Bill Bither's Insights : Entrepreneurship

Reflection on Growing Atalasoft in 2010

Bill Bither — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 20:59:50 GMT

Just over eight years ago, I left my job as a mechanical systems engineer at Hamilton Sundstrand on the hunch that I could build a successful software company. I learned a lot working in a large aerospace company, and was proud of my work. My last job was a systems engineer on the Convergent Nozzle Actuation System (CNAS) for the Joint Strike Fighter. See the photo below*.

I spent the entire previous year in 2002 learning to become a new dad, and building Atalasoft on nights and weekends. I barely slept! My day started at 6:45am where I would wake up and head to the office. I’d be home by 6 and spend a couple hours with my wife helping out with the baby. At about 7:30 or 8, I was programming until about 2:00 – 2:30am where I’d feed the baby and get to bed. Weekends were pretty much all programming and I survived on 4-hours of sleep. At the end of 2002, I realized I was earning more money at Atalasoft than I was as an engineer. My measure of success was to make a six figure income, and I was easily doing that between two jobs, and managed to pay off my credit card debt. In January my 401K was vested after being with the company 5 years. I knew I could pay my mortgage and other bills on my 2002 Atalasoft income of $85,000, so I walked out that door in January 2003 as a 28 year old clueless entrepreneur with the mission to build the first Imaging Toolkit for .NET developers.

Fast forward eight years, and here I am looking back at 2010**. What a remarkable year! After a flat 2009, our 2010 sales growth was 48%. Like most companies, 2009 was a particularly challenging year and the first time our growth trend turned upside down. IT budgets were frozen and companies weren’t buying anything – including Toolkits for their developer teams. It impacted us, but we overcame the challenge by focusing on profitability and NOT laying off our workforce. I’ll write a future post specifically about how we managed to reduce our expenses to get out of the slump and end up with a profitable 2009 with record breaking Q3 and Q4’s.

We made some changes in late 2009 and in the beginning of 2010 that accelerated the growth of our toolkit business, enabling us to achieve nearly 50% sales growth. Significantly growing an established company in one year generally requires making some pretty aggressive changes that always has the chance of backfiring. We bit the bullet and made these changes anyway. They included decreasing our SDK costs, requiring active maintenance to deploy runtime royalty free to desktops, and offering an OEM license that allows any type of server deployment for a reasonable fixed yearly fee. I can now tell you these changes were very successful. The chart below speaks for itself.

Since I founded the company, our financial goals have constantly increased. First it was to make more money than my engineering salary, then to hit $1 million in sales, and a few years later it was $5 million. In 2009, the goal quickly changed to just remain profitable! Today, I know we have the team, the vision, the customers, and the resources that will bring Atalasoft to the next milestone of $10 million in sales. Not in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be in this position when I walked out the door of Hamilton Sundstrand eight years ago. I owe my loving family, my brilliant team, and our great customers for making this a reality. I truly look forward to continuing this trend in 2011, meeting our new employees and customers, and having a lot of fun along the way!

* - Since I left, I believe they have gone through at least 3 more iterations, and it’s STILL not in production.
** – My family and I took a 2 week vacation in January before my wife went back to her PhD studies, so my reflection occurred a bit later than normal

Atalasoft, Inc. - 5 Years Old

Bill Bither — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:48:24 GMT

Wow, has life changed since Atalasoft, Inc. was incorporated in August 2002, just over 5 years ago. The turning point for me in founding Atalasoft was the aftermath of 9/11. I did not want to be at the mercy of a large corporation in aerospace facing a downturn. I would seek a new challenge with a simple vision. I realized Microsoft was putting a lot of energy into .NET and it was the next step for software development. I also recognized that Imaging was an interesting and emerging field; one that I had taken a keen interest in. And finally that software was the best way to create a company with minimal startup funds. The vision was to create a company that would leverage Microsoft's new .NET developer framework by offering the best possible imaging technology to .NET developers. I didn't perform any market research, I didn't care about any competitors. I'd like to say that I knew an easy-to-use imaging toolkit for .NET would open the door for other ISV's to create vertical document management solutions, and that the industry would continue to grow at an increasing rate. But I had no idea, just a vision and a goal. The goal of building a company that would provide a better life for myself and my new family.

