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Posts Tagged ‘John Song’

Staying the Course to Deliver on Social Intelligence Vision

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 9, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

By 1997, ARIS had about 1,000 employees in the US and the UK and generated more than $100 million in revenues. ARIS was a high tech consulting and training company publically traded on the NASDAQ. Leading and managing a services company is much more difficult per revenue and headcount than a non-services company. I remember working very, very hard.

At ARIS, I played various executive roles as the company grew from a basement of a house to an international public company in seven years. The whole experience was tremendous as our young executive team learned so much basically drinking out of a fire hose of growth.

By 1999, I had decided to leave for a chance at a dot com dream. I had missed the startup environment and was not having much fun helping to run such a large company with the obligations of being public. Since then, I’ve stayed in the startup arena leveraging my experience of building companies to various early-stage liquidity events.

This April my earn-out for the sale of Intrepid expires. However, I don’t believe that my work is finished yet. The social intelligence space is very dynamic and poised for another inflection point of rapid growth. We have an exciting value proposition and some new releases coming up that will help define where this industry will go in terms of delivering actionable and predictive insights from social data.

There have been five ventures since those ARIS days for me. Now at SDL, I’m rediscovering some of that drive to make impact at a larger level. Right now, this is the right company with the right CEO and executive board to keep me focused and excited about what we are doing together.

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Cremerie Creperie in South Kensington, London

Posted in travel, tagged , , , on March 4, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

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Buying a Nike+ FuelBand

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 2, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

The other day, I was visiting Portland with my wife sampling the different food trucks and shopping. Oregon has no state sales tax and decent shopping.  After following her to the usual department stores, we walked into the new downtown Nike store. Right in front was the display for the Nike+ FuelBand. Finally some fun gadgets.

The Nike+ FuelBand uses a sports-tested accelerometer to measure your movement in NikeFuel, a universal metric of activity. It calculates how many steps you take, your sports activities like basketball and tries to count the calories burned (this not accurate but it’s consistent). Cool stuff.

Nike

I’m not a person obsessed

 with fitness. However, I’m pretty disciplined about a healthy lifestyle. I don’t work out all the time, but I’ve “learned” to enjoy healthy and balanced foods. I don’t count calories but I’ve “learned” to listen to my body about how much to eat. I lift weights when it feels right and stretch in hot yoga when my body tells me to. It’s not a routine but a sustainable lifestyle that works for me as I live with a lot

of energy.

A Nike+ FuelBand is perfect for someone like me. I’m naturally competitive and keeping score would be motivating.

At the store I could not decide between the white or the gray one. So, when my wife walked by, I enthusiastically asked for her input. She, looking very annoyed, said that I didn’t need another gadget that is going to just sit on the night stand for months. She told me to just donate the money to the homeless instead. She then walked away.

When the guy helping me started putting the bracelets away, I said, “Hey, hey, wait.  Don’t put those away, I’m still buying one!” He looked somewhat worried for me but sold me the gray one.

In selling, always learn who the budget owner is. Don’t let the other opinion and noise distort your view of who is the actual buyer. I guarantee in the flea markets of Turkey or Vietnam the vendors would have known that they always had me.

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Seahawks’ Transformation a Lesson for Leaders

Posted in business, management, tagged , , , , on January 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Today in Seattle, people are extremely excited about the recent success of its football team (Seahawks). Such success is not normal for this town which has had one major championship (NBA championship in the 197-79 season) throughout its sports history. That franchise (Sonics), by the way, is no longer in town. While the Seahawks are still three difficult playoff wins away from a championship, people are excited about the foundation that has been built. This team is having success with a nucleus of very young players.

Watching Seahawks Victory Over the Skins!The recent progression of this team has some valuable lessons for any leader. First of all, owner Paul Allen and his executives were decisive when they planned to “go in another direction”. They let big-name coach Mike Holmgren go without offering him even a front office position. Then, they fired the “coach in waiting” Jim Mora, a local favorite, who was groomed by Holmgren after just one season. They had a plan in mind. They aggressively went after USC coach Pete Carroll and gave him extensive power, including authority over the general manager (inverse of the normal hierarchy). Thereafter, Paul Allen stood by his commitment by getting out of the way.

