Posts Tagged ‘Entrepreneur’
083 A Legendary Executive, Sue Barsamian
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:31:33 — 84.0MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Today, we hang out with an amazing and effective executive, Sue Barsamian. Sue recounts the early beginnings of her career, her challenging job at Mercury Interactive with Christopher and her not-really-a-retirement retirement. In this episode, find out why people dream about having her career.
Challenges After Challenges
Sue has an engineering background that might have contributed to her natural passion for creating, building and solving things. She worked with Christopher at Mercury, which was sold at $5B to HP. She stayed with HP and was assigned to run a billion-dollar cybersecurity business.
“HP gave me a chance to test myself at a scale that I have never tested myself, ‘can you lead 4000 people, can you do 10,000 at P&L?’ Its a different ball game and you’ll never know until you tried it, so that was fun, I had a blast.” – Sue Barsamian
She went ahead to become the head of Sales and Marketing for Software at HP—a role that is unusually given to a single executive. At present, she’s on the board of Symantec ($15B), Box ($2.5) and privately held Gainsight, Xactly. She retired from the operations side of the business but still held a seat at the board.
Keep on Evolving
Sue admits she had a good run in her 36 years in the business. She worked with 8 companies have had around 25 roles overall.
“Nothing in my resume that would say ‘she could do that.’ One of the things about staying in a company is, companies take a risk on people they could stretch and that benefitted me tremendously through my career.” – Sue Barsamian
Other than staying with a company, she stressed the importance of working well with people. She admits that she loves working with different people of different cultures, surviving different situations. She has learned how to understand people and help them become successful
Career Tips to Ponder
Sue Barsamian shares a lot of career tips in this episode. She gives special importance to understanding people and how they have a part to play on the path to success. Giving due credit and acknowledging employees as heroes also do wonders.
“In order to get things done in a company, you need to move mountains that don’t report you. At the end of the day, if you are not about other people’s success, if its all about you and you taking credit to all of your work personally, you’ll crash and burn.” – Sue Barsamian
To hear more about the legendary executive Sue Barsamian and more relevant information from Sue, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Sue Barsamian is a seasoned technology veteran with experience in both startups and major public enterprises.
Her background spans in general management, marketing, sales and engineering.
She serves on the boards of Symantec, Box, Gainsight, and Xactly.
Previously she served as the Executive Vice President, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software, successfully spinning the division out from HPE and merging with Micro Focus International, plc to form the 7th largest software company in the world.
From 2006 to 2016, Ms. Barsamian served in various executive roles at Hewlett Packard including SVP and GM of Enterprise Security Products, the company’s cybersecurity portfolio and SVP of Worldwide Indirect Sales.
Prior to joining Hewlett Packard, Ms. Barsamian was Vice President, Global Go-to-Market at Mercury Interactive Corporation and held various leadership positions at Critical Path, Inc. and Verity, Inc.
She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University and completed her post-graduate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
080 B2B & B2C Entrepreneur Strava CoFounder Mark Gainey
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:50:26 — 101.2MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
In this episode, Mark Gainey, a serial entrepreneur with big-time success B2B and B2C, joins us for another insight-packed conversation. He is the co-founder and chairman of Strava, the athlete’s social network. Today, he talks about entrepreneurship and success, despite major setbacks in his life.
The Virtual Athlete’s Locker Room
The Swedish word for strive is strava, which is defined as “to make great efforts to achieve or obtain.” This is perfect for a team of individuals who have the ambition and attitude to achieve more. Strava’s mission is to build the most engaged community of athletes in the world.
Co-founders and former college colleagues Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath dreamt about this company way back in 1995. They had the concept of creating a virtual locker room and they called it “Kana Sports.”
“We had this concept at the back of our minds, how Kana sports morphed into Kana communications, we had a great time building that, no regrets.” – Mark Gainey
From B2B to B2C
Mark was previously the CEO of Kana Communications which went public late 1999. With a market capital of 11 billion USD and an upcoming new CEO at that time, Mark found himself moving to a different chapter in his life after.
“I distanced myself in a pretty meaningful way. I often joked to people, if you give your child up for adoption, don’t stay living in the house.” – Mark Gainey, after IPO of Kana Communications
Mark further shares his experiences working in a B2B setting, as a CEO and now B2C setting, as a stockholder.
18 Surgeries in 51 years
One of Strava’s irony is they serve the world’s cyclists, but Mark quips that he must have been one of the worst ones on the planet. For one, he had been in a major biking accident which required 11 surgeries. These surgeries are on top of other surgeries from skiing accidents and car accidents.
“Nobody is dying anytime soon but it is a test. You just get back to the saddle. You learn and say okay now I can have three more runs, good to play some other day.” – Mark Gainey
Mark continues narrating his accident and further says that when he is inactive, he feels like he is a different person. Mark shares that ultimately, this is their goal at Strava: to forget trying to push people to go fast and perform well, just encourage them to engage in activities and sweat at least once in a day.
“I think thats the balance. As much as I know that I take the risk everytime to go out there but the idea of not doing that, that is what would kill me.” – Mark Gainey
To hear more about B2B to B2C entrepreneurship and more relevant information from Mark, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Mark Gainey is a serial entrepreneur, co-founder, and Chairman of Strava – the social network for athletes.
