Whenever I can squeeze an hour out of the month, I like to attend the TAG (Technology Association of Georgia) presentations of what they call technology “Rock Stars.” This past week, Val Rahmani from Damballa spoke about her experience moving from almost 30 years at a large corporation to running an internet security start-up.
Ms. Rahmani is a very good speaker (the British accent doesn’t hurt) and she is passionate about what her company/people do. Her presentation was structured around 10 pieces of advice anyone thinking about running a startup company should avoid, things like not angering the board, not chasing PR, not moving from a big company to a small start-up, etc. All things, obviously, which she has done and done well – her company is growing tremendously.
What does any of this have to do with running a small technical writing consulting firm? Good question. After 25 years, my company is hardly in startup mode. I have no Board of Directors to ignore and no investors to appease. In short, the similarities between my business and hers are few indeed.
But I do connect with these entrepreneurial speakers. (Lynne Laube, who spoke several months ago, from Cardlytics is another good example.) And I realized exactly what that connection was. When you listen to an entrepreneur, mostly likely what you’re going to hear underlying everything else s/he has to say is the passion to do something better than anyone else, to produce the best possible product or service in the world. That was clearly evident in Ms. Rahmani’s and Ms. Laube’s presentations.
And that’s how I feel about my people and the service we deliver. I don’t believe there’s anyone out there that can do a better job at delivering world class technical documentation than we do. No wonder I enjoy these presentations: they remind me why I started my own company and what excites me about what we do.