Today, all I can say is WOW. What luck!! I can honestly state that we have the best .NET Imaging technology on the market highlighted by our ASP.NET Imaging Technology for Viewing and Annotating documents with a zero footprint thin-client.

In 2007, Atalasoft's revenue grew by 57% (previous year's growth was 60%). Since inception, Atalasoft has been profitable and has never taken on outside funding other than a few small bank loans. Sure, we have had our share of growing pains. We are about to grow out of our 3rd office space in 4 years. We've had to change our phone system and telecom provider to support our growing workforce, and had some recent unplanned phone outages (sorry for any missed calls). In maintaining my role as President and CEO, I'm no longer engineering software, but spending more time engineering a business. To me, it's the same thing, but an even greater ongoing challenge that continues to keep me up into the wee hours; not because I have to, but because I want to.

Obviously our goals have continued to evolve over the years, but our vision has remained the same. It's been written down, refined, and the words change frequently, but however you want to word it, we are still about providing value to .NET developers that are building solutions that require the use of advanced imaging and document technology. Will this vision maintain our 60% growth for the next 5 years? Please stay tuned!

Financial Stability of a Bootstrapper

Bill Bither — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:40:19 GMT

This past week the high tech firm GetConnected of Boston suddenly closed their doors after eight years and $20 million in funding. This left over 100 employees unemployed. I'm sure these former employees wont have too much of a problem finding a job in today's economy, but how could this happen in the first place? Atalasoft is a bootstrapped company, and hasn't taken any outside funding. Some clients look at this lack of outside investment as a problem with stability. Why should a client of ours spend tens of thousands of dollars on a company that doesn't have a significant financial backing?

Since the inception of Atalasoft, it was critical from day one to be profitable. How can this be done without a significant boost of capital? This is the tough part, but it can be done! In my case, I continued to work my day job building a small source of revenue for the company on the side that could eventually sustain myself and my family. After a year I left my day job on good terms and with revenue growing at a good clip. It only took a month to hire the first two employees. I only hired them when I had the revenue to support them.

The first few years were tough, no doubt, but we had a good idea, a good team, and better yet, the revenue to support it. I suppose an advantage I had over some starting out is that my standard of living wasn't too high. I had only worked in the engineering field for 5 years and was guaranteed not to get a raise after 9/11. My salary wasn't even close to 6 figures. It didn't take that much to make ends meet.

These first few years really shaped the company. Banks wouldn't finance us because we didn't have a track record or any tangible assets. I didn't have wealthy family or friends. I was also unwilling to give up equity for early stage investment, and quite frankly, at the time I was more interested in developing the product versus meeting with investors. Atalasoft grew organically. We only hired new employees when we could afford them. Did we take risks? Absolutely. But they were measured risks. Not all of them were worthwhile, but because most were, we succeeded. That's because we had to be. If I failed, I'd have to go back to my former job with a LOT of debt and tail between my legs.

Today, our company continues to grow at a rate of about 75% per year in revenue. Most of our profits are invested back into the company which is how we continue to innovate and grow. Unlike some VC backed startups, we have learned to be careful with spending, take measured risks, and manage the company our way. As a result, we have had virtually no turnover, we've outgrown 3 office spaces, I field calls from Venture Capitalists every other day, and now banks are more than willing to extend us financing that suits our immediate needs.

When investigating a company's financial backing as a decision metric (whether it be to work for, or do business with), consider the stability of a company grown to 20 employees without outside investment forced to be profitable to stay in business vs. a company of 100 employees burning through 20 million in multiple rounds of VC funding. This isn't to say that Venture Funding is always a bad idea as there are plenty of examples of successful VC backed companies. Even Atalasoft could take a form of outside investment at some point for the right reasons. However, in the example of GetConnected stated in the first paragraph, the sign on the front door reads "CLOSED. Good-bye ALL." Which basket would you put your eggs in?

Leveraging Emerging Technology as a Foundation for your Startup Software Company

Bill Bither — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:41:00 GMT

There are many software engineers who are unhappy with their current jobs or seeking a greater challenge. Many dream of starting their own company and are at a loss for that revolutionary idea. If you have an idea and it's truly unique, patentable, and has a viable and proven market, congratulations, you've achieved the first step. You probably do not need to leverage another technology in this case. However, most entrepreneurs aren't quite that brilliant and would benefit from building on the momentum of an emerging technology. This is especially the case if you are looking to avoid venture by bootstrapping.

