Why Sabrix

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Opportunity Assessment

• Why Sabrix?

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Why Sabrix?

• Death and Taxes
• Best offense is a good defense
• Razors need blades
• Einstein
• Air Strikes can be positive
• Pajama Fits
• Persistence beats resistance

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The CEO Role at SabrixSeptember 2008
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Agenda

• Building a venture-backed company
• The role of the CEO
• Using operating principles to establish and
  maintain culture
• Hiring and leveraging the right team
• Leveraging the board of directors
• Bending to the will of the market

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Building a venture-backed company

• Market
• Management
• Merchandise
• Money
• Metrics
• Mojo

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The CEO role

• Vision or strategy and execution
• Focus
• Hiring and leveraging people
• Allocating and managing capital
• Setting the course, then adapting and adjusting
• Talking to employees, customers, and partners
• Seeking the truth (process and metrics)
• Bearing ultimate accountability for all outcomes
• Embracing agony and frustration as easily as
  success and power
• Getting comfortable with loneliness
• Accepting responsibility for the safety,
  security, and needs of your and everyone elses
  families

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Aligning behavior with goals
The role of operating principles in building
culture . . .

• Trust
• Market focus
• Ownership
• Decisive action
• Responsiveness

• Accountability
• Results
• Competitive edge
• Innovation through learning
• Respect for the individual

Handout
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Hiring (and leveraging) the right team

• Treat hiring as the most impactful decision you
  make
• Architect your hiring, recruitment, and retention
  strategy
• Invest in the HR function early
• Treat recruitment, hiring, retention, and
  termination as 4 different business processes
• Develop a supply chain of talent to support
  present future growth
• Hire with the recognition that you will require
  strong middle management to scale
• Commit to leveraging the distributed intelligence
  of the organization rather than simply increasing
  your headcount

Handout
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Leveraging the Sabrix board

• Board charter
• Maintaining a board that holds the CEO
  accountable
• Fiduciary responsibility
• CEO decisions versus board decisions
• Asking for feedback
• Being responsive to the board
• Board composition
• Filling the gaps in expertise
• The importance of a functional board
• Board preparation, board size, and a balanced
  board
• Managing the board
• Board communications
• Providing the best, most accurate information
• Discipline and execution in the board room
• Candor without malice
• Dashboards
• Frequency

Handout
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The Sabrix case study

• Birth in a bubble
• Surviving the nuclear winter of software
• The greatly exaggerated reports of the death of
  enterprise software
• Responding to market dynamics (not just to
  investment bankers)
• Managing a hybrid model
• Slow-down, Recession, or Depression
  Focusing on the fundamentals still matters