Mike Oeth

Mike Oeth is the CEO of OnSIP Business VoIP and winner of the Telecommunications Executive of the Year in the 2013 American Business Awards. Mike graduated from Harvard College in 1991 with a degree in Economics and has since worked for technology companies, cofounding OnSIP in 2004. Mike is an active community member and father, balancing his roles as board member of the local YMCA, member of the father-daughter Y-group Adventure Princesses, and basketball coach for his three daughters’ basketball teams. Mike also enjoys rock climbing with his teenage son.

Mike Oeth is the CEO of OnSIP Business VoIP and winner of the Telecommunications Executive of the Year in the 2013 American Business Awards. Mike graduated from Harvard College in 1991 with a degree in Economics and has since worked for technology companies, cofounding OnSIP in 2004. Mike is an active community member and father, balancing his roles as board member of the local YMCA, member of the father-daughter Y-group Adventure Princesses, and basketball coach for his three daughters’ basketball teams. Mike also enjoys rock climbing with his teenage son.

Find & Follow: @VoipCEO

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Notes:

  • Sales/support > engineering estimates & provides 2 cents > executive team (mkt potential vs time to mkt)
  • It’s rare to get a completely 1-off request
  • Sync up with very active resellers (to help harmonize with the consumer base)
  • Biggest thing to worry about, customer who is yelling the loudest or the most recent thing you heard
  • Loudest or recent is not the best way to figure out what your product should be
  • Have, follow, and stick with a process
  • We are not going to get this deal without X feature, okay pass on the deal
  • Interrupting engineering for 1-off features is like a commercial break, you have to go back and recap
  • Best thing you can do is have a very clear idea of where the product is going and end result is and stick with it
  • Do all of your research ahead of time before they write that first line of code
  • A good engineering team will go pick the best tools, database, interface, etc
  • Have a process, stick to it, and have some consistency once it gets going
  • Emails are best because it's in the customer's own words
  • Tough/flawed: not being thorough enough and not thinking through all the way to how the customer is going to interact
  • Like a director shooting a movie, get down to the little story boards before you even start
  • Get down to the detail before starting otherwise there is too much ambiguity or the result is not what's expected
  • Hedgehog concept (book: good to great), nucleus of the company...what is the core idea
  • If they don't fit into your hedgehog concept, you pass on those features
  • Have to figure out how these products mesh where you want them to be in 5-10 years
  • Internal back office projects are tougher to get priority compared to revenue generating projects
  • Pitching a product, easier to talk about revenue versus cost savings with execs
  • Interesting to have a voting system to get the wisdom of the crowd
  • Nice to have a crystal ball to see what the market impact would be

Good Job:

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