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I became CEO at the beginning of the hit on old economy stocks. When something like that occurs in your first six months as a CEO of a more traditional branded firm, it makes for a fast learning curve.

I met with several public company CEOs to learn about their experiences of going public and listened to as many earnings calls as I possibly could.

When I came into the CEO office, I basically changed the entire management team. We knew that we had to change the company, so we needed a new set of leaders.

You meet with a CEO or founder. You talk about sales, engineering, product management and give some ideas or suggestions. And the founder quickly understands that you really can help them both operationally and from a strategic standpoint.

If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.

In the space of three weeks, I met a fair bunch of the guys who were just starting those little programmers' co-ops, and everybody was talking about starting businesses.

I never set out to be CEO. I always set out to be a good team member, a good colleague.

One of the things that I think I do well as a CEO is that I'm present. When I'm with my employees, I'm there in the moment.