Making Money in Technology
After the Bubble, page 25
Triage: Understanding What Is Worth Saving, continued
It is tricky to evaluate the value of technology employees. You should have a look at resumes and
employee reviews, as well as personally interviewing as many employees as possible. You may wish to
schedule technical interviews as well, perhaps conducted by a technology consultant.
It’s a foregone conclusion that any software has bugs and problems (it all does). An expert such as
a technology consultant you hire best does technical review of code quality and architectural design.
You can use this kind of due diligence review to determine if the software has resale value despite
the problems.
Be aware that technology employees and the software they have created have something analogous to a
short shelf life. First, technology and the dance of progress march on. Delays of days (or weeks)
can severely reduce the value of a product or solution.
In addition, it is hard to motivate good technology employees to stay with a sinking ship. The more
of the good people that go, the less residual enterprise value. It may even get to a point where all
the people who really know how to maintain and modify the technology have left. If this happens, you
are toast.
Consolidation and Rationalization
Venture capital funded far more start-ups in the last few years than can be successful (or the VCs can
support).
For the matter, there are niches in which there are far more public companies than the market can support.
However, many of these companies have real assets—cash, customers, employees, and technology.
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