What is an entrepreneurial company in Iowa?

Published July 29, 2010 Building a Company , Iowa 1 Comment

We have been having lots of discussions in Iowa with our Economic Development Department as well as our Technology Association of Iowa about entrepreneurship.  Like many states, Iowa wants new, high tech companies in the state and they want to create jobs.  There are a few ways to do that:

  • Start new companies in Iowa
  • Bring companies from other states to Iowa
  • Expand existing businesses in Iowa

Now, if you are a betting person, which of the 3 expansion plans above gets the least attention?  If you said “Expand existing businesses in Iowa,” you win the prize.  I am certainly biased.  Spindustry is a 15-year-old company (which I cannot believe, by the way – time flies) and no longer considered a startup, although I assure you we try to still think like one every day and still are in my opinion.  We are also not a company that invents “widgets” or something you can hold and touch, thus are not as exciting to an outsider as a company inventing the latest medical gadget or car part.

The discussion we have been having, however, is “who is the best bet for growth.” I would contend in many cases a company like Spindustry who has shown technical competency and the ability to manage a business for 15 years could be more entrepreneurial and have a greater chance for success given some outside funds to create a product or suite of products.  The argument is that a company like us should fund these things out of cash flow.  And there is the rub.  As a company like Spindustry grows, we do “have more to lose” than the “garage entrepreneur,” so while we could risk money from cash flow, we have to first protect current employees and the core business vs. throwing caution to the wind.  But I would contend that we would also use this practicality and experience to spend an outsider’s, or state funded, money wiser than someone just starting out. 

I am not saying to ignore the garage entrepreneur.  I was one once.  I just think when you are making investments in your state, you should bet on several different types of horses and that our type of company should be one of those. 

On the topic of bringing companies in from out of state, I also think this can be beneficial, especially when large, but that the State of Iowa should also remember to help companies loyal to the state and help them grow.  It’s honestly a little annoying to know a competitor has just been brought in from, say Omaha, and they are getting literally free rent, while you are waving the Iowa flag and paying expenses yourself.  Again, not saying the state should never do it, just look at both options.

So, what do you think?  Maybe the State of Iowa should not be investing money in companies with ideas at all; maybe this is a job for venture capitalists.  But if you assume they should be investing in growing companies, creating jobs, and generating success stories, which do you think they should focus on?

Can you have a social media strategy and block your employees from Facebook?

Published June 30, 2010 Social Media , The Web , Working with Clients Leave a Comment

Taking a break from history for a minute, let’s talk about social media…

We have spoken with several clients lately who expressed confusion about having a social media strategy when they do not allow their employees access to social media content while at work.

This obviously brings up several issues.  Let’s talk about the blocking of social media sites at work first.  My personal opinion is that this is a short sighted strategy.  Ten years ago many of these same companies likely blocked the Internet from employees and I would bet most now have access to it.  They have figured out that there are benefits and now weigh the good against the bad.  They understand that you have to judge your employees on the results, not as much how they get there, and then deal with ones that spend all day on YouTube the same way you would deal with someone who simply spends all day in the break room, etc.

But… assuming we accept that some companies do not believe you should be on these sites while at work, let’s talk about whether a company that blocks these sites from their team keep should push information out through social media channels.  Is it hypocritical? Can you make exceptions for those employees responsible for publishing this content and allow them on Facebook during work hours?

I think if you believe people should not engage in social media during work hours, then fine.  But if you assume your customers use Facebook in the off hours and you are not there sharing information with them and gathering their opinions, you are missing out.  So I do believe it is worth having a social media strategy even if you do not have your own employees using these tools during the day.  I think it makes sense to say we assume people use these tools in the evening and on weekends and we need to be there.  I think it is acceptable then to allow a small team access to these sites if they are responsible for your strategy.  They need this obviously to publish the information but also to stay up to speed on what is going on in the social space.