In the first two years, Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider made 502 player moves! They wanted to completely overhaul the team culture. The team became younger, bigger, faster and meaner. While Holmgren’s system is known for its finesse and intricate execution of his complex offensive system, Carroll and Schneider built an intimating in-your-face team. The transformation which took around two-and-a half years is astonishing.

As a business executive, I admire the decisive, “all-in” moves by the team’s ownership. You cannot change an organization in a “transitional” manner. You need this level of decisiveness. No doubt those were difficult decisions given the popularity of both Holmgren and Mora within the community. Furthermore, Carroll and Schneider were not afraid to make mistakes as they re-built the team. Five hundred and two transactions is a lot of experimenting and changing to build the team that they had in mind. Without question, some of the experiments were failures but they believed in their approach and were clear on their eventual goal to build a young, tough-minded team that can effectively run  the ball and play stifling defense.

There is a lot that any leader can learn from the new Seahawks approach.

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The Goodbyes and Hellos at Airports

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 4, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Just returned from a set of very productive work meetings in Vietnam. We held our SDL Social Intelligence Leadership Strategy meeting in our Ho Chi Minh office to lock down our product roadmap for 2013. I’ll blog  another time why I occasionally hold these meetings in Vietnam.

In this post, I just want to reflect on how airports can be one of the saddest or the happiest places around.

On my way out, I saw a couple outside sitting on a bench in front of the airport in a full embrace. She buried her head into his shoulders while she visibly sobbed. Any movement by him resulted in her clinging tighter to him. She was Vietnamese, petite and young. I could sense a bit of desperation as she wouldn’t let him go. He was twice her size but looked just as vulnerable at the moment trying to console her. I’m sure he was trying to reassure her about his eventual return.

He had a well-weather face that was red. He had a receding hairline but long hair in the back that touched his shoulders. His hair was completely white. He was publicly emotional and sad, which softened his otherwise coarse appearance. She kept melting tighter and tighter into him. Airports can be a place of miserable good-byes..

Behind them was a big crowd of people waiting for their loved ones or friends to step out of the airport and into their arms. Every time the doors slid open, there was a grasp of anticipation. One middle-aged woman was greeted by screams of her name and an eventual mobbing. These tears were the happy sort.

I walked past, envying all the raw emotions around. The music in my ears made for a music video of life that would be hard to replicate on camera.

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A Simple Treat 26 Years Ago Remains A Great Memory

Posted in lifehacks, tagged , , , , on September 27, 2012 | 5 Comments »

Today is my wife’s and my 26th anniversary. Wow, where did all the time go?

When we first got married, neither of us had started our careers yet. We were living rent free in an old house owned by my parents. I was doing some part-time editing work for a non-profit organization.  We were just happy to be together. We watched a lot of evening television since that didn’t require any money. We would also pass time dreaming about our future, such as raising a big family some day.

On occasions, we would spurge by running out to a nearby McDonald’s and ordering sundaes at 50 cents each. I always got the caramel with nuts and she the chocolate fudge. We would savor each bite, giggling at the pleasures of those simple treats. Since then, we’ve had some great moments during the next 26 years but I will never forget the pure joy of sharing time together over those sundaes.

No award-winning creme brulee or chocolate souffle could ever replicate what those 50-cent McDonald’s sundaes represented to us back then. They proved that the simplest of treats could conjure up lifelong bonding moments when dreaming of a common goal together.

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Critical Thinking versus Negativity

Posted in management, People, tagged , , , on September 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Critical thinkers are thorough and can flush out ideas with both conventional and unconventional perspectives. These people have the mental acumen and courage to challenge popular consensus with reasonable reflective thinking. In the end, they can help clarify goals, examine assumptions, discern hidden values, evaluate evidence, accomplish actions, and assess conclusions

Critical thinkers move ideas forward or stop them on their track when necessary. I appreciate them as an executive and entrepreneur. They are critical to innovation as well as execution. I don’t consider myself as a critical thinker. I’m more of a ‘filter’ of ideas after critical thought has already been put forth. I’ve had a lot of experience quickly recognizing compelling ideas at an early stage.

