How I created a software company worth $ 350 million without knowing anything about software (Part 1)

The second part is here .

I always dreamed of making a big fortune and doing wonderful things, I wanted people to pay attention to me. I just did not know how to come to this.

Many of my friends who founded their own companies told me about how they showed entrepreneurial qualities as a child - they sold sweets, worked in the summer for harvesting, etc. They started earning early and learned about the strength of hard work.
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But I could not get through this. I created a horse racing simulation game on Applesoft BASIC in the computer class at Manhattan Beach Middle School and collected the stakes. But who could blame me? Teachers left this room completely unattended during breaks and lunches, as if they could not have imagined that any child could get into trouble by playing with huge computers.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that I was able to get money to buy an endless stream of Atari games, and I still learned how to collect tribute from eighth-graders who were bigger than me, all this did not teach me anything about how to build IT -company By the time I decided to move to San Francisco, I had no idea about that.

My ability to select the right moments also went nowhere. By the time I was in the labor market, the boom of Internet companies had already passed, leaving many smart people out of work and catching up with the wave of the crisis of venture capital firms. Many people left the San Francisco Bay area, leaving home, but I was too stupid to understand the sound logic of decisions made by people.

I settled into a discount brokerage office where we were just two weeks taught how to trade stocks online at one of the call centers in San Diego. It was then that I was visited by a great idea (if you do not take into account the fact that it was great after several changes).

The call center manager, who was following our training, was about thirty; he had a smug grin all day, day after day. “The system I teach you costs about 30 thousand dollars per person,” he mentioned it several times. He constantly smirked smugly, and I despised him.

The idea struck me that if I could develop cheaper software for call centers, I could create my own software development company - and thus take revenge from a self-satisfied manager.

Apparently, heaven itself heard my thoughts, because I was soon called by my former roommate in college, to whom I gave the nickname "African" (I give nicknames to everyone to whom I have a strong affection). This boaster told me that the call center software development startup in which he worked was absorbed by Cisco.

He also noticed that he was not able to stay in a startup at a later stage of its development, but he understood the principles of work and opportunities, so he encouraged me to fly to Boston in order to discuss the creation of our own startup. “In the end, you are good at selling shit,” he said.

I wasn't sure if it was a compliment, but I bought a plane ticket.

We spent the whole weekend discussing our dreams and human feelings and finally inspired each other so much that both of them decided to quit their job right from Monday. I hurried to report my decision to the authorities.

Then something strange happened. African did not answer my calls all Monday. On Wednesday, he finally called me and mumbled shyly: “Dude ... You know what? I decided that now is not the best time for me to leave work. I'm serious. Sorry".

There were 5 thousand dollars in my bank account, and I seriously thought about spending a thousand on a re-flight to Boston and smashing it well. Instead, after talking, I hit the wall. Maybe even several times in a row.

Then I called him back and asked him as calmly as I could, if he knew anyone else from his recently absorbed startup who might want to create a software development company with me. I reminded him that I was selling pretty shit. He introduced me to the "Alkash", which, as it turned out, was heading to my edges for snowboarding in Tahoe.

When we met at the Heavenly Ski Resort, I discovered that he is obviously a very talented guy who does not like corporate life and has an unrestrained love for various types of recreation that could hardly be fully legal in the state of California. But we are all imperfect.

He explained to me that he and African worked at a startup that developed software for call centers — the age-old industry in which they had revolutionized, adding .com to the name of the company.

Since I was now an entrepreneur (unemployed), I told him that we only needed to recreate the software of this class, and he agreed. We must pay tribute to him - he struck me by sending a letter to his boss on soap and quitting that evening. A few weeks later, he sold his home in Boston and bought a new one in the San Francisco Bay area.

But what made him such a brilliant programmer and risk-taker also at times made him an unsurpassed asshole. He did not know anything about software development companies, and at the same time he answered many of my questions with a counter question: “Are you an idiot?”

Alone, I met many depressive evenings, often watching my favorite film “Escape from the Shoushenk” - again and again, staring blankly at the screen. Perhaps, watching Andy Dufrein’s sufferings, I convinced myself that my own situation was not so tragic.

It was obvious that I needed help (more precisely, therapy). Therefore, I turned to my former boss at a brokerage firm asking if he knew any business angels.

Fortunately, he introduced me to his beloved client (intraday trader), and told him that I was a promising entrepreneur, and Drunk was a terrific engineer (which he actually was). With all the passion I had, I told the investor about my plans to build a successful software development company or die on the way to the goal, and since I still have the self-preservation instinct, then ...

Our future investor pointed to a photo of a small private plane that hung in his office: “I want you to help me buy it.” Then he wrote a check for 150 thousand dollars, and we officially received funding.

Then we hired a “Machine” (engineer number 2), and I moved with him to an apartment that was located in Twin Peaks in San Francisco. The main purpose of this was that in this way I could stand above his soul so that he would be engaged in programming day and night. And as soon as my two engineers created the beta version of our call center software, I started calling the call center owners with promises to provide cheaper software.

After a huge number of failures, I myself wanted to surrender.

After I made more than two thousand calls with an offer to buy our software, I finally heard the voice of a person ready for conversation. Joe was the owner of a small but successful call center in the city of Provo, Utah. He realized that I was bluffing, and we don’t have a finished product yet, but he believed that we could create it - only the price should be half the price I told him.

The second part is here .