This is exactly how Atalasoft was founded. The emerging technology we leveraged was the Microsoft's .NET Framework in 2002/2003, and my idea was to develop a document management and imaging toolkit specifically for Microsoft .NET developers. It was a gap that needed to be filled and would be filled by another company if we didn't act quickly. The idea wasn't unique and it wasn't patentable (although we have patents now, but that came later). The technology was new enough that it gave me time to compile a small team, develop a competitive product, and deliver, all before industry players could react. We became the first to market an imaging toolkit for Microsoft .NET and our strategy for leveraging emerging technology worked.

The Microsoft .NET Framework is no longer new, but it didn't take long for me to come up with five new technologies that a developer could leverage as the foundation for a new company:

1) A few weeks ago Microsoft released Windows Vista; their first new OS in 6 years with some really cool new features for developers including Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). I was reading an article in the Boston Globe the other day titled The Vista Effect about a study that claims for every $1 spent on the Vista Operating system, it's partners will sell $18.61 in products and services.

2) Dual core processors are now powering even the cheapest of new computers, with very few applications that take advantage of them. Developing a faster alternate solution to an existing problem by taking advantage of multi-core processors with parallelized programming is a great opportunity for a new business. Think of all the applications that could use a performance boost from everyday consumer apps to industry specific vertical apps.

3) The concept of a computer in every living room is coming to life with Microsoft's Vista Media Center, Windows Home Server, and Apple's iTV. This is a huge opportunity to develop consumer software for the living room that could end up in millions of homes. A PC in every living room opens the door for many product opportunities for home automation. Personally I'm not much of a gadget geek, but I love the media center at home, and the idea I can develop applications to extend the media center. Our new house is going to have media center "extenders" in a few rooms to stream music and video. There are many applications I'd love to see in this area that are just not available yet.

4) Many cell phones and other mobile devices now pack more power than most high end PC's from less than 10 years ago. However the applications that run on these mobile devices are much more limited than the applications we had on desktops then. Mobile application development has had a slow start, but it's about time for the software to catch up with the hardware.

5) Let's face it. There's a lot of money to be made in niche business applications. Leverage the extensibility of the SAAS success story salesforce.com, and develop your own hosted business application based on their AppExchange platform. Your application will be marketed by Salesforce and available to thousands of companies desperately looking for solutions for their business application problems.

This list illustrates technologies that I am familiar with and are bound to grow or are already experiencing growth. The list could go on and on as the opportunities for new software applications are endless.

The Downsides...

Yes, there are downsides. For one, don't expect to create the next billion dollar company. Although I'm sure it's possible, it's certainly not likely if you are planning on leveraging another company's technology. You'll never grow as big as that company.

The other downside is that whatever idea you decide on, there will probably be at least one or more competitors looking to obtain the same market. You must be the first at something. Differentiate!

Whatever idea that you decide to go with, you better love it, because if you are successful you will be living and breathing this idea and industry for many years to come. I'm sure we'll see more companies like YouTube, NetFlix, and Flickr, but chances of success are a lot greater when leveraging emerging technology.

Starting a Software Company Outside a Startup Hub

Bill Bither — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 05:51:00 GMT

According to Paul Graham's article The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups, startups prosper in some places and not others. The startup "hubs" are in order: Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, Austin, Denver, and New York. There are most certainly advantages to starting a company in one of these areas, in particular Silicon Valley or Boston. However, there are also advantages to starting a software company outside of a startup hub. In this article, I'll relate to my own experiences starting a software company in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts as opposed to the startup hub in Boston, only a 1.5 hour drive away.

There are many reasons to start a company in the Boston area, namely the fact that it's the #2 destination for software startups, has the worlds top universities, home to hundreds of software companies, and hosts a huge pool of tech talent. Boston is a great city with history, wealth, and many attractions. I know this first hand because I frequently travel to Boston, just as I do New York. Either city is a day trip from Western Mass.

