Roman's miles

Come to a "IT Architect Regional Conference 2007"

International Association of Software Architects hosts a series of IT Architect Regional Conferences at Atlanta, GA, San Diego, CA, and Washington, D.C on Sept 13-14, Oct 15-16, and Oct 8-9 correspondingly. The organizers' idea is instead of having one expensive national event leading to substantial travel expenses to host the conference three times in the country attracting much more visitors. Scott Amber gives the key notes on the conferences which makes it automatically as of a serious caliber.

You can click on the charter of your geographical preferences above and check the agenda. Many great speakers from the industry (software houses, consultants, and customers) present at the event and you'll find it difficult to pick up a topic of your interest from four concurrent tracks.

I'm presenting MDM at Atlanta and the capital - MDM "MDM - where business meets IT". I'm planning to talk about the problems MDM comes to resolve, why it's vital for today's business to address them, and what make an enterprise want to buy a ready solution instead of developing an in-house one. I'm planning to split marchitecture and tarchitecture as 1:5 (at least) so the geeks in the audience should not get too bored with ROI, TCO, and other exciting stuff.

Come to listen lead industry architects, learn something new, and rub shoulders with you colleagues. It's gonna be fun.

Technorati tags: IASA, software architect, MDM

Marc Fluery about the art of selling a company and Atlanta

I've started enjoying TAG today where I gave a trial visit to listen to Marc Fleury sharing his tips on selling a company. As I wrote in the past I've been trying to answer the stay-or-leave question for myself and Atlanta projecting my future career in the startup world. The TAG gathering would be (and it is!) a good place for answering the question.

Marc's speech was great, inspiring, and informative; while Marc was experiencing Atlanta traffic I enjoying chatting with TAG members and guests. One of them, Lance Weatherby, already posted a blog about the event listing some items from the shared wisdom.

I'd add  that Marc emphasized the need to use a professional banker for negotiating the deal. There are "boutique companies" who evaluate, consult, and negotiate startup M&A deals for living. You hardly can become an expert in selling a company after reading "selling startups for dummies" and in such a vital operation the bankers really earn their share of the deal.

Marc also said that startup selling is an art rather than science, advising to align with the board the mission of selling, a strategy, and tactics. There are many pitfalls and traps on the way: it's very likely to be acquired by a competitor merely to be killed or other competitors will (absolutely legitimately) initiate negotiations solely with the target in mind to inquire on your situation, prospects, pipelines, etc.

Another question is retaining forces after the acquisition. In JBoss many of the buzdev/sales folks have gone since then but none of the R&D people. Marc pointed us to the books on the topic still underlying the importance of the question.

After the speech I approached Marc and ask him THE question: if he opens now a startup will he be doing it in Atlanta or move to Silicon Valley? The answer was categorical YES. No need to move to SV or even to Boston. He assured me that there is a plethora of highly experienced business people here and lots of venture money as well.  He thinks that we have enough nerds in Atlanta too but couldn't prove it with JBoss since they worked remotely in a global team.

Anyway, I'm joining TAG as a member and hope in the future will post on other inspiring and meetings from the program.

Technornati tags: TAG, startup, JBoss, Atlanta, Fluery

Joining the startup world - remain in "province" or move to Silicon Valley?

I've been struggling with answering this question for myself for a while and as I read on the realm  a set of options is widening instead of shrinking. The title question may seem to be obvious and drive to the immensely polar answer - Silicon Valley - but in reality the question should be re-asked differently. If you live in a big enough American city should you relocate to SV to make your startup adventure easier? By adventure I mean either creating your own startup or joining  an existing one. The former entails  rising funds, hiring people, organizing office, etc.  The latter makes you choosing the most attractive position from available options.

The question is very relevant for me - I live in Atlanta and as an option consider after completing my MBA to open a startup navigation, leaving my current job in SAP. I'm not trying to reiterate the well known reasons of why SV is the Rome of high-tech ventures explained and opposed  here, here, here, and here. Instead, I'm seeking for arguments whether it's possible to stay in Atlanta and achieve desired targets instead of locking myself in a void of opportunities.

On one hand, in the Bay Area a number of vacancies and VC groups looking for promising ventures is bigger - so there are more options. On the other hand, in Atlanta (or any other  city with sufficiently provided resources, infrastructure, and local VCs) the number of challengers is smaller hence one's candidacy may meet less competition.

I'm attending a presentation of Marc Fluery (the JBoss guy) next week where hope to ask this question but will be very interested in others' experience and findings. What are your thoughts? Does the province have its piece in the startup world or better off plan to move to the capital?

Update: Johanna Rothman helps to answer my questions.

Technorati tags: startup, VC, Silicon Valley, Atlanta

Ask the VC - a new blog from Brad Feld

Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson have started recently a new blog - AsktheVC - a dedicated place "to discuss relevant issues in the venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem".

The blog is shaped as a categorized FAQ on the venture capital and entrepreneurship areas where currently presented Accounting, Advisors, Angel Investing, Company Creation, Compensation, Conferences, Founder/Exec Exits, Fund Terms, General Q&A, General Site Info, Great VC Posts, and Media. Apart from the fact that Brad is a great blogger and every his post is worth of reading the new blog has an "ask the rabbi" button where anybody can post a question to the authors. Another interesting feature of the blog is the downloadable content. You can select interesting categories and download the blogs tagged there as an HTML or PDF doc for future offline reading.

The blog's has started with a resolute pace - just today they have 6 posts (or 6 answered questions) which gives hope the blog will become soon the VC bible in the net.

I advise everybody who's interested in the topics of VC, startups, and entrepreneurship to subscribe to the blog and post your questions there.

Brad and Jason, good luck with your new venture in the blogosphere!

Technorati tags: VC, entrepreneurship, startup, blog