Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Back from a week in classic Europe and on my way to the East Coast. Spent some time in England, Switzerland and Spain with customers and prospects at IBM, Steria, BT, Telefonica, Capgemini, and HMRC.

Spending more than 50% of my time on the road definitely gets tiring, especially with 2 young daughters and a pregnant, beloved wife at home. But it is all worth it when I meet customers who use our software. Of course, I’ve already told you about that and don’t want to bore you.

I love Europe. The history, the culture, the character, the colors, and real people who have perspective on life and know how to live it! I’ve been recently criticizing the western world, stating that we spend more than we produce, take loans we can’t return, that many of us don’t really create anything but just trade and deal, and that government debt is inherent to democracy. After all, to win elections you need to win a popularity test, and anyone who ever managed people knows you can’t be popular if you make the hard, right decisions. How can you be fiscally responsible if you need to win a popularity test every 4 years?

But after a few days in Spain and in other European countries, all my economic theories break down, and I’m thinking, we need them! The world just won’t be the same without Madrid, Rome, Athens, or London.

I was lucky to have Madrid on my tour agenda this visit. I simply love it. The historical buildings, the lively atmosphere, the amazing tastes, the joyful people, the passion, and the passionate language rolling off their tongues.  And the food – oh, the food. I can’t spend time in Madrid without sitting at a local restaurant and having a good glass of local wine with a big dish of Cordero Asado, lamb grilled slowly for many hours in an oven with just water and salt sprinkled on it. It’s a simple, heavenly dish. No sophisticated spices, just pure, soft-as-butter lamb meat that melts in your mouth. I think Laith, my director of EMEA PS got scared seeing me enjoy it so much…

All of you who have any doubts, make no mistake – the world needs Europe. I asked Vince, my CFO, to prepare a proposition for our board to buy Spanish government bonds in return for a steady supply of Cordero Asado.

Just kidding

I was driving my oldest daughter, who is five years old, to her kindergarten the other day. She asked me her regular questions about how a telephone works, how does electricity run through wires and so on. And then it happened. She popped the question, “Dad, who created the sky?” Ouch. Just what I needed now.

I took a deep breath and said, “You know, this is a very tough question and I am not really sure about the answer, but in general people are divided into two groups, those who believe God had created the sky and everything else, and those who believe there was a big blast which had created it all.”

“So what do YOU think?” she insisted. I paused and said that I will let her answer, and she said “Oh, silly dad, no question that a big bang created it all since God lives in the sky so he cant have created it.”

Stupid me. I should have thought about that on my own. I wanted to tell her that true capitalists change their belief based on how well the quarter is going and on how close they are to its end, but decided to spare her the details.

One week to go…

Every New Year’s eve my father meets his friends and neighbors in our village on the way to the holiday prayers, and always greets them with warm wishes for good health and business prosperity, except for the village doctor – he always gets “I wish you good health and hope you go out of business,” well that’s life when your profession is addressing other people’s challenges and needs.

I got an excited call from Yakov Kogan, one of Digital Fuel’s founders, this evening. He was calling to tell me about great meetings he had with one of our customers, a large North American cosmetics company. After all these years he is still so passionate when he sees how our solutions help companies. I had to run into a meeting so he texted me how they described the IT Financial Management challenge which drove them to buy our solution. It was better than any marketing copy we could have come up with:

“IT service Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is unknown
Can’t show a business case for an IT service
IT service Unit Cost is unknown
Can’t measure efficiency of an IT service
BU’s are not accountable for IT consumption
BU’s consume much more IT than they need
Actual vs. Budget done quarterly
Money loss continues for at least three months
BU’s see IT costs as too expensive and not predictable
BU’s struggle to forecast profit. Leads to tension between IT and BU’s
Not enough data supporting Tax Regulation
Hard to pass an audit
Manual MS Excel Based
Time consuming, error prone, no audit log, no trending, no data security, no collaboration.”

God bless fathers, doctors and passionate founders!

I am a descendant to a long dynasty of rebels. If everybody goes right, we go left. Why? Just because.

My grandmother, who was the lead spirit of the clan for some time and who passed away last year at the age of 97, would always curse my father whenever he misbehaved (and you can rest assured that happened quite a lot) that his kids will treat him the same way. Well, I like to think he was luckier than that.

The other day my daughters were playing and dinnertime came so I announced with all my charisma and authority that they need to clean up and then they can eat. My oldest, 5 years old, immediately obeyed, cleaned up and sat at the table. My youngest, 3 years old, ignored me, refused to clean up and just went and sat at the table waiting for her food. When I firmly told her no food until she cleans up, she slowly and elegantly got off her chair, stood firm in front of me, looked up straight into my eyes and said, “you are not my friend. I am going to sleep!” She walked upstairs to her room, got undressed and into her pajamas and went to sleep! She is three! I hope this is instead of the teenage rebel. If this is just the preview, I am doomed.

Well, I guess that I, who is blamed for being stubborn and needs things to go my way and my way only, deserve it. I guess there are lots of investors, board members, VP’s, employees, consultants etc. who are laughing their heads off reading this post, saying “serves you right dude.”

The other day I took my family and some friends to visit the village my wife and I grew up in. My friends were stunned by the simplicity and modesty of my childhood.

I grew up in a 2-bedroom, 570 sq foot home. At one point we were 5 siblings in one bedroom and we loved it. We had no TV at home – only in the central social club, but we did not need it. We hung around the trees, bushes, springs and nature. When my mother wanted to call her parents, she had to go to a central payphone.

I am always amazed at the distance between the life I live today, on the high-tech highway, and the rural farm-oriented village I grew up in. I enjoy stopping for a moment and thinking about the things I would like to maintain from that way of life and the things I am thankful for in my new way of life. I like to think I can bring the good from both together, but let’s not kid ourselves.. OK, maybe just a sprinkle.