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Zack Urlocker

Traverse City, Michgian

Software executive, mentor, advisor, writer, musician

Interests: Technology, music, writing

Recent Activity

Services That Scale

In the software industry, professional services have a bad rap: services don’t scale. Yet for many enterprise software companies, professional services can be a huge enabler of revenues and a significant differentiator. Many startups begin with a focus on product-led growth. Companies are started by engineers, often target other engineers... Continue reading

Posted Dec 18, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Building A Culture of Collaboration

I remember way back when we sold MySQL to Sun Microsystems. In our early meetings with Sun executives when we would describe how Sales and Marketing worked together on product launches or how Product and Engineering were fully in sync with the roadmap, they would smile wistfully and then complain... Continue reading

Posted Dec 18, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Building Your Board

Following last week’s post about the OpenAI board debacle, here are some additional ideas on how to build and use your board of directors. Its fundamentally important to build the right relationship between you as founder or CEO and the board. While technically, a board holds the formal power, in... Continue reading

Posted Dec 18, 2023 at Build To Scale

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What Went Wrong with the OpenAI Board?

This weekend’s drama at OpenAI raises a lot of questions about what makes an effective board. While we don’t know all the details behind Sam Altman’s ouster, the poor communications, board wavering and disastrous outcome indicate a high degree of dysfunction. There have been a few excellent posts by investor... Continue reading

Posted Dec 18, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Coping with GAS!

There was a good post on Redit (picked up by MusicRadar) on a young man who seemed to have succumbed to an extreme case of GAS -- Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Noah is just 22 and has bought more than $20k... Continue reading

Posted Dec 2, 2023 at GuitarVibe.com

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Disruption Is An Ugly Duckling

While many successful businesses have been built that are not disruptive, the disruption model lends itself well to the technology industry where new innovations are able to change the market. This gets at the heart of how disruption works. Disruption occurs when an inferior solution for an unattractive market changes... Continue reading

Posted Nov 21, 2023 at Build To Scale

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The Power of Disruption

Over the years, I’ve been asked many times about the common elements across the companies I’ve worked in. Borland, Active Software, MySQL, Zendesk, Duo Security, were all quite different. However there were several factors they had in common which might be helpful for those thinking of joining or creating a... Continue reading

Posted Nov 21, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Taming the Annual Budget

While you are thinking about the overall strategy and initiatives for the upcoming year, you must also prepare a budget that enables you to fund these efforts. Generally speaking I’m in favor of a bottoms-up approach to management. However, when it comes to budgeting, a top-down approach is more efficient.... Continue reading

Posted Nov 21, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Conquering the Dreaded Annual Plan

As we enter into the autumn season, it’s time to consider the dreaded annual plan. Most startups begin work on this in November and with the Christmas holidays and end of quarter, a lot of work gets crammed into the last week of December. Then departmental budgets and plans come... Continue reading

Posted Nov 21, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Product Council

One of the biggest challenges in scaling a company comes when the Engineering and Product functions expand beyond the founders. What started out as a tight-knit effort between a small, high-functioning group turns into any number of problems: Feature creep Blown schedules Projects in limbo that never ship Teams get... Continue reading

Posted Oct 19, 2023 at Build To Scale

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How To Run An Offsite

If you’ve worked in a growing startup company for more than a few years you’ve likely noticed when the executive team schedules an offsite meeting and wondered what happens there. Sadly, there’s often a lot of bonding and not enough actual work. So let me suggest a framework for how... Continue reading

Posted Oct 19, 2023 at Build To Scale

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How To Lose Customers & Alienate People

Founders and CEOs are sometimes accused of being out of touch. If that’s your goal, here are seven tips on how to get there faster. Don’t Listen, Just Talk Talk to customers, talk to employees, talk to customers. The more you talk, the less you have to listen. Give them... Continue reading

Posted Oct 4, 2023 at Build To Scale

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How and When to Do Layoffs

Sometimes it’s helpful to remember that the technology industry is cyclical. There are times of tremendous growth, when investors are flush with cash, and other times when buyers cut their budgets and investors wait on the sidelines. These cycles are hard to predict, but if you’ve only seen the boom... Continue reading

Posted Oct 4, 2023 at Build To Scale

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How Much Data Is Too Much?

