Is Federalism Working-Issues of State Sovereignty

Posted on Bob LaGardePosted in government, politics

For those who follow a generally libertarian point of view and therein traditionally lean towards a states-rights oriented political philosophy, the 2013 session of Supreme Court rulings would appear to be a victory. In its ruling on Arizona’s voting rights law and California’s Section 8 law on gay marriage the Court catalyzed the sovereignty of the states to regulate their own affairs in these two important areas. However, these decisions and the diverse and divided treatment by various states legislatures of these and other important issues including abortion, marijuana and Medicaid coverage leads one to question how decentralized governance sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. The spate of recent public governance decisions spanning social, cultural, political and economic matters of significant importance, has clearly left some […]

Where Do Jobs Come From?

Posted on Bob LaGardePosted in business, entrepreneurship, government, politics

In 2010 when I was serving as co-chair of the Information Task Force for Sen. Pat Roberts’ Science, Technology and the Future advisory committee I saw this “Firm Formation: The Importance of Startups” report published by Kansas City’s Kauffman Foundation, a think tank dedicated to fostering economic independence by advancing entrepreneurship and education, that shows “without startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S. economy.” So why aren’t public economic development activities putting more effort and investment into the start-up market?

Build vs Buy and the Evolving Maturity of Open Source Software

Posted on Bob LaGardePosted in business

“If I knew then what I know now” is a pretty common lament heard in the postmortem analysis of most in-house proprietary software development projects. I recently got to tackle the build vs buy debate while working on a turn around engagement with the software development subsidiary of a large Costa Rican tourism company. What I found was that business leaders were reasonably familiar with the risks and considerations of the old build vs buy paradigm, but they were not at all up to date on the tremendous impact of the current open source market on this important strategic IT decision.

Living on the Water

Posted on Bob LaGardePosted in adventure

In 2006, after ten years at the helm of my first start-up and having successfully transitioned the company from a focus on the small business market to the mid-market and having prepared the company to scale rapidly, I brought in an outside CEO followed by a venture partner and I stepped aside from the day to day management of the company for a much needed break.

Build Better Teams – Listening, Logic and Critical Thinking

Posted on Bob LaGardePosted in business, entrepreneurship

What are some of the key characteristics of successful teams charged with planning and decision-making responsibilities?  A friend and former college classmate who worked for some years as a VP of Marketing for Microsoft once told me about working with Bill Gates.  “He’s super smart” he said,  “in our product marketing team meetings he could be pretty brutal.”  He went on to elaborate further; “you’ve got to be totally prepared; he asks a lot of tough questions and he’s quick to call bull shit.”  What Gates was doing was challenging assumptions, a key ingredient of  critical thinking.

The Toxic Investor

Posted on Bob LaGardePosted in business, entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs seeking start-up capital often look to early stage investors as validators for their vision and business acumen in addition to their value as financial supporters critical to the venture’s growth and survival.   Thus, early stage investor may have a substantively different type of influence on the founder and the company. Unfortunately, in many cases, such early stage angel investors may be friends, family members, or local business executives with little to no experience in mentoring a founder of his company’s product, market or business strategy.  Even worse, the investor may believe that he or she is an expert and mistakenly assume that they know better than the founder and his team what the company should be doing.

Immigrants and Start-Ups

Posted on Bob LaGardePosted in business, government

A few years ago I was a panelist on a discussion featuring John Gartner, author of The Hypomanic Edge – The Link Between Craziness and Success in America.  In his book Gartner makes the case for why America, a nation of immigrants, has such a high quotient of entrepreneurial success. I had become friends with a number of H1B immigrants in my first start-up and I had marveled at the courage they had exhibited in leaving the comfort and security of family and culture to come to the USA to study and work.  So Gartner’s findings not only made sense but they served to explain much of what was so impressive about this special group of people.

Timeline – The Early Days

Posted on Bob LaGardePosted in business, entrepreneurship, Other

<- Snapshot from early LaGarde website Bob LaGarde entered the technology arena in 1996, about a year after the phenomenal Netscape IPO.  He began programming in IDC/HTX, an old Microsoft methodology that is coincidentally somewhat like .NET with presentation layer and code behind architecture.  This was back in the day when CGI was the dominant method of making web pages do something.  The coolest stuff on the web was thought to be “eye-candy” things that blinked, spun or scrolled across the page. A few artifacts from the scrapbook: