From English Prof to Tech Startup CEO: Steve Adams of Sabrix (Part 5)

SM: The tax space actually seems like a very solid niche.

SA: It is interesting. It is hard to mention the word tax anywhere in the United States. People have an automatic negative response.

SM: You arrived as the first outside CEO. How did the founding team react to the situation?

SA: I think they had been at it long enough that they realized where their core expertise was and what piece was missing. They had had some failed experiences on the sales and marketing side, and they really wanted somebody that would partner with them and take their vision and bring it to reality. We talk a lot about vision in Silicon Valley. I have always joked with people that I don’t consider myself a visionary. Vision is about seeing what others cannot see.

That is also the exact same definition as hallucination. What is the difference between vision and hallucination? My answer is execution. That is what I focus on. I think the three founders would agree some six years later that they wanted someone to execute on the sales and marketing side and bring in operational discipline across the board to grow and scale the company.

Most technical entrepreneurs come up through the product side, they do not come up through the IT side. They were one degree removed. They were IT guys from a hardware company trying to build software. It was a reasonable decision to bring in someone from the software world.

SM: This type of scenario happens often. Intellectually, founders understand the need to bring in an outside CEO. However, it often requires an emotional transition.

SA: The question is whether anybody ever completely emotionally transitions. I think the important thing you need to worry about as an entrepreneurial CEO is, what role are your founders going to take? My position is that they have a well-defined operational role in which they are held accountable as with every other person in an operational role, or they are out. Anything else in between is confusing for them and for the organization. It just does not work well. I was fortunate that I had three founders who could take on and execute real, meaningful operational roles very well. That is what they did, and that is where they continue to add value. It works well. They now have the opportunity to play meaningful roles, add value to the company, and to see the growth they were hoping for.

SM: What roles did you put them in?

SA: One of them is the SVP of Customer Advocacy. He was the founding CEO and the one who led the IT project. The value that his IT background has brought to the company is that he can be 100% empathetic with the IT audience we sell to. An R&D guy who grew up in those ranks cannot have that same empathy. That has been very meaningful.

Another has been a sales engineer. He leads the pre-sales organization. He is a unique combination of technical expertise and tax-domain expertise. That is really hard to find in a single human being. He has built an organization that reflects that hybrid skill set, which is necessary for our sales.

The third one left our company just about two years ago. He played a number of roles. He was in services for a while, then development, then product management. He really enjoyed the startup process, was fully vested, and wanted to go do a second startup and get another equity slice and start the clock over. He was there for my first five years.

This segment is part 5 in the series : From English Prof to Tech Startup CEO: Steve Adams of Sabrix
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