Measuring & Delivering Energy Savings

Our client  is a leading energy software company founded in 2007. Based in Boston, MA and privately held, The Company has developed patent-pending technology that enables them to retrieve utility data on behalf of virtually any household in America. Utilizing that technology, the company is the richest residential energy efficiency platform available today, and serves both customers and a variety of institutions that care about energy efficiency with its platform and the technology that underlies it. Its platform helps people to understand their energy use and be incentivized to save, as well as enables individuals to interact with and track their electric, gas, and water usage online.

The Position

The CTO/VP Engineering’s role is to oversee day to day activities of the software product development team for all of Company offerings. The role will build out and directly supervise a team of architects, software developers, quality assurance, and business analysts; identify risk and opportunity areas; and coordinate all software development activities.

This role will also work closely with Product Strategy and manage the Lead Technical Architect to envision and define features in the product roadmap and be accountable for the features development, deployment and support.  In addition to the technical leadership of the team, this role will have full management responsibility and oversight for a cross-functional group of engineering and quality assurance personnel.

Reporting directly to the CEO, the VP Engineering shall:

Be chief in charge of translating business goals and objectives into technical framework

Manage software architecture, design, development, procurement, and integration. Also manage tier-2 and higher support with business-to-business partners including utilities, etc…

Manage short- and long-term staff planning, recruitment, performance management, work assignments, training, mentoring, career development, and recognition or disciplinary action.

Achieve cost, schedule, technical and quality performance for delivered software. Compile, maintain, schedule, resource, execute prioritized lists of development projects, including planning and managing the budget and scheduling personnel and vendor contracts to meet project needs. Collect metrics on development performance and report on them.

Collaborate with other functional managers (customer facing business units, systems engineering, QA, and operations) to ensure architectural integrity, effective integration and test, and ongoing system stability.

Direct any technical subcontractor management including contract negotiation, technical support, budgetary management and program management of various contracts and associated budgets.   Coordinate vendor contracts, deliveries and schedule with affected company parties.  Contract with vendors for services to support engineering while addressing Intellectual Property, Non-Disclosures and Statements of Work.

The successful candidate must also have the ability and experience to lead a multi-disciplined organization in a multi-location environment.

Qualifications

Senior-level or leadership experience in a web-based software development environment with 10 or more direct reports.

Experience working with product managers and other business stakeholders to set timelines, budget resources, and manage expectations and quality of the development process

Advanced understanding of web application programming architectures, including standards for security, scalability and configurability

Expertise and experience in implementing and overseeing measures for data security, business continuity, disaster recovery

Deep understanding of load balancing and performance optimization  principals for cloud-based high volume/transaction web applications

Experience leading development efforts using a variety of different SDLC approaches (RAD, Agile, Scrum, etc.)

Experience developing service-oriented architectures for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer customer sets.

Outstanding collaboration skills, excellent communication skills, an ability to look at the big picture

Essential Job Functions/Responsibilities

Lead software and front-end engineers in the specification, design and development and support of all our applications, including websites/products, our core services and our internal and external tools

Provide hands-on technical management leadership and support to software development team soon to grow to 12 – 15 engineers

Identify skill and performance gaps in current organization and provide improvement plans

Improve existing processes and establish new processes for efficient development and high quality output

Evaluate and enhance overall development environment, release practices and Quality Assurance methodology

Instate and maintain development standards, code reviews, unit testing and integration testing frameworks

Maintain overall ownership / accountability for data security, business continuity, disaster recovery

Work in tandem with Technical architect and development team to identify and implement new measures for system performance optimization under high load using cloud backbone

Lead, recruit, develop and supervise the development team members

Evaluate and take accountability for decisions on key technologies adopted

Ensure proper development of technical specifications and documentation.

Estimate resource usage and timelines for development team

Review team members’ detailed design of components/modules/code

Provide a good balance of experience and skills in several front-end and/or back-end technologies

Strong relational database skills

Knowledge of latest web technologies with particular understanding of browser behavior when automating data scraping, open source development platforms like Ruby on Rails, etc.

Ability to translate technology choices into business implications

Ideal Candidate Profile

The diagram below illustrates the intersection of competencies critical in the position:

This executive search is for a private equity-backed, revenue-generating, 7-year-old high-growth company that represents the next generation in healthcare innovation—PatientsLikeMe brings together patients in e-communities who create insights on their diseases and treatments by sharing information that improve their conditions.  At the same time, these insights bring value to large pharma and biotech companies, influencing the way they develop and deploy drugs.  With more than 100,000 registered consumer patients, PatientsLikeMe re-balances the healthcare system, ultimately returning power to the patient.

BSG Team Ventures is  retained to identify the VP of Product, an expert in e-community consumer acquisition, engagement, and retention.  With current pharma customers like Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi-Aventis, the Company’s goal is to grow to 2+ million registered users in the next several years.   This role will lead consumer online acquisition, experience & engagement, serving as the internal voice of the consumer.