Mark co-founded Kana Communications Inc. (Kana Inc.), in January 1996 and served as its Chief Executive Officer & President from January 1996 to June 1999.
He has been building successful companies for nearly 20 years. Prior to Kana, from April 1991 to September 1995, Mark Gainey served as an Associate with TA Associates Management, L.P. (TA Associates, Inc.), where he focused primarily on technology and business services investments.
Mark served as President and Chairman of SWK Holdings Corporation. Further, he served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kana Communications Inc., from July 1996 to July 2000.
In addition to these, he has been a Director of Clari Inc. since April 2014.
Mark serves as a Director of TA Associates, Inc.
He served as a Director of GlobalSight Corporation, AlterG, Inc. and BoardVantage Inc.
He served as a Director of Kana Communications Inc., from January 1996 to June 1999 and SWK Holdings Corporation since January 1996. Mark Gainey holds a B.A. in General Studies from Harvard University.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
076 Billionaire Entrepreneur Tom Siebel on Digital Transformation
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:03 — 41.4MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
In today’s episode, Billionaire Entrepreneur Tom Siebel shares some thought-provoking insights on new, leading technologies and its impact on businesses and society. He is the founder of C3.AI, a new software platform that harnesses Big Data, IoT AND AI.
Tom covers in this episode the contents of his book, Digital Transformation, as well as some intriguing ideas about huge US Tech companies.
Silicon Valley Entrepreneurial Giant
Listeners might recall Bruce Clevland, author of “The Traction Gap” and guest in episode 033. He used to work with Tom Siebel at Siebel Systems, which was the category king in the 1st wave of CRM.
In the year 1999, Fortune magazine named Siebel Systems “the fastest growing company in the United States.” In 2006, they merged with Oracle for $5.85 billion.
Digital Transformation
Tom has a brand new book entitled “Digital Transformation.” The book covers giant Megatrends and impacts on business and society. CEOs and senior leaders would find this book highly beneficial to their decision-making process.
“The coming two decades will bring more information technology innovation than the past half-century.” -Tom Siebel, Digital Transformation
Further, he discussed that companies who fail to seize this massive technological growth will be extinct in the future. In the last 30 years, companies that didn’t make the necessary transition required in their industry, cease to exist today.
Continuous Learning and Education
Tom Siebel and his company have a real commitment to their employees: to focus on continuous learning and education. Employees can take online classes via Coursera—in relation to AI, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, among others. Universities such as Stanford, MIT, and the University of Illinois offers these online courses.
“Things are changing more rapidly so to be on top of these, you must be continuously learning” – Tom Siebel
The company recognizes the employees who completed the courses and awards cash bonuses — ranging from $1500 to $25,000. At the moment, the company is rolling out new incentives — a 15% increase in compensation and an additional equity grant.
“These people are better equipped to do their jobs and to serve customers. This is to advance their careers professionally. They also do feel more empowered, so everybody wins.” – Tom Siebel
To hear more about digital transformation and more relevant information from Tom, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Tom Siebel is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of C3.ai.
He was the Chairman and CEO of Siebel Systems, which merged with Oracle Corporation in January 2006 for $5.85 billion.
Mr. Siebel is also the Chairman of the Siebel Energy Institute, a global consortium for innovative and collaborative energy research for the public domain.
Mr. Siebel serves on the boards of advisors for the University of Illinois College of Engineering and the University of California at Berkeley College of Engineering.
Mr. Siebel is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received a B.A. in history, an M.B.A, and an M.S. in computer science.
Links:
Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction
Thomas Siebel – Forbes Profile
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
050 Can Sales & Marketing Work Together? with Brian Burns
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:11 — 48.0MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
On this episode, a no BS leader in the sales world, legendary author and podcaster Brian Burns.
Brian and Christopher had a captivating free-range conversation about sales & marketing and they unearth some powerful ideas for how the two can work together and they tackled the always important topic of – sales and marketing alignment.
“Certainly in marketing, we’ve got a lot of shiny objects to play with and what I found working with CMOs is they pick the shiny object who enhance their portfolio versus enhance the company’s position.” – Brian Burns
Sales and Marketing Alignment
Have you ever run into this issue? Lochhead found some easy ways to get it right where sales and marketing were completely in sync.
First is for CMOS to treat the quarterly sales number like it was your 100% responsibility.
“If you’re the head of sales and I’m the head of marketing and we’re working together, it’s not your number, it’s our number. It’s not your company, it’s our company.” – Christopher Lochhead
Breaking the Gap between Sales and Marketing
Being in a field is where you will really learn.
“I think the misalignment of sales and marketing, generally is the fault marketing.” – Christopher Lochhead
To hear more about Brian a no BS leader in the sales world, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Brian Burns is the sales guru in Silicon Valley and a host of two podcasts in the top 15 in business on iTunes, The B2B Revenue Leadership show, and The Brutal Truth about Sales and Selling.
He has authored four books on B2B sales and marketing and he has over 25 years of experience.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed Brian Burns on this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
