3 Comments Add your own

• 1. Sylvia Nessan  |  November 15th, 2006 at 10:41 am

  Thanks for the mention, nice to know that I add value from time to time.

• 2. SKMurphy » Odd Jobs&hellip  |  November 15th, 2008 at 11:30 pm

  [...] Ken passed away a few years later. It was a sad death for so young a man. I am not sure how he maintained his calm, perhaps it was such a huge opportunity for him compared to where he started that he was just grateful to be there. Or he may have been blessed with equanimity. I think every startup above a certain size needs someone who can do “odd jobs” with an even temper. Especially as things get tougher in Silicon Valley, don’t underestimate the value of small kindnesses, a sense of humor, and cultivating calmness. [...]

• 3. SKMurphy » Administ&hellip  |  October 22nd, 2009 at 1:51 am

  [...] A blog post from October 2006 “Administrivia in Startups” made the following points I had lunch with Sylvia Nessan, a veteran of Synopsys, CoWare, and several high tech startups and she made an observation that I thought was worth writing down: the founding team, and CEO in particular, don’t pay enough attention to how much time they waste on administrivia. Hiring an admin or other outside service providers to take care of the four to eight hours a week of work that they really don’t need to do–basic e-mail networking, taxes, finances, office management / operational issues–reduces the number of different balls they have to juggle at once and increases your effectiveness by 25-40% when you take into account that, although it’s an important set of tasks that must be done, the founders don’t have to do it. [...]

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