Rizm 1.0 Launch

Today is one of the happiest days of my life. 2.5 years of hard work with an amazing team and we finally launched Rizm. Fortune released their article this morning.http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/06/18/quant-trading-comes-to-main-street/?iid=SF_F_River

Increasing Executive Growth through a Weekly Questionnaire

I co-founded my software company with two friends from college and hired a Chief Technology Officer very early on in our original expansion stage. And even until now, 10 months later, the four of us still comprise the only executives at the company; CEO, COO, CBDO (Chief Business Development Officer), and CTO.

We have tried several different techniques for task management between the four of us, which has included varied styles of our weekly executive meeting, in an effort to create the optimal environment for productivity and harmony. However, nothing has worked so well as our method of answering 17 questions once a week for the other executives to review. We then have a weekly meeting to discuss our answers to these questions and cover anything else that we see of extra importance.

I created these questions with three goals in mind: increase accountability, reflection, and execution amongst our executive staff. As such, I recalled many of the leadership principals that I was exposed to during my time in the military for inspiration. I, like the military, believe that while some people are born with initial positions that are conducive to excellent leadership, leadership characteristics, as a whole, can be created through specialized experiences and a personal will to succeed. Additionally, I have also engineered these questions to inspire dynamic executive growth by virtue of my three original goals for the document.

1. Do you feel like you have set corporate standards by personal example this past week?

2. Has your work, personal or delegated, supported the company’s mission this past week?

3. Have you allocated your resources (time, capital, task delegation, etc.) as efficiently as possible this week?

4. List your major areas of focus and important, completed tasks for the past work week.

5. What was your most important accomplishment?

6. What was your most difficult challenge?

7. Was there a particular problem or question that you did not have the experience or expertise to answer sufficiently? Have you taken measures to remedy this?

8. Were there any situations this past week where you hesitated or were reluctant to make a decision?

9. Did you find that you had made any wrong decisions and, if so, did you revise them?

10. Did you discover any new personal strengths or staff capabilities this week? If so, have you contemplated on how to best employ them?

11. Has any of your staff achieved anything abnormally praiseworthy? Did you discuss this with them?

12. Have you spent any time getting to know members of your department staff better?

13. Do you feel that you have adequately informed your subordinates of relevant information so that they may accomplish work to the best of their abilities?

14. Have conducted any team oriented activities this week? (Meetings, etc)

15. Have you done anything this past week to develop a sense of responsibility in your staff members? (Assigning important tasks to subordinates, etc.)

16. What are your goals for the upcoming week?

17. Any additional comments.

It is not Halloween Silicon Alley, please take off your masks…

As a New York tech start-up owner that is based in Silicon Alley, I am always developing my network and meeting people who are often other entrepreneurs themselves. We then attempt to bond by discussing current ventures and business practices. Sometimes these conversations have a competitive nature and other times genuine help is offered, but, nonetheless, I have found that techies love to pontificate more than they like to program.

What I have also found is that a prominent trait amongst tech owners is a general sense of arrogance that will only be pacified until they have beaten why their product is superior to competition to death. Thus, the average tech owner is living a paradox; they compromise the human element of vulnerability by objectifying relationships. They meet someone whom they feel the need to show value to, which they achieve by feigning strength and glossing over weaknesses until their legitimacy is “established”, and by the end of their peacocking, they have disenfranchised their audience by objectifying them as a judgment panel rather then human beings.

The point is that people like other people. It sounds obvious, right? People do not want to just communicate with someone else's personality veneer and defense mechanisms. They want to talk to another person, which includes the personality faults and lackluster professional performance that most entrepreneurs are actually experiencing in their every day lives. Start-up owners are not all going to be special and revolutionary, but experienced business people that can offer contacts, advice, or funding already know this. Just because you are not the next revolutionary product does not mean that people will not want to help you to the best of their abilities. In fact, people often times love the underdogs without funding, a network, or experience because there is a higher likelihood that they can help them, which is a rewarding practice.

So, as a business person in any space, I implore people to stop trying to be Richard Bransons and be more like Oliver Twists. Be earnest, honest, and humble and I know that you will find the help that you need.