As a 43 year old entrepreneur whose primary skills in life up to three years ago was working in advanced electronics in the United States Navy, you would not think I would get the startup bug.
My family has always been in business for themselves and I have sold and or had a stake in several companies in the past. When podcasting hit the scene in 2004, I knew by things happening in the space that there were several good business models that could be applied to the New Media space.
The original TechPodcasts.com COOP model (not what it is today) did not work out well, as people wanted the rewards but few were willing to put in the work.
This led me to form RawVoice in a more traditional model and luckily was able to put together a hell of a core team. Like any business, we have added and lost a few people along the way which has been a learning experience in itself, but we continue to have people that understand and actively participate in the space.
The core team at the time we got started almost all had jobs, homes, families etc. Two members of the team were single with one scheduled to get married and in the middle of buying a home. As we explored our options we decided to build the company virtually because none of us could have survived financially without at least a base salary coming in.
A lot of people told us to quit our day jobs and move to Silicon Valley. Easy for someone to say when there are bills to pay and kids to feed. In my situation at least, this was not at all possible as I was obliged to be in the Navy till Oct 2007.
As cash flow increased, we were able to bring Angelo our lead developer on full time in mid 2007, which has allowed us to speed up our development cycle.
In May of 2007 we were approached, and nearly acquired by an east coast company, After visiting the company in person and having some internal discussions we decided that the deal was not in the best interest of the company and we walked away from the deal.
That was a tough thing to do but we made a decision that was absolutely was the right choice. Today RawVoice as a company is stronger than ever, and we understand that we are in the space for the long haul.
From the beginning we were told you have to move to Silicon Valley. I am positive had we done so that we would probably would have two or three divorces within the company and we would probably no longer exist.
Building a company where each team member is essentially tele-commuting can be a challenge, but hey–we are a technology company and we use technology. Between the Phone, VOIP, IM, Skype, Collaborative Software, Revision Control and central repository for corporate documents, the office infrastructure is no different than if we were all huddled together in a shitty apartment someplace in Silicon Valley.
Do we lose productivity? Probably a little, but guess what ? Everyone is sane and we are fortunate that we can still maintain our local support structure, and we can build this company at the pace we set. That pace has been pretty aggressive with a large percentage of it happening while we all had full time jobs, kids, college and a host of other things that happen in life.
I am sure if I was 20 years old with no kids or wife. I would have probably packed up and moved to Silicon Valley, but sometimes you just don’t have those choices, and while I have Team members in Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, New York and Hawaii we all work as a well -greased machine and everyone is happy.
We are not under any pressure by any outside source. At the same time, we are making our internal goals and putting a hell of a lot of money in the New Media creators’ pockets that we support. Our software-as-a-service business with the RawVoice Generator and RawVoice Statistics white label service is gaining traction.
Because we are in this business for the long haul we can survive a lot longer than other companies in the space, and we can adapt and change as needed while other companies face tremendous pressure from their venture investors.
As long as we stick to the fundamentals we started with, the value of the company will continue to grow. When customers are exposed to the technology side of what we have built, they are pretty amazed! As I tell people, we have 2 plus full years of code development in a New Media platform that is unlike any others, and for that and the advertising media side of the business we could not be happier to have done it on our own outside of Silicon Valley.
You tend to see a similar way of thinking in the music community. Many people believe you have to move to L.A. or New York to “make it.” It’s an outdated mindset, and doesn’t really apply these days.