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Clarity

Nora Ryan

Menlo Park, CA

Invented and built the teams to deliver and grow products that were:

Award-winning international products to take company from inception through their public IPOs and/or successful sales: PaaS, SaaS, AaaS, and more

Tech Crunch Crunchies recipient

Featured products at the plenary and demonstration areas of the primary TED annual conferences multiple years in a row

Multi-year plenary feature and core to the main roadshow for ESRI geospatial solutions (ESRI is the world’’s leading geospatial solutions company and one of the largest multi-billion dollar private software companies in the world) and other major SIs

World class, leading developer tools and services including databases, language compilers and IDEs

Best of class software products and services for many years running, winning top industry awards- analytics, social, workflow, gaming, financial services, i-radio and more

Best of class mobile and consumer electronics products and services for many years running, winning top industry awards- multifunction systems, network cards, smartphones, and more
$0 to $B, many companies from pre-concept

As well:

Successfully raised funding for multiple high tech companies

Sought out to mentor CEOs and companies by entrepreneurs, incubators, venture capitalists and equity firms

Served as industry spokesman in multi-billion dollar high tech industries - multiple verticals

Multiple patents filed internationally

MIT graduate in Computer Science and Engineering

MBA and solid, consistent track record delivering great product and recovering success in technically challenged projects

Developer, partner, customer, and complete product team and ecosystem builder

Companies include Palm, Apple, Borland, eFax/J2 and smaller ventures

Led independent consulting practice to deliver for customers for 14 years

$8.33/min

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31 Reviews

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Start-ups Product Management Strategy Social Media Strategy Mobile Marketing Business Strategy Cross-functional Team Leadership Gaming Mobile Devices Integration

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Designing a New Product, Shaping Your Startup, Managing Typical Company Issues

I have designed new, leading products in their categories for the past few decades, created newcos and done a lot of turnarounds. I've also built out new divisions or reshaped enterprise strategy and re-architected their core business.

Answers 4
Reviews 31

Answers

Nora Ryan answered

What are top factors you'd want to understand before committing to a PDP?

I've put together many multi-company product development partnerships. However, as a startup, the other company may not consider you to have enough credibility (longevity, need to pivot to better meet market needs, time for product to reach market) and may not want to expend the time and resources requied to make a partnership work.

The value proposition can be time to market, differentiation as far as a more complete solution, use of sales force and channel or marketing dollars to sell something that is more readily acquired by a customer. As the startup, you gain credibility through the brand of the other company, if it's established, trusted, and well known.

I would need to know more about your particular situation to be able to be more complete in answering this question. Please feel free to give me a call if you'd like to go into further detail.

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Start-ups

Product Development

Strategic Partnerships

Nora Ryan answered

What legal safeguards should be in place for the limited release of an app in Beta?

Unless your application is something you'd have to submit through the FDA or other regulatory because its use could impact health, all you should need are disclaimers. You aren't giving the person source code. You are asking them to take time from their schedules to try out your offering and to give you feedback that will hopefully help you to shape a product that is of more value and that users will want to use. It's not a final application and unless it's extremely high value per unit (1M / unit) it's not a true product, you're not losing any customers even if they give it to someone else, you're simply getting someone else to give feedback on your product. If you're worried about someone copying it, unless you're at the forefront of a very competitive industry, where a competitor will put a lot of engineers on copying and improving what you have immediately, there's no need to worry about your app being disseminated by users. If you don't want more user feedback, you can ask your users to not distribute it. And then you can ignore if someone else gives you feedback beyond the limited beta.

You can find typical disclaimers that you include with your product by looking at commercial product. This essentially states that people are aware that this is not final product, their data is not safe, they should back it up, that the product will have bugs, and that they are offered it so you can get feedback to improve your product.

I don't know your product so cannot guess beyond this as to other potential issues that might make you ask the question above. Please feel free to give me a call to discuss if you would like to go into this in more detail.

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Mobile applications

Start-ups

Legal Advice

Nora Ryan answered

Should a business have a chargeback policy?

You should set up your contracts so there's clarity on payments and milestones per payment. In that way, you and your customer are already agreed on what payments are owed if you become in breach of contract, which is apparently what this client believes you have done. Additionally, if a client then attempts to rescind the payment, you have the signed contract to prove to the bank or credit card company that the chargeback is not appropriate (unless it is). For each milestone, the payment is confirmation that the milestone is complete. You can also request confirmation with a set number of days defined where any bugs or issues may be reported upon delivery or after the milestone date. And state in the contract that once the set number of days transpires without requests for fixes, that this is defined to mean that the client accepts and is satisfied with what you delivered. Some contracts call for x% to be paid upon contract start, and then the remainder to be paid over 1 or more additional milestones. The contract should list clearly the options that the client and you have to sever the relationship and what this means as far as remaining payments.