MORE COMPANY DETAIL:

The roots of the company are anchored in one of three brothers who developed ALS, a neuromuscular disease that ultimately proves fatal.  Ben and Jamie wanted to do all they could to help their brother Stephen, and—leveraging their prior career experience and entrepreneurial leanings—decided to try to help their brother gain insights from other patients with ALS in order to improve the understanding of how the disease progresses and what might be done to ease and improve one’s condition.  And so was born PatientsLikeMe, a health data-sharing platform.  The Heywood family’s fight to save Stephen has been chronicled in the book His Brother’s Keeper as well as the documentary “So Much So Fast.”  For more, preview an interesting short video piece on their story at http://www.patientslikeme.com/about.

The Role

As VP Product, this consumer web expert needs to have the following 4 experiences as builder-leader:

Success in companies whose mission is to acquire & develop vibrant online B2C relationships with consumers who are drawn to affinity groups and online associations

Ownership & leadership of the entire consumer lifecycle and product roadmap, from acquisition through engagement & retention

Strong grow-it/scale-it-stage experience, having grown companies or divisions from at least $10M to 25M or more in revenues

Prior track record of recruiting A-caliber teams with the skills and experiences required to deliver a world-class web-based consumer experience

Companies that might be part of this executive’s career progress (although less likely their most current position) include horizontal social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), online affinity groups (Eons, Weightwatchers, sports fan communities like FanIQ, etc.), social commerce properties (BuyWithMe, Gilt, Groupon), or social gaming destination sites (Gamesville, Worldwinner, Zynga).

Below is a bubble diagram outlining  key career & functional attributes critical to success for this role:

As executive recruiters, we often get asked about executive compensation.

So often—after we finish up a search—we aggregate the compensation data we’ve collected across the search, and share it back with the innovation community. In this case, we recently finished a CFO  search for a profitable SaaS software client located here in New England in September, 2011.

Here is the snapshot of compensation from our search—

The footnote at the bottom of the image above articulates the following criteria for the majority of companies in this data set:

SaaS software companies (virtually all B2B)

Venture capital/externally funded

Profitable stage

Series A-D in funding, usually between $5M and $20M raised

All companies located in greater Boston area

There are many variables to consider that influence where to pinpoint one’s own compensation vis-a-vis the above:

The closer toward Boston/Cambridge and the  urban locations these represent,  the more likely compensation will be higher

The later the stage of company development, the higher the CFO compensation, the earlier the lower

The more money raised, usually the higher the compensation is in the above range

Once a company reaches consistent profitability, executive compensation increases across the functional spectrum

If a non-founder CFO vs. founder-CFO, cash compensation is likely higher (and equity lower in the range)

Our client provides a leading Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) campaign and order management platform that serves the unique needs of Direct Response and eCommerce businesses with Web-based technology (SaaS).

As a key member of the management team, the CFO will provide strategic financial input and leadership on decision-making issues affecting the organization by the development of sophisticated financial planning, budgeting and forecasting models for operating and capital purposes, product/service profitability and contribution analyses and special project analyses as needed.  Key to the role is an ability to bring a strategic level of leadership to the finance function, serving as financial strategist while managing the day-to-day requirements of the finance, legal & HR departments.

The CFO will be part of the senior operating team with principal responsibilities including:

Provide strategic and tactical thinking as well as broad business insight. Take a leadership role in developing the financial strategy to support the growth of the business, while continuing to drive operating efficiencies

Interact with the company’s Board of Directors, including audit committee and outside independent auditor firm

Support & partner with senior management team with improved ongoing analytical and financial management data and insight

Develop and maintain a strong relationship with lending institutions, investment bankers, financial analysts, shareholders and the financial community in general

Manage all corporate financial functions including general accounting, internal reporting and controls, planning, human resources, budgeting, forecasting and variance analysis

Oversee all regulatory and tax reporting

Direct the preparation of annual operating and capital budgets and cash flow projections

Drive any additional capital raising efforts, if needed

Establish best practices, identify and implement operational and system enhancements, and recommend new initiatives

**********

Ideal Candidate Profile

The diagram below illustrates a comprehensive intersection of competencies critical in the CFO position:

Team

Reporting to the CEO, the CFO shares the responsibility for communication with the board.  Reporting currently to the CFO are an accounting manager and a contracts manager. Total employee base is approximately 25 and growing.

Compensation

Compensation is competitive with the position’s requirements.  In a performance-based environment, this will include base salary, incentive bonus structure based on both individual and company milestones, and a stakeholder position in the company.

Each quarter we survey growth stage CEOs who are running innovation driven companies.  This quarter,  we had more than 60 CEOs responding.  CEOs were running companies in broadly defined technology (software, hardware, semiconductor, telecom), Internet (e-commerce, media, social, entertainment), medical devices, biotech, and cleantech / renewable energy sectors.

A note on methodology.  We send these surveys only to those who fit the category (in this case, sitting CEOs or board member/founders of technology/science-driven growth-stage companies).    All responses were anonymous due to the web-based survey technology employed. The majority of respondents were in the United States, with the highest concentration on the East and West coasts (New York, Boston, and San Francisco/Silicon Valley areas).

