Lund Sybersay Case Study
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The executive VP of SyberSay evaluated the company's status after burning through $10M with no product or distribution channels. A plan was developed and approved to lay off 30% of employees, fire the president, reduce costs, and hire new sales, marketing, and international teams. Several new product lines were developed and $10M more was raised from investors. The new product line was eventually sold to Fellows and the technology was licensed to Flextronics.
Lund Sybersay Case Study
- 1. Lund Case Study SyberSay Company: SyberSay Market: Wireless cellular devices Industry: Consumer electronics Position held: Executive VP Sales and Marketing Responsibilities: Worldwide Sales, Marketing, Service, Support, Business Development How hired: The CEO was a business partner of mine and we came into the company as a team to turn the company around and develop new products. Company status when started: Burned thru $10M with no product, no partnerships, no channels for distribution and no manufacturing. Methodology: Step 1 evaluated the current state of the business. - Employees o Who to keep o Who to let go o Who was good at their jobs including the current executives o What did they think were the problems? o Did they have any solutions - Product o Quality of the product o Pricing o Reliability o Competition - Partners o Who are they o Do they like working with SyberSay o Is it a win win for them - Manufacturing o Cost to manufacture o Cost of shipping and packaging - Service and support o Policies o Pricing - Financial condition o Balance sheet o P&L o Revenues o Expenses - Investors o What did they think were the problems o Would they put in any more investments Step 2 put together a plan and get buy in - Worked closely with the CEO and developed a plan
- 2. - Got buy in for the plan with the executive team - If executive team did not support the plan then we let them go. o Fired the President of the company o Laid off about 30% of the company o Met one on one with remaining team Step 3 implemented plan - Met weekly with the team o Monitored the effectiveness of the plan - Developed a new manufacturing partner in China o Reduced manufacturing costs o Reduced packaging costs o Reduced shipping costs - Negotiated a new channel partner for the consumer market o Fellows Master Distributor - Hired a new sales team o Kept 1 sales person from former team - Hired a new marketing team o Refined our brochures and presentation materials - Hired a close friend of mine from Apple to head up international sales and business development - Developed several new product lines - Improved the quality of the product - Changed the service and support policies that better matched the consumer electronics markets - Raised another $10M from investors - Hired a branding company o Developed a new brand for the product o Changed the messaging Step 4 - exit strategy - Sold the new product line to Fellows o Integrated our product with Fellows line of wireless devices Integrated Sybersay into BodyGlove - Licensed technology o Flextronics What I learned: 1 Hire people you can trust 2 Take the right amount of time to understand the situation 3 Once you have decided to clean up the company do it quickly 4 Play off of your strengths and minimize your weaknesses 5 - Act faster to resolve the problems