Larry Augustin
Chairman & CEO, Brief
Larry founded VA Linux Systems and led SugarCRM for a decade. He writes four of the seven Papers and owns the HBR pitch for Essay 04.
Background
Larry Augustin has spent thirty years inside the software-category shifts of his time. He founded VA Linux Systems during the rise of open source. He led SugarCRM for a decade as the company built one of the first credible commercial-open-source businesses. He has watched a category get named, and watched founders fail to name one, from inside the room.
He writes Essays 01, 02, 04, and 06 of The Executive Intelligence Papers. Essay 01 names the category. Essay 02 names the enemy. Essay 04 puts a number on the cost of work that gets delegated and quietly doesn't happen, and pitches HBR. Essay 06 traces the fifteen-year arc of the executive operator class and argues that Executive Intelligence is the next system of record.
What he's writing about
Larry's voice in the Papers is calm, precise, disciplined. He does not use personal history to credential himself. He uses it as grounding for a claim about the work, the way an operating leader who has been through three category cycles can recognize the fourth one as it forms.