A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

“It’s shocking we don’t see more engineers and entrepreneurs interested in enterprise. (…) In the last 10 years, there have been 56 IPOs in the enterprise space that have gotten north of a billion [dollars in market capitalization] and just 23 in consumer.” —Jim Goetz, partner at Sequoia Capital

I cited Goetz’s comment in a post last fall chiding entrepreneurs for trying to be the next Facebook instead of solving enterprise problems.

Six weeks later I asked Walter Paliska, marketing VP at long-time client EMANIO, to attend a Big Data conference and write about it. I turned to EMANIO because 1) I no longer live in the Bay Area and 2) EMANIO recently pivoted and is building a truly disruptive big data product.

Mobile is considered the hottest field, but many of its most innovative apps are a result of the explosion of big data; on the flip side mobile is feeding big data inspiring yet more innovation in that area.

When the Data 2.0 Summit came along I turned again to EMANIO and asked Randy Hyshiver, Director of Delivery and Services to give us an update on the effect of big data on innovation.

Big Data: Inspiring Innovation by Randy Hyshiver

It’s clear to me that the Big Data movement is inspiring a new wave of Innovation and the birth of a new set of entrepreneurs.  The pace of growth of ideas and the proliferation of new companies dedicated to solving big data problems is amazing.

The massive growth in data that is spurring the big data movement is leading to an increasing degree of interest not just from technologists, but also from investors looking to capitalize on the technological breakthroughs.

Big Data touches our lives in numerous ways in an effort to help improve how we work, how we live, travel and just about every other aspect of our daily existence.

The massive adoption of mobile devices has also been a huge driver in big data interest.  As mobile devices generate massive amount of data, a whole new set of applications has emerged in just about all business sectors, to take advantage of the data generated.

• The fitness industry is marrying concepts from the gaming industry and bringing portable sensors into the mobile space creating a dynamic data collection model that can be leveraged to help users accomplish fitness goals through competition with friends.
• The automotive industry is using sensor data to understand driving behaviors and to create better driving environments in new generations of vehicles.
• Big data is also helping the environment as ecological companies use massive amounts of sensor-generated data to help farmers, travelers and ultimately to help us understand how our actions impact our World every day.

The growth and rapid adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms during the past decade has also helped drive demand for the usage of evermore readily available data in new ways.

Concepts like Data as a Service (DaaS) are beginning to drive a democratization of data to help build radical new consumer and business applications using now widely available resources.

The World of technology and innovation has found a new impetus by the growth of data.

The collection of vast amounts of data is driving the adoption of new technologies and is inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs.

Mobile devices, cloud services and the widespread adoption of sensor-based applications are all just the tip of the iceberg in the drive to generate more data – data that can be analyzed and leveraged to improve our lives.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I’ve worked for years with the tech world, particularly startups and young/growing companies mostly run by guys.

Too often by guys who know it all and/or have little use for wisdom that comes from outside the tech world.

What I tell them is that wisdom comes from everywhere and every level and if they plan to succeed they had better open their minds along with their ears.

What can you learn from an entrepreneur who sells dog food?

A hell of a lot, actually.

Jen Guzman is C.E.O. of Stella & Chewy’s, which sold $8 million worth of organic veggie/raw meat frozen or freeze-dried dog and cat food nationally in 2010 and making it number 424 on the Inc. 5000 in 2011.

Eight million dollars isn’t chickenfeed and I know of no business of any size that wouldn’t kill for comparable testimonials.

Here are three major (IMO) points that any founder would do well to remember.

The right candidate isn’t always a star or the strongest or possess the hottest skills.

The right one is the one who fits best.

I try to hire the best person for what the organization needs, and who can fit into the culture, rather than just hiring the person with the strongest résumé.

These are great questions to ask a candidate, but paraphrased, they are also great questions for investors to ask an entrepreneur.

Why do you want this job? Why do you think you would be good at this job? And what do you think are the five most important qualities or things that you need to be good at this job?

Guzman came from private equity where one of her jobs was assessing potential CEOs.

I looked for people who could explain their business and how they were going to succeed in simple terms, as in: “This is my business model. This is why it works. This is what I think we’re going to achieve next year, and this is how we’re going to do it.” Someone who can boil it down to something very simple, to me, really has their arms around their business. If it’s too complex, how are their employees going to follow it?

The key here is “simple;” a term often seen as offensive when used in conjunction with any one, let alone all, of her questions.

Out of the hundreds of entrepreneurs I’ve talked with over the years maybe a third of them could respond well to these questions.

Be sure you are one of them.

Flickr image credit: Stella & Chewy’s

If you’re a guy how do you get more promotions and more compensation?

Pitch your voice lower.

Sheesh.

What matters to people never fails to amaze me.

I remember when John Kerry was running for president and there were more comments about his hair than his policies.

It’s bad enough that humans are predisposed to gravitate to attractiveness, but now voice tone is in the same class.

They wanted to find out whether deep voices correlated with success, since prior research has shown that Barry White-like bass is often preferable when it comes to selecting a mate.
A separate Duke study last year also found that voters favor political candidates with deeper voices.

Does a deep voice just open doors or is it more than that?

That benefit proved true even when controlling for a leader’s experience, education, dominant facial features and other variables that might sway decisions of recruiters and compensation committees.

Well, that’s depressing.

Just how big a deal is this?

BIG.

The median CEO, with a  125.5 Hz vocal frequency, earned $3.7 million, ran a $2.4 billion company and was 56 years old.

Not bad, but researchers found that executives with voices on the deeper (that is, lower-frequency) end of the scale earned, on average, $187,000 more in pay and led companies with $440 million more in assets.

(For a reference point, James Earl Ray’s voice is around 85Hz.)

Another question is whether what’s sauce for the gander applies equally to the goose, but there’s no way to answer that one.

Mayew says he would like to assess the voices of women executives as well, but he says there aren’t enough for a statistically meaningful study quite yet. At last count, there were just 21 women CEOs in the Fortune 500.

Welcome to the modern Stone Age world of corporate America.

Flickr image credit: MyAngelG