Friends,
With a mixed feelings of sadness, happiness and apprehension, I am announcing my “resignation” from the post of CEO of
Innowix, Inc. I am taking on a full-time employment opportunity as an
Enterprise Architect/Technologist with a global quick service food company
right in Ann Arbor, Michigan area. The company will continue to offer services it has
been providing so far but I will have much less of an involvement going forward.
I want to provide a perspective into how things panned out Innowix.
Beginnings
I started Innowix in October 2007 with a vision of creating
an innovative, honest, and pragmatic IT consulting company to help our clients leverage
technology in the most effective fashion to solve their business problems. I am
happy to say that it carried out this vision.
Clients and Projects Executed
Along the way, we helped many clients in Healthcare,
Automotive and Government segments.
We executed projects ranging from a single to a few consultant
on a time and material basis and a few on a fixed-price basis for our clients.
Needless to say, I have learned a few lessons. Some projects were smooth and
some were a bit painful.
These projects were for small and large enterprises ranging
from HP, Henry Ford Health Systems, GM, Commonwealth of Kentucky, MathTech (for
various State Governments) and Xerox. I am also very happy with the fact that ALL the clients can serve as references.
I am very thankful to all my clients, partners and people who helped me in many ways along the way. I very much appreciate your help, inputs and guidance.
Intellectual Properties Created and Used
I was successful in creating and using useful approaches for
IT strategies, processes and architecture at various levels. I intend to publish
some of these to public domain under Creative Commons license.
So, why the change in direction?
Well, lately all my engagements required extensive travel. That meant much less time towards family and on personal health and few fun projects with the kids I have grown to enjoy - Robotics, Science Olympiad and other similar pursuits with the kids. This was the primary drive to make this change.
Missed Opportunities and Lessons Learned
Start with one or more partners
Looking back, I believe a start up such as Innowix would have
been better served with couple of additional like-minded partners. I had put
together a financial model towards that but I probably should have started the
company along with these partners instead of expecting to add some later. I
came very close to adding couple of great individuals as partners but it didn't
materialize. You need a set of close partners who you can bounce off ideas and
who can keep each other on track.
Find time/resources to build products (or now services)
Another missed opportunity is in the development of
product(s). I had (I still do!) a few ideas but putting them into execution
required a lot of resources which I was very short on.
Maintain positive cash flow and be profitable
I am very proud to say that Innowix was profitable from Year
1 and continued to hold a positive cash flow for the most part (except one year
end where one of the client was changing their financial system and payments
took more than 3 months to materialize! That put us in a tight spot for a few
months but we eventually caught up). BTW – maintaining a positive cash flow is
much more difficult than it sounds on paper. This was one advice I received in
the very beginning from a friend who strongly recommended that always manage
your cash flow and I cannot emphasize this enough to any new entrepreneurs.
What’s Next?
As mentioned before, Innowix as a legal entity will continue
to exist but may go in a “dormant” state. I am going to stop blogging here (not
that I was blogging a whole lot!) and move to a new destination to express my
personal views on the IT industry and other things of interests. I will
continue hosting Puzzle Parties.
May be in future, I will re-start/re-launch this type of operations, hopefully with few partners. But till that time, see you around on the Internet!
Posts
