From English Prof to Tech Startup CEO: Steve Adams of Sabrix (Part 2)

SM: I find it fascinating that you started as a tech writer and moved all the way to a VP of marketing. Can you tell us more about that experience?

SA: The first company I worked for folded into Unisys. They had an advanced R&D group and I worked for them as a technical writer. That led to my first startup, which was in the mini-supercomputer market. The company was called Scientific Computer Systems. About seven companies were funded and one survived, Convex, which was bought by HP. I was doing site preparation guides and installation guides for those companies, very much in line with what a technical writer should be doing. I then looked at some of the marketing collateral and realized it was just so far off message that I went to the folks in marketing and said, “I can do a better job than this”. They gave me a chance to do it, but on my own time because I was not part of their group. They liked the work I did, so I was able to transition over to marketing communications and from there to product marketing, and then to a marketing job.

SM: What year does that bring us to?

SA: I joined Sympact in 1988 and rose up through the ranks of marketing. We were a very atypical adopter of Lotus Notes. We were really intrigued about collaborative notes. We became a reseller and developed a voice capability inside Lotus Notes. That experience lasted through 1994, when Novell acquired WordPerfect. Novell had created Groupware and was looking for someone from the outside to come and develop a channel for the Groupware products. Having been in the Lotus Notes space, I was recruited to join the Groupware Division at Novell in 1994.

SM: Were you based in Provo for that?

SA: Yes. I did that for a couple of years. I had been in small companies most of my career. I wanted to see if I could play in the major leagues. I thought, at the time, that large companies were the major leagues. I have a different opinion of that now.

I got this opportunity at Novell, and we decided to go there. We did not particularly want to live in Utah, but we wanted to see if I could rise through the ranks there. I took a director role and gave up my VP role of marketing. There were four VP of marketing positions at the time, so I wanted to give myself three years to get positioned. It ended up taking about three months to get promoted to VP of marketing for Groupware. I spent another 18 months doing it, got my large company experience, and left.

SM: Where did you go?

SA: I went to a large company in Seattle called Digital Systems International and rebranded it to Mosaics. I was developing software for call centers. One of the things that is either good or bad, depending on your perspective, is that the business problem interests me but not necessarily the technology stack. I was recruited out of Mosaics into Citrix. Again, mostly because of my channel background at Novell and other places. I went to work for Citrix in 1997-1998.

SM: What product were you marketing at Citrix?

SA: WinFrame. That was in their fast path, the 1998-1999 timeframe. They had great public markets, and they were a company 100% focused on revenue and profitability. They enjoyed a very robust public market but they did it based on revenue and profitability. That was a great place to be. It was in South Florida; however, my family was not happy there.

I was not actually looking to leave, but Novell came calling again. Eric Schmit was the CEO and Novell had introduced a new technology called DigitalMe. It was a piece of identity managemet software. It was in 1999, very early in that space. It was a great technology with a definite lack of clarity as to how to bring it to market. I was asked to come back and build a startup within Novell in a general management role. I wanted to get back to California. I felt that was a great opportunity to do it. Novell had promised in March delivery of the product in July. I started on July 2nd and there was nothing to deliver.

This segment is part 2 in the series : From English Prof to Tech Startup CEO: Steve Adams of Sabrix
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