Let me tell you a story about how I made the decision 15 years ago to become an interim CEO, solely based on a chance conversation with someone I didn’t know very well — an acquaintance named Philip Monego.
Philip and I occasionally ran into each other at conferences for online companies. On one particular occasion, I saw Philip approaching and holding out a new business card. I tried to make a wiseass joke, asking: “Can’t you hold down a job?”
Maybe not the best line, but he smiled and said, “Bob, you don’t understand VC here in Silicon Valley. They won’t just give a rookie engineer a check for $5 million.” He went on to explain that back in 1987 based on the advice of one of the investors in his first startup, he formed Technology Perspectives Partners, LLC (TPP), an interim management consulting practice. He had developed a team of professionals who could parachute into a new company to help the founders, alongside the VC fund’s check.
Then he handed me his new business card. It read:
Philip Monego
Interim CEO
Yahoo
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