Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 5)

SM: When working with smart people, it always pays to explain why. LD: Exactly, and they will ask 15 questions to get there if they need to. To this day I adore them. They cannot do anything until they know why. I love that. That was the biggest learning for me was how to manage an engineering team. I didn’t know what I was going to learn; I knew I would learn something but I didn’t know it was going to be that. >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 4)

SM: Your technology background is nominal by Silicon Valley standards, it seems. LD: Absolutely. At that time I was a little more humble. I thought technology was intimidating even though I had used it in my different jobs. >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 3)

SM: How long did you stay in that job at Unilever? LD: I moved back to the head office after a year, which is unfortunate because I really liked that job. They moved me back because we bought our biggest competitor, and they asked me if I could travel around the biggest countries and understand whom we should keep and whom we should fire, and then merge the two companies into one. >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 2)

SM: What happened after you left Novartis? LD: This all ties into how I ended up starting my company. I remember being headhunted by Unilever, a big company with 320,000 employees with $60B in sales at the time, and I felt Novartis had done so much for me … I remember walking into the global VP of HR and telling him, “Hey, you probably don’t care but I am going to join Unilever, and I am leaving today.” >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 1)

If you think you need to have Silicon Valley DNA to become a successful technology entrepreneur, Lars Dalgaard proves that it ain’t so. Lars is the CEO of SuccessFactors (Nasdaq: SFSF), a SaaS company which recently went public.

SM: Lars, I want to start with your personal background – tell me who you are. LD: You don’t have that much time! I was born in Denmark – I have a Danish passport. I lived in Denmark until I was 18, with a brief break when I lived in England from 13 to 16. >>>

Why is it so hard to develop a drug that cures cancer?

By Carlo Maley, Guest Author

[SM: Carlo is an old friend of mine from MIT. We met at orientation in 1993. At the time, there was no formal field called Computational Biology, which was his area of interest.]

We all know that cancer is a big, scary problem. Approximately 40% of Americans will get some form of cancer in their lifetime. Many of us will die of the disease. >>>

Financing & Exit

If you are a very early stage entrepreneur looking for financing, chances are you need a lot more than help with financing. Most likely, you need help with Positioning, as well as overall strategy. For the moment, I do not have the bandwidth to take these projects on on a pure equity basis. I do offer “office hours” of sorts, which are 1-hour paid consulting sessions. You are welcome to contact me if that is something you want to avail of.

In general, I do not raise money on a pure equity basis. I also do not sell companies or IP on a pure success-fee basis.

Most deals that are stumbling in either way – financing or exit – require pretty extensive strategic re-engineering. To work with such challenges, you need to have the runway to be able to fund a proper strategy consulting project.

If you do, and are interested in working with me, by all means, feel free to email me.

Vertical Travel Ad Network CEO Cree Lawson (Part 10)

SM: What are your thoughts about exit?

CL: I don’t think Elvis will leave the building for a long time yet. We’ve certainly had offers that would have made me a very wealthy man, or at least a guy with a very loud car stereo. >>>