts, I've watched the same shape arrive: the company that should be moving but isn't.
The work: I diagnose the actual shape, embed alongside the CEO for a bounded window, and transition into the right permanent structure on the other side.
What makes it hard isn't only the technical and operational dimension - it's the human-systems read underneath: what's actually happening between people in the leadership team, not just what's on the whiteboard. Get that read wrong, and the engagement falls apart under stress. Get it right, and you've unlocked the next level.
Four exits. Engagements are bounded, with capability transfer on the back end.
Down To The Desktop Or Up Into The Clouds
I think that my recent purchase of the iPhone has tipped the balance in quandry I’ve had.
It goes something like this: I’ve wanted a better tool to manage my professional relationships (something I’ve been thinking of as a personal CRM). As a result, I’ve been looking for what Mac apps fill that niche - and there are some nice candidates (e.g. Contactizer, Daylite, even Crm4Mac). At the same time, I see web-based solutions as well (and here’s the ‘in the clouds’ part), such as Highrise, Etelos, even a customized SugarCRM.
Unfortunately, none of these has the right set of features - which would have closed the deal and locked me in (either as a source of recurring revenue for the SaaS solutions or as a grateful customer for a Mac app)
At the same time, it’s itched my concern about whether to committee further ‘down’ into my local box with a Mac app or ‘up’ into the clouds with a web app.
All that leads to this - now that I’ve used my iPhone for a few days, and I’m successful at doing some of my basic tasks on it (e.g. reading blogs, web pages, email) it’s tipped the balance ‘up ot the clouds’. In other words, with no clear feature leader, I will make a solution work that’s an SaaS so that I can use it on my iPhone whereever and when ever I want.
Seperately, I’ll blog about what I really want in a Personal CRM.
My profiles, managed by me...
So if vertical social networks become popular, then the horizontal problem becomes intestering, e.g. how to manage one identity across multiple services. OpenID provides authentication, but nothing beyond that. What about profile data ala Google’s form-fill?
How? Consider this - if an OpenID enabled set of tools existed to extend OpenId so that when you registered, a plugin (ala greasemonkey) would run to take your OpenID related profile data and place it into the registration.
It would require a community of trusted “registration plugins” to be created that used your augmented OpenID data.