Who else but my old friend Jim Milbery, a founding partner at ParkerGale, could come up with a podcast called the Private Equity Funcast, complete with its own jingle and with a Thunderbirds-inspired opening?
Jim and I worked together at Ingres back in the — well “pre-Chernobyl” as Jim likes to put it. When we met, he was a pre-sales engineer and I was a technical support rep. We’ve each spent over 25 years in enterprise software, in mixed roles that involve both technology and sales & marketing (S&M). Jim went on to write a great book, Making the Technical Sale. I went on to create Kellblog. He’s spent most of his recent career in private equity (PE) land; I’ve spent most of mine in venture capital (VC) land.
With a little more time on my hands these days, I had the chance to re-connect with Jim so when I was in Chicago recently we sat down at ParkerGale’s “intergalactic headquarters” for a pretty broad-ranging conversation about a recent blog post I wrote (Things to Avoid in Selecting an Executive Job at a Startup) along with a lot of banter about the differences between PE-land and VC-land.
Unlike most podcasts, which tend to be either lectures or interviews, this was a real conversation and a fun one. While I’m not sure I like the misparsing potential of their chosen title, Things To Avoid in Selecting an Executive Job with Dave Kellogg, I’ll assume the best. Topics we covered during the fifty-minute conversation:
- The pros and cons of CEOs who want to get the band back together.
- Pros and cons of hiring people who have only worked at big, successful companies and/or who have only sailed in fair weather.
- The downsides of joining a company that immediately needs to raise money.
- How CMOs should avoid the tendency to measure their importance by the size of their budget.
- Should companies hire those who “stretch down” or those who “punch above their weight”?
- The importance of key internal customer relationships (e.g., the number-one cause of death for the CMO is the CRO) and how that should affect the order of your hires when building a team.
- Feature-addicted founders and product managers (PMs), technical debt, and the importance of “Trust Releases.”
- Pivoting vs. “traveling” when it comes to startup strategy.
- The concept of Bowling Alleys within Bowling Alleys, which we both seem to have invented in parallel. (Freaky.)
- The difference between knocking down adjacent markets (i.e., “bowling pins”) and pivots.
- Corporate amnesia as companies grow and surprisingly fail at things they used to know how to do (e.g., they forget how to launch new products).
- My concept of reps opening new markets with only a telephone, a machete, and a low quota.
- My pet peeve #7: salespeople who say it’s impossible to sell into an industry where the founders managed already to land 3-5 customers.
- The difference between, in Geoffrey Moore terms, gorillas and chimps.
- How there are riches in the niches when it comes market focus.
- How feature differentiation can end up a painful axe battle between vendors.
- Thoughts on working for first-time, non-founder CEOs in both the PE and VC context.
- The difference between approval and accountability, both in formulating and executing the plan.
Here are some other episodes of the Private Equity Funcast that I found interesting:
- Interview with Len Finkle, CEO of Profisee
- The Evolving Role of the Operating Partner with Jay Barlett
- Scoping Market Due Diligence with Parthenon/EY – Part I and Part II
So my two favorite podcasts are now The Twenty Minute VC on the venture side and The Private Equity Funcast on the PE side. Check them both out!
Thanks for having me on the show, Jim, and it was a pleasure speaking with you.
