I just read a blog post on TechCrunch by Vivek Wadhwa, titled, Is Entrepreneurship Just about The Exit?
 
The post posits that venture capital investors (known as “VCs”) drive technology entrepreneurs to focus too much energy on their exit strategy - either selling the company or IPO - rather than building great businesses. The article highlights bootstrapped, lifestyle businesses as an alternative approach to creating great technology businesses over the traditional VC route. It argues that the bootstrapped financing model, which is funding growth organically or from the “three Fs” - friends, family and fools, promotes the creation of truly great companies.

Clients often ask me about our investors, since financial strength is an important consideration when choosing a business partner. Bullhorn has lived through three different stages of corporate development. First, we were a venture capital-backed dotcom. Later, after refocusing our efforts to build a Software as a Service staffing and recruiting front-office application, we bootstrapped our way to profitability. Most recently, we’ve gone back to the VC backed approach to fund the organization’s current stage of growth. Having experience with both bootstrapping and VC backing, I can say that both have their merits. But, each has its time and place. This is true not only for software companies with VCs, but for any sort of business start-up with outside investors. 

Lean and Mean
Bootstrapping is a great way to build a technology business to a certain point. It forces you to learn how to be pragmatic and listen carefully to your clients. If I had to point to a single thing that drove Bullhorn’s early success the most, it was that we had to win to survive. We could either delight our customers or go out of business. Anyone who started a business in 2009 probably knows exactly what I’m talking about. 

Spend Money to Make Money
Bootstrapping, for all its positive effects, also has a downside, especially when it comes to technology companies. Once you’ve validated your business model, you reach a point where you need capital to support your growth. You need to promote and sell your offerings. You need to invest in infrastructure to be able to support your growth. You need to invest in outstanding services staff. All of these things require upfront investments. If you’re too cautious about spending, you open the door to competitors. If you’ve proven to yourself that you’ve built a great business, you’ve probably proven it to others as well and given enough time, they’ll over take you. That’s when venture capital investment can help.
 
VCs as Puppet Masters
In the article, Wadhwa paints VC investors as driving the agenda with entrepreneurs - forcing them to make decisions that serve only their interest - driving relentlessly toward a pay day. I’ve heard this from other entrepreneurs: “You took VC money. Do they call the shots now?” or “How long until they make you sell?” Most people picture VCs as puppeteers - having complete control over their portfolio companies and manipulating the management team’s every move. But, the reality is that most investors don’t have any control over the course a company will take. They can only do two things: make suggestions to management and replace the CEO. There’s no doubt that this is a powerful lever, but it’s really the nuclear option. 

Let’s Not Fire the CEO
Most entrepreneurs are terrified of taking venture capital because they fear being replaced. If you’ve never grown a company from $1M to $100M, it’s natural to be unsure about whether or not you will be up for the task. But, most VCs won’t give you money if they don’t believe you can make it. And, they’ll usually be upfront about it if they have doubts. They invest in people just as much as they invest in products and markets and they want a big return on the capital they invest. Replacing a CEO is never easy and puts their entire investment at risk. The likelihood of finding another executive with the passion and enthusiasm of the person who built the business is low. It’s really in their best interest to make it work. 

Stop Listening and Start Listening
CEOs get fired for one of two reasons: they either don’t listen to their investors or they listen to their investors. CEOs who don’t listen to their investors are very distressing for them. If investors believe you won’t entertain their input because you don’t value their opinion, they’ll worry that you’ll drive the company off of a cliff. They’ve seen more companies succeed and fail than you have, so you should be willing to listen. On the contrary, if all you do is follow the advice of your investors to a T, then you’re not a CEO - they are - which is also daunting for investors. 

Achieving Balance
To build a successful organization, you have to be in tune with your clients, your team, your investors and your gut. If all you did was implement every suggestion your clients ever gave you, you would end up giving away your product and you’d go out of business. Clients typically don’t share your perspective because they aren’t standing in your shoes. So, similarly, if you did everything your investors told you to do, you’d make a lot of poor decisions. Achieving balance is critical. Your investors can be incredibly helpful in avoiding bad hires, analyzing acquisitions, thinking about sales and marketing strategies. But, unlike you, they aren’t on the ground, close to the clients. They will never have the full perspective that you will. So, when they steer you in a direction that you don’t think makes sense, you should acknowledge them, but tell them you disagree. In fact, it’s similar to what you do with clients every day. 

