17557 Mainsoft 4

SILICON VALLEY / SAN JOSE
VOL. 22, NO. 3
ENTERPRISE
MAY 21, 2004
Old Testament
offers a study
in management, all
courtesy of Joseph
Old world
lessons
are his
BIBLE
Profile
■
BY DOUGLAS E. CALDWELL
dcaldwell@bizjournals.com
For Yaacov Cohen, president and chief
executive officer of Mainsoft Corp., a software
maker with U.S. headquarters in San Jose,
modern management lessons can be found in
the Jewish Bible, or, as it’s called in
Christianity, the Old Testament.
Mr. Cohen holds the biblical Joseph up as an
DENNIS G. HENDRICKS
SEEING THE LIGHT: Yaacov Cohen follows a different guiding light as president and CEO of
Mainsoft Corp. in San Jose.
‘You need faith, faith in
what you can do.’
Yaacov Cohen
Mainsoft Corp.
example to business leaders, pointing out that
Joseph had to overcome hardship from childhood.
“He grew up in a family of traditional
shepherds and he’s a visionary, he’s a dreamer,”
Mr. Cohen says. But for Joseph, it got worse
from there. As Genesis tells it, Joseph was
thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, betrayed,
imprisoned and then called upon to interpret
the Egyptian Pharaoh’s dreams.
“This is the most important business meeting you
can imagine,” Mr. Cohen says. “What strength it
takes to be so self-confident as Joseph is.”
The dream interpretation Mr. Cohen likens to a
business plan, “a 14-year economy plan,” he says.
“What’s more fascinating is that he doesn’t put
himself in the center,” he says.
Mr. Cohen says the story of Joseph is at the
core of how he tries to manage his company.
“You need to have faith, faith in what you do. It
can be faith in one god; it can be faith in a business
vision. It’s not about a quick return. It’s about putting
in the center not yourself but others,” he says.
Mike Gullard, general partner of Cornerstone
Management, a venture capital firm and chairman
of Mainsoft’s board of directors, says Mr.
Cohen’s intense study of the Bible “gives him a
frame of reference. It’s just part of his style.
“I hold Yaacov in very high regard and part of
it is because he’s very true to himself and true to
his beliefs,” Mr. Gullard says. “I respect his take
on the world from a biblical sense. In the same
vein, he respects everybody else’s opinion. He
‘He has a lot of staying
power but he has something in
addition and that is an internal
belief he is doing the right thing.’
Gur Shomron
StageOne Ventures.
treats people with a lot of respect. He’s very
biblically grounded but he’s not a zealot.”
Mr. Cohen does not sit for many interviews
because, as he puts it, “What’s important in business
is not to put yourself in the center. It’s not about me.”
Rather, for Mr. Cohen and his company, it’s
the customer who should get the spotlight. “You
should be sure that everything that’s being done
in the corporate environment is being done for
the customer,” he says.
Company leaders who are “self-centric”
cannot be “other-centric,” a failing Mr. Cohen
says will cause a company to never measure
up to its true potential.
“The Bible is a lot about that,” he says. He
says many of the stories in the Bible emphasize
the importance of not being self-centric.
Mr. Cohen admits his philosophy may be at
variance to other Silicon Valley CEOs, some of
whom have the personas of rock stars — but he
adds that it’s served him well.
Coming to the U.S. from Israel in August 1999
after being promoted from chief technology
officer to chief executive officer, his first task as
the top executive at Mainsoft was to make the
next month’s payroll. “We had to do some quick
fundraising with shareholders and we had to
redefine the company,” he says. “And we had to
say that, first, this is not about the CEO.”
He
says
executives
should
MAINSOFT
realize that being a
CORPORATION
company leader is
a privilege, a
Business: Software maker
Address: 224 Airport Parkway
responsibility.
Suite 300, San Jose, CA 95110
“You need to
Phone: (408) 200-4000
lead with involveFax: (408) 200-4044
ment. You need to
Web: www.mainsoft.com
show people that
President and CEO: Yaacov
you have the
Cohen
vision, the passion
and you’re going
to show them the way,” he says. “But everything
has to start from the customer. We obviously have
to make money, to be profitable, to be successful.
The way to get there is to solve real life problems.”