However I argue that there are just as many reasons to start a company in Western Mass as there is in Boston. Maybe even more. Here are 7 reasons why I believe Western Mass is a great place to start a software company. I believe the same argument holds true in other desirable areas to live with an educated workforce near an existing a startup hub.

1. Office Space is Cheaper

Despite being a mere 1.5 hours away, real estate in Western Mass is 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of that in Boston. This includes land, buildings, class A space, and residential housing (source, Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council). Leasing office space ranges anywhere from $3 - $10 per square in towns adjacent to Springfield and Northampton to $10 - $15 per square in space in Springfield and Northampton.

2. Salaries are Lower

Although closely related to the cost of living being lower, salaries for experienced and degreed computer scientists and engineers are much lower in Western Mass than in Boston. In today's global economy, the urge to offshore development is very high. As engineer's salaries go up, so does the pressure for founders and business leaders to send development offshore. Offshoring does not fit within the culture of our company at Atalasoft, nor does it fit my personal ambitions. By not having to pay very high salaries, we can stay competitive, and employ a team of highly skilled engineers in our own office providing better products and services, and serve our local community.

3. New England's Knowledge Corridor

There are 32 higher education institutions in the Hartford/Springfield area producing 25,000 graduates each year, one of the highest concentrations in America. Very important to software startups, are computer science graduates. UMASS in Amherst, which has a wonderful computer science program, graduates students who are recruited by the software giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Many students I speak with graduating from these schools would love to stay in the area, but cannot due to the lack of good software development jobs.

4. Shorter Commutes

The average commute to Boston or San Francisco from suburban areas is likely to be an hour and a half. Personally, I can't imagine driving more than 30 minutes to work, and I never had more than a 20 minute commute in my 10+ years living and working in the area.

5. Outdoor Lifestyle

City life isn't for everyone. Western Massachusetts appeals to an active lifestyle, with activities such as hiking, cycling, kayaking, skiing, fishing, and boating. The Connecticut river valley offers a host of rail trails, perfect for the lunch-time run or rollerblade. Again, quoting Paul Graham in his essay How to be Silicon Valley, "Most nerds like quieter pleasures. They like cafes instead of clubs; used bookshops instead of fashionable clothing shops; hiking instead of dancing; sunlight instead of tall buildings." Where in Boston can you look out your office window for a mountain view, enjoy a peaceful hour lunch run or walk on the Manhan Rail Trail, or enjoy a coffee at a local coffee shop, all in the same block?

6. Urban Centers

Northampton boasts a unique cultural downtown center with shopping, restaurants, arts, entertainment and nightlife rivaling those of major urban centers. Nearby Springfield is the 3rd largest City in Massachusetts and home of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and the Springfield Armory.

7. Loyal Employees

Cities are great for young people. However after settling down, married couples tend to move to suburbia to raise a family. In Boston and other major cities, suburbia requires buying a house you usually cannot afford and driving over an hour to work (yes, this was covered in reason 1 and 4 above). In suburban areas such as Western Mass, there is no need to relocate, housing is cheap, and employees tend to stay with one company longer, sometimes for their entire career.

While I point out some great reasons to start a company, I shouldn't fail to mention the unique challenges that are faced when starting a software company outside a startup hub. Here are 3 challenges to starting a software company outside a software hub.

1. Lack of Venture Funding

Silicon Valley and Boston have hundreds of venture capitalists ready to invest money in software companies with viable (or sometimes unviable) business plans. However they typically like to invest in companies within an hour of where they live. Driving a couple hours to a board meeting isn't all that appealing. There are other ways to start a company, such as Bootstrapping it yourself, and there are a few venture capitalists in our area such as Village Ventures. However today I field phone calls from Venture Capitalists all the time, none of them local. I'm really not sure this is a real problem in Western Mass.

2. Lack of Experienced Developers

So far Atalasoft has been fortunate in finding some very experienced employees from companies such as Adobe, Excite, and other smaller startups. However there is a limited pool of developers with this level of experience in the area, and attracting people to the area can be a challenge. So far, the pool hasn't run dry, and I continue to meet very experienced developers, many of whom have recently relocated from New York, Boston, and even Silicon Valley for the very reasons I state above. If the pool does happen to run out, there is a constant supply of very talented developers graduating from UMASS in Amherst. We attend UMASS career fairs and have hired some graduates. We bank our company's future on UMASS being 20 minutes from our office doors.