Exit via Brute Force 
Lastly, when it comes to giving investors a pay day, whether through IPO, strategic sale or a financial buyer, investors are entirely reliant upon management to drive the agenda. Very few companies would want to acquire a company where the management team is unwilling to participate in a merger. Wadhwa mentions registration rights in his post, where investors have the right to force a company to a public offering. While it may be possible to force to IPO, it’s hard to imagine a CEO trying to build enthusiasm for a public offering with a gun to his or her head. That’s far from the ideal exit scenario for any investor. 

While it’s exciting to imagine that there’s a lot of skullduggery, arm twisting and palace intrigue in the board room of venture backed technology companies, goal setting, strategic planning and pitched debate are the modus operandi. Ultimately, everyone is aligned toward a common goal: building an innovative company that delivers products and services of incredible value to its clients. Investors know that if you accomplish that, great returns will be a natural by-product.

Sometimes I find myself scratching my head when I think about how things work in the industry—low order-to-fill ratios, in particular, is one issue I have yet to figure out. Why do so many job orders go unfilled, some without even a single cycle of recruiting time? As the market crawls out of the recession, job orders are flowing in again. But many firms are short staffed, which means covering every job order is going to be a big  challenge.
With this in mind, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to our clients about how they allocate their time. In particular, how they decide whether or not to work an incoming job order.
Not All Orders Are Created Equal

I hear over and over again that managers use several rules of thumb to prioritize orders. They work those that are from clients that:

• Have a long-standing relationship
• Pay a great rate
• Are relatively easy to recruit for

These criteria shift as the market changes and client relationships evolve. A good fee today could look low in as little as three months. Clients can agree to give you an exclusive on their orders and that would dramatically change their rank in the food chain.
 

Just Use the Force

The challenge here is that the job order prioritization scheme is highly subjective and ultimately locked in people’s heads, like “The Force” in Star Wars. Some account managers try to use a flag on the job order within their ATS to designate that it’s higher priority, but these flags can become chronically abused and thus, ignored. 
Job order prioritization strikes me as too critical to business success to remain so subjective. Consider its impact on critical factors like:

• Client retention: while some firms are incredibly disciplined about saying “no” when they’re too busy to fill an order, most feel they have to tell clients “yes” because clients who hear “no” too frequently eventually stop coming back. But if staff is not prioritizing the jobs of important clients and they go unfilled, they may stop coming back anyway.
• Revenue: prioritizing jobs that have higher probability of success and bigger spreads means more will close and those that do will generate higher margin
• Expenses: given that industry turnover is 30-40%, at any given time, about a third of a firm’s recruiting staff is fumbling around in the dark before they master “the force” and can prioritize themselves the orders that most deserve their attention.

A Possible Solution: Deal Scoring

The solution is to devise a numeric deal score on each order as it’s received. Yes, I was a math major, so of course my solution involves math, but bear with me. The idea here is that you could look at the things like a client’s historical orders-to-fill rate, the fee or spread on the order, the client’s responsiveness to submissions, even the availability of the required skill sets in your candidate pool and give each order a deal score. It could be as simple as giving the deal a number from 1 to 10. Then, recruiters could simply come in each morning, sort the orders by the deal score and get to work on those at the top of the list.

This concept is not new to business.  In fact, here at Bullhorn we use this approach to solve a similar problem. Last year, Karen Maloney and our Marketing team generated well over 10,000 potential sales leads – way too many for the Sales team to follow up with an equal degree of diligence. So leads get scored based on where the prospect is in the buying cycle, the potential size of the opportunity, etc. Sales can then focus effort on those leads most likely to generate revenue. This is a well-established approach that “baked in” to our marketing software. 

By developing a deal scoring process, you will be able to see if a recruiter spends time on low priority orders and point them in the right direction. Ideally, this will help to drive down recruiter turnover and decrease payroll expense, plus improve retention of key clients and grow revenue.
Has anyone tried to implement something like this?  If so, how well has it worked?

In 1999 we launched Bullhorn, an application exclusively delivered via Software as a Service or SaaS. At the time, people told us that the internet was for buying books and other people’s used stuff, not for enterprise software. I must have heard a thousand times, “large companies will never host their data on the internet”. Today, the market has turned 180 degrees and the world’s largest staffing firms will only consider cloud-based, zero-install solutions. Premised-based applications (i.e., those that involve a server on site or software installed on desktops) have officially been put on the endangered species list.

