With Timothy Chou

More from our conversation with Timothy Chou, a longtime Stanford University professor who served as President of Oracle on Demand and currently invests in and advises startup companies in Silicon Valley: 

CIOs and IT execs often complain that vendors are too pushy, too intrusive, etc. when they're trying to win business. But CIOs can't be perfect...what sorts of things do they typically do that cause problems from your end?

CHOU: Vendors are pushy. We’re pushy because we have objectives to meet. We’re pushy because we’ve invested lots of time in one deal and let nine other relationships languish.

And by the way, we’re often not sure how a decision gets made, so we push to figure that out. Of course, you can push yourself right out the door as well, so any good sales team knows when to push and when to pull back.

This is the second in a series. See Chou’s first entry here

In between stints teaching at Stanford University, Timothy Chou served as President of Oracle on Demand, where he helped pioneer the concept of cloud computing. He serves on the board of Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) and continues to invest time and treasure in a few young Silicon Valley companies. Timothy is the author of the landmark book, "The End of Software" as well as "Cloud: Seven Clear Business Models".