Massachusetts is home to Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium, world-famous institutions like MIT and Harvard, and of course, the Boston Red Sox. In thinking about his home state, Avid Technology-founder Bill Warner created a scorecard and playbook to strengthen the state of Massachusetts’ tech companies. Although our own Chris Cameron recently featured Boston as a great tech hub, Warner’s posts aim to elevate business in Beantown via sports metaphors.
Says Warner, “I believe we have sold too many of our great companies, and we have put our national and global leadership at risk… I propose a scorecard that helps push us towards having companies locally run. It’s a shorthand way of saying: ‘Play big.’ ‘Don’t sell out.’ It’s a way of saying ‘Lead here.'”
Warner goes on to define his scorecard with singles as any successful product launch, doubles as companies with sales over $10 million dollars, triples as companies with sales over $100 million dollars, home runs as those with a $1 billion dollar market capitalization and grand slams as any company with a $10 bilion dollar market cap. He suggests Akamai as a grand slam candidate, with established grand slams being Raytheon and EMC.
Warner argues that while Massachusetts companies are seeing decent exits, they are selling at the double and triple stage rather than reaping longer-term rewards and contributing to the local tech environment. In his second post, entitled It’s About New Behaviors: A Proposed Playbook for Massachusetts Technology Companies, he explains some ways the community can improve. He suggests investors should be willing to fund inexperienced first-time entrepreneurs, that companies should forgo non-compete clauses to open up the talent pool, and that the community should focus on mentorship, long-term planning and recruiting super angels and outsiders to rebuild the region.
Explains Warner, “I believe that we indeed need to look harder – at new ways to measure success, and at new ways to spur success. The good news is, as our behaviors change, so will our fortunes.” It will be interesting to see if the Boston tech community heeds Warner’s advice and aims for the fences.
