Moog's Viewpoints

Five lessons learned as an early stage entrepreneur

In my 16 year career (uggg, I must be getting old!), I spent 4 years at Microsoft in business development and then joined a start up (CoolSavings) as the VP of Sales and worked there for ten years, the last five as the CEO.  I ran CoolSavings as a public company with 150+ employees and while revenue exploded from $21 million to $80 million.  Then we took it private and I left to pursue my dream of starting from scratch, as the say -  tablua rasa or with a blank slate.  Now almost exactly two years later from absolutely nothing two years ago, Viewpoints Network has 12 full time employees, 750,000+ monthly users and as they say, the world is our oyster.   Allll right, I hear you, get to the point.  What are five lessons learned about starting an early stage start up?   

Why I Love Software As a Service

Six months ago I left my position as CEO of Q Interactive an Interactive Marketing Services company that I helped start ten years ago.  I ran it as a public company for the last five years and we took it private in December 2005.  We had 160 employees and last year reported revenue growth of 78% to $68 million.  Within two weeks of leaving in late July, I started a new company called Viewpoints Network and four weeks later had secured the first round of funding for $4.8 million.  This post is some of the nuts and bolts lessons I have learned about how to take advantage of the numerous new companies who offer their services as a “Software as A Service”.

First a little bit of background.  After having raised $100 million to launch and grow my previous company, I wanted to take a more measured approach this time.  I have come to appreciate and value very lean and efficient businesses that “stick to their knitting” and focus on improving their unique value add.  Therefore, I intended to keep the company very small (less than 15 people) for as long as I could.