NFQ !!

I founded Castek almost two decades ago, on a couple of credit cards and a dream (at the time, we referred to it as a "wing and a prayer" ... now we prefer to remember it as a "vision for global leadership" *lol*). After 2 economic cycles, 3 major rounds of financing, 3 business model changes, and 2 “perfect storms”, I have reached the conclusion that "success" and "failure" are simply different points along the same continuum, and that every human being and business will eventually encounter both (probably many times!!).

In retrospect, getting through all of these inevitable cycles wasn't just about foresight, strategic vision, competitive strategy, customer relationship management, innovation, time to market or any of a number of factors that most business pundits focus on. Yes, all of these factors were important -- but the one consistent ingredient required to survive and thrive, was to face each challenge with an "act of will", and to rapidly adapt to anything that was thrown at us.

Winston Churchill probably said it best: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts ...".

Look, everyone will applaud, remark upon and celebrate your brilliance when things are going your way. I propose, however, that you are defined by how you react when times are tough, when you don't have momentum on your side, and when you wake up to a daily, weekly, monthly diet of adversity (which every company and every person will eventually encounter). Do you exhibit grace under fire? What does your leadership look like when things aren't going your way? Do your people continue to follow you when you have to climb uphill? What about when the bullets start flying? Are you able to take decisive, tough actions while continuing to hold the hearts and minds of your team? How do you keep all of your stakeholders informed and aligned to a common purpose, when all of the external forces are working to splinter your coalition?

The single biggest challenge for my company occurred shortly after we had just raised our third and last major round of financing in June, 2002 -- the single largest private financing round for the tech sector in Canada after the tech bust. At the time we were almost 400 employees, growing annually at 50%, and 6 months away from an IPO – in other words, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. Two months later, the impact of 9/11 hit our customers hard, and the entire NA insurance sector (our primary customer base) went into a tail spin, going through the worst time in their history. Major IT programs were the first initiatives to get cut by our customers and prospects, as the insurance sector tried to conserve cash and reduce all discretionary expenditures, and we went from a market where we were winning 60% of the deal flow in our target market, to having no deal flow available in the market for the next 24 months. Instead of preparing for an IPO, we ended up facing a sudden major downturn in our business. Bad markets trump good management and great products ... we took immediate action to conserve cash, restructure the company and “hunker-down” to ride out the market cycle and survive nuclear winter in our space. We undertook the toughest and most painful actions of my entire entrepreneurial career, exiting every major long term obligation, shutting down all non-core operations, slashing expenses down to “life support” and dismantling over 90% of the company that I had carefully built up over 15 years.

We were fortunate – in spite of all of the pain that shareholders, customers and employees collectively shared, I and my management team received complete and continued backing through all of the tough actions that we needed to undertake. We outlasted the market cycle with our intellectual property and a small core team intact. We rebuilt the company from substantially the same top notch employees whom we were forced to release during the downturn. The tough actions that we had taken, resulted in a very lean, efficient operating model, and a vastly simplified equity structure and balance sheet. This allowed us to reposition the team and the intellectual property for global leadership in our space, leading eventually to the recent, very successful sale of the company to Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise software company.

Bottom line ... you do your best in the situations that you control, and you make the best of the ones where you don't, by making the best decisions given the data you have, being decisive and action oriented, and honoring your obligations to your stakeholders. My main premise is that the key to sustainable successful business performance, is a determination to never quit, and an ability to constantly adapt. Having the tenacity to keep continuing on, is the one thing that is within our ability to decide, and by doing so, you give yourself the opportunity to choose the nature and timing of the "Kodak moments" within the continuum, that determine your own so-called, "overnight successes".

[Show More ...]

Dying professor's words to live by ...

I'm just back from dinner with three very close friends, KenP, PeterT and PeterC, in a sort of "guys night out" evening. Over drinks, we started talking about various inspiring experiences that might be relevant to entrepreneurs who are out there, fighting the good fight, and they pointed me towards this "last lecture" by Dr. Randy Pausch, a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon, who is dying of pancreatic cancer.

Take a few minutes to look at this video segment. It's worth it. His topic is about achieving your childhood dreams, but the words of wisdom that he imparts are essentially about how to live life, how to overcome adversity and how to take every opportunity to make choices and live the right way.



He brings out a couple of major themes in his lecture. It struck me that these are as good a set of principles as any that I've seen, to build a great company culture around ...

• "Experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want."
• "Brick walls that are in our way, are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out .. they are there to give us a way to show, how much we want it. "

• "Choose to have fun and a sense of wonderment, all the time ... "
• "People are always more important than Things."
• "Live with integrity ... simple advice that is hard to follow -- just tell the truth. When you screw up, just apologize, with sincerity. "I'm sorry, It was my fault, How do I make it right?". "
• "Sooner or later, you will encounter people that you don't like, or you have a bad experience with. No one is pure evil. If you wait long enough, they will show you their good side. Be patient, and seek it out. "
• "Show gratitude. It's a simple thing -- and a very powerful thing. "
• "Complaining and whining does not solve anything. You can choose how you spend finite time, energy and effort. By complaining and wallowing, or by choosing to play the game hard. It's your choice. Make the choice. "
• "If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. "

Like many real wisdoms in life, they can be applied universally to business, family, relationships and yourself, and remain equally relevant and valuable.

[Show More ...]

An Open Letter to Castek'ers ...

Dear Friends,

18 years after founding Castek, I will be moving on to new pursuits. From the very first experience of starting the company in 1990 with my founding business partners, Fay Wu and Dragan Kopunovic, bootstrapping its growth through our credit cards, and all of the thrills, chills and spills of an incredible journey through the most exciting times in history for our industry, the birthing of this company and the opportunity to work with each of you have been amongst the most important, formative experiences of my life.

Together, we have been able to make a difference in our industry, and in each other's lives. We have invented the future together ... we have grown up together ... we have built a foundation and won many hard-fought campaigns together -- these are the ties that bind.

It has been a privilege and an honor to have served as your CEO, and I am grateful for all of the support that employees, customers, partners and shareholders have provided me and the company through the past 18 years. As they say, all good things come to an end, but each ending is also a new beginning. Castek is not my first company, nor will it be my last -- as all of you know or suspect, I have always been a far better entrepreneur than an employee :-). That being said, we built Camelot when we built Castek, and this company and the people that built it with me will always hold an honored place in my memories.

I wish each of you all the best, as you go forward within Oracle. This is a wonderful final chapter in the Castek story, to see our collective dreams of achieving global leadership in our space realized, and I will be very excited to follow your future progress.

My very best wishes for much continued success !!
Yung Wu.

[Show More ...]