Silicon Slopes articles

Un. Be. Lievable.

While writing for Silicon Slopes, I’ve had the opportunity to interview several successful tech-company founders, and a subject I always like to bring up is the Lean Startup movement.

It’s getting a lot of hype, but is it real? The general consensus seems to be a resounding yes. Successful founders often realize that they implemented the risk-limiting lean startup principles, and that those principles lead them to entrepreneurial success.

Scott Johnson, founder of AtTask, was an especially converted proponent. He said that starting his now multi-million dollar company was a  process of trial and error, and that the lean startup describes well what he did to achieve success.

One of the best lean startup stories I’ve heard is from Crux (http://cruxcase.com/), who mainly sells laptop-like cases for the ipad.

Brian Probst, the company's founder, pulled the one of the most intelligent, outrageous entrepreneurial stunts ever to gauge demand for his untested product.

Without ever having made a physical version of his product, Brian sent 3D drawings to be made into a video to promote one of his first products, the Crux 360. The video came out just the way it was supposed to - making the product look like it actually existed, and consumable enough to get passed around the web.

What happens next is almost unbelievable. With the Crux website live and ready to take orders, Brian sends the video to bloggers and tech writers early one Friday morning. The video gets picked up and traffic to the site spikes. And he sells over a hundred of thousands of dollars worth of the Crux 360.

What?!

That’s right. Not a single one ever actually produced, but thousands sold. Genius.

So with is product fully validated by the general public, he then fires up manufacturing in China. It took so long to produce and deliver the new product that almost half the original orders cancelled - but even those orders had proved invaluable to Brian, because now he knew - didn’t hope or guess, but knew - that his product and company would be successful.

A lean startup story for the record books.

WakeBoard Meeting

Scott Johnson, AtTask

After you’ve built a multi-million dollar company featured on the Inc 500 three years in a row and hired a few hundred employees, what do you do? Run for president? Buy a Ferrari and move to Fiji? Or maybe rekindle your childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut?

“Whatever you want” is probably the most correct answer to that question - which for Scott Johnson, founder of AtTask, means teaching at BYU and wakeboarding.

While it sounds like a life most people would love to live, Scott says giving up the helm to a new CEO and staying on only as Chairman of the board wasn’t easy. After all, he did build the company from the ground up - it is, as they say, his baby.

As he tells me about the decision to replace himself as CEO, he gives off a humble aura of maturity. The subject brings a demeanor about him which clearly shows the strength of a man who has achieved ultimate self-honesty. But having passed on the responsibility to a new capitán, Scott is free to do other things - like wakeboard and, of course, think about firing up another company or two, though probably on the other side of the table this time.

So while it hasn’t been easy, going from CEO of a hot tech company to captain of his rather unknown wakeboarding boat has been a great move.

But who knows - for a guy who likes acceleration that much, the world of startups may beckon too strongly to resist much longer.

Teach a Man to Franchise

Interview with Peter Harris, University Venture Fund

What says cut-throat capitalist better than a Venture Capital fund? But when it comes to the developing world, Peter Harris, a principal at University Venture Fund, has a softer perspective.

Venture capitalist by day, Peter goes through all the typical motions of a hard core investor - deal screening, entrepreneur thrashing, founder firing - its what you’d expect from a man who leads the largest student-managed fund in the United States ($18.2M).

What you might not expect is his outlook on third-world inhabitants. Peter has a special interest in poverty alleviation. He believes that the causes of poverty are not lack of intelligence or work ethic, but that people suffering from poverty lack the resources - not abilities - to pull themselves out.

“Teach a man to fish” is a great principle, but Peter argues that many of these people have never been taught how to fish, nor do they have access to fishing poles, boats, nets, and other equipment to be effective providers.

Peter believes that microfinance and microfranchises are steps to creating a sustainable poverty-alleviating environment for developing peoples, and has invested significant time into furthering its cause. He believes that through these mechanisms and others yet to be developed, we can legitimately create a world without poverty.

“Teach a man to fish”? It’s 2012! Now is the time to “teach a man to franchise”.

Predicting War

Interview with Charlie Harrell, ProModel Corporation

With over one million active duty personnel, a 2010 budget of $664 Billion, and the country’s survival on the line, the DoD has some serious logistical challenges. Luckily for them, Charlie Harrell started Promodel Corporation in 1988.

ProModel began as a process modeling software used mostly for manufacturing companies to accurately predict inputs and outputs of their processes.

Though ProModel has always been a big-league player - one of its initial clients was IBM - it has recently moved into the super-league of military contracting.

The military faces major challenges in logistics. Thousand of troops, vehicles, weapons, and other equipment which must be acquired and transported on time and on target to the most unstable areas of the world under the most heated circumstances, and failure is not an option. ProModel’s technology will be used to provide predictive data to military officials about future personnel and equipment needs so they can be sure to have all their ducks in a row before pulling the trigger.

With a work order like that, ProModel now moves to “superhero status” as its technologies begin to be used to save lives and help secure the nation’s ongoing safety.

I’m Fired!

Boyd Timothy, Appigo

Wife, kids, a nice house, and a good job. Isn’t that the American dream?

Not so for Boyd Timothy and Calvin Gaisford - even with families to feed and mortgages to pay, these two entrepreneurs decided to quit their good jobs in search of the true American dream: a top spot in the Apple App Store.

Just three years after founding their company, Appigo now has several employees, a slick office space with bean bag chairs and a couple of walls painted lime green, and bragging rights to some of the most popular apps ever built.

So what’s their secret? I mean, I built an app three years ago and my walls still aren’t lime green.

For Appigo, the secret was no secret at all - lots of hard work and a bit of luck. The founders began to develop their first app as a hobby in addition to the work they were doing at their real jobs. Then, when the time was right, they said goodbye to their nine-to-fives and started working on Appigo full time. Or rather fuller time, as they worked insane hours to get the company moving.

And the timing was perfect. Their first app was in the app store before it even opened, so on opening day of Apple’s app store, Appigo was one of the debut items. At the time, the app store was far less saturated with apps, so Appigo had an easier time standing out than it would have if the founders had waited a couple years to start the company.

But the early years had its challenges as well. Data on downloads was sparse and infrequent, so the company had very little upon which to measure their success. For the first month of sales the only indication the founders had of downloads was support emails coming in.

Luckily for their happy app users, Calvin and Boyd pushed through the early challenges and created a successful company with a bright future. Brighter even than their lime green walls.