What’s In Store For 2004

I don’t know exactly why.  Maybe it’s the times.  Maybe it’s the haggard or shell-shocked look on my face.  But whenever I meet with people I haven’t seen for a few months, I inevitably get asked “How is Acuitive doing,” which I interpret as “Are you guys still in business?  How? Why?”

The answers are “Yes.  Beats me.  Because we like it”. 

We have downsized the company over the past couple of years.  More than ever we are now focused on strategic business, marketing and product planning activities with (predominantly) Silicon Valley based IT infrastructure-oriented start-up companies, often taking on an interim role on the company’s executive team.  To get to this focus, some good people have moved on.  Barbara Saxby and Denise Barton have created their own consulting practices in areas such as Enterprise Software and Web Services that weren’t core to Acuitive.  Dave Logan moved back to North Carolina to be closer to both his and his wife’s family and to get some land so he could grow his family of dogs.  He is now the CEO of an interesting company called Covelight that is trying to help enterprises shed light on their security vulnerabilities before such vulnerabilities cause them to be in the news.   Jim Kubinec got co-opted into RFCo, as the VCs insisted he join before they fund.  (That still rankles me to this day).  Roy Harvey left for religious reasons – he religiously wanted to help Electronic Arts deliver John Madden Football to the world via the Internet.  He also wanted humidity and big insects, both of which he has found in Florida.  Dave Brenner had trouble finding consulting work in the Dallas area that he lives and got tired of commuting to Tucson for work.  So, he joined a UWB company in Dallas formed by some top-notch people.  Most recently, Tim Helms has left to pursue his own consulting practice in Analyst and Public Relations mostly because those functions don’t overlap well with what the rest of us do, which is more front-end or “in-bound” oriented. 

This probably sounds like a bit of a rush to the exit door, but I’m talking about a sequence of events that has occurred over a couple of years.  In all cases, leaving Acuitive was probably the best thing both for the individual and for Acuitive, given the times, (except that damn extortion related to Kubinec).  Many of the ex-Acuitivers are good friends.  My wife even named our first son after Logan.  That turns out to be fortuitous because he looks and acts just like him.  

Hey… wait a minute!

Oh well, let’s move on - as Acuitive will.  We will continue to offer our services to start-ups.  As times get better, we may even add a person or two or three to the team.  This time around, we’ll stay focused on the Silicon Valley and Greater Boston areas.  There are certainly some interesting things going on outside of those areas, but it spreads us too thin to try to get involved with them. 

We’ll probably also be more consistent in recognizing the VCs “two hour drive rule.”  In the past, we’ve tried to work with distant management or engineering teams, and it just hasn’t worked out.  The most extreme case is several times we’ve tried to work with some Israeli-based teams.  Person-for-person, these were probably some of the most skilled and energetic Engineering teams we’ve ever worked with.  But our added value working with them has always been modest.  It’s the nature of the work we do that daily, if not hourly, interaction, informal communications, and shared experiences is key to an effective working relationship.  You just can’t do that at a distance.  When far apart, you tend to try to batch up issues and discussions and substitute formal documentation for informal communication, and it just doesn’t work as well.  Fresh feedback from a customer needs to be evaluated, clarified, and worked into the plan immediately or it rusts. 

(volume 6, number 12)