A lot of people talk about what they want to do or who they want to be. Companies do it too. They talk about their vision or their purpose, but what does it all really mean? To believe in what you are doing, is that vision? What is the purpose of the work I am doing?

These were the types of questions I asked myself when I was sitting in a chair at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. My wife was recovering from complications with her Diabetes, so I had a lot of time to sit, stare blankly at my laptop screen, and ponder the impact our solution has on healthcare and even further, on my life directly, in this moment. I had the same reoccurring thoughts, as I watched nurses come in every thirty to sixty minutes to test her blood sugar levels. This isn’t just marketing; they are really using the product to help my wife recover. This is real.

I did not understand the true importance of the Voalte solution until I saw it in action. I watched as someone triple checked the basal rate of insulin my wife received every hour. The nurse used the product we sold, making sure not to double up on the dosage. It really hit home at that moment, how lucky we were to be in one of the best hospitals in the world, a hospital, which is running Voalte.

You hear sales pitch after sales pitch, involving the vision or purpose of a company, but you don't really understand the reality until you experience it first hand. I understand, now more then ever, what it means to have purpose in my work. It’s not about hitting a sales goal. It's about building something that is capable of impacting the quality of care your child, parent, or spouse receives. I love being a part of something like that... I was sitting in the hospital room while my wife recovered when purpose slapped me in the face.

We have all read the articles on huge amounts of money being raised by hot, new social media software companies. Two twenty-somethings with a great idea, a Stanford pedigree and a freshly minted business plan from the Y Combinator raise $15 million dollars and move into the 18th floor of the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco. Well, that is not the way it works…  at least not in healthcare. In my experience, it involves endless meetings, lots of inane questions, and traditional Venture Capital always seem to end up at the same place:

• How long is your sales cycle? Did you really say six to twelve months?

• You mean your staff actually goes on site to train and support the client? How can that scale?

• Did you really say that you have to integrate with hospital systems and you can't just download an app or subscribe to a cloud service? That sounds way too complicated.

Now don't get me wrong, I have worked with Venture Capitalist for more than 30 years and I know some great ones, Dick Kramlich at NEA, Randy Komisar and John Doer at Kleiner Perkins, to name a few. But the Venture Capitalist landscape has changed. Funds are raising hundreds of millions of dollars, with deal size getting bigger and bigger. Valuations have grown as rapidly as planning horizons have shrunk. Deal velocity is up and patience is down.

We recently closed a Preferred Round with strategic investors, one a major vendor and the other a top-rated healthcare provider. Why would we do this? I think the number one reason is that "they get it". Not just as a financial transaction but as a shared vision for transforming healthcare. We must act and we must have strong partners that can look over the horizon.

I spend a lot of time on coaching, mentoring and teaching entrepreneurship and innovation to young people. For the last 10 years I have been on the executive board of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Florida, Warrington College of Business Administration. I love my involvement. I am also very involved with our local Sarasota County Economic Development and most recently with GrowFL. I love technology and love that when technology is combined with new ways of thinking the results can be transformational. I have seen this repeated many times over the last 30 years.

Many organizations have asked me to share any lessons learned and I am always glad to do so. Not to say that I think that I am smarter, brighter or more insightful than other, but I thought you might be interested. So here goes:

1. Building new companies is hard work… really hard work. The stories you read about Facebook or Instagram are not what you should expect. You should expect long hours, low pay, and sleep, money and time deprivation.

2. You and your team should embrace, not fear, change. Just about everything you thought will change. The average time between change is compressed. Get used to it. Learn to enjoy it.

3. Your personal life should be in order. If you don't have a strong relationship with your spouse or significant other, it will be at risk. Make sure your moral compass is well calibrated.

4. There is a reason that revenue is at the top of the income statement. Focusing on engineering, although important, won't get you any closer to payroll. Always have a clear model of your company works and the source of your growth. Do you need to acquire more customers and at what price?  Or, do you need to increase the value of each of your existing customers?

5. Focus on cash. It is probably more important than your mother. Keep in mind, cash is different than sales and revenue. Sales can go up, revenue can go up and you can still run out of cash.

6. Be generous. Be generous with your time, your ideas and even your money. I am always surprised when you help someone with no expectation in return. I am frequently amazed how these moments of generosity provide unanticipated results.

7. Get out of the office. A single trip to a customer will provide more insight than an expensive research project. When talking and meeting with customers learn to ask questions and then listen carefully… not only to what is being said but what is not being said.  

8. Hire well. Take time to recruit, hire, coach, train and mentor well. Most of us can do better.

9. Test early and test frequently. Sometimes a leap of faith becomes institutionalized before it is proven. This holds equally true for sales and marketing initiative and operational processes. Why are we doing the things we are doing?

10. Eat your own dog food. Ok… I really don't need to explain this one, do I?

I hope you find something helpful here. We need more juiced-up entrepreneurs, more risk takers, more never-say-no'ers, more crazy, foolish start-up junkies if we are going to pull this economy and this country out of the economic doldrums. If you are passionate, driven, obstinate and tireless, entrepreneurship might be right for you. Or, at least visit our job-opening page and let Voalte get your juices boiling.

I am frequently asked, "Why would you start a high-tech, software development company in the worse recession since the Great Depression... and why of all places in Sarasota FL?"

Well, let's start with the Sarasota question first. Only the people who don't live in Sarasota, haven't visited Sarasota or are confused by Saratoga, CA seem to ask that question. Have you seen this place?

White sand beaches, beautiful warm water, gentle breezes? Are you kidding? Combine that with fifteen-minute commute times, great restaurants, and an international airport that gets you to the gate in thirty minutes, what's not to love? Check out Sarasota Tourism. And, by the way, it is 74 degrees on this February winter's day.

Now, Sarasota is not without its problems, but keep staring at the picture.... you are getting warmer... you are getting warmer...

So, Why Now?

No one ever said there was a bad time for a good idea. Having spent over 30 years in technology, I have learned to look for inflection points, or game changing events. In 1977 I stumbled into the Good Earth restaurant to have lunch with a young kid (we didn't use entrepreneur in those days) named Steve Jobs. Steve was on fire as he began ranting about personal computers and how they would change the world... how they would change the way people work and play and educate their children. Huh? Guess what? Whole new mega-companies came into existence.

In 1981, Steve came roaring into Apple talking about bit-mapped displays, icons, WISIWIG and mice. Most business people refused to use keyboards, and we are going to give them mice?? Whole new products and companies were created that took advan

tage of these amazing new technologies. Adobe, Aldus, Microsoft, and my little company that brought you FileMaker and PowerPoint. Another tipping point!

Today we are at another main technological inflection point. In the last three years millions have purchased deep, rich, highly-mobile portable computers that slip easily into a pocket. And not even know it. Yep... I am talking about the next generation of smartphones or what some call them App Phones.

But are they really phones? I think they are really portable computers that run phone applications in the same way that the Apple II ran a spreadsheet or a word processor. Oh, BTW, where are all those dedicated word processors from Wang, IBM and NBI these days? Am I dating myself?

iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry Curve, Google Nexus. Is this the future of highly-personal computing? Now the iPad... Another member of this new family of exciting new devices. Voalté would much rather be early in an emerging market than late in an existing market.

The speed of adoption of these new devices is phenomenal. Compared to the adoption of personal computers, CD's, DVD's, and HD TV, these highly mobile computing platforms are enjoying one of the fastest deployments of technology in history.

So, why now? Because it is the right time.