Finance specialist

1987 to 1988

Promoting the killer app: There was only one person around who knew anything about client server technology. His name was Nick and he wasn’t even an employee. He was a consultant. Between Nick’s role as consultant, and my new role as spiky-hair manager, we were not able to find enough time to sit down and prepare a demonstration. Nor could I find a VP who was willing to sponsor the project and release us from our day-to-day responsibilities. However, Nick and I were sufficiently motivated to devote our own time to it. I was interested in making Director, which I figured a project of this magnitude would entail, and Nick was interested in making Partner at his Consulting Firm. So, on weekends we would commandeer a large table at a restaurant overlooking the Pacific Ocean and, over beer and clams, we proceeded to draw network plans, with crayons and paper tablecloths. Next, we found vendors willing to ‘buy-in’ and contribute networking equipment for free, or ‘on spec’, in hopes of receiving a substantial payoff later. It was this way we were able to produce a working demonstration and show Buyers they could publish a subcontract order on a desktop PC, something they had never seen before. The Buyer Workstation project was officially approved and we were awarded funding for limited-deployment. This meant we could roll-out Buyer Workstations in just few departments, mainly the ones that purchased general supplies (pencils, paper and whatnot). Not exactly what I had in mind, but they were playing it safe, the way conservative companies generally do.

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