3. Lack of Supporters

I have to admit, I feel a little alone at this. There just are not that many other software companies in our area for me to share war stories with, or to seek advice from. I have met a few, and would like to meet others. There are some great local technology groups in this area involving some budding and more established companies such in the RTC, Hidden-Tech, Western Mass .NET Users Group, and Java-Python Developers Group. If you are involved in a software startup company in Western Mass, and I haven't already met you, please contact me! I would love to share war stories, take advice, and if you care to listen, even give advice.

I certainly expect that Atalasoft will continue to grow and employ more and more highly paid software developers and other technology professionals in Western Massachusetts. Possibly just the beginning of a new wave of startups that understand that the advantages of settling just outside a startup hub in an area such as the Pioneer Valley can in many cases outweigh the disadvantages. I hope this article can help with that decision and help entice other startup companies to join me and branch away from the startup hubs.

Another Bootstrapper

Bill Bither — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:35:00 GMT

I was reading Paul Graham's blog today and was pointed to a fellow entrepreneur and bootstrapper, Mike Taber with his article Startups for the Rest of us. Mike outlines a few problems with looking to Y Combinator to fund a software startup. The main problems are competition, relocation requirement, and giving up 6% of your company for $6000. The program really seems great for students, but what about the "rest of us"?

To summarize what Mike said, those with a family, a career, or even kids, can't take advantage of Y Combinator to start a business, but it *is* possible without VC. It takes dedication, you need to be a decent developer, and you need a little money. I couldn't have said it better. Here's my take on Mike's points.

Dedication

I've said it before in my article, 5 Personality Traits of an Entrepreneur. Motivation, perseverance, and dedication is key to success.

You need to be a decent developer

This is a good point. I can say I was a pretty good developer, but not the best. A jack of all trades, master of none. I am self taught. My mechanical engineering background really helped formulate solutions to problems, establish requirements, and architect an application, but it didn't help in learning OOP, and design patterns. That I learned by reading and doing. Luckily I've hired smarter people than me to write the majority of the code.

You need a little bit of money

Yes, this is true. But I started with no money. In fact, a fair amount of debt. One motivation for starting my business was to get out of debt and in order to do that I had to dive even farther into debt. Luckily I had a lot of credit. That's probably one advantage I had being more established with a house, a wife, a kid, and a full time job. Multiple credit cards with very high limits!

The fact is, some ideas are worth VC and some aren't. I've just added Mike Taber to my blog roll, and he's only 40 minutes east of us in Worcester, MA. May our paths cross someday.

Venture Funding versus Bootstrapping

Bill Bither — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 02:36:00 GMT

There is a bit of a debate going on about the importance of Venture Capitalists in today's economy versus bootstrapping a company yourself over at Venture Voice. I strongly feel that it totally depends on the expectations and market of the company. More on that in a bit.

Yesterday's interview was with Bo Peabody, founder of tripod which was purchased by Lycos for $58M back in '96. Going to high school in Western Massachusetts, and college at Rensselaer just 30 minutes from Williams, Tripod and Bo Peabody is probably the most amazing local success story in the area. Bo was challenged by the host of Venture Voice, Greg Galant, of the need for Venture Capitalists as declared by Joel Spolsky (founder of Fog Creek Software) in his interview on Venture Voice a few weeks earlier. Joel stated that venture capital was broken, and there is no longer a need for it. I disagree.

Bo brought up some interesting points, namely that now VC's are looking for companies that have already established themselves with a working product or service, and that funding is required for marketing the product. What he is really saying is that companies still need to bootstrap themselves enough to develop a working product. That's the easy (and cheap) part. Hell, if you're young enough you can do it for next to nothing. If you're a little older with a family, then it's a lot more difficult, but still very possible. I'd say I'm a testament to that. The next step, marketing the product, is what gets tricky. Lets now ask a simple question:

"Does my product idea have an established market?"

or to put it another way

"Does my product idea have a viable competitor?"

If your answer to either of those questions is "yes", then most likely, you're not going to find an interested VC. But... the good news is since your product is certainly better than the competition, you still have a fighting chance. In fact, a much better chance than if your answer was "no". It's time to open your pocketbook, max out your credit cards, and talk to your rich family and friends (if you are so lucky). My company, Atalasoft, was based on this principle, and so was FogCreek, SourceGear, and many other companies yet to be referenced in my blog.