Since day one, a desire to challenge status quo in the industry with game-changing innovation has fueled Bullhorn’s efforts.  And, today we announced the launch of our latest innovation, the Bullhorn Marketplace- the industry’s first destination for staffing and recruiting software applications and services. Much like the iPhone and Facebook have opened their platforms to the development community with much success, Bullhorn has now opened its application platform to partners, customers and developers. With access to a rich set of APIs, now Bullhorn’s Alliance Partners can bring their products and services, all pre customized with Bullhorn, directly to our fast growing community of over 15,000 staffing and recruiting professionals worldwide.
 

What this means for our Customers

The number of technologies and online services that enhance productivity in the staffing industry has exploded - from job boards to communications tools, back office services to assessments and social networks. Recruiters and sales people are no longer judged on their ability to work a phone. The myriad of applications they use every waking hour on their PCs and mobile devices enhances their edge in the market.  Likewise, the integration between the back and front office is no longer a demand from executive teams, but an absolute necessity.

By opening up our platform to our partners, customers and the broader development community, we are breaking all of the chains that held true innovation back for decades. Now, a small, emerging vendor has the same opportunity that the large vendors have to integrate with our platform. And, we’ve made the evaluation, selection and deployment of these integrated offerings as easy as a few clicks.

• Wondering how to connect Bullhorn with your Accounting System?
• Want to tie your phone system to your client and candidate database?
• Want to eliminate cumbersome data entry from your work with VMS systems?
• Want to quickly automate and record phone screens for a list of qualified candidates?
• Our partners in the Bullhorn Marketplace have answered these questions and many others, while eliminated all of the pain typically associated with integration. No friction, no technical discussions of how, or how much to integrate - customers just pick a solution and get back to running their businesses.
   

From SaaS, to PaaS

The Bullhorn Marketplace is yet another evolutionary step as we emerge from SaaS (Software as a Service), to PaaS (Platform as a Service). And the value that this step presents to our customers and partners is 100% unmatched within our industry. By taking down the technical barriers between our customers and the products and services they use, Bullhorn has dramatically improved the experience for everyone involved: Bullhorn, its partners and of course, our customers.

So, I encourage you to check out the Bullhorn Marketplace and give our partners’ integrated offerings a try. If you don’t see one of your partners there, please point them in our direction. We’d love to have them join our team and I’m sure they’d love to gain access to our growing network of over 15,000 staffing and recruiting professionals.

A Bullhorn client, Neil Bernstein, of All Medical Personnel in Florida just sent me this article about Florida’s unemployment insurance crisis:

http://bit.ly/7acB6o

Because the federal government extended unemployment benefits last year, many state unemployment insurance funds are headed for bankruptcy unless they dramatically increase rates in 2010. For most employers, this is troubling, but for staffing firms placing employees in temporary assignments, this will be crippling. Because unemployment fees are front end loaded into the first 8 weeks of employment, unemployment is a big expense for staffing firms because of the short duration of most staffing assignments. Compound that with the fact that staffing firms typically have very high unemployment experience ratings and you have what amounts to a massive increase in costs for staffing firms. And, firms engaged in long term contracts with their clients will be unable to pass through these costs. This means that for lower wage employees, contract margins will likely swing into the red.

This problem is particularly acute in states like Florida, but is affecting the entire country. Staffing and recruiting firms are subsidizing a large portion of the unemployment benefits extension. Considering temporary workers only account for 2% of the US work force, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. And, this issue is extending the staffing industry’s worst downturn in its history. The media focuses a great deal of attention on the losses the automotive industry has suffered, yet the staffing industry employs nearly the same number of employees nationwide and it took a staggering 25-30% hit last year. In fact, the staffing industry probably should have received TARP or stimulus funds in 2009.

Perhaps it’s time the industry started to make some noise. As a staffing industry executive, in case if you haven’t done so already, it’s time to contact your state representatives. And, it’s also time to get involved with the American Staffing Association (ASA) so they can get their lobbying efforts into high gear and get the industry some much needed relief.

2009 was a year of winnowing. And, what made it such a tough year was the fact that the prior four years were easy years of growth. Four years of wind at our backs had made us all soft. Even those of us who survived the dotcom bust, who knew that markets can turn at any time, had grown a little complacent. Relaxed spending here, relaxed hiring there, a little less scrutiny of the numbers and suddenly, the strategies that made sense in years like ’06, ’07, and ’08 simply would not work in a climate like 2009.