Some people confuse negativity for critical thinking. Playing devil’s advocate just to be contrary is not productive or is it critical thinking. Negativity is cancerous  and stands in the way of execution while critical thinking enhances clarity, quality and production.

Negativity often disguises itself as critical thinking, while critical thinkers clearly understand the difference.

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PART IV: Closing The Deal

Posted in business, entrepreneur, tagged , , , , , on September 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

PART IV: Closing the Deal

Bob Hale, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Alterian, came to visit in June. It was obvious he had done his research and was asking good qualifying questions about our business.  He decided to stay for dinner at Barolo Restaurant that night rather than flying back home.

Everything just made a lot of sense. Alterian had a great suite of marketing products, including SM2 (social media monitoring software) that needed services support. A large part of their revenues came from their channel and we had a model with our research center in Ho Chi Minh that could complement, rather than threaten such partners. Also, we could help pull in Atlerian’s platform into our research and strategy engagements.  Intrepid had a global reach which matched Alterian’s need for services throughout its 14 offices.

The negotiations went quickly and were finalized by end of July. It helped that we had executives experienced in transactions like this. I hired my brother, Paul Song, to do the final negotiations because he is very knowledgeable in these matters, but also because I didn’t want to be negotiating with my future bosses.

Then, the due diligence started with a tight deadline to close the deal by the end of August. I must admit I was not quite as prepared for this process as I had thought. Given that Alterian is a public UK company, there were a lot of laws and regulations that I was not familiar with. Additionally, I had under-estimated the rigor of the due diligence process.

In order to protect my team from being too distracted from running the business, I took on most of the due diligence effort myself with the support of a fantastic attorney, Daren Nitz, who had supported me though previous transactions.

The deal had some dramatic twists and turns, but the business executives at Alterian would always help put the business objectives in perspective when things were at an impasse. They gained my respect through the process, re-affirming our decision to join forces together. Never did I have a backroom discussion about corporate politics with any individual executive. They were aligned in vision and on how to execute. This has not always been my experience with these deals.

I’m extremely optimistic about our future. Misia Tramp and Liz High are already incorporating Alterian suite of products into some of our solutions. Warren Sukernek, Wilson Raj and Ed Kim are preparing for the expected increase in demand for social media services from Alterian’s channel and direct sales force.

The decision to join Alterian was relatively easy. The process to complete the deal was very intense and challenging but well worth the effort. The momentum we are creating reassures me that our initial vision to help define the social media analytics market has just become much more probable.

So, thirteen months after starting Lift9, I was in the Alterian Bristol UK office signing the Stock Purchase Agreement with David Eldridge, having scarfed down some late night Dominos pizza, feeling relieved that the due diligence was finally over…  and looking forward to the future.

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PART III: When 1+1 Can Equal Something Greater Than 2

Posted in business, Digital Marketing, entrepreneur, social media, tagged , , , , , , , on September 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

PART III: When 1 + 1 Can Equal Something Greater Than 2

We met at Wild Ginger for the first time in December, 2009. Misia Tramp and I talked about leveraging the available social media data for market research projects. She obviously knew her subject matter as she had been providing market research services through her company, Intrepid, for more than 11 years.

Misia had charisma that was further enhanced by her proper British accent. I was intrigued about the rigor of market research methods that could be used with social media data to gain truly useful insights. We left that lunch with just a promise to reconnect, but my mind was already racing ahead about the possibilities.

Lift9 had expertise around social media data and analytics. We had an improving team of cost-effective analysts at our research center in Ho Chi Minh. Intrepid had agro rhythms, methods and rigor from market research projects that could potentially be applied to social data. They had a bigger revenue base, but struggled with margins that would be improved with Lift9’s cost structure and focus on accessible digital information.