Chargebacks are for consumers who do not receive the goods they were promised by a vendor. It's typically tied to credit card purchases.

Please feel free to give me a call if you have further requirements that cause you to have questions on the above.

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Payments

Business Strategy

Nora Ryan answered

Should I create two seperate IT companies?

Many companies bootstrap their product development by providing services. You can do so from one company. At the point when you believe that the focus of the two businesses is a full time job each, and the channels for sales, etc. are not congruent, then you may want to consider spinning out the product company from the services company. You can even continue to do some services from your product company even, that are more in line with your product direction, and let the services company thrive on its own, at this point in time. It sounds like you're too early to worry about spinning out the product company from your services company. There are some accounting differences between the two types of businesses so that at some point, there may be positives from having two companies. As well, if there's conflicts not just in focus and accounting, but also in competitive issues with your product for your service customers, then the separation into two companies is of value.

Feel free to give me a call if you'd like to go through the details of your current situation in more detail.

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Business Strategy

Business planning

Business Development

Reviews

Exceptional leadership combined with an innate grasp of the big picture. Ability to motivate teams to perform above the level of its members. Excellent mentor who cares for the individual as well as the team. I hope to work with Nora in the future .

Robert Schmitt Source: LinkedIn

It is my pleasure to provide a recommendation for Nora Ryan. In her role as an advisor to the Board of Directors at Otosonics, she made numerous cogent suggestions on the operation of our company. She was instrumental in introducing us to our lead investment group and in maintaining solid relations with that group. Nora has tremendous business experience and insight in high tech industry. She knows how to work with engineers, scientists and managers. Most important, she has keen vision on significant opportunities for advanced technology.

Erik Viirre Source: LinkedIn

Nora was a classmate at MIT and instrumental in pulling me through at least a course or two. After MIT, she went off to Silicon Valley and has been a product manager/launcher wiz ever since. Her experiences, at both startups and big companies, have long impressed (and exhausted) me. But I was never surprised; she was always smarter and worked harder than me. I recommend her highly.

Chunka Mui Source: LinkedIn

Nora provided an ongoing process for divisions at Apple to identify opportunities for joint collaboration and development. She provided an excellent conduit for division leaders to jointly work together on cross functional projects. I would recommend her highly for any project, involving multiple companies or divisions.

John Gomes Source: LinkedIn

Nora's job at Apple was difficult and often thankless, and yet one that she fulfilled with enthusiasm and aplomb. Her role as an engineering liaison meant she not only had to be a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of some as well. Nora is a brilliant (and funny) person that I can recommend without reservation.

Russ Wetmore Source: LinkedIn

Nora is top-notch. Sharp, aggressive, intelligent, ethical and an
incredibly hard worker. She knows how to get the job done, on-time and under budget, and how to take care of her team, who would walk through fire for
her.

Tom Wadlow Source: LinkedIn

When starting our e-Commerce activities, we were in need of strategic consulting, support in evaluating contractors and understanding the new market. With Nora we found all that in one person. She got us started in no time and brought in her experience to architect a solid base for a successful business. If I ever need to start a technology venture again, I know who I will be calling.

Stefan Welz Source: LinkedIn

My company, RealNetworks worked with Nora (representing Palm) to create a media player for various portable devices. Nora was professional and reliable every step of the way. She had great attention to detail and knew when to "drive" the project more hands-on, and when to step back.

Overall, she gets my most enthusiastic thumbs up and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend her for a leadership role.

Brandon Milner Source: LinkedIn

I worked with Nora while she was with Palm. She did a great job holding together a very complex project, involving several companies and continents - and a new technology. The project delivered successfully - and on time, which is a great testament to Nora's skills.

Iain Barclay Source: LinkedIn

While at Palm, Nora used her ability to strategically define a way to greatly improve Palm's ability to utilize external companies for development and marketing. Nora gained the support of management and peers across Palm to substantially change Palm's processes, focus and resourcing to enable far higher quality results and vastly improved relationships with Palm's 3rd party community.

DucoJan Pilot Source: LinkedIn

Simply stated, Nora is one of the smartest people I know. Combine that with significant experience and a broad education, and you have a natural winner. Nora's ability to consider deep engineering problems from a variety of perspectives, with an emphasis on business aspects, makes her one of a very select few who have what it takes to help define future trends in the high-tech industry.

Tony Barreca Source: LinkedIn

Member since May 2014