Venture Adventure

Recently, Roger Ehrenberg published his post mortem on his experiences with Monitor110.

Roger’s top-seven mistakes:

1. The lack of a single, “the buck stops here” leader until too late in the game
2. No separation between the technology organization and the product organization
3. Too much PR, too early
4. Too much money
5. Not close enough to the customer
6. Slow to adapt to market reality
7. Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the Board

There’s many things that can be discussed and learned by looking at the details of this list.  But when I look at it from a very high level, it all points to 2 major issues — A lack of planning and a lack of leadership.

“Battle is a highly fluid situation. You – You plan on your contingencies, and I have. You keep your initiative, and I will. But what you don’t do is share command. It’s never a good idea.” — Vic Deakins (John Travolta), Broken Arrow, 1996

And this, to me, is a symptom of the web 2.0 mentality of creating a business web-site based on a high concept pitch with no plan and no real leadership.  I guess when the VC is only investing a few hundred thousand dollars, it really doesn’t matter.

But real businesses have an idea of who their customers are, what the customer wants, what the customer is willing to pay, and how the business will make money.  And all of this is known before a single penny is spent.

And real leaders lead!

Edit 1: Fixed Typos

Time can be a real pest when it flys by without you noticing it.

Some time soon (I hope) I’ll be back to writing….