CIO opinion
CIO OPINION
“
WHEN FORTINET
WAS A SMALL FIRM
COMPRISING A FEW DOZEN
STAFF, COMMUNICATION
WAS A BREEZE AMONG THE
TEAM MEMBERS.
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Michael Xie, Founder, President and CTO of Fortinet
FORTINET FOUNDER:
How tech companies
can avoid growing pains
What happens when an IT
business becomes really
successful and grows
rapidly? Is it still able
to operate in the same
flexible way it did when it
was smaller? Michael Xie,
Founder, President and CTO
of Fortinet, shares some
pointers on how to raise a
tech business successfully.
A
s many teenagers can attest to, growing up isn’t easy. In my
experience, neither is nurturing a tech business. As firms that
find success as start-ups develop into mid-sized and eventually
large companies, they run into growing pains of all ilk that call for the
right strategies, processes and decisions to alleviate.
For example, to be successful, tech businesses need to recognise change
and react swiftly. As they expand, however, they often lose the ability to
perform quick pivots, or even to recognise that a pivot is needed.
Start-ups, on the other hand, tend to be much more agile – it doesn’t
take much deliberation for them to do a pivot and create a new product
to fill a gap they see in the marketplace. This is largely due to their
singular, focused business direction. Start-ups typically aim to do one
thing only which may cause indecision.
The other obstacle that companies face as they grow is that their
decision making chain gets fuzzier. In larger firms, this chain often gets
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