Career Watch: Portrait of the IT worker

Q&A: Steve King

The president and CEO of Virtela Communications Inc. has advice for any would-be entrepreneurs considering marketing their own high-tech gadget or launching an IT service.

What mistakes do first-time tech CEOs commonly commit when launching a business? The No. 1 mistake is trying to do too much too soon early in the life cycle of a company. The customer's strategy must drive the company's strategy. You should find a beachhead and stick to it. Be laser-focused on where you can build a complete product for a segment that's going to buy it.

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Q&A: Steve King

The president and CEO of Virtela Communications Inc. has advice for any would-be entrepreneurs considering marketing their own high-tech gadget or launching an IT service.

What mistakes do first-time tech CEOs commonly commit when launching a business? The No. 1 mistake is trying to do too much too soon early in the life cycle of a company. The customer's strategy must drive the company's strategy. You should find a beachhead and stick to it. Be laser-focused on where you can build a complete product for a segment that's going to buy it.

Another thing that's difficult for the first-time CEO is getting unfiltered information from the organization.

What do you mean? You're getting good news all the time or bad news all the time, depending on who you're getting the information from. It's not unfiltered data that you can analyze. You're not always getting the straight scoop from your team because either they're intimidated or they don't want to give you bad [news]. You want raw, unfiltered data, because you can react to that and integrate it into your analysis.

What advice would you offer aspiring technology entrepreneurs, particularly those with a predominantly technical background? First and foremost, you've got to surround yourself with a strong team. If you have a technology background, you need to have a partner with a product marketing background. And finding really strong product marketing talent is not easy. It isn't necessarily true that if you build the right product, the world will beat a path to your door.

What else should entrepreneurs focus on? Building a team that's focused on the market that they're pursuing. Being the CEO of a technology start-up is really difficult. You have to focus your attention on so many areas: investors, industry analysts, the media. You have to make sure you're applying enough bandwidth to all of those areas as a CEO. It's not for everyone.

-- Thomas Hoffman (tom_hoffman24@gmail.com)

Who Are You?

Aurvey finds that IT pros worldwide hate workplace politics -- and love the History Channel.

Having an aptitude for technology seems like a good prerequisite for an IT professional, but how about having a thing for the Eagles song "Hotel California"? Both show up as common attributes in a wide-ranging survey conducted by online community ITtoolbox and PJA Advertising & Marketing. Besides asking about the work-related issues below, the survey pried into areas like favorite books (The Bible was No. 1, followed by the Harry Potter series, but business titles like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The World Is Flat also made the top 10), consumer technology that IT pros would most like to own (Blu-ray players), politics and preferred TV channels (the History Channel was No. 1, followed by CNN and ESPN). When it comes to favorite songs, the respondents showed a clear preference for hits from the '70s and emo; the only contemporary songs in the top 10 were two by Coldplay. No. 8, Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," was perhaps the response of several hundred people who thought they were answering the question, "How do you feel when things are going well at work?"

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright Computerworld, Inc.