LIM, MARYLYN GRACE C.

OOA

            Evan Williams is an entrepreneurial person and a web geek. He had started a couple of several of companies. He was a dropped out student because he thought that he don’t need to have a degree because he won’t going to try to get a job with anyone. But then, he works as a web developer on contract for about a year and a half and has worked in various companies like Intel and HP.

            While working he started thinking to start another company. He had visions of raising money and building something cool. Then he thought of Pyra, his first product. The idea of Pyra was the personal and project information management system; to build projects for clients around their interests and help them organize their work and personal information. Pyra is a web application where you could put your stuff, things you are thinking about, things you had to do, things you wanted to share with other people. Evan Williams shared his thoughts to his friend, Meg Hourihan. Meg was so excited about Evan’s plans and asked him if she could start it up with him. Evan agreed with her. Both of them worked very hard on their product. They were working on it while working for other companies in order to fund their product. During their first year it was entirely self-funded, but eventually they have to quit their jobs in order to work full-time in their product. They hire their first employee, Paul Bausch. Most of the coding was done by Paul Bausch. Meg and Evan had an internal blog which they called Stuff. This is where they collected everthing and it became the center of Pyra. At first, it was only for personal use, but later on, they thought of posting an external company blog. They were the first company to have a blog on their site. So they decided to turn the blog into a product. But the problem is that they don’t have enough resources for two products because they don’t have enough funds and there were only three of them who are making the product. Then they decided to launch Pyra. It was successful and more and more people are starting to use it. Evan and Paul continued what they had started with Blogger. Paul and Evan improved the Blogger and launch it. It was a success. Many users where using it.

            At first, Blogger was completely free of charge and there was no revenue model. But there came a time that the company was dying. Evan had no money to pay his employees. At first, the employees continued to work without pay for weeks or in some cases months; but eventually it could not last, and eventually, the day came were in Evan was the only came in the office, all of his employees including his cofounder, Meg Hourihan left the company. At that night, he also broke up with his girlfriend. He felt so bad about what happened. But the good news was that the Blogger was still running and with no employees. Evan ran the company all by himself until he was able to secure an investment by Trellix after its founder Dan Bricklin became aware of Pyra’s situation. After what happened, Pyra became successful little by little.

            I admire Evan Williams so much because he was able to face all his problems. He didn’t give up the company even if all his of his employees left him and he is the only one running the company. He kept working and he was able to pass through it. Running a company all by yourself without any employees is a very hard thing to do, if I were at his place maybe I would have left the company because I don’t think I could handle such pressure. I never thought that he would be able to do it. But he proved that nothing’s impossible. He is always optimistic and he always thinks that there is going to be a better tomorrow.

LIM, MARYLYN GRACE C.

OOA

            Ray Ozzie is the founder of not just one company but two companies. His first company was Iris Associates but later it was acquired by Lotus Development in 1994. His second company was Groove Networks that was also acquired by Microsoft in 2005.

            Before Ray Ozzie founded Iris Associates, he worked on PLATO Notes. Later, he was recruited by Jonathan Sachs and Mitch Kapor to work for Lotus Development to develop what became Lotus Symphony. After that, Ozzie left Lotus Development and founded Iris Associates. He always wanted to develop his own software but the problem is that he couldn’t find funding. Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs decided to invest on the product which Ozzie created that became known as Lotus Notes. The company’s primary funding came from a contractual relationship with Lotus Development. Lotus funded development of Iris Associates’ product in exchange for a future option to purchase exclusive intellectual property, marketing and sales rights.

            After Iris Associates was acquired by Lotus Development, Ozzie started another company which was Groove Networks. The common theme both Iris and Groove was the fact that the ideas were not based on technology but on a need he saw for users for the product.

            One thing I learned from Ozzie is about what he said, “You’re on this mission together. Everyone has to feel that and you have to hire people who are willing to believe in something they are trying to accomplish. But what held people together was the belief that you’re really going to change the world. I think that’s the nature of many startups. You believe that what you are doing is going to have a dramatic impact. You might not exactly know how, but you really have a belief that keeps you going and going through many changes and a lot of uncertainty.” All of these startups started from an idea that you wanted or desire. Just like Ozzie, he always wanted to develop collaboration software of his own. And because of his strong will and determination he became successful. That’s why the people surrounding him believes in everything he does. But one thing that I think that can be prove wrong was that you cannot accomplish something completely on your own. Evan Williams somehow prove that wrong, because the time where in all of his employees leave the company and he was all alone, he was still able to keep the company running and eventually find a way to solve his problems. You just have to have a strong will, perseverance and determination in order to succeed.

            We should also appreciate other people’s skills because they are also going to help you start your company. You should have trust with your skills especially in what you’re good at and what other people are good in. We should always remember that people do things for the right reason. People do startups not because of money. They do it because they want to achieve something. And people don’t always succeed in startups. It’s a matter of learning from failure and striving hard for the future. Just like what Ozzie said, “It should about the mission. It should be about changing the world. It should be about how you can impact the lives of users, partners and employees themselves. It’s not just about this big payday.” All of us think of money if we are starting a startup but if we only think of money we won’t be successful and the company will not last long. Stating a startup should be touching other people’s lives and trusting other people’s skills.

LIM, MARYLYN GRACE C.

OOA

            Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs founded Lotus Development in 1982 after Kapor left his post as head of development at VisiCorp and selling all his rights to VisiPlot and VisiTrend products to VisiCorp. After Kapor left VisiCorp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. This was Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus 1-2-3 could handle larger spreadsheets and added integrated charting plotting and database capabilities.

            Lotus started when Kapor helped Eric Rosenfeld write a statistics routine that can ran on the Apple II. This was called Tiny Troll. The publisher of VisiCalc wanted to take Tiny Troll and they will rewrite and clean it up so that it would be a companion product to VisiCalc. Kapor became the product manager and he rewrites the Tiny Troll, which eventually become VisiPlot.

            Kapor thought of putting the VisiCalc and VisiPlot on a single disk so that it would be less troublesome for the users. But the people who did VisiCalc weren’t interested in it at all. The people who did VisiCalc were not interested because they had serious technical backgrounds nad a bunch of computer science training. They know what they were doing and they had the hot product. While Kapor is not as good as they are.

            Kapor left the VisiCorp and met Jonathan Sachs, who had implemented spreadsheets previously but there was no market for that. Kapor convinced Sachs to work with him. Kapor had the royalties and they both have some ideas, so they thought that they might be successful. Then they created Lotus 1-2-3.

            One thing that surprised him was that their original business plan called for 3 million to 4 million dollars in sales. But during the first year of Lotus’ operations, the company achieved revenues of 53 million dollars and had a successful public offering in 1984. The company tripled in revenue the following year to 150 million dollars. Lotus 1-2-3 became the most powerful spreadsheet program available. The sales were huge, turning Lotus into the largest independent software vendor in the world in just one day. They were very surprised how fast the success was.

            How do startups become successful? Maybe it’s because of their strong will, perseverance determination and wanting to achieve their goals helped them become successful in life. Sometimes the desire for simple things can help you become successful. At first, Kapor only wanted to have an Apple II then he wanted to try to do something that could stand up well. All of the startup came from failure before it become successful.

            The advice that Kapor gave was almost the same as what Ozzie said, “The most important thing for me is, I don’t want to work with someone who says, just help me make the business be more successful.” This means that the person who only wants the business to be successful only thinks of money. In the business world we should learn to work with entrepreneurs who are personally passionate, committed and believe in what they’re doing. Startup is not just about business but it is also about helping other people. We should be the person who is going to create something that actually has value for people in a way that can be a game changer.