Been Away

I’m back in Columbus for the week (my mom is doing much better), and trying to get back into the swing of things. Despite some pretty good progress with Call True, I’m once again back in a space where I feel stuck. It seems that most of our target customers are holding off on all decisions about their website until the 1st of the year. This is good in the sense it gives us a chance to get the “stage 1,” of our product completed. But it is bad when you’re very impatient like me. I want people to sign up with us now, and love it. I did have a fantastic meeting on Monday with Rich Langdale, a principal in the venture capital firm NCT ventures. Rich’s story was quite an impressive one. He set out to create a holographic printing distribution company back in 1986 while still in college. True to the entrepreneur inside him, he sold his Honda to raise $5,000 for the company’s startup. While he never found a market for holographic printers, he did build an international digital storage wholesaling powerhouse over the course of 15 years before selling in 2001. The whole key to his success was constant adaptation. He told me that a 5 year plan is a necessity for a startup company, but a good startup will not follow a 5 year plan through. Even google did not complete their 5 year plan (They had planned to license their search technology to companies and other search engines) I’ll admit that the planning aspect of the business is not something I’m really crazy about. It’s way too easy to seek out the activities that have more immediate impacts, such as sales and assistance with developing our program. But on the other hand I’ll do anything I have to do to keep this company rolling. It’s all in my head. I can see this company changing the way companies connect with their customers forever. By remembering that, it’s pretty cool to work out of a coffee shop for now. Everything big has a little beginning.