-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Archives
- November 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- September 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
Categories
Meta
Category Archives: management
So you want to start an EDA company?
As I have said repeatedly, the old model for innovation in EDA has died. The old model was largely that venture capitalists would fund teams of engineers, they would produce products to solve some problem that was looming on the … Continue reading
Posted in investment, management
Comments Off
Acquisitions: cull the managers
When a company acquires another one, not just in EDA, there is often an internal group already doing something similar. For example, Intuit has just acquired mint.com and they already have a product, Quicken Online that competes in pretty much … Continue reading
Posted in management
Comments Off
Interview questions
A friend of mine is interviewing for a marketing position at an EDA startup. I’d better leave everything anonymous to protect the innocent. He (or maybe it was she) asked me what good questions to ask would be. There are … Continue reading
Posted in management
Comments Off
Spending money effectively
People die because they run out of oxygen. It doesn’t matter what the reason is—trauma, cancer, heart attack—lack of oxygen is what finally kills us. In the same way, startups die because they run out of cash. It doesn’t matter … Continue reading
Posted in finance, management
Comments Off
How long should you stay in a job?
How long should you stay in a job? The answer will depend a bit on your personality. But I think a job is interesting so long as you’re learning a lot and that seems to mean that you should stay … Continue reading
Posted in management
Comments Off
Mergers and acquisitions
There were three interesting acquisitions in the last week or so: Apache aquired Sequence, Synfora acquired Esterel Studio and Global Foundries acquired Chartered. The Apache/Sequence acquisition is interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that both companies are private and … Continue reading
Posted in eda industry, management
Comments Off
Being CEO
I talked earlier about how you get to be CEO (basically, luck the first time; track record after that). But what does being a CEO entail? I think all senior management jobs consist of two separate dimensions that have two … Continue reading
Posted in management
Comments Off
Big company guys don’t do small
Big company guys think that they can run startups because they’ve run small divisions of big companies. So that must be the same, right? Actually the two things are very different and not many people seem to be good at … Continue reading
Posted in management
Comments Off
Being too early to market
Startups have a singular focus on getting their product to market as quickly as possible. Given that focus, you’d think that the primary mode of failure for a startup would be being too late to market, but it’s actually hard … Continue reading
Posted in investment, management
Comments Off
Integration and differentiation
EDA acquisitions are very tricky to manage in most cases. This is because most acquisitions are acquiring two things: a business and a technology. In the long run the technology is usually the most important aspect of the acquisition but … Continue reading
Posted in management
Comments Off