Softletter

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Latest Articles

Operating Income 2017, The Softletter Benchmark 53 (Open access through July 4th)

Jun 26, 2017 | 0 Comments

The Softletter Benchmark 53 are all publicly-held companies and most of our basic business metrics are derived from documents these companies are legally required to provide to investors. In most cases these are 10-Ks and equivalents, supplemented by expert analysis...

Windows 10 S: The End of Free Range Software

Jun 26, 2017 | 0 Comments

The high-tech industry is full of people opposed to GMOs and in favor of free range chickens, but when it comes to software, putting code in cages is currently all the rage. What we tend to think of as the modern software industry started in the 70s with the...

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Executive Compensation

Software CEO Compensation 2016, Executive Summary

Jan 19, 2016 | 0 Comments

(Please check our recent RPE and R&D metrics for a listing of the firms listed in the software CEO compensation Benchmark 53 report.) For thesBM53 reports, we do not break out compensation by base, bonuses, and various stock and options packages, simply base and...

Software CEO Compensation 2016 (Softletter subscriber-access only)

Jan 21, 2016 | 0 Comments

(Please check our recent RPE and R&D metrics for a listing of the firms listed in the Software CEO Compensation Benchmark 53 report.) For these BM53 reports, we do not break out compensation by base, bonuses, and various stock and options packages, simply base and...

Book Reviews

A Blueprint for Building the Virtual Company: A Review of The Invisible Organization by Mitch Russo, CEO of DiiDit

Dec 27, 2016 | Books

Purchase on Amazon The age of SaaS has reoriented thinking about how corporations should function and be structured. If an application can reside on servers scattered around the globe, a development group located overseas or on another continent, a customer service...

The Lighter Side of Softletter

A Lifetime of Regret: A Post Mortem of Steve Jobs the Movie

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When I was a boy my father used to take me during the Christmas season to model railroad layouts in Connecticut and New Jersey. My grandfather worked for the U.S. postal system on a mail car during and after the Great Depression. My dad, in an effort to remain...

An Interview with Daniel Kottke, the Man Who Built Some of Steve Jobs’ First Macintoshes (and Witness to the Last Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field)

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Daniel Kottke was Apple employee number 12 and at one point a close friend of Steve Jobs, meeting him at Reed College in 1972. He accompanied Jobs on what has become a semi-legendary trip to India before Apple’s founding in 1976, an event portrayed on film and widely...

Thanks, Dan Lyons. Now Anyone over 40 Really IS Unemployable in High-Tech. An Open Letter to HubSpot, Brian Halligan, and Dharmesh Shah

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Dear Brian and Dharmesh: I have to admit that when I read a while ago that Dan Lyons had been hired by SaaS firm HubSpot, I was gobsmacked. I mean, Dan Lyons, former technology editor for Newsweek, which itself was started at the same time Moses was publishing the Ten...