Soapbox: About the Industry

Anyone Can Be an Internet Success-- Why Aren't You?

by Sandy Antunes
August 7, 2001

The recent internet "Gilded Age" is perhaps the best example of American spirit there is. Anyone, with a good idea and hard work, has the potential to become a millionnaire. Indeed, my story is just like many you may have already read. I have a paper worth of $10 million dollars, the result of three years of dedicated, even evangelical 24/7 work.

But I think it's important to point out how, unlike with previous decades, the internet has removed the usual barriers of business. It really is "Joe Everyman" who can do things, because everyone is equal in cyberspace. You can't guess where the next internet millionnaire will come from-- could be you, your folks, your neighbor. It's all in the idea-- and a hell of a lot of hard work. But if you drive yourself hard enough, you can grab that brass ring.

Our idea for a business was simple. "Virtual Vapourware", a niche no one had tapped. What if, instead of companies always announcing products then missing release dates, a B2B portal site was created that tracked their schedule delays and produced stopgap solutions in order to maintain their internet revenue stream? Why, eliminating the deadline churn rate alone would be an essential service, and we could handle this for them under a co-branded vertical net!

Such a simple idea, and we knew that we'd have to move quickly, before someone else was first to market with the idea. I first checked with my wife-- this was a big step, starting my own company, and I knew it would take a toll on our family life. But she knew what it meant to me, that this just wasn't something I could let pass us by. With her blessing, then, I set about building a company from scratch.

I got together two of my Harvard college buddies to form our team. Seth had been pre-law at Harvard, and Nancy was a networking guru. I would take the burden of managing the entire affair, as well as doing late-night coding so we could be web-live within 90 days.

Seth's folks loaned us the first $100k of seed money just so we could get our bare-bones setup going. With Nancy handling the hardware and setting up the actual web site, I began doing rough prototype code on a cheap $5k Dell in a rented flat that we got for a mere $3k/month plus "the promise of options", which has replaced security deposits as a standard fixture in office leases. Seth was handling all the legal work and also, like us, doing coding in the evening for the website.

Nancy had met with a few friends in the network trade, and they thought their company (Cisco Routers) might be able to introduce to a few folks. A little 'down home' networking at their Texas office later, and we came off realizing two things.

First, our idea was gold; the techie supervisors at their front office there really liked it. And second, we'd have to get some serious capital if we were to pull it off before anyone else.

I was by then flying around so much-- Texas to meet with the Cisco people, Silicon Valley to talk to some of Nancy's classmates over at a rival startup, New York to meet with my Dad's banking firm. And all that travel was shooting holes into our programming timetable. So we brought in David, a programming guru from MIT. We'd always been rivals with David-- he and Seth had done crew for their respective schools. But for this venture, we were all in it together.

With David crunching the code, I was able to spend more time talking with potential customers. By then, we'd gone live with the initial site, and (thanks to a friendly article by our friend Kurt, who wrote for the Wall Street Journal), we had a client list of three Fortune 400 companies just begging for our product.

We hit a stumbling block then, sort of a Mexican Standoff. None of our potential clients were willing to commit to a sole-source contract unless we could guarantee a unique IP that could lock out their competitors. Without their full buy-in, though, we'd have to default on the $700k we'd been loaned for the Trademark application and patent filings on our system. And without the patent, we couldn't promise the IP!

We were literally at the brink of disaster. But it turned out David's grad school advisor back at MIT had a patent on infomapping that he was willing to license to us cheaply. It took a month of trips to New York to check in with my father's investment firm, but eventually we negotiated harsh terms for a float in anticipation of valuation, that freed up enough credit to pay for that license.

With the license, two of the 3 clients came on board. This gave us enough clout that we decided to have an impromptu meeting. Should we just continue this slow build, or make the big push to go public now? Over a hasty meal of ramen in our backstreet office, we didn't even have to put it to a vote. Only by going public could we continue to fuel the growth necessary to bring Virtual Vapourware to 'first light'.

Nancy then dialed up one of her ex-boyfriends, who was over at Microsoft, and wrangled a meeting with their vice CTO. Meanwhile, Seth arranged a meeting with a fraternity brother of his, a minor analyst in Kleimer-Perkins, in hopes that we could try and get an appointment with someone major there.

By then, we were almost totally out of cash. I had to borrow $2500 from my folks just to cover plane fare to the Valley, so we set up both meetings for the same day. It was all or nothing time-- either we'd score with both, or our entire venture was sunk.

It's really ironic. We were just three students, fresh out of school, who'd had a wacky idea and decide to try and make a business from it. And now, barely seven months from that first idea, and we were sitting in the main office of Microsoft, about to pitch our idea to one of the top-ranking people there. If he said yes, we'd have to dash to Kleimer-Perkins and get their approval. Our entire fate was in the hands of these power-brokers.

I tried to think of all the advice my folks had given me when growing up. Stand tall. Believe in yourself. And keep your cards close to your chest.

We totally blew away the Microsoft VP. Nancy had the best moment, when she 'let slip' that we had to wrap up things quickly because we had an appointment with Kleimer-Perkins. By then, the VP was so sold on our idea he'd have bought in at any price. We set up an appointment to close on the deal and rushed out before he could change his mind. But there was still Kleimer-Perkins to go.

To our total surprise, the meeting with them was a breeze. Turns out they'd already decided to back us, based on the MIT Patent we had rights to, and all we needed to do was figure out the IPO date! We all looked at each other. We'd done it!

From there, it was no picnic; between setting up our core office and the constant negotiations over contract and finance details, I was feeling like I was being pulled in five different directions. The attendents for Northwest Airlines practically knew me by name, and I barely managed to spend one night a week at home with my wife and kid. But they knew the payoff was coming soon, and so did I.

And sure enough, 8 months later, we floated a successful IPO for Virtual Vapourware, Inc. As I bounced my son on my knee, the little tickertape on the computer scrolled by with my (and his!) net worth... $40 a share on 25% equity for the company. And I knew Nancy and Seth were watching similar good news in their homes, watching the options we'd negotiated for them push their personal valuation into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You know, I'll always know it was the simple faith in myself that my mom and dad gave me, that let us succeed in the end. Because it really comes down to values. You have to have faith in yourself, and you have to be willing to push yourself, test your limits, just totally devote yourself to your work.

But if you have that, you can do it. In this Internet Age, we've all got a millionnaire inside of us. All you have to do is believe.

Until next month,
Sandy Antunes, sandy@rpg.net