Founder-Ceo Succession at Wily Technology

Founder- chief executive officer Succession at guileful Technology Lew Cirne sit d take in stunned in his chair, digesting what Richard Williams had just proposed. As the founder, CEO, and chairman of dodgy Technology, Cirne (pronounced Ser-nee) had meeted hard to plant the skills necessary to involve a start-up, had developed Wilys early technology single-handedly, had hired 50 employees to help him build the company, and had masteryfully spearheaded a strategic transformation of the company.He had led the company to the point where he had convinced some(prenominal) important customers to buy WiIys flagship product and had successfully raised two rounds of financing from top investors. ?Cirne , ,CEO, ,Cirne( ? -NEE) , , , Wily , 50 , , , ,? WiIy , However, after(prenominal) the last round of financing, at the behest of Wilys lead venture capitalist, Cirne had concord to give up his CEO position and step down to CTO and had helped find and recruit Williams to take everywh ere the CEO position.Now, as the last condition before he would accept the job as Wilys CEO, Williams Wanted Cirne to also give up the chairman position that Cirne had held since Wilys founding. As he stared out the window, Cirne wondered how he should react Just how much am I going to leave to give up to crap this thing a success? When is it too much? Is this step i going over the line? As he thought back through Wilys history, he also wondered what he could have done differently to avoid having to step down so soon as Wilys CEO. , ,Cirne CEO , ,CTO, CEO ,Wily? CEO, , Cirne ,? Cirne Wily ,Cirne , Wily , , Wily? CEO Early Years Lew Cirne grew up in rural southern Ontario, Canada, the only child of worIreminisced I contend a lot of hockey when I was growing up. I was a goalie_l used to play agency out of the net, taking obscene risks to get to the puck. Its a very entrepreneurial position.When I wasnt in the hockey rink or at music rehearsal, I was programming. My mom loves to say that she got me a Commodore PC when I was 12 and that she hasnt seen me since. ? Cirne , worIreminisced? , goalie_l, , , , , Commodore PC? ,? 12? , , Academically, Cirne was a high performer and set his sights on becoming the first from his extended family to go to college. He headed south to New Hampshire, where he attended Dartmouth and studyed in computer science.All Dartmouth undergraduates were required to buy and use apple Computers Macintosh PCs, and like many of them, Cirne became a devotee of the Macintosh architecture. Each grade, several graduates from the de offsetment went to work at Apple. One of those people was Jeff Cobb, who was a year ahead of Cirne and had served as a role model for him. After graduating in 1993, Cirne fall in Apple, too. His first major project was developing one piece of the operating scheme for Apples Power Macintosh. He recalled That was the easiest project lve ever been able to explain to my mom.I was supposed to create the cursor for the Power Macintosh, halt the cursor appear on the screen. I could tell her, See that little thing moving around, florists chrysanthemum? I did that His next project was Copland, Apples next-generation operating system. Copland was based on object-oriented technology, and Cirne was assigned to the team working on Coplands object-oriented user interface. During this project, Cirne learned some technical truths that five years later would be part of the underpinning for the founding vision of his company. Cirne said ,Cirne , Macintosh , ,Cirne Macintosh , , Cirne, 1993 ,Cirne Power Macintosh L , Power Macintosh, , , , ,? Cirne ,Cirne ,5 , Cirne? It was great to work with brilliant, technical people, learning from them how to solve tough technical problems.But even with the most brilliant technology team, no one could explain how the operating system as a Whole behaved. Each person knew their own little piece, but no one had the visibility to be able to see the big picture. Without comely visibility, even the best systems are going to have problems. Part of the epiphany for me was, how can I make this complex, object-oriented computer software system visible, so we can see how the whole system will perform? I thought, theres an prospect here to make the potential a reality. , , , , , , , , , , , Cirne loved the technical challenges and the fact that people came to work stimulated every day, but he felt restricted by the narrow specialization his role demanded in such a large company. In addition, he wanted to start building the skills he would claim to play a central role in a start-up I wanted to learn how to be a founder or an early employee of a new company.I wanted to gain breadth, compared to my more think role at Apple. To do so, Cirne wanted to work for a smaller company for two years, after which he planned to leave to start his own company. That month, Cirne got a call from an executive recruiting firm that was toilsome to h ire software engineers for Hummingbird Communications, a small public company. Cirne agreed to meet with Nick Gault, the vice chairman of corporate development at Hummingbird, who would be his boss there. Gault, who had engineering degrees from Stanford, had founded Common Ground Software.When he was 32 years old, Ga. it had sold his 30-person company to Humrningbird. Cirne said Cirne , , , , , , , , ,Cirne , , , ,Cirne , , , Cirne , ,? , , , 32 , , 30 Humrningbird? Cirne? I met with Nick, and the job opportunity admit what I had in mind, between Hummingbirds size and Nicks background.The company had just hit $ nose candy million in revenues with 350 employees, and Nick would be a great mentor for me. He was a developer sullen business-man, just like I wanted to be. I was very up front with Nick, telling him, Youve had success at starting a company and selling it. Id like to work for you and learn from you. , , $100 350 , , , , , Cirne joined Hummingbird as the lead en gineer for its Macintosh product. Culturally, Cirne found Hummingbird quite different from Apple.Apple was a product-driven organization, Hummingbird was sales driven. Apple employees would talk about shipping the product, while Hummingbird employees would talk about making our quarterly numbers. Cirne Macintosh ,Cirne , , ,? Without ratting Hummingbirds headquarters, Gault created a skunkworks project to which he assigned Cirne, with the mandate to rewrite their viewer product in lava, an object-oriented language that was beginning to gain wide acceptance.As he started victimisation the technology, Cirne became impressed. He came to believe that companies would start using Java to develop enterprise systems but that those companies would face the same problems Apple had faced in developing Copland that it would be very hard to knit together all of the individual components into a coherent system that performed and scaled well. Cine said , , Cirne, , , ,Cirne , Java , , The more successful lava would be, the more the problems would abound for these companies. It was a belief that came from my in the flesh(predicate) experiences, both at Apple and at Hummingbird. As I was driving home through the mountains, on a curvy road on the way to Santa Cruz, 1 had a second epiphany that if I could make the Iava prog. ram self-diagnostic, then I could help those companies solve that problem in a big way. I would solve the problem l had experienced myself. When it hit me, I almost drove off the road.When I got to Santa Cruz, I knew Id start a company with this idea as a core foundational technology. , , , , , IAVA prog. ram , , , , During discussions with Gault, Cirne dual-lane his vision of the potential opportunity he had perceived during his epiphany, and Gault helped Cirne understand how potential investors would view his venture, what types of people he should plan to hire to work with him, and a wide variety of other issues.By the time Cirne left Hummingbird, he was leading a team of half a dozen people, managing both the technical and managerial aspects of the driveway to develop a ava version of Hurnrningbirds viewer product. ,Cirne , ? 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