For prior survey results from Q2 2010, titled “Impact of Economy and Renewed Growth”, go to http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/ceo-survey-results-q2-2010-%e2%80%93-impact-of-economy-renewed-growth/ .

ECONOMIC CLIMATE

The first set of questions was around the economic conditions in which each CEO felt s/he was operating.    One question we continue to ask and re-ask over the last six quarters or so targets the turbulence in the macro- economic climate.  It is interesting to compare CEO responses to the same question, “Do you anticipate a double dip in the near term future?”

* In Q3 2009, more than half  (54%) of CEOs polled were expecting a double dip, and planning accordingly

* In our Q2 2010 survey,  again 50% felt a second economic correction was likely, the biggest percentage of those CEOs believing it would be in either Q3 2010 or sometime in 2011.  The other half  of CEOs felt the specter of recession was behind them

* Currently in Q4 CEOs were consistent with prior quarters with a bit more than 50% indicating they didn’t feel a double dip was likely, and the other half of the CEOs saying either a 50/50 probability or greater (16% feeling more likely than not)

So less than 1 in 5 CEOs feel another economic dip is likely.  No CEOs selected the ” greater than 75%” probability.

It’s interesting to do a meta graph of the changing CEO sentiment on this question.  Surprisingly, the graph would be sloping downward, but not as much as many would hope.  The high point was certainly back in Q3 2009, but even throughout 2010, as many CEOs were fearful of a negative correction as those who felt it was behind us.  No doubt this “lack of confidence” index doesn’t inspire the CEO with a swashbuckling, damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead attitude toward growing their companies.  Rather, it makes CEOs think in short-term windows, perhaps 3 months at a time, with little appetite to make medium or long-term bets.

Those CEOs who felt another downturn was likey referenced several factors that might tip the scales negative–  gridlock in Congress due to midterm elections and likelihood that Democrats lose congressional majority, a belief that a bad Q4 holiday retail shopping was likely, and the persistent overhang of ongoing commercial and residential loan defaults.

As for when another economic dip might occur if it were to occur, the vast majority of CEOs pointed to Q1, 2011, with Q4 of this year and Q2 2011 tying for second at 18% each.

STRATEGY

Almost 50% of CEOs polled said that they had either made a shift in strategy in 2010, or were planning to in the near future.  Granted, growth-stage companies are prone to shifting strategy until they land upon the best formula for significant and sustainable growth.  However ~50% is a big number, and clearly a chunk of those companies have been driven to rethink their strategies because of the challenging economic climate, the concern over the future, and the possibility that 2010 might represent “the new normal” where with no economic “rising tide” no help generated to float all company boats as in periods of economic expansion in the past (1997-2000, 2005-2008, etc).

CASH FLOW

The majority of CEO survey respondents (49%) indicated that they were still planning on burning cash over the next 2 quarters.  24% indicated they would be profitable.  CEO comments regarding this question indicated an overwhelming drive toward cash flow break even.  That was the big push and focus for their companies in 2010, and if they hadn’t achieved it yet, they were gunning to by end of the first quarter of 2011.  CEOs also commented that they were trying to run their companies at break even, with any extra EBIT being reinvested back into the company for additional growth.

COST REDUCTION PLANS

When asked what were the top 3 areas CEOs were targeting for cost reduction, the following table summarizes their responses, representing a combination of spend reduction and staff reduction in non-core areas.  There was a preference by CEOs to favor non-staff cuts over cutting headcount if at all possible, but many acknowledged that in order to make meaningful cuts, staff had  to be considered in the equation.

CEO responses when asked about increasesin spend were logical.  The top three in order were sales, marketing, and R&D.  Many of the comments about this question noted the fact that outside of directly growing revenues, additional spend was hard to build in when many CEOs are driving toward a minimum cash-neutral mandate and economic uncertainties are driving CEOs to think conservatively rather than expansively.

[Click on "more" below for remaining 8 slides and narrative from Q4 2010 CEO survey]

More…

Americans dropping email, portals and auctions in favor of social media and online gaming

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/

Nielsen reported a few days ago on Internet usage in the U.S.  Although intuitive to many of us, it offers numeric confirmation of the fundamental shift in user habits online.

Social networks/blogs were where we spent the most time (906 million hours in aggregate for the month of June).  Second place went to online games, at a little less than that (407 million hours), and e-mail–the bastion of baby boomers but shunned widely by X, Y, and Z generations, clocked in at a paltry 329 million hours).

In percentage change up and down, email, portals, and instant messaging took the biggest hits, while social networking, games, and online video saw the biggest increases.

Interesting also to look at the corollary for mobile users and how it was similar/different.  In fact, given that email activity on mobile devices increased from ~37% to ~42%, one might conclude that email has moved off the desktop onto the handset for the most part, and desktops are being preserved for rich media/bandwidth intensive behavior.