Entrepreneurship Archives

CoreDial’s Alan Rihm on Being a “Real Entrepreneur”

“I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur until 2 or 3 years ago. I just thought I was dumb enough to keep going no matter what.”

CoreDial’s CEO Alan Rihm found his status as a “real entrepreneur” further validated when he was recently honored as a 2015 Ernst & Young Technology Entrepreneur of the Year in Greater Philadelphia.

But it took getting let go from his first job more than 20 years ago to fully plunge Alan into entrepreneurism. “I’d been working on a business plan all along. Now, I had just been given 3 months of pay and told goodbye. I realized that I just got pushed off the diving board, and if I don’t do it now, I’m never gonna do it.”

And so, with a 100K loan from the Small Business Administration, Alan told his wife, pregnant at the time with their first child, “I’m going to start a business.”

The ISP Craze
Alan’s first business piggybacked on the ISP craze, selling web and dialup access. In need of some guidance, he approached a senior corps of retired execs. “They told me to get a good lawyer, get enough money, and to go get out there. I discovered that people will give you help, but you have to do all the hard work yourself.”

The year was 1995. “We bought 2 servers and rented 1500 square feet of office space,” says Alan. With no one to actually run the servers, though, “We put an ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer. We got 2 people, including a guy working part time at DuPont.”

“We went from selling 2-3 accounts a day to 20-30 because we went on the Howard Stern Show and gave away Netscape disks for free.” Alan needed help. Fast. “I recruited my mom to answer the phones. She said, ‘But I don’t know what to say!’ I told her just to pick up the phone and put them on hold.”

He sold the enterprise within 2 years, paid off his credit cards, and prepared for his next venture.

Next Steps
Alan started ASPRE, an e-commerce company, in 1998, quickly adding 7 employees to the roster. They won a collaborative deal with AT&T that allowed them to grow to 75 employees in just 4 months. “I loved the culture there,” says Alan, which taught him the importance of intentionally building the culture you want to have in an organization.

After selling ASPRE, Alan founded a CRM company called CentraView. “It offered one central view of everything I need in my business. I put half a million dollars of my own cash in. We worked on it for 2 ½ years and raised another million in angel money. And then we hit a wall and couldn’t raise any more money. I had to put it to bed. ”

CoreDial
In 2004, Alan spent 3 months helping out a local ISP, Chester County Internet, get their business on track. After counseling them to sell off the ISP portion of the business and focus on developing a spinoff VoIP service, the founders came back and asked Alan to help them run the new enterprise.

“I tried to leverage everything I had learned about business. We applied all those things, but I still made all those mistakes again. We weren’t fully funded. I was still paying guys out of my personal bank account.”

Alan’s approach to leadership and culture is strongly influenced by the book Great by Choice. “One thing I’ve learned about culture building is that it takes a constant drumbeat to build a culture of success. You have to constantly talk about it. And then you start seeing people in the hallway saying ‘if we’re using the hedgehog strategy then we should do it this way.’”

Now, CoreDial has grown to 100 employees, and they’re looking to add 30 more. “I’ve also learned that you not only have to hire the right people, but get ‘the right people in the right seats on the bus.’ And also at the right time.”

Another cultural choice is the foosball table. Just not in front of the CEO’s office. “I was so excited, gushing about this table when I bought it at 3 am. We put it outside my office, and no one used it, because they didn’t think they were actually supposed to play. So we moved it to a spot away from my office where people are comfortable.”

Alan’s approach to culture includes firm roots in Philly. “I believe that if you can’t make an opportunity happen here in Philly, you can’t make it happen anywhere.”

Frank Coates on the Transformative Power of Failure

“When people ask my kids what their Dad does, they tell them, ‘My Dad’s the biggest failure in the world.'”

It’s an arresting first line for a presentation, and it only gets better as Wheelhouse Analytics founder and CEO Frank Coates explains how failure drives him to success. Founded in 2010, Wheelhouse Analytics helps financial services companies analyze data.

Frank shares his story, noting how “in every one of my public failures, something good came out of it.”

“In 1983, I almost flunked out of the electrical engineering program.” His academic near-failure led to success, though, when he eventually earned a computer science degree from Siena College and headed to the Army for 3 years, where he moved up the ranks to first lieutenant.

On Getting Fired. 3 Times. From the Same Guy

“Dick Strong (of Strong Mutual Funds) had been after me for years to come do for him what I did for Dreyfus. Strong had started one of the biggest mutual fund companies in the country. He told me he didn’t want a ‘yes man.’ Well, the first time I told him what he didn’t want to hear he didn’t like it. That was the first time he fired me.”

Frank transferred into Strong’s brokerage business. “One day, I fired everyone in the office for going out to lunch and leaving the office open. I thought I was going to ride into Dick’s office on a chariot, but when I got there, it was just the opposite.” And Frank was out again.

“I learned a ton from being fired. I love the guy and he taught me a million things that I took to my companies.”

