Marc Volovic wrote:
Few people make it over the divide and BECOME managers (I think the
only one I can can remember off the cuff is Gil Schwed).
A venture capital once picked up from my online resume that I worked at
a company they were thinking about investing in, and called me to ask me
about it. The very first question the guy asked was "do you think the
CEO" (which is also the founder) "will manage to continue to manage the
company going forward?"
My answer was this. I worked for that company, and I had lots of
criticism about how it is being run. I then moved to Check Point, and
had even more criticism about how it is being run, so maybe the problem
is with me :-)
Of course, my logic being what it is, I then opened my own company.
Of course, VC logic being what it is, the guy then asked whether Lingnu
was looking for an investment.
Yes, Gil is the common quoted example of someone successfully turning
from founder to manager, but the simple facts as I see them is that all
of Check Point's top management (at least when I was there) was from the
founding generation. Check point did not successfully show that they can
recruit an outside manager for anything that is even closely related to
development.
Obviously, the company is doing relatively well, so who am I to
criticize. Then again, if things were different, I may have still been
working there (and, no, I was not fired - I quit), so obviously it has
some downsides as well.
I am equally certain that, just as you cannot claim that Check Point and
Gil Schwed are an overwhelming success stories, you can equally well not
claim that they are unique. Not all companies strive to be "market
leaders", and very few companies reach market leadership even if they do
everything "right".
Shachar
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