If your answer to the above questions is "no", then that is when you must look at VC for the next step. A product with no market means that millions will have to be spent in marketing for potential customers to realize the benefits of your product. Otherwise, there almost certainly already is a competitor in the space in which case please see the "yes" paragraph above. Before listening to Bo Peabody's interview, I would have guessed that the market should be greater than $250M or so for a VC to be interested. However Bo's VC company, Village Ventures seems to be funding companies with expectations much less than this. That's good news for us entrepreneurs. Now I can come up with a truly unique vertical product, for an emerging technology with a market today that might be non-existent, set my sight on a company revenue of say, $100M in 5 years, then make that 45 minute drive to Williamstown, MA and propose my business plan. All hypothetical of course!

5 Personality Traits of an Entrepreneur

Bill Bither — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 02:34:00 GMT

Do you have what it takes to start a business? If you do a web search on "Type A Personality" I think you'll find that most definitions include the word "entrepreneur" in them. There are a number of different personality tests. The Meyer's Briggs test is popular, but it seems to be a little more abstract then the "type" tests. Traditionally, there was either Type A or Type B. But I found one description on the web that separated personalities into 4 types. I personally like this rating system. My readers digest version, with some of my own additions, is as follows:

Type A personalities are the leaders, risk takers, and independent thinkers. They don't like to waste time with the details, and often look for better ways to solve problems or as the saying goes "to build a better mousetrap". A type "A" person can multitask, moving from one thought to another and back without missing a beat. These people dislike routine, but will take on a routine task in order to achieve a greater goal.

Type B personalities are the socializers, love to be part of groups, and be the center of attention. Many TV and radio personalities and great speakers are Type B. It's important for Type B people to be well liked and are talkative and outgoing.

Type C personalities are very detail-oriented. Your stereotypical accountant, engineer, and programmer is type C. They are very neat, orderly, and sometimes predictable. A type "C" personality will check all the facts before making a decision.

Type D personalities are resistant to change, and do not mind doing the same thing every day. They are content and compassionate. I would say underachievers fall into this category.

It takes so much motivation, risk taking, and challenge to start a new business, that I dare say one has to be Type A to successfully start a business. A Type B or C might be successful if they have some Type A traits or a partner who is Type A. A Type D person wouldn't even be reading this.

My Take on 5 Personality Traits of an Entrepreneur

Desire to build a better mousetrap
Willing to take risks
Supportive family and friends
Motivated to a point of being obsessive
Jack of all trades, master of none

Desire to Build a Better Mousetrap

The most obvious of all traits. The desire to improve a process, a product, or revolutionize an industry is usually what gets us excited about the idea in the first place. That doesn't mean you have to have an idea to be an entrepreneur, but you must have the desire to discover that idea.

Willing to Take Risks

I can't stress how important this is. When running a business, especially high tech and software, risks must be taken every day. The challenge is deciding which risk to take. The first risk is leaving your comfy day job. That initial step is required, and also one of the most difficult to make. However it isn't as big a risk as one might be led to believe. If you're working for a larger company, you're liable to be their "shining star", one of their few employees that could easily climb the corporate ladder. As long as you don't burn your bridges, they will probably hire you back if your start-up business fails.

Some risks an entrepreneur might take are for example, hiring an employee whom you can only afford if sales increase as you plan. In fact every hiring decision that's made in a small company is a risk. The last thing you need is a lawsuit on your hands. Most risks are financial in some way, but there are others, like the risk of telling your large client how many employees you have, or taking on that consulting job to pay the bills, letting your core product development slide.

Supportive Family and Friends

Starting a company can really take an emotional toll on you and your family, and consume nearly all your time. It's probably best to start a business before a spouse and kids, however don't let that stop you. I did it with a newborn baby and could only have done it with a supportive wife. I was able to work 100+ hour weeks for an entire year while she took care of practically everything else. I could spend a couple hours of time with my family in the evening, then get back to it after everyone went to bed. There is a balance here though, as it's important to take some time out to be with your family. My wife understood my vision and made the sacrifice, just as I had done.

