Less than a decade ago, I left a high-paying tech job in New York City to found my own SEO-optimization company. It was a calculated risk — I had a family to support but did not pursue investors or venture capital. Instead, I focused on organically building a consulting company, and using it to later…
Less than a decade ago, I left a high-paying tech job in New York City to found my own SEO-optimization company. It was a calculated risk — I had a family to support but did not pursue investors or venture capital. Instead, I focused on organically building a consulting company, and using it to later incubate my software company.
Since I left my job in November 2011, I have personally sold around $3 million of business to date (without an enterprise sales background). This is more than twice what I would have made if I stayed at my previous job, and I now I also own a very valuable software business.
While this approach may seem antithetical to the traditional startup model, I can assure that there are key insights that I learned during the process that allowed me to bootstrap a successful technology company.
You must look for windows of opportunity to launch a new business. Oftentimes, people wait until the environment is “safe” (i.e. the market already offers popular versions of your product or service) and then launch startups to test the waters with their incremental ideas. But if there’s already established competition in the market, it’s too late for a business to have any significant success.
Quite frankly, you even can be incompetent, but if your timing is great, you can leverage it into a successful launch.
Many years ago, I worked for a tech company that was a the forefront of the online gaming industry that was making tens of millions of dollars per month — and just as many mistakes. In fact, the service was so popular that the servers were constantly crashing. The founders solution? Hire someone to literally sit next to the servers and restart them!
The company was by no means the best at what it could be but, because it capitalized on critical timing in the market and hired people with enough skills to execute their business, it was very successful.
