what i do at work

i have a pretty vague job description, so explaining what i do to other people in the company, much less my friends, family, etc has left some people scratching their heads. officially, i'm a business development associate. my boss, the head of the business development, reports to the CEO. our charge is to make all of the differents parts of the business work together and to add new parts.

err, does that make sense? i thought listing what i did in my first week might give some flavor to what i actually do.

• monday: ok, it's my first day. besides learning how to attach my laptop to the docking station and how to turn on my electronic leash (aka blackberry), i spend a lot of the day meeting the other executives and people in my group (there are five of us). the company is preparing for an IPO (initial public offering), a major, major landmark in every start-up's life. it seems a lot of my job may revolve around getting ready for the IPO.
  
• tuesday: i start scoping out a project to put in place key operational measures. these will let anyone in the company look at any part of the business and see how certain activities translate into sales and profits. thankfully, i actually did this for a client at my old job, so i have a decent idea of how this could go. seems interesting. when we go public, having these measures will be key to making accurate profit forecasts to wall street, something that young companies usually struggle with.
• wednesday: sit on a conference call with a consulting firm we've hired to help evaluate a company we're thinking of buying. i'm looking forward to tearing up the consultants, but their deck actually looks good and the work is low on bullshit (well, for a consultant). i realize that consultants really do sound like tools and they can't seem to the help it.
• thursday: i spend all day at our software subsidiary. we own three companies right now (and will probably buy some other ones in the near future). i meet a slew of folks, ranging from software product developers to account managers. they're not quite sure what to make of me, but everyone is really nice. i try really hard to take it easy and turn the east coast business mentality down a few notches and just listen without running my yapper. unfortunately, someone had sent them my resume ahead of time, so each of them knows that i'm a tool from the big h.
  
• friday: i spend more time meeting with folks at the software unit, then start scoping out another potential project that would look into what our strategy should be to poach market share from our competitors (we are #3 in market share). i start pullling data to put together a first pass at calculating some sales measures.

so there you have it: a mix of acquisition deals, some strategy, and internal operations.