Making a Difference: A Founder’s Statement to the World

So what’s your say? When you walk into the office every Monday morning, would you love to walk straight back out the door? Or is the office a place where you find friendship, motivation, inspiration, and passion that makes you satisfied at the end of every day?

Ants know a thing or two about team work | photo by Prashant Menon

When we started our company 1.5 years ago, we decided that we wanted to have an impact, not just survive. True, in the very first days, it was impossible not to be taken by the constant pressure of looking for our next income. But after some time, after we had the chance to find our first truly outstanding team member, David – who gave us the right push at the right time — our team began to grow quickly. In our short history, these are a few of the facts we have to be proud of:

• No venture capital or investment money since day one means we’ve run the company “Our Way”
• Positive cash flow from the very beginning
• Team approaching 15 members after 1.5 years of bootstrapping
• Expecting to hit 1million in revenues by the end of year two (according to U.S. GAAP)
• Getting employee stock options program in place by the end of year two

We’re proud of the foundation that we’ve built. We own our own distributed hashtable technology and our own tracking technology – all built from scratch and capable of dealing with billions of requests a day on a single machine. Our advertising technology is capable of handling any sort of targeting methodology on the market, be it contextual, retargeting, behavioral, or network pattern based – just to name a few. We’re also on the way to closing the gap between the classical tracking technologies and the CRM sector via Customer Network Analysis. I know that we will truly make a difference in the coming years, and things are getting even crazier (in a good way) as we’re growing.

While spending the last 1.5 years on building all the stuff from scratch, we’ve realized that there isn’t much difference anymore what all the big guys are up to in tech business. Now we’re on our way to getting the sales business in place, doubling the size of our team, and moving to a bigger office to accommodate our new talent. All of this without any Angel or VC investors, but always inspired by the zanox founders, who did an unbelievable job. (Guys, you truly deserve it!) I think all of this makes it clear that we’re on our way to challenge the market — we can provide unbelievable technology and an unbeatable price. We are prepared to take on all the players in our league, even the big guys like Google.

Yes, we’re trying to make things different. We’re not in it for the gold rush. We believe in our people, and in not burning money on what the zanox guys called “castles in the sky.” Of course we’re willing to “pay back” – but we want the payback to go to our team! Our team is what makes the difference in a market that is challenging and constantly changing.

Most things we do in life are about change and motivation. While the soccer world championships were taking place back in 2006, everyone in Germany came to see how important this fact is. Jurgen Klinsmann (the former German coach) introduced new ways of working with his players on a daily basis. He started to build a new foundation for a different sort of soccer play. You could see this even in the 2010 World Cup, watching the German team beat Argentina and England with soccer that might be the best seen for ages. We’ve seen a new German team: inspiring and multicultural, open minded and respectful. This is what I want  our team to look like, too.

I’ve learned that success in life is never easy, and I know what it means to live on less than €25 a week. You have to fight daily, and in the end you have to pay back what you owe to your team. I know the day will come when we will be pleased to see our people prospering and see the trust they invested in us, the founders, paying off. There is nothing more in life than friendship, especially bonds that are built through hard work together. The people who helped us build up the company are at the heart of it — they make the difference.

Looking at our numbers, I don’t know where we’re heading precisely, but I know that everybody is giving his best. And how can we help them to do it? As a founder, you have to be the guy showing commitment on a daily basis. You have to be the leader in every way – every move, every word, must be an example. But as we expect a lot from every team member, we’re also trying to give them maximum freedom back. For example, we don’t have fixed working hours at our office. Instead, we allow team members to work the hours in which they will do the best work — taking care of the team is taking care of the company. Trust is also an important thing – we try hard to empower our people by keeping all communication lines open and enabling decision making without a complex hierarchy. In the end, trust and motivation will make the team strong and ultimately successful.

Our working culture is still developing, but I hope that sooner than later we will have an outstanding office culture. I’m thinking of the Virgin Group or Google, who changed the world’s landscape so much — I’d like our company to be a part of this wave of change in corporate culture. I truly can say that the vision we’re following is to make the world a little better. There are special challenges associated with working with an international team, but I hope the benefits of this arrangement return as much to everyone in the team as it does to me.

You have to believe, to be trustful, to be thankful, and it will pay off!