Altaide Valley: Interview

(FR) Grosses erreurs des Managers - Manager's big mistakes

I worked as Controller then Finance Manager for 15 years, in 7 different companies, different kind of business. The Finance position is structurally exposed because of its nature and the responsibilities engaged. In France, Finance position is mostly under estimate, mostly by CEOs that did not have a real international experience... they consider you as the "keeper of the book"... if not "book keeper". It has been really interesting to see from very closed how sometimes could Managers run their company... This video reminded me a lot of interesting stories (not really good ones...).

I saw some Managers having made one of the 7 main mistakes (or several...)... Jason Calacanis could have said that, he enjoys to give good tips to manage comapnies...

Let me translate that for you guys (the video is in French)... this can be valid for any startup entrepreneur...
1. Any growth can decline. Don't consider you just can be successful. There is no magic in big successful. It's a mixture of many different things. Luck can turn down easily, you don't own it...
2. Never under estimate competitors. A company is a matter of man and woman. Sometimes the mixture (good product-good marketing-good communication) can make success comes fast. Being in a kind of permanent survey (I don't mean paranoia) can be a good thing to manage the team internally, and ensure about everybody's effort to make things moving forward.
3. Manage your company focusing on right areas, with the right time to spend on each... Focusing to much on client requests but not having a good view in costs, or focusing to much on dashboards and not visiting enough new potential customers... Be a well balanced Manager!
4. Risk management: this is a key issue... You cannot control the full situation, and accept risk one it's determined and valued... It's not possible to develop without any risk taken, it's not possible to maintain market share, hire key people in the company. If you know how to anticipate, then you will know which part of risk you have to take.
5. How to hire people: don't hesitate... select the best! You can't have control on everything, and having expert on Board is the best insurance to move forward. And if that's not one of your expertise, whatever... you will learn at the same time. That means that a Manager has to be modest too, whatever his influence and control on the company is!
6. Don't mix your personal interest with company objectives. So obvious. In some country you can go in jail for that. Or pay the Big Price for it...
7. Innovate! What is good or true today, may not be the reason of success for tomorrow. Everything goes so fast now!

Phil Jeudy on 05/02/2009 in Interview | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Box.net now lunching its french version: a US startup expanding in France!

Box.net, a San Jose based startup, has recently announced the release of its new French version.
The three main uses of Box.net are to backup, share and access files from anywhere.
The company started to run in 2005, have now 500 BtoB clients (having each an average of 3to 10 user, a few have some hundreds)...
Box.net is a very good example of a pure startup, creating a new service, meeting then Google as main competitor, and on its way now to expand internationally...
I asked few questions to Alexandre Scialom, Stategic Marketing at Box.net...

- Could you tell us few words regarding Box.net international strategy? Can you give us some metrics?

Box.net is an online file storage and collaboration platform. It allows our 2.1 million registered users to put any kind of files (whether they are word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, pictures, videos) online "in the cloud"... They can then access their content from any computer or cell-phone, share it with specific people, and collaborate at work, school or home. Thanks to over 20 OpenBox Services, Box users also have access to an extensive set of specific functionality provided by our partners' services. For instance, they can edit documents and spreadsheet hosted on Box with Zoho, send fax with eFax, edit pictures with Picnik, send documents to Twitter, and more.

We manage more than 100 million files and serve 1 million files from our servers every day. In 2005, Box.net started as a consumer product and we learned how to design simple and efficient applications that anyone can use. Since the end of 2006, we also propose an offer specifically tailored for enterprises. We now have more than 500 Box Enterprise clients, a majority of them having between 3 and 10 users, and some of them up-to several thousand users.

Our service is currently used in more than 200 countries. We're going to use what we've learned through our experience in the US to accelerate the development of Box.net internationally. For instance, our affiliate program and our Box Enterprise reseller program will be made available to businesses who wish to distribute our application abroad. We're also talking to local internet actors to expand our base of partners that already encompasses companies such as Dell, Facebook, or Netvibes.

- Did the fact Google recently came in your market as direct competitor accelerate your international expansion?

Competition is very aggressive in the online storage market. New start-ups are created every month even though we recently saw Omnidrive, XDrive, and Mediamax, 3 companies that pioneered the industry, close their services. Microsoft recently entered the game too, but as far as I know Google doesn't offer an online storage service so far... Anyhow, we don't really intend to wait for them and we know we have to expand our business as fast as possible. Going international will help us towards that goal.

- Why choosing France as first localization? What are your objectives?

French-speaking users have been very actively asking us to translate the site in their language. Many of them also proposed to help us translate the site, and it was natural for us to fill their need. Today we have over 80,000 users in France, some of them using Box.net in the biggest French companies in the engineering, financial services, telecom, fashion, or advertising companies. Our goal is to make sure we put the right marketing and business development effort to continue extend our reach on the French market.

Thank you Alex, and all the best to Box.net in France and everywhere else!
Box.net and Dell has signed recently an online and storage collaboration deal: more here...

Phil Jeudy on 10/17/2008 in Interview, Start up | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

If you can't meet Guy Kawasaki, read him!

Image by Laughing Squid via Flickr

Guy Kawasaki is a very well known hi-tech evangelist, mostly due to his work at Apple where he worked in 80's then 2 years in 90's. He has written some books, and he's doing seventy five speeches a year, he's Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures (a venture capital firm which specializes in high-technology start-up firms located in Silicon Valley) as well as co-founder of Nononina, the company that created the Truemors and Alltop websites.

I did not have the chance to meet him for real yet... surely best way would be to walk through University Avenue and see him by chance for a 5 minutes coffee!
What makes me really impressed and interested by Guy's work and talks is simplicity...

Listen to one video you can find on his blog: