Demystifying Technology by the MacLaurin Group

Programming language - why should I care? What is a typical development stack inside of a portfolio company? The MacLaurin Group looks at development stacks and discusses why the choice is so important.

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We talk with Kirk Pepperdine, co-founder of jClarity, a Java based performance tuning company that was recently acquired by Microsoft. Discover the evolution of jClarity and how bringing a structured performance model, using machine learning, for tuning language runtimes led to success and an exciting future with the most unlikely of Java bedfellows: Microsoft.

MacLaurin Group’s Intimate Conversation series continues with our guest Justin Marquardt, Principal at New Harbor Capital in our Part II of the discussion for learning about the process of deals in Private Equity.  Justin continues to share insights about the process — from deal valuation to determining when it makes sense to delay a deal.

You keep hearing that you shouldn’t store passwords in clear text.  Why though? What does that actually mean, and what are the risks? Jim and Alan discuss this thorny issue, provide some insights as to what-is-what and how you can easily rectify this.

Once you’ve listened to it, you can head over and read a more in-depth article on the issue. 

https://medium.com/maclaurin-group/what-is-clear-text-passwords-and-why-you-shouldnt-store-them-e61c604b1fb7

MacLaurin Group’s Intimate Conversation series continues with our guest Justin Marquardt, Principal at New Harbor Capital.  In Part I, Justin talks about the process of Private Equity Deals — from evaluating a Confidential Information Memorandum to turning due diligence into valuable strategy sessions. 

Much of what happens with deals in P.E. is something not understood by founders who have not been through the process. Justin gives insight into what to expect once you have the opportunity to engage with a PE firm.

As leaders we must understand both the Maker’s Schedule and the Manager’s schedule.  A small interruption has the potential to completely derail progress of a development team, impacting clients and your business.

Most leaders have never been trained to run a meeting or to understand the impact of what seems to be a small interruption.  Yet, leaders are asked to run meetings every day. In the previous episode on the debate of the Manager’s Schedule vs the Maker’s Schedule  Jim Milbery of ParkerGale and Alan Williamson of MacLaurin Group have friendly banter with Kelley Powell. They strongly suggest meetings are not the problem, rather it’s the leadership and how a meeting is run.  Who are we kidding? They are quite blunt about it all. 

Cameron Herold, author of ‘Meetings Suck’, has written a book on the subject and joins the debate to teach leaders how to use focused, time effective meetings to grow your business. Cameron goes in depth about the importance of training your leaders and employees how to run a meeting, the types of meetings you should have, who should attend, and when to have them.  Cameron has written a wonderful immediately actionable handbook for leaders to help turn something that most loath into one of the most valuable elements to a business.  

Hear Cameron, Jim, Alan, and Kelley as their friendly banter continues on a topic every employee should be better trained and informed on for both introverts and extroverts alike.  When done right, effective meetings make us all and our companies better.

Moving to a CI/CD style release process is becoming popular, what is it and when does it make sense?

We welcome Kristina Heinze of ParkerGale onto the show. Our hosts Jim and Kelley talk with Kristina as she offers insight into how she selects founders to invest in.

On this week’s Demystifying Technology episode, Alan and Ryan discuss version control, the bedrock of any software engineering team.  Life has no form edit-undo, but your software department can!

A CTO is no different from any other leader in business in that they need to have the same skills to motivate and inspire to get the best out of their team.  The role of CTO is one of the most exciting and varied roles at the executive level. Alan Williamson and Jim Headley share experiences supporting private equity clients and their portfolio companies to recruit for the right CTO to lead and inspire through periods of high growth.