The second must-have competence is a knack for partnerships. Monorail's business model simply can't work without seamless integration with its two major strategic partners: SunTrust and FedEx. These companies are better at what they do than almost any other organization in the worldand what they do is critical to Monorail. It's no coincidence, for example, that the company's chief financial officer, James Clarke, 34, was a senior vice president at SunTrust before he joined Monorail. FedEx plays an equally central role. Indeed, the most unique design feature of Monorail's product linethe remarkably compact dimensions of its computers, which take up only 20% of the desk space occupied by a traditional PCgrew directly out of its partnership with FedEx. Monorail's founders set out to design a PC that could fit easily into a standard FedEx box. "We asked ourselves, How do we start a company that can leverage what FedEx does? How do we design something that is 'FedEx-compliant'?" says Hocker, Monorail's chief technology officer.
Doug Johns argues that relationships are the glue that holds Monorail's virtual company together. "This company was started on handshakes," he says. "We view people as fixed costs. And we put a premium on relationships."
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Recent Comments | 4 Total
February 24, 2009 at 12:46pm by Eli Shapiro
Although it's an older business model by now, using contractors to do everything that your core group can't or doesn't want to do is a really good idea, provided of course that you have the right partners to work with. Monorail's method of outsourcing sales and everything except the C-level jobs (apparently) is a great way to run a lean company and I expect to see a comeback in that methodology as our economy continues its descent.
May 22, 2009 at 11:39am by Sam Beal
Yes, it is a brave new world.
http://bit.ly/11Rdnf