This is the fourth entry from the diary of Edward Rushbridger (a nom de plume to protect the owner's identity) which fell into my hands recently. Ed, a serial CEO, has been parachuted by venture capitalists into his latest company. He is, it seems, serially adept at putting his foot in it (see previous diary entries here, here and here).
'Went this morning to a meeting of the general managers in charge of the product divisions', writes Ed, 'all goes well because I have mugged up extensively on the markets which our products address. I make several contributions which are well received.'
'All goes well until the general manager of the industrial IC products business unit puts up a slide showing a sharp upward trend in sales of chips for scanners.'
'"Is this is due to government stimulus packages for healthcare investment?" I ask.'
'There are sideways looks. A tense silence. Then, in that slow tone of voice used for children, old people and idiots, the general manager of the industrial IC products business unit says:
"We don't make healthcare products, Ed, but we have a significant business with ASML, Nikon and Canon for chips used in lithography scanners for patterning ICs."'
'They appear to be politely suppressing their amusement. Bastards.'
'Only another 424 days till we IPO and I'm out of here with my boots filled.'
Hi David,
this is a funny parody, but is there a message which you try to give? Kind of miss the point, except engineers rulez and ceos-who-did-not-spend-20-years-in-the-industry suckz...
Hi, Good Old Anon, Yes that's pretty much it. More specifically the Ed thing is having a dig at this practice where VCs parachute in a CEO often despite of, or against, the wishes of the founding team who are usually engineers. VCs are sheep-like creatures and they have collectively fallen for the idea that they are the best judge of who should be CEO of a company. This, of course, never happened at Fairchild, Intel, Xilinx, Altera, National, AMD, Motorola, TI and most of the other great IC companies but, in the last decade, VCs have got it into their heads that this is a good thing to do. Imagine Noyce, Moore and Grove being told by Arthur Rock that he was bringing in his own CEO! They'd have given him very short shrift. But, of course, Rock would never have done it. He had too much respect for them.