Bullhorn was no exception. I still believe that we fielded a good team in 2008. People worked hard and we accomplished a lot. We had good raw talent, but 2009 required a different level of play all together. We were like freshmen showing up for pre-season practice: we were out of shape and our game had big holes. We simply didn’t have the benefit of the hard lessons of 2009. The hard-scrabble fight of a recession forced us to examine every aspect of our business, question prior decisions and make hard choices.

While there were many sleepless nights along the way, I can’t argue with the results. If the Bullhorn team of 2008 were up against the team we’re fielding in 2010, it wouldn’t even be a fair contest. Even though most of the individual players are the same, we’d outsell, out-service, out-innovate and out-smart them at every turn. Those scrappy freshman are juniors and seniors now, all at the height of their game and all working together as a team. Of course, hindsight makes me wish we had been more disciplined from 2004 - 2008, but I simply have to look ahead at what we’ll be capable of in 2010.

So, here’s where the team made big improvements in 2009:

Visibility and Process – We have always been a metrics driven organization. Our executive team dashboard used to contain 4 key metrics which we reviewed weekly as a team. The metrics were good diagnostics of the business’ health, but they were lagging indicators. It was only clear what had happened, but no one could tell what was going happen. For instance, we would look at Net Promoter Score (NPS) client survey data every quarter. Yet, we had no visibility into the leading indicators of client satisfaction: our Technical Support team’s ticket backlog or response times. So, we could never get ahead of potential customer service issues. We could only react. The same held true for our sales pipeline, or professional services productivity and even our development process.

We spent 2009 tearing into every area of the business, retooling it and making it measurable down to the individual desk level (this was critical). Then we aligned functional, team and individual goals around making big improvements. We changed processes and operational systems in almost every area of the company: R&D, Quality Assurance, Technical Support, Sales, Professional Services and Finance.

Now, when the executive team gets together, we have a whole series of charts, trend data and metrics we use each week that truly give us insight into what’s going on so we can get ahead of problems. It’s amazing the effect it’s had. Even something small, like instituting bi-weekly development demos so the entire company knows what the development team has been working on has had a big impact. It’s brought the company together and given each team much greater visibility on where we’re headed.

Culture and Team – we spent much of 2009 thinking about our culture. What makes a person a true fit for the Bullhorn team? What are the raw attributes of our best employees that make us win in the marketplace? Integrity, intelligence and hard work are obvious. What company wouldn’t value these things? The five core values that truly capture our culture are not so obvious. We have spent the past 5 years refining the core values list and I’m sure we’re not done yet, but my team feels more investment and ownership of the values than ever before and that’s a true sign that they capture who we are, rather than what we wish we were.

In 2009, we held up a measuring stick to our entire employee base on the five core values: Passion, Impact, Energizing, Edge and Accountability. We rewarded those that stacked up well on that score and were very candid with those that didn’t. We had always stressed candid feedback, but in-depth leadership training for every manager and supervisor made the message hit home. Managers dug deep and had some very tough conversations with those that weren’t measuring up. Ultimately, that candor helped people understand where they stood at the end of the day so they could adjust – and most did. As a result, the entire company is performing at a much higher level. And, we have a strong template for hiring and measuring our employees throughout the year.

We also spent a lot of energy balancing resources. We had grown quickly since 2004 and we had team sizes that didn’t necessarily align with the market. For instance, we were winning enterprise deals, but our resource allocation was geared to small and mid-size clients. We needed to segment our sales, account management and service staff to better service our entire client-base. Getting the mix of resources aligned to fit the market was an important step in getting our footing right for the next phase of growth.

Listening – the entire organization has tuned into the client much more than ever before. We’ve always been ahead of the curve here with things like Bullhorn Brainstorm and our use of NPS, but 2009 made us redouble our efforts. We knew that the economy was creating tremendous pressure for our clients and they themselves were in the process of changing and restructuring. We could either be seen as vendors or partners. We chose the latter and carved out resources dedicated to helping clients gain greater adoption of the system and conducting Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR’s) to help us stay close to our client’s goals as their strategies evolve. In the end, the organization has deepened its relationships with its clients and that will no doubt yield dividends as the market picks up in the years to come.

Innovation – 2009 was a year where we got serious about innovating. We’ve always invested a lot into R&D, but we really turned the heat up in 2009. We made the bet that every one else would be in hibernation mode, just trying to survive. And, we could really lead the market if we invested into the down turn. Not only did we increase our investment in our core product offerings, but we also wanted to invest in truly innovative initiatives. So we created a whole new R&D team dedicated solely to creating new products and services. That team is probably as big as the entire R&D team of our next largest competitor. The pay off of this investment will be big. We’ll be launching the first new product offering into beta in Q1. We had a very small alpha test in December and the early returns have been incredible. This team will continue to help Bullhorn lead the staffing and recruiting market in 2010 and beyond.

