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"Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."
Today, Henri Poole is a well respected Internet pioneer, open-source guru, and serial CEO. But for many years, Poole fit the stereotype of the lone geek who escaped into the world of machines. Poole admits that making the transition from geek to entrepreneur required quite a bit of conscious effort. "For me, the nice thing about a machine was the feeling that I had some control over it. If something didn't work I knew it was my own fault. With people, all sorts of things happen that aren't really logical." A Conscious, Gradual Process
The transition for Poole was gradual, but steady and successful. Poole's company, Spatial Data Architects (SDA), who built multimedia solutions for companies like Apple Computer, joined with vivid studios, a multimedia publishing company. vivid helped online community the WELL with its user interface and in 1996 was named one of the "10 Hottest Web Designers & Design Houses," by The Net magazine. Later, as CEO of Linux distributor MandrakeSoft, Poole came up with the idea for his new venture, Affero, which provides a system of reputation measurement for the Internet. Poole is also currently on the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation. "My process of learning the language of business began with the language I needed to land a job," says Poole. "It's a constant effort to get to know the customer's language and work to add value by bringing new languages and processes to bear." Around 1990, Poole realized that the technical landscape was breaking into too many niche markets and languages for him to keep up with. "Eventually, I couldn't deliver all of the solutions myself, so I figured I could either go find new customers that happened to fit the machine language that I spoke, or I could continue to further cultivate my people and business skills." Poole chose the latter, and this forced him to become more empathetic and understanding of the complexities of personal relationships. "I learned by consciously putting myself in the place of my customer, mentally asking, 'What is it like to be you?' and, 'If I were you, what would I want out of a technical solution?'" By honing his project management skills and professional network, Poole found the platforms, the technologies, and the programmers who could deliver solutions for his customers. "I lost my fluency in the emerging programming languages, but I understand what it is like to be a programmer, so I can also empathize with the programmer." Poole admits to having had mixed emotions about his decision to move from coder to entrepreneur. So much so that he's recently picked up a PHP book with the serious intention of learning to code again. "After working for years and years with people, I've yet to find the comfort that I found with the machine in my youth...the escape by constructing worlds that would execute my thoughts in silicon." For Tom Rolander, a six-figure check for his portion of KnowledgeSet was his motivation to learn the language of business. "Up to that point I only paid attention to engineering-related issues, relying on Gary [Kildall, co-founder] to deal with all the business issues. Stock options and founders stock had no real tangible value, but the moment I received a check-which enabled me to remodel my home and buy an airplane-I realized the benefit of being an entrepreneur. Then I began in earnest to learn the language of business." Like Poole, Rolander says that his path to business knowledge was a conscious, gradual process. "I went from going out of my away to avoid dealing with any business issues at all, to making sure I was involved-or at least observing-how all of the business decisions were made. The most complex issues were related to different types of stock and raising capital. The simplest tasks included managing the payroll, accounts payable and receivable, and so forth. It did not even occur to me to take a class. I learned largely by watching and by doing the business-related tasks." In the summer of 2002, Rolander left Novell (the company who had acquired his company, PGSoft) to form pgsc.NET. Today, with enough personal wealth and freedom to choose his projects, he has turned his attention from "a successful career to a meaningful career," by joining Benetech-a company that uses the entrepreneurial business model to build products that solve social problems-as CTO. Co-Evolution Builds Successful Partnerships
Learning the language of business can be essential to the careers of many engineers and developers - even if the goal isn't to become an entrepreneur. Al Evans, founder and president of Matrix Intermedia Corp., says that it can be a struggle to hire technical people who can communicate with business partners. "When starting a business it is essential that your technical people can interact in business, can talk to your non-technical business partners. I can't afford to use people who are technically brilliant but have no social skills, or who can't articulate ideas or collaborate. It's so important to communicate, to establish relationships." Evans honed his entrepreneurial and technical skills helping his father with his small business, a materials company based on NASA-licensed products. He sees technology as a catalyst for innovation. "There is a synergy between existing technologies and new technologies." says Evans. "The original intent of an emerging technology is often not what it evolves into being, so it really spurs innovation and enables the existing technologies. Innovators see that, but they can only communicate that vision if they can speak the language of business. It improves their business prospects and marketability." "I like the term 'co-evolution,'" adds Evans. "I can't co-evolve with someone that doesn't have personal skills. My CTO, Mike Oliver, for example, has that duality of technical expertise and social skills. It may not have been innate, it may have been developed through his experiences, his ability to adjust, his military background. There's a definite co-evolution between my technical management and his technical skills, for a cohesive vision of software technology. Immediately we were acting on synergies we developed independently of each other." | ||||||||||
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