On Dec 11 2010, in a blog post, Rohan said this:
"My next goal is to make Notion Ink best in its customer relations and whole of my energy will go into making this happen. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions on this topic."
The blog post generated over 3,000 comments. People cared about this issue. They said so too. And here we are, 5 months later. What does this tell you?
The CEO makes statements he has no intention of following through
or
The CEO makes statements without thinking through
or
The CEO makes statements but has no ability to make it happen
or
The CEO makes statements that his team cannot carry through
or
This is a really weak CEO with no energy at all, because clearly 'all his energy' amounts to .... nothing.
Don't hate me. Just go through his blog with a little more critical eye, please. And find me another CEO blog where the executive makes these many empty statements and does not follow through at all.
So let me reiterate. Do I complain because I can't stand a start-up making mistakes? No. I complain because this start-up couldn't care less about the difficulties of its customers or their feedback.
Now that is unacceptable.
I think it is a combination of
ReplyDelete- The CEO makes statements without thinking through
- The CEO makes statements but has no ability to make it happen
- The CEO makes statements that his team cannot carry through
Regarding the quality control (of software) etc, the problem is that NI is trying to get things done cheaply. For example, Rohan hired undergraduate students in their 5th to 8th semester to build the software, in addition to MentorGraphics providing a turnkey solution. These students probably all left for greener pastures as soon as they completed their course.
Rohan's plan was to hire developers / support, and actually and remunerate them, with the money he makes from the sale of the Adams. So, he had to make sure that he makes maximum profit from the sale of the Adams so that he can afford to hire developers to actually build the software, and support personnel.
This is the reason I suspect for the sub-par quality of the hardware (reduce the manufacturing cost), the half-baked software (developed by college students who left and by MentorGraphics who care less about it), and the lack of personnel (support, developers etc).
Even Andre (who was hired to be their UX expert) has started bad-mouthing NI (check his twitter feed). I suspect Rohan hired him on promises which he was ultimately unable to keep resulting in Andre leaving NI.
This is also the main reason why NI is unable to absorb the cost of returns. They will only accept returns which can be directly blamed on the manufacturers with whom they might have some return contract.
Oh, I don't think there is any big investor either. He mostly has taken a big loan from a bank.
I don't blame Rohan, but rather applaud him for his shrewdness on managing all of the above. I think his business acumen will help him survive and after sufficient sales of Adam, he might actually start delivering on his vision and promises.
"http://www.ogtmobile.com/". Déjà vu ?
ReplyDelete"http://www.androidcentral.com/first-look-ogt-tablet-worlds-thinnest-android-tablet"
SRK,
ReplyDeleteInteresting. You seem to have some inside / extra knowledge about how he's operating. I agree with your reasoning but not the conclusion that he has 'business acumen'. If this is the way he think he can grow his business, I'd be very worried about his employees, investors and customers! It's also not an indication of how he's 'managing' it all because as you can see, it doesn't look like it's being managed.
Most of the startups have at least some "higher ups" who have sufficient experience. This is not the case with NI clearly, as it is formed by buddies with insufficient experience. This is also a cause for their current maladies. In most of the startups the 'brain' normally takes the position of CTO, and not CEO. This is because the inexperienced founders would like to have someone with industry experience to be the CEO and act as their guide. Just take a look at Google. Larry and Sergei choose Eric to be their CEO as they had no experience running a company. Now when they have "learnt the ropes" so to say, they are taking up the reins. Rohan must learn to do the same. Hire an experienced person to be the CEO, and he should focus to be the "Director Creative" as his title says.
ReplyDelete[...] (oh, he said this too...) [...]
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