Are you sympathetic to startups? Why or why not?

I agree with the others, I'm very sympathetic to startups. As an organization, we tend to be very conservative, so it's not always possible to purchase from them, but we'll always hear them out and I've offered my experience and advice to several as well. 

Given that we're in the Bay Area of California, we're always seeing new startups. We get foundries who present to us their portfolios on a quarterly cadence. That allows us to see who's doing what, who's competing with who, and what the latest and greatest technologies are. There's always a great idea but if the startup isn't able to pivot, they don't survive. Ultimately you do need that customer to sign up with you. You can only go to round A, round B, round C so many times without generating some level of revenue.

I'm always sympathetic to startups because it's a small team, which reminds me of when we were small and I was working 24/7 to get things going. I got my hands in IT, HR, training and multimedia, all at the same time. Knowing the life of a startup person on that level, I’ll say, "I get it, but at the same time, you just need to focus here a bit more so we can survive together, and you can survive in the long term." 

Over the years I have definitely found a lot of interesting ideas among startups. I may not have engaged with all of them or given them business, but I did show them which direction to take in terms of what they could be doing differently. I gave them informal mentorship rather than getting into a formal engagement with them. During my time as a CIO and even now, a lot of them return with feedback on what worked and what didn't, as well as whether the conversation was worth it or not. That's a good place to be. I have been sympathetic to startups because they're struggling to do something new. We should hear them out. I’ve realized that within the ecosystem, not everyone is amenable to spending time on startups.