On to The 2010 Season
And we won’t stop refining our game in 2010. There’s a lot of work left to bring up our skills across the board. Every functional team will be growing in 2010. Adding resources while preserving and improving quality will be a challenge in of itself. And, just as we leveraged the new found discipline we gained from the dotcom bust during the years of expansion, we’ll leverage what we learned in 2009 into 2010 and 2011. While I don’t know if the wind will be at our backs in 2010, I do know that we’ll be a better company for having trained so hard in 2009.

Bring it on!

I’ve just returned from the UK, where Bullhorn has built quite a buzz over the past year. The staffing and recruiting market was hit hard in the UK, just like it was here in the US. And, things are starting to pick up there as well. The remarkable thing about the UK market is the sheer density of staffing and recruiting firms in a 25mi radius of London. Agencies compete fiercely and their and margins reflect it. Most firms operate on margins 25-50% lower than those enjoyed by firms in the US. One’s first thought would be, how could firms make money in that environment? While I don’t have the answer, I can tell you that the bottom lines of these businesses look similar to those of their US counterparts. Staffing penetration in the UK is higher and the market is mature, so perhaps firms just “make it up on volume”. The UK staffing market is more mature than the US market, so perhaps this is a forecast for where the US market will head over time?

While the UK recruitment industry is more mature than the US, the IT market is behind. Software as a Service (SaaS) is not yet industry standard like it is here in the US. In many ways, it’s 2004 in the UK - many of our sales calls involved lengthy discussions about the SaaS delivery model. Unlike 2004, most savvy IT professionals in the UK recognize that moving their applications to the cloud makes sense for so many reasons. It’s CEO’s, MD’s and CFO’s that still need convincing that running hardware locally is actually riskier than outsourcing it to a partner who specializes in secure application management and delivery. Of course, Bullhorn has come a long way since 2004. We didn’t have our SAS70 type II, or Safe Harbor in 2004. And, the fact that we spend more on R&D, hosting and security than any of the largest staffing firms in the world (let alone our competition) makes for a compelling argument.

We’ll be investing a lot more into the UK and further international expansion next year, as many of our enterprise customers are bringing us there already. 2010 promises to be an exciting time for Bullhorn and let’s hope the entire staffing and recruiting industry.

I finally gave in to the social tidal wave and started micro-blogging last week (using twitter). At the same time, Bullhorn employees started using Yammer internally. Twitter asks users the question, “what are you doing?”, and publishes their responses to the web. Yammer, asks the same question, but publishes it only to your fellow co-workers. It’s set up and controlled by an administrator for the company. So, it’s not public to the outside world. What I like about it is the fact that it lets every one share information, links, press releases, thoughts about competition, etc without flooding every one’s inbox with individual email messages. Now, if I see that a competitor is doing something new, I just post a quick update with the link and every one who’s interested can chime in without filling up every one else’s inbox.

A few months back, Jim Lynch, one of Bullhorn’s Product Managers, posted a feature request to Bullhorn Brainstorm to integrate Yammer-style micro blogging into Bullhorn, but the entry didn’t get much response:

I wouldn’t have voted for it a few months ago. But, now that I’m hooked on Yammer, I’d be all for it. I can see this being especially compelling for staffing and recruiting firms, given the transactional and collaborative nature of their work. Let us know (on brainstorm) if you agree.

Today is Bullhorn’s 10th anniversary. It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years since November 19, 1999 when Barry Hinckley, Roger Colvin and I embarked on this amazing journey. We certainly had no crystal ball that would predict who or what we would become - one of the most successful Software as a Service companies in the World. But, we knew one thing - we would build mission-critical, cutting edge technology that would have a dramatic impact in the way people go about their jobs.

The company has evolved rapidly throughout the years and we have learned as much from our mistakes as our successes. One constant has been our commitment to building world class products and services and, most importantly, a culture of building Bullhorn around great people who embody our core values of Passion, Impact, Energizing, Edge and Accountability. As a result, we’ve built an incredible team.

