How do you measure high performance?

I get asked a lot what does it mean to be a high performer.  There is no simple answer to this question, but I did put a few thoughts down here.  At the end of the day, I believe it all starts with your core values.  Creating them is the easy part, truly leveraging them …

An Evening With Rolf Schromgens of Trivago

Being a part of the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) has brought me so many great learning experiences over the years. This weekend, thanks to one of our EO members Lars, I had the opportunity of listening to the fascinating journey of Rolf Schrömgens, the co-founder of Trivago. It’s a given that an entrepreneur that is able …

15 Minutes of Love

Recently I decided to do more, shorter meetings to get a better pulse on my team.  Here's how I did it. Read on...

My journey from a technical project manager to an entrepreneur

My background in tech went from my time as a Microsoftie to building a content management platform for small businesses to co-founding an outsourcing company to being Head of Product Development at TINYpulse. My life as an entrepreneur started long before that. I’ll write more about these experiences one day but I once owned a …

How it feels to let go of a team member

Over the past 18 months we've only let go of four people on the product team of TINYpulse.  Three of them though have been in the last four months.  Here are some of my thoughts on what is the most difficult decision a leader must face. https://medium.com/the-culture-of-teams/the-longest-minute-in-a-leader-s-career-7daa46ec1b62#.ey8vqit75

How I lost a young star

Recruiting and retaining talent is the most important piece of any leaders day. I take a lot of pride in our track record at TINYpulse. In our Saigon office, to date (1.5 years in) we’ve only lost 3 people out of 60 total team members whom we really wanted to keep. We invest a lot …

Should I Feel This Nervous

In every career there comes a time when you have to grow up.  Depending on what your aspirations are, some have much more growing to do than others.  I always thought I wanted a simple low key life.  Never got too involved with the tech community, didn't do much to build my personal brand. As …

Get Shit Done Together

I grew up playing competitive sports such as basketball, football and baseball. Towards the end of my career I’d settled into two sports, tennis and wrestling. A coach once told me the only excuse he wanted to hear from me is the reason I expect to win.  It’s really easy to say I’m feeling sick, …

Great Agile Event in Ho Chi Minh

Here's a quick summary of a fun event I attended on December 29th in Saigon https://medium.com/events-around-town/agile-retrospective-12-29-sgn-356bb68e68be

Fun Day at the University of Natural Science

I had a great day last week with the students at the University of Natural Science. The first time I ever talked to a Venture Capitalist was 9 years ago. I remember one of the key things he asked me was how are you going to defend your position. Interestingly enough, that was the #1 …