Wheelhouse Analytics

Wheelhouse’s angle is small—not large—data. “We call ourselves ‘the king of analytics,’ but most of the time I feel like the dunce of analytics. I show up at a presentation and say ‘I’m here to talk about little data.’ It’s all about finding small pockets of need in these big financial organizations that other IT companies find underworthy of their investment. A small company like ours can do that.”

Frank says he’s happy to play in the little part of the market, what he calls “the day-to-day analytics.” “In financial services, broadly, generic capabilities won’t win the day,” he shares. “We’re killing it against global companies, because we walk in and know what you should be doing. We know where your messes are. We know when not to use the data.”

“Our approach is to get the data to them, let them learn, and then go back and talk to them. It’s a 6-month process. Within 6 months we might have 100 dashboards for them, and we ask how it’s working. They might say, ‘Well, we’re still not making any good decisions.’ Now they are ready. Now we can go back to the key questions.”

On Picking Good Partners

“The first thing is that I’m a loyalty guy. My second hire was a guy whom I worked with at another company. Your partners should be loyal to you and loyal to the mission.”

Frank also believes in the power of transparency to attract the right people. “Be as transparent as you can up front. I’m not that good at accounting, or paying attention to finances, and you need to know that about me. If someone knows that about you and still wants to join you, then you have the right person.”

The Future

“Right now we’re looking for partners. We don’t want to sell right now, even though we’ve had offers.”

Indie Game Night w/ Skyless Game Studios

We asked Chris Bennett from Skyless Game Studios to hang out at Night Owls to play LifeLeap with our community. Skyless Game Studios leverages the power of video games to support and empower social, educational, and philanthropic causes.

What was the problem your game aimed to solve?

“LifeLeap is a casual infinite-runner game aimed at drawing attention to the need for better healthcare in the developing world. A troubling number of young children around the world do not have access to necessary preventative healthcare. As such, many suffer from conditions and illnesses that could easily be prevented.”
–Chris Bennett, Founder @SkylessGames

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How did you go about solving it?

“LifeLeap is designed to reflect this issue. The player isn’t only challenged to avoid obstacles, he or she must also battle constantly declining health by picking up medical supplies. The game also ties into the real world; whenever a player makes an in-game purchase, the proceeds will go towards helping children in rural India.”
— Chris Bennett, Founder @SkylessGames

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What’s next for LifeLeap?

“Along with Aahana, the non-profit we are developing this game with, we will be launching LifeLeap this summer. From there we hope to expand our network to allow us to provide funds from the game to even more children in developing nations.”
— Chris Bennett, Founder @SkylessGames

Chasing Small Ball Counts with Alchemy Learning

Henry Blue, Co-Founder of Alchemy Learning

@AlchemyLearning

Henry Blue was restless.

“The cyclical nature of education had started to worry me,” confesses the former teacher. “I didn’t necessarily see a direction to progress in, doing the same thing year in and year out. How do you reconcile that need to impact major change during your day-to-day work?” In need of some wisdom, Henry turned to one of his mentors, who sent him off with a quote that still resonates: “Little by little, small ball counts,” a nod to the game-winning baseball strategy chronicled in the movie Moneyball.

The quote has guided Alchemy Learning’s co-founder along the startup path.

The Classroom Inspiration

After college, Henry traveled abroad teaching ESL before returning to the Boys’ Latin School of Maryland–his alma mater–to teach. “It was great. I got to coach and teach alongside the people who had taught me.”

During this time, Henry’s buddy and fellow Davidson College grad Win Smith was working nearby in Baltimore, and they started chatting about the software education space. Henry was using more technology tools in the classroom, and together they hatched the idea for a web-based curriculum program that would allow teachers to create and deliver e-lessons for students.

The First Version

They needed help with development, and turned to outsourcing as a solution. “Outsourcing development is kind of risky, though,” Henry advises. “We had trouble getting work done. Suddenly, we were being assigned the junior folks just cycling through.” In the end, Henry and Win were victorious, getting a minimum viable product out of the process.

They released the free tool for teachers. “Bloggers loved it, the industry loved it. It got some awards. There was a good pace of onboarding new teacher users, which allowed us to raise a little more money to build it out beyond just a free tool.”

On the Digital Revolution

Henry was encouraged by the technology buzz going on at the time. “We saw iPads trending in schools. The White House was pushing for 95 percent connectivity of schools in a 5-year period.” He pauses. “Well, we’re still waiting for that to happen. It’ll happen…we just thought it would happen faster.”

The Competition

“We weren’t backed by a foundation or major corporation, so we started worrying about competitors. Unlike other industries, our SaaS numbers didn’t mean anything in the education industry.”

Google Classroom, another free tool, provided an alternative for teachers to manage lessons and grades. Additionally, Khan Academy and Guru offered similar features. At the same time, “We saw some other startups running similar things and folding up shop.”

Henry and Win needed to shift gears. “We looked at our user base on the free version. Users tended to be high energy, tech-adapting teachers. Our assumption is that excitement matters for adoption when you’re talking software. And another assumption is that it’s useful for learning outcomes, but also for creating learning engagement, especially for learners who have trouble with traditional textbook learning.”

