Starting Something by Wayne McVicker

Author:Wayne McVicker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Starting Something: An Entrepreneur’s Tale of Control, Confrontation & Corporate Culture
ISBN: 9781932881004
Publisher: Ravel Media, LLC
Published: 2010-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

One of her first pet peeves was like deja vu: “The name, the name, we have to change the name . . . Neoforma doesn’t mean anything . . . and it has at least one . . . two . . . maybe three too many syllables. It doesn’t sound hip enough.”

When we made it clear that the name was far too entrenched to be changed, she said, “Well, at least you have to add .com to the name. We’ll get three or four times the valuation as a .com company.”

I didn’t like this idea at all. We had always professed that we were a company that delivered specific solutions to specific problems. The Internet was a great medium to deliver those solutions through, but it did not define us. We had been doing the same stuff before the Internet and we could do it again without the Internet.

However, the other managers and investors seemed unconcerned with my objections, and it wasn’t a big enough deal to me to fight everyone. So at significant expense, we changed the official company name to Neoforma.com. Hey, maybe it would increase our valuation. Who knows?

Lori saw everything through the eyes of the press. And she did not like what she saw when it came to Neoforma. We weren’t sexy enough. Sure, we had been covered by a few niche publications, but not the right publications. Not the major publications. Lori’s two defining characteristics of a successful company were (1) being written about in the Wall Street Journal, and (2) being funded by Kleiner Perkins (KP).

She had made her disapproval very clear regarding the fact that KP had not funded us in our first venture round, but she still held out some hope for us. She knew we were already beginning the process of raising another venture round at the beginning of next year. She wanted very much to have an open channel to John Doerr, the legendary partner at KP. In Lori’s world, that would be the pinnacle of success.

She figured the best thing she could do to get us in the target of KP would be to get Neoforma in the Wall Street Journal. In spite of the fact that Lori came close to getting us covered by the Journal several times, we were always bumped at the last second by breaking news. To her frustration, the Journal didn’t cover us for almost a year. However, through Lori’s work, Neoforma did get covered by an increasing array of minor and major periodicals. They liked our big market and our spinning rooms.

Early in her initiation into the company, Lori often came into my office to brief me on a few of her contacts with the press, dropping names that I was supposed to recognize, but didn’t. Then she would begin chatting. About everything.

I always enjoyed the first few minutes of her briefing. After that, well, I had many things to do, so I would try to look distracted, hoping she’d take the hint.

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