What are your thoughts?  Curious on this one…

Adding to the Team

Published May 28, 2010 Random Thoughts Leave a Comment

So, after we had two other programmers in place and a sales person in the office, it was time to start working in the office and helping to build the project side of our business.  Over the next year I worked to let certain projects come to and end and backfill others with new people so I was not programming on site.  I managed to do that and still worked on some projects from our office for some contracts.

Beyond that, we were looking to grow as a company and needed some additional talent.  It worked out that just as a new web design client was approaching us, a very good graphic designer became available.  Knowing good talent when we saw it, we hired him.  Over the next few months we also hired server support, project management, and office support.  For me, this is when we began to feel like a company.

I think one thing we did well here was manage to not get caught in the trap of surrounding yourself with… well, yourself.  I have seen many people, especially technologists, enjoy their own belief system so much that they only want people who share their belief system.  I firmly believe that allowing people with different talents and different perspectives is a better way to go, especially as business partners or entrepreneurs.  It sounds obvious but so many people do not go in that direction.

Have to run off to a fun Memorial Day weekend but more soon!  Again if you have questions, let me know…

An Office and a Sales Guy

Published April 30, 2010 Building a Company Leave a Comment

As I mentioned in the last post, Spindustry was going pretty well with 3 contractors at the State of Iowa.  I had 2 business partners, neither really active in the business.  To take the next step it was time for that to change.  Stephen Fry, one of the two partners, had recently decided not to pursue a different business opportunity and thought he was ready to join Spindustry in an active role.  He would be in business development and seek out new clients for web development, while the three of us developers continued our day jobs as contract programmers.  Given the revenue from the three contracts, we could afford to pay Steve something.  I will always be grateful to Steve for seeing the vision and taking a chance on this venture.  Without his help the next successful years, and upcoming interesting blog posts, would never have been possible.

So, Steve came aboard and the next decision was where to exist as a company.  We had the option to run things out of our homes, but as we have done many times since, we decided instead to try to be who we wanted to become vs. who we were, and go ahead and get an office.  Now, we were also practical – which is another quality that has saved us over the years.  We got a very small office with a shared reception area which was smaller than my current personal office, but right for the time.  It allowed us to feel like we were “going to work” and gave us a little leg up over a freelancer in many potential clients’ eyes.

So with a small office, a business development person in place, we were ready to go.  Over the next few months, Steve was successful in landing our first few web development clients and the three developers we had worked on those projects at night.  It was a fun time and all good work was followed up with pizza and mountain dew.  Okay, maybe some mountain dew showed up while working too :)

I will talk more about these relationships later, but it should be mentioned that we formed two long-standing relationships in this time period.  One, with Lightedge, then Lighthouse, who has worked with us since we both had offices the size of a broom closet.  It was also very interesting to watch them grow, but in a completely different way than us over the years.  The other was with Austin Palmer, who formed Palmer Search Group.  Palmer had the small office cube next to ours and we had a great time growing our businesses together and have enjoyed watching their success over the years.

As this started to work, the next big decision was how to extricate myself from being a day-to-day contractor and get more involved in the growing project based web development side of things.  We also needed to think about adding a graphic designer. Stay tuned…

Spindustry Starts Programming On Site

Published April 20, 2010 Building a Company 2 Comments

So, I mentioned we put $1,000 in a bank account and started Spindustry.  One thing people always ask me is what the name means.  I wish I had a better story but it was truly just a process of combining words and finding a URL that was available.  I thought about a new SPIN on INFORMATION MANAGEMENT and for a few minutes the company was going to be called Spinformation (boring).  But with the idea, at that time, of software still being CD based and possibly even having more of a gaming influence, Spindustry sounded better and everyone seemed to like it. 

