BostInno
Six Entrepreneurs, One Question: 'Talk About Your Best Moment as a Manager'
By: Molly Blaauw Gillis
Jennifer Lum, co-founder, Forge.AI and Adelphic (acquired by Time Inc.)
“Winning and launching a huge first customer. A few months after closing our first round of funding for Adelphic, my co-founder and I had an opportunity to speak with Rishad Tobaccowala (Chief Strategist, Publicis Groupe) for 10 minutes prior to his keynote speech at MITX's FutureM. (Debi Kleiman created that opportunity for us, thanks Debi!) Rishad immediately understood our vision and connected us with the product and tech executives at Publicis' trading desk (thanks, Rishad)! At this point in time, we were a team of eight, and pre-product.
We recognized the tremendous opportunity and our team worked hard for the next two years to understand Publicis' requirements, win their mobile platform RFP, and launch our self-service platform on time. It was an incredible series of events for us to gain the support of one of the world's largest agency holding companies, compete and win against mature platforms, and launch on-time, meeting our commitment to our very important first customer.”
Katie Rae, President and CEO, The Engine
“Best moments are the small wins. My favorite is when one of the teams I am working with realizes they are really on to something and, boom, things start going faster. That is the moment they turn from a great idea into a company.”
Kirk Arnold, CEO, Data Intensity
“When we started NerveWire, we created a team of three hundred amazing folks. We had such a shared vision for the work we were doing, but we reached a point where we had to adjust to reflect that the market was on the decline. The goal was that we could protect as many customers, employees, and investors as possible, but we had to do a restructuring. I will say that the proudest moment for me as part of the leadership team was the thoughtfulness we brought to it -- the transparency and communication. There was a moment in time where we spoke to the employees and shook everyone’s hand as they walked out. It left such an amazing impression because 100% of the folks that left were thanking us for the experience, which was crazy and made it even more heartbreaking. I realized that there is a right way to do even the toughest things as a leader. It left such an impression on me about the importance of transparency, directness, clarity and communication and also owning your decisions. It was a moment I won’t forget.”
Ellen Rubin, CEO and co-founder, ClearSky Data
"The best moments are always around the incredible people you work with. While sometimes personalities clash and are intense, you can still look around and see how people are able to play off of one another’s strengths... that’s very powerful. Those moments when you look back and say we were all able to figure something out that was really hard, that we had never done before, and that we all came together and did it... well, those are my best moments and I have many at various stages of building companies.”
Diane Hessan, Entrepreneur, Marketer, Investor
"At the beginning of Communispace, now C Space, we had our share of near-death experiences: two times we almost ran out of money, and we had a massive case of employee fraud. At one point, we were at thirty employees and needed to cut half because the internet bubble had burst. We took the problem to our employees, and ultimately everybody agreed to take a significant pay cut in return for stock options. Those employees saved the company.
One of my best times was January 20, 2011, the day we sold Communispace to a strategic investor. We didn’t sell to get an exit, but rather because our clients were major brands and we needed to be global faster than we could do it on our own. We were thrilled to get so much value for the company, especially because every employee had stock options. On that day, we had everyone in our cafeteria to get their checks – and I got to thank each person individually, including all those people who cut their salaries and made the biggest sacrifices, who were now getting the biggest checks. 'Can you believe we made it?' we would ask. I remember saying to people, 'Please, don’t put it all in the bank. Do something nice for yourself.' One employee said, ‘No no, this is great, I’m taking my parents to Europe because they’ve never been out of the country!’ And another was sobbing and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this, I’ve been trying to have a baby for the past five years and this is going to allow me to pay for in vitro.’ This was the day that affirmed what we all know – that building a company is about so much more than making money. It’s a chance to help your clients, for sure, and it is also a way to touch people’s lives.”
Lou Shipley, CEO, BlackDuck Software
“Some of the proudest moments are also the saddest moments. When you join a startup you believe your opportunity is limitless, infinity. When someone puts a price on the company you’ve built, when they want to buy it, they are essentially saying, "this is what it’s worth." Selling, or parting with your potentially infinitely valued company, can actually be sad. When I was at Webline, I had visions of grandeur that it would be as big as Avid, would get to $500 million in sales. We sold it for $325 million when we had built sales to only $5 million, which is an amazing multiple. I remember thinking how sad I was that it was over. At Avid, I started our Japanese office from scratch. I started working out of a reseller’s office then after some time, we terminated that relationship and opened up our own subsidiary, just me and three Japanese nationals. I remember a few years later just walking around the office to the buzz of activity, 25 people running a big business. It was so cool to start something from scratch and see it grow. But it’s bittersweet as well. That’s when it’s time to go create something else.”