We live in a world that is rich in analytic software and fabulously scalable databases that let you pivot, ply and bend trend lines in fantastically interesting ways. Which is great, because it enables companies to have much more comprehensive data than ever before. However, the multitudes of data also... Continue reading

Posted Sep 15, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Build A Strong Middle Management

One of the most important elements of scaling a business is you must develop a strong middle management layer. Often when a company first starts to expand, people are made managers somewhat haphazardly. Perhaps they are the least worst for the job, the most outspoken, the first hired, the tallest... Continue reading

Posted Sep 8, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Setting and Measuring Objectives

One of the things that I see routinely in early stage startup companies is a lack of accountability around execution. Sometimes this is because there are unclear objectives. Or sometimes there’s a process around objectives which has become dysfunctional or fallen by the wayside. When I joined Duo Security, the... Continue reading

Posted Sep 5, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Hiring senior people into a company can help accelerate your growth. But done poorly it can also change your startup culture in ways that can set you back many months. And remember, no matter what your board or investors have told you about how much they like certain candidates or... Continue reading

Posted Aug 28, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Get Your Positioning Right

One of the topics that comes up a lot in startup companies is around positioning. As in, “we need to hire a marketing consultant / guru who can help position our product.” Positioning is super important, but it’s not something that can be done after the fact. You can’t build... Continue reading

Posted Aug 25, 2023 at Build To Scale

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What Does Your Brand Stand For?

The early days of my career were in Product Management and I eventually became a Vice President of Marketing (later title inflated to Chief Marketing Officer.) But I never worried about things like company logos, colors and taglines. I had and still have a strong bias that in a startup,... Continue reading

Posted Aug 25, 2023 at Build To Scale

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The Cost of Poor Performers

It’s always tough to deal with poor performers. No one likes to manage laggards or to admit to a hiring mistake. When companies are growing at a fast rate (50% year over year or higher), managers will often focus more on recruiting new people than in managing the team they... Continue reading

Posted Aug 21, 2023 at Build To Scale

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The Peril of Growth At All Costs

I’ve had good luck working with many Venture Capital (VC) firms over several decades. For the right kind of high-growth business, they can be very helpful in providing not just the investment capital, but also opening doors to hiring executives, providing strategic guidance and financial counsel when needed. I have... Continue reading

Posted Aug 18, 2023 at Build To Scale

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Finding Product-Market Fit

The toughest thing about building a startup is to be honest with yourself about product-market fit. Product-market fit is a fancy way of saying “Does anyone care about the thing you’ve built?” The mistake most founders make, is they spend months or even years building something before they determine whether... Continue reading

Posted Aug 16, 2023 at Build To Scale

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What Are The Patterns?

One of the questions I often ask founders is “What is working and what’s not working in the business today?” What I’m trying to do is identify the patterns they see among customers. Identifying patterns and reinforcing them is one of the most important elements in building and scaling a... Continue reading

Posted Aug 14, 2023 at Build To Scale

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The Power of Velocity

Running a startup can sometimes feel like hell. And as Churchill said, if you’re going through hell, keep going. Forward progress can be hard to maintain when there are customer disasters, technical setbacks, funding challenges and more. But what other option is there? As a startup, making forward progress is... Continue reading

Posted Aug 11, 2023 at Build To Scale

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There’s a certain failure pattern than I have observed quite often with middle managers and occasionally with executives, and that is “the people pleaser.” If you’re exhausted from trying to build consensus up, down and across the organization, this might be making your job harder than it should be. Being... Continue reading

Posted Aug 11, 2023 at Build To Scale

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