Exposure to Closure 2024 - Chapter 5: How to Take On an Investor Without Getting Off Track
The Digital Age of High-Tech Business and Marketing
Welcome back to Exposure to Closure 2024, a tech entrepreneur’s rollercoaster ride of failures and successes.
In Chapter 4, we recalled the early 2000s’, technology, pivoting, and lessons to manage the ego. Now we delve into “Exposure”, and discuss marketing a product and service in a volatile and ever-changing digital world.
Launching Any Business is Not Cheap - You’ll Need Capital
Over the years, I have met a lot of startup entrepreneurs and inventors. If there is one common worry they all seem to have it is how to gain exposure for new products and services. Usually, the first thing that goes through an entrepreneur’s mind is, “I need an investor to help fund a sales and marketing campaign.”
The problem is, even if you had the investment money how would you spend it and ensure a return? Would you buy brochures, radio ads, TV spots, a cool website, pay-per-click ads on Google, or maybe hire a marketing firm?
Having a previous business that ruined what I thought was a good friendship, made me completely close-minded to taking on another partner for SCATE. Also, the last thing I wanted was an outside investor influencing or controlling financial decisions at our new company.
In 2003, while teaching college programming language courses (i.e. Perl, Flash) at night, I was introduced, by my friend Orlando, to an individual who owned a restaurant called Joe Kools. His name was Dan and like me, he grew up in Canada and still played hockey. These commonalities created an immediate connection.
So you see folks, life is all about hockey! 🏒 😂
Seriously though, after I told him about my little software technology company, he wanted to learn more about what we were building and how he could potentially help.
I kindly responded, “Thank you, but we don’t need much help!”
But that was not the end of it. Dan traveled around with me for about eight months. I started to wonder if this guy would ever go home. Dan was probably one of the most persistent dudes I had ever met, but, I liked him and was starting to trust his business advice. By the end of 2004, Dan became an employee and an investor. More importantly, he became a good friend and still is over twenty years later.
Branding - RCDS or Ignite?
With all the previous unplanned pivots, I was getting accustomed to changing gears. Directing an engineering department for a large automotive stamping supplier was one thing. Training engineers worldwide through e-learning solutions was a significant transition and required more work than I imagined. The important fact I didn’t realize, was that my latest move into the software tech world added a whole new level of complexity and competition that required an entirely new approach to sales and marketing.
Like most entrepreneurial newbies, I just figured that once our software was shrink-wrapped in a box and commercially released, we would have CompUSA or BestBuy knocking down our door wanting to sell our cool new software tool. Unfortunately, to my disappointment, that wasn’t the case. Unless you were Microsoft or Adobe, boxed software was no longer sold in the store; people now downloaded it from the web, tried it for free, and then bought it online.
This places all the marketing responsibility on the developer… a bunch of techies. How the heck were we going to compete against companies like Adobe and gain exposure for our product via the web?
The first problem was, that we didn’t even have a cool name for the product and I was certain the name “RCDS” would not be commercially successful. So, our CTO, Jeff decided to have a brainstorming session at our