To be fair, six months is really quite arbitrary, but it has a nice ring to it. I first spoke about the concept with Perry Evans last summer and officially started as a co-founder and employee at the beginning of December. But, it is safe to say that I have been entrenched in the product and concept for six months. I hope to blog more regularly about the company and the product in the coming months, but I thought I would share some early musings. Oh, and also to brag about the fact that we will be on stage at Demo '10 in Palm Desert this coming Monday. Pretty darned impressive for a company so young!
I haven't co-founded a company since January of 2001 when Dave Jilk and I started Wideforce. I learned a lot about entrepreneurship and work relationships during that period and hope that I am carrying some of those learnings forward. I wear a lot of hats at Closely, as is to be expected in an early stage, angel-funded start-up. On any particular day, I might be writing product specifications, testing software, configuring our help desk software, managing client implementation schedules, getting ready for a major trade show or communicating with the janitorial staff. Or washing dishes. Or buying office supplies. This job (or jobs) has reinforced several things I know to be true:
- I love to work on lots of different tasks and hold many roles. I can focus for hours (sometimes even days) on a singular activity, but I do much better when I have 3 or 4 or 10 different tasks amongst which I can multi-task. I am blessed to have had a career that has allowed me to hold many different positions and learn how to do a lot of different things. I am most certainly a generalist, not a specialist.
- While I do enjoy many different activities, I always have and still do love product management. Taking a high-level vision and making it tangible in the form of a working product is incredibly rewarding. I have also always enjoyed showing products off at trade shows, providing sales support and conducting training.
- I relish the intensity of challenging deadlines and lofty goals. While there is ample opportunity for these in a larger company, it is never the same as it is in the first year.
- Finally, being a very social person, I appreciate the intimate (not in a bad way!) relationships you develop with your start-up colleagues. When you spend this much time with a group of people under what can be trying circumstances, you inevitably develop relationships that are deeper and more rewarding than those you develop in a more casual setting.
I expect to have lots of cool stories to share as the year progresses.
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