He says in addition to having to steer his
company away from financial ruin, he had to
adjust to American society. Born in France and
raised in Paris before moving to Israel, Mr. Cohen
had some experience in adjusting to new cultures,
but finding his groove in the U.S. was difficult.
“It took me a good year to really understand,” he
says. “It’s hard to motivate people here just with
money because there’s an enormous amount of
wealth in Silicon Valley. The first challenge was to
create this vision where people can subscribe to it.
In Israel, it’s all about a job. At the basic level, it’s ‘I
belong to the company; the company is good to me.’
In Silicon Valley in 1999, it wasn’t about having a
job. It was realizing a vision, about being part of
something much bigger.”
There was one other, teeny, tiny problem he
faced in 1999.
“Basically, the first challenge was to get a
product which worked. The concept was really
powerful but the product just didn’t work,” he
says. “Once we made the product work, we had
to build the company around the product.”
Mr. Cohen’s tenacity in achieving goals helped
the company overcome its problems, says another
venture capitalist.
“He never gives up. He has a lot of staying power
but he has something in addition and that is an
DENNIS G. HENDRICKS
OLD WORLD STYLE: Yaacov Cohen contemplates a
lesson on the San Jose campus of Mainsoft Corp.
internal belief he is doing the right thing. And that
gives him strength,” says Gur Shomron, a longterm investor in Mainsoft and venture partner at
StageOne Ventures, an Israeli venture capital firm.
He has known Mr. Cohen for the past decade.
While Mainsoft, now ticking along with a
growing portfolio of products and customers, can
look at the problems of 1999 as ancient history, the
move to the U.S. has been not been easy for Mr.
Cohen and his family. His wife, who has a Ph.D. in
microbiology, and six children have returned to Israel
to live after three years in Silicon Valley.
“She felt Israel is our homeland and, yes,
business is very important, but we want to grow
our kids in our homeland,” he says. Mr. Cohen
now commutes between a bachelor’s life working
in San Jose and his family life and working in
Israel. “I spend almost three weeks in the United
States, then three weeks in Israel,” he says. “But
it’s not about me; it’s what we’re trying to
accomplish as a goal.”
CALDWELL is associate editor of the Business Journal. Reach
him at (408) 299-1835.
In his own words
P
Yaacov Cohen on Joseph’s national recovery plan:
Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel, is a fascinating personage of the Bible,
and the book of Genesis dedicates most of its last 14 chapters to his inspiring
story. Joseph architected and led one of the largest national recovery plans.
Before his meteoric ascent as a slave forgotten in the jails of Pharaoh to the
position of prime minister of the Egyptian superpower, Joseph led a turbulent
life. Joseph, the “dreamer” as his stepbrothers sarcastically called him, was the
intellectual visionary in a family of traditional shepherds.... Joseph spent 12
years in jail until one day when he was suddenly rushed to Pharaoh to solve the
Pharaoh’s troubling dreams after all Pharaoh’s experts had failed to do so. This
meeting between the venerated king of Egypt and the young Hebrew slave
was Joseph’s tremendous opportunity to start a new life of freedom.
During this meeting, Joseph listened carefully to Pharaoh’s dreams and
proposed a coherent interpretation. He pronounced that Egypt would go
through seven years of tremendous economic growth and abundance
followed by seven years of implacable famine. Joseph didn’t just resolve the
enigmatic dreams. He also laid out a 14-year economic plan to overcome the
upcoming national disaster. The result was remarkable: Joseph’s charisma,
self-confidence and exceptional analysis convinced Pharaoh and his cabinet
to adopt his plan.
Joseph’s plan included some revolutionary ideas for his time, such as food
rationing and distributed storage. During the years of plenty, the crop was to
be gathered from land owners by the Egyptian authority, and then stored in
public granaries where it would be preserved from rot and vermin using
advanced food storage techniques. Additionally, to transport such huge grain
quantities from farm to granary, Joseph decentralized the storage facilities
from the capital to various cities of Egypt which served as distribution centers.
How did Joseph find the psychological resources to of front, with such selfconfidence, the king and his court, after so many years of slavery, captivity
and successive deceptions including the treason of his own brothers? His
profound faith and trust in one unique God, which drives every moment and
aspect of his existence is the foundation of Joseph’s personality.
Reprinted for web use with permission from the San Jose Business Journal. ©2004, all rights reserved. Reprinted by Scoop ReprintSource 1-800-767-3263