“The Attic” Video Podcast Episode 4: Why Partnerships Matter from Kevin Goodman, Director of Product Management, AWS

Be sure to check out this conversation with veteran entrepreneur Kevin Goodman, a great sage on what it takes to make a product successful and how no one can go it alone during the sleepless nights and occasional hiccups of a software startup.

IGEL continues its exploration and celebration of origin stories in Episode 4 of “The Attic” video podcast. The series gives a nod to IGEL’s founding 20 years ago in a small attic in Bremen, Germany by sharing the stories of tech experts and thought leaders across the end user computing (EUC) industry.

This fourth episode features a conversation with software innovator Kevin Goodman. Kevin helped create some of the early products in end user computing, selling one of his successful ventures, RTO Software to VMWare in 2010, and a second, FSLogix, to Microsoft in 2018. Currently, he is working on a mystery project at Amazon which will no doubt be another market-moving venture when public.

Kevin Goodman never wanted to make computers his career. Math was his passion but at the University of Georgia he aced a Fortran course and never looked back. After college, in 1995, working as a coder, he had a chance serendipitous conversation with former Citrix CEO Mark Templeton who introduced him to Citrix and EUC.  He learned about putting a Citrix client on a server rather than putting an application (Lotus Notes) on a back-office server. It eliminated tedious updates and you could say it was one of the first conversations about EUC!

EUC Predictions. “We have a name for it now, the work-from-home industry. 2020 showed enterprises that work from home is legitimate…It will be a hybrid situation, maybe a couple of days at home and a couple of days in the office. Desktop growth will continue, maybe not at the rate of 2020, but for the next several years at least.”

 Customer approach. “I didn’t know to call it customer obsession at FSLogix but that’s what we had and that’s why we succeeded. It is the first leadership principle at Amazon… Customer obsession serves you well over time.”

 The value of partnerships. “Customers sometimes don’t know which way to go. And let’s face it, if they buy the wrong product it could be their career on the line, so they reach out to people they do trust to say ‘hey is this real?’ Having those partners stand up and say something nice about you and having software that works and the metrics that allow you to prove it to the customer, then it becomes very synergistic at that point.”  – Kevin Goodman                                        

Kevin also talks about his very short ‘retirement,’ why he went to Amazon instead of starting a company this time around, and what is the answer he is looking for when he asks new entrepreneurs about their motivation.

Watch the Attic: Episode 4 – Kevin Goodman

Thanks for stopping by The Attic. Join us again next time for more insightful conversations. Some of our upcoming guests include Tim Minahan, CMO of Citrix, and David Smith, CEO of Teradici.

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