In addition to the tireless efforts of our team, we attribute much of our success to our clients. You believed in us and our vision, well before others could see its potential. You’ve helped shape who we are, through both your feedback and support. You’ve been a driving force in our success thus far, and you’ll continue to play that role in the future.

In many ways, we’re just getting started. We’re all looking forward to writing the next chapter.

One thing I hear over and over again from executives in the staffing and recruiting industry is that their database is an asset. If someone has spent years building a database of clients and candidates, they feel that data is something of great value to their business. Certainly, it is expensive to pay people to build out a database. And, there’s no doubt that data helps drive the flow of business - what jobs are open, what candidates are a fit, what phone # to call, which candidates to avoid, etc. But, here’s the problem with valuing the data: the vast majority of information in these databases is freely available to the public.

Want to know who the VP of Sales is at Bullhorn? Go to linkedIn.
Want to know his work history and education? Ditto.
Want to find people with enterprise software sales experience in Boston? We all know where to go to get that.
Want to know what Raytheon is hiring for this month? Their website will tell you - better yet, their VMS will let you know.
Want to know what a candidate’s interests are? Go to Facebook. 

Perhaps 15 years ago, knowing these things about your clients and candidates gave businesses an edge. But, every year, more and more data is becoming freely available on the internet and its value as a competitive edge is eroding. In fact, the value of your data is probably near zero already.

The game has changed. It’s not about what or who you know (or knew yesterday). It’s about how fast your firm can process and react to information. How quickly can you generate a list of qualified candidates for an order and blast them an email, SMS or phone call? How quickly can you get in front of the new VP of Development at the startup that announced VC funding this morning?

The staffing and recruiting industry is going through a tectonic shift. This type of radical change in access to information only comes around once a generation. Those who are agile and open their minds to the possibilities will ride the wave to big gains. Of course, some firms will still make a few bucks doing it the old fashion way - clinging to their data, but this will be the exception not the rule in the future.

Someone recently sent me a really good article from Harvard Business Review titled, “Moving up in Downturn”. Usually, HBR articles are pretty disconnected from the real business world. It’s as if they’re written for the sole purpose of helping management consultants sell more services to confused middle managers in the F500. This particular article however, I felt was actually helpful. The thrust of the article was about how companies can tune their strategy to get ahead in an economic downturn. In its 11 pages, the article talks about the three phases of a downturn and lays out some simple Do’s and Don’ts for businesses. Here’s my take at the crib notes:

Storm Clouds Gathering

When it’s clear that problems lie ahead, e.g., the summer of 2008, executives have to face reality quickly. Acting as if the storm will blow over will leave your firm flat-footed when your business gets hit. Contingency planning is of critical importance – “what will we do if orders drop by 10% next year? What about 30%?” Executives and managers need to resist the urge to tell employees that the downturn won’t affect them or that it won’t be bad. Contingency planning is not a sign of weakness. It’s good business.

The Hurricane Hits

When things get ugly, e.g., November 2008 - February 2009, the firms that had their heads in the sand typically over react with aggressive cuts. Cutting deep after things are bad seldom solves near-term cash problems and ends up causing damage to the business that lasts beyond the downturn. Companies that have their contingency plans ready put them to work and are positioned to make strategic moves. Firms can focus on quality and customer service, or finding acquisitions at a bargain. Competitors who have to cut deep late in the game will do so at the expense of the quality of their service.

Skies Clear

Just as you shouldn’t slam the breaks suddenly when things look bad, dropping the accelerator to the floor when outlook improves doesn’t make sense either. The companies that cut too deep will probably over spend to try to repair the damage they caused by cutting into bone. Overspending can cripple a business even further by creating inefficiencies and destroying profit margins. Companies need to temper their growth strategy against their businesses’ ability to scale.

Applying the Principles in 2010

It seems like 2010 will be a year of recovery. And while no one knows how fast employment will come back, it’s likely it will be a better year than 2009 (let’s all hope). If the last recession is a guide, you can usually pull off 2 or 3 big strategic plays in a recovery before your team gets busy with the business of managing success. We’ve spent the last few months here at Bullhorn mapping out our big plays for 2010 and weighing our options. It should be a very strong year for Bullhorn, even if the economy doesn’t come roaring back.

_______

PS, since people always post questions about the iPhone despite the blog topic, here’s an update: We’re making really good progress on the iPhone sync solution and a large percentage of Bullhorn employees using it every day. Although we ran into some snags rolling it out into beta this month, we should have the beta out to customers in December.

And, no, iPhone is not part of our recovery strategy. It’s just good business.