Jump forward 10 years, and Kim Kardashian really seems to like it and started a show about the PR industry called The Spindustry – thanks for that J  Nothing like a show on E! with your company name to mess up your search engine rankings :)

But back to how we got started… We made a key decision out of the gate – we would start with contract programming but as Spindustry not as an individual.  After calling many companies only TSC, now Modis, would bill us in that fashion and so they found us a contract at the State of Iowa and off I went.  After several months of billing there, they needed more done and so I got two additional contractors on at the State through Spindustry.  I am happy to say that 13 years later both of them are still on board at Spindustry.  Thank you Jason and Jerad for trusting me then and still being with us!  Ironically the business development person that placed us at the state through Modis, Steve Tommingo, is now working with us as part of Spindustry Staffing – but that’s another post…

So, with three of us contracting at the state, it was time for Stephen Fry, my partner, to take a more day to day role in Spindustry and begin selling project based web development, but again – a post for another day…

I hope you are enjoying hearing about how we began as many people have asked me how we did it – but let me know your thoughts and what other topics you are curious about and we will be happy to offer thoughts…

Bye for now

Bird

…in the beginning

Published March 27, 2010 Building a Company , Personal 2 Comments

As you will see in this post, life is full of chance.  The reasons I am in Iowa, how I met my business partner, and other choices are all fairly random.  What you must have below all that is a passion about something and a drive to succeed.  I like to believe if my current story wasn’t my story, based on different choices, I would still be having a nice life somewhere – just different.  But we’ll leave those discussions to shows like LOST to solve…

After some interest in computers and writing some simple programs on my Atari 800 XL, I had the good fortune to have a wonderful computer teacher in high school.  And, Jack McGrath, formerly of Broomfield HIgh School, if I can ever find you I owe you dinner – and a lot more.  He was one of those great teachers that opened your eyes to something and let you explore.  After that experience I went to the University of Colorado and majored in Business with a double focus on Management Information Systems and Marketing.  I was interested in both disciplines and still am to this day.  When I graduated end of the summer, I interviewed with EDS, the #1 company in the industry, got hired and was ready to go and work in Boulder, Colorado.  Unfortunately, or maybe not as it turns out, they did not have openings locally and needed me to move to – Iowa.  Enter the random part – I would never have moved to Iowa on my own, but the young lady I was dating at the time had family in Iowa so was willing to go on the journey with me.  That worked out too, by the way. Thank you, Lora :)

Once in Iowa, I worked at EDS for several years and formed some great relationships along the way.  It was also a wonderful chance to see the good and bad of working at a large organization.  But due to some lack of opportunities and what I felt was some mismanagement of the young hires there, I chose to look for a new job.  I explored contract programming but that seemed risky to me at the time.  And then another opportunity came along.  At EDS I had met my future partner, Stephen Fry, who had since gone back to a small, fire and safety exporting company.  He reached out and asked if I could help them develop a customer management database.  I took that opportunity part-time and we both soon realized there was more to do in bringing a database, the emerging idea of web sites, and general technology know-how to a small business.  So, I joined that small company and handled all things technical.

This was a wonderful complimentary experience to working at a large company and I truly enjoyed this more – but still glad to have experienced both.  After a year or so we did realize that I was not going to be needed on a daily basis, however, as there was simply not the volume of work.  We began to imagine, however, that many companies of similar size likely did not have a database, web site, etc. so perhaps we could provide those services.  So, we put $1,000 in a bank account, came up with the name Spindustry - more on that later – and off we went.

Welcome to Spindustry…. and Bird

Published March 24, 2010 Building a Company , Iowa , Personal , Random Thoughts , The Web , Working with Clients Leave a Comment

So, I have hesitated starting a blog for a while.  Not that I am short of things to say – anyone I know can tell you otherwise.  I wanted to reach a point where I felt like I had a point of view, some experience to share, and honeslty the time to do it right.  I feel like all of those pieces are in place.

I have run Spindustry for 13 years which has included starting the original web development firm and evolving it over a decade, as well as starting two other spin-offs including a technical training company and a staffing company.  In my conversations with people it is still strange to be asked How We Did It, because I am not really sure. 

I like to think we had a plan, but you and I both know those change a lot.  What I do have is over a decade of stories to share about running a company, helping clients find success, as well as commentary on current events and ideas, so let’s start sharing…. be back soon :)

Bird

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