Motivated to the Point of Being Obsessive

Whether you are bootstrapping a company yourself or seeking venture funding, motivation is the key ingredient to be a successful entrepreneur. Did you always have at least one interest that consumed you? Have you been a competitive athlete, dedicating a few years of your life to being the best you could be? In college, were you apt to do whatever it took to pass (or get an A) in a course? Have you ever established a crazy goal like riding your bike across the country, and actually achieved that goal? If I were to interview a candidate to start a business, these are the types of experiences that I'd like to see.

I could have labeled this trait "motivated", but I don't think that's strong enough. Being motivated and obsessive about a difficult goal is usually what it takes to achieve that goal. Just make sure you obsess about the right things.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

When running a business, you'll be doing a little bit of everything. And you have to be good at everything you do. However you don't have to be a master of everything (in fact, I think that's impossible). If you are one to specialize in just one thing, then running a business might not be for you. You'll want to find a partner that's more versatile so you can concentrate entirely on your idea.

In my case, I'm a jack of all trades. I can design software, write software in a few languages, I'm pretty good in math, can get by in differential calculus even though it took a lot of work. I'm a pretty good engineer, a decent businessperson, I can get away with speaking and presenting, and I'm a fairly effective at writing. I'm not a master of any of these things, but each of of these abilities is crucial when running a company. If you need a master at something, you can eventually hire that person. I do my best to hire people that are smarter than me.

In Conclusion...

I am by no means an expert. I can only talk about personal experiences with my company, Atalasoft. The personality I outlined above is pretty much who I am and with that personality I was able to start a company in a tough market. If you don't fall into my narrow view of an entrepreneur's personality, please don't be discouraged! I'm sure every personality type has had some success in starting a business. I encourage anyone with a good idea and passion, to start a new business. It's rewarding in more ways than one. Feel free to comment and good luck!

Inception of a Company Name

Bill Bither — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 02:33:00 GMT

When I was a kid, growing up in rural upstate New York, I had this fond interest in butterflies. It seems to be an incredible geeky thing to do, even then. But I would spend my summer's chasing, collecting, and identifying these insects even participating in a scientific study documenting location and identifying species of all butterflies I came in contact with. Could life really have been that simple once? I was 9 years old and it was 1984. That year, my family took a 2 week vacation to the Everglades in Florida, and I found one of the rarest butterfly's in North America, the Atala.

Sixteen years later in April 2000 when I had a small shareware product to launch, called EyeBatch, I had to come up with a company name. At that point I knew nothing about running a business, let alone branding and naming a company. I happened to have my old butterfly book on a bookshelf, and as I was flipping through I came across the Atala. Remembering that day years back, I looked for the domain atala.com (it was taken) and decided on atalasoft. Little did I know that it would evolve into the successful company that it is today. If only I had known how often it would be confused with atlasoft or utalasoft. That's OK though, we are all very fond of the name, and have a great mascot and logo despite breaking so many of the accepted company naming rules!

We now use a local marketing firm, BidwellID, to help with our branding efforts. John Bidwell, the president and founder, has a white paper on this subject and is one of the best sources I have found on naming a company. John suggests that a good company name will:

distinguish you from your competition
create an immediate, positive image of your organization
help you be remembered
inspire images that later will take form in your organization’s logo, marketing campaigns, and other communications efforts
can help you dominate your organizational category (such as education, tableware, or wireless networking)

Additionally, the following points should be considered:

should be easy to spell.
should make a good nickname.
Aim for repetition of letters and sounds (For example, Apple and Dell both repeat a letter.)
The name should suggest the category into which your organization fits. (For example, it’s easy to guess what Rounder Records sells.) At the very least, your name should not suggest a category different from the organization’s.
The name should be easy to pronounce. Beware of foreign words and of English words that are too esoteric.

John mentions that a name should suggest a category. While this can be considered, I don’t think it's necessary for a company that is looking at establishing a brand for themselves. Look at names like Apple, Adobe, and Yahoo. They do not suggest a category, but even my grandmother knows who you're talking about when hearing them. Or you can pick a name that breaks almost all these rules and takes an entire blog entry to explain. It worked for us! Even if you are picking a company name for some silly product idea that you really have no plans on going anywhere, you never know where it could lead in a few years.