The New Reality

Enter virtual reality. “We found that cultural institutions, museums, nature centers, and the like wanted a tool for their learning and outreach portions.” Henry and Win decided to use virtual reality in K-12 classrooms to connect those institutions.

They got funding for a first pass of the project, where students wear Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets and “float” down the Amazon. Students take photographs and get information on the things they photograph, culminating with a trip over a waterfall.

“We took this basic prototype to education camps to see if anyone wanted it. And we saw there was a lot of excitement. Now, it’s a matter of proving the use case and seeing that people will actually use it in the classroom.”

It’s an interesting challenge. “How do you build both ends of a network?” Henry asks. “You need both schools and network providers. So we’re thinking through niche angles. This is a tool for more technical development. We’re putting students in situations they wouldn’t get in.”

Henry knows the future won’t wait. “Right now, we have the early mover advantage. We want to do everything for the school so they don’t have to do anything.”

The Brutally Honest Entrepreneur: SEER Interactive’s Wil Reynolds

Wil Reynolds, Founder of SEER Interactive

@wilreynolds
@Seerinteractive

“I am really brutally honest about how tough the entrepreneurship journey has been.”

Normally, brutal honesty might be off putting to an audience, but it’s hard not to be dazzled by SEER Interactive founder Wil Reynold’s infectious charisma and fearless self disclosure. He notes, “I fired myself as the CEO from my own company…twice.”

Wil started his professional life on the teaching path, loving the kids in his high school economics classes, but not the red tape and overbearing parents. It didn’t take long for him to strike out in a new direction.

Changing Gears

“I wasn’t a big fan of resumes—I liked to put on a suit and go visit the place in person.”

Wil suited up and hit the streets in Philly. He scored a job offer at NetMarketing, the first place he visited, provided he could build web sites. So he went home and built his very first project, a Geocities site all about his Jeep Wrangler. “I was proud of it, but when I rolled in the next day, all my images were x’s because I had not FTPed them.”

His new employer wasn’t worried. “They told me, ‘you’re our first employee. We don’t need somebody who knows everything. We need someone who wants to learn. We like that you took the initiative to learn what you need on your own.’”

The company was growing, and soon a shower was installed in the office. “Because that’s how many all nighters we pulled. My girlfriend at the time dumped me,” Wil says. “And then one day, I got the call that it was over—the company was done.”

Striking Out

Out of a job, he did what had worked before. “I put on a suit and started going to all the Philly companies I wanted to work at.” During that same period, he started volunteering at CHOP, an experience that shaped his approach to professional life. “I started a company because no one would hire me and because I wanted to continue my volunteer efforts too. I’m an accidental entrepreneur. I never wanted to start a company.”

Meaningful relationships with people in the company were paramount to Wil. “I wanted to deeply know the people I work with. For the first 2 years, we turned away over 80% of our leads because I wanted to cap the company at 10 people. I wanted to be able to make those people super rich.”

The Epiphany

“I love my job, and there’s only been one day I didn’t want to go into work.”

It was the day after bonuses were given out, a day to share the bounty of a good year. Wil’s unsolicited offer of a partial bonus to an employee who had left 4 months earlier stung him unexpectedly when the former employee decided she warranted a full bonus. “That took a chink out of my armor that couldn’t just be filled. If that happened in a company with only 10 people, what could happen in a bigger company? I realized that being in a tight-knit family environment is only one part of what keeps people at a company.”

“When you’re CEO, everyone brings you their bad day. And it’s your job to deal with those bad days,” he offers. “So the bigger your company, it’s more and more dealing with everybody’s bad day. How do you deal with that? For me, it meant I stopped running my company.”

(Read Wil’s blogpost about the experience here.)

Evolution

Wil flew to Seattle for a weeklong “job swap” with Moz CEO Rand Fishkin, a story they chronicled in a YouTube video and which was compelling enough to capture the attention of Wired magazine. “It’s very exposing to run someone else’s company for a week. Within 6 months, we both stepped down as CEO of our respective companies. We both realized that we liked experimenting and playing around with stuff.”

He put SEER in capable hands to focus on his passion. “I’m a maker. I like to make stuff. As your company grows and scales, you watch yourself grasping for that thing you started out doing.”

Over the past 6 years, SEER has grown from 10 to 106 employees.

Putting it Out There

Volunteering is critical in both Wil’s and SEER’s missions. He walks the talk and encourages employees to do the same. “I don’t want to work with someone who doesn’t volunteer. We started building volunteer opportunities into the company. If I don’t have something else going on, I’ll go on a volunteer assignment with my employees.”

Giving back applies to ideas, too. “Being open about my ideas makes me go back into the lab and learn some new shit when no one else is looking. I’m doing that right now, in fact. I’ll be talking about it in July, which means I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in August.”

The Future

“Vision doesn’t guarantee success. Vision plus operations is how you become successful.”

“I want SEER to be a great company to be from. People don’t have to be here forever, but they should be really proud of their time here.”

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