My first proposal was to merge Lift9 with only the US entity of Intrepid. In the end, however, we decided to merge both the UK and US operations of Intrepid with Lift9.  Misia’s business partner, Liz High, had been running Intrepid UK.

We put together an operations agreement in late January, 2010 to test whether we could merge the two companies’ products. Meanwhile, we concurrently kicked off the due diligence of the deal.

The signs were encouraging from the start. Misia was able to get more attention from her client base by incorporating social elements into her pitch. In many cases we were able to deliver faster, better and more cost-effective outputs right away.

The biggest challenges were at the speed we needed to improve our cash flow, which had been a deteriorating issue for Intrepid, and how to effectively merge the two different cultures into working cohesively together. We allowed some turnover of people in the beginning, and focused on driving sales and improving margins and cash flow.

On May 3, 2010, we finalized the merger with Lift9 taking controlling interest, but keeping the Intrepid brand. From there, the financial performance began to improve so dramatically, I started to think about raising capital to acquire additional boutique market research companies that had solid client bases. We now had tangible proof that combining social elements with traditional market research methods provided compelling insights that resulted in better sales traction and improved financial results.

The management team approved plans to raise money for acquisitions, which included up to 11 potential transactions within a three-year period.

Right about then, I received a call from an Alterian senior executive about a possible service partnering deal using its social media monitoring tool, SM2. When he asked to come visit us, I had an inkling our world was about to change yet again.

My advice to entrepreneurs is to keep improving your companies’ stories through different possibilities. Don’t get too stuck in just what you are trying to do with your current resources. Understand what’s happening in the market around you and find ways to improve your story within that context.

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PART II: Continuous, Honest Self-Evaluation of the Business

Posted in business, entrepreneur, management, tagged , , , on September 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

PART II:  Continuous, Honest Self-Evaluation of the Business

Everyone loved the idea conceptually, but securing client contracts was a whole another matter.

We started selling our social media solution in late October, 2009. This had given us time to set up and train our researchers in Vietnam. When presented with our sample Lift9 reports on social media, people in the industry seemed genuinely impressed. We secured a few quick contracts, making us extremely optimistic about our future.

The market was young and immature, and a lot of bad social media reports were being delivered by agencies, setting the bar low.

Our research center was getting better with each report. These researchers in Vietnam were smart and were able to apply new learning to each and every new report.

Then, we hit a slight wall. We had a stretch where the sales cycle seemed to take longer. We discovered the following problems:

  1. We secured the “low-lying” fruit opportunities within our personal networks, which explains the initial success
  2. We had trouble competing against agencies that were burying their social media monitoring cost into their retainers, thus making cost-savings a difficult benefit to sell
  3. A lot of organizations didn’t appropriately budget for social media intelligence, so internal groups had a hard time securing money for such support
  4. The insights in our reports were interesting to start, but we even had a difficult time articulating the value of such reports on an on-going month-to-month basis

The last point (#4), in particular, bothered us. My background was in Business Intelligence before Web Analytics. I knew that data could give invaluable insights if one KNEW which business questions to ask. We had been too focused on our cost-effective and speed-to-report competitive advantages. We needed more compelling insights than just the monthly change in the volume of a brand’s mentions on social media.

If we had better applications for social data, the potential truly would be tremendous. Lift9 was already getting a lot of attention just because we were in the hot space of social media. We now were looking for something more disruptive to the market than the general social media monitoring efforts. What would it be?

It was around this time in December that I was introduced to Misia Tramp, President of Intrepid US.

We had gotten to near break-even business relatively quickly because of our low-cost model. It would have been easy to just focus on getting to a good cash flow business, but we wanted to build something bigger than that. Such perspective forced us be extremely honest with ourselves and realistic about our situation.  It kept us motivated to find that “disruption” factor, and would not let us be content with our initial progress.

My advice to entrepreneurs (or businessmen) is to be honest with your situation and realistic about what still needs to be done.  Acknowledge the challenges ahead so they become less daunting and you and your team can prepare to overcome them. A lot of people at this stage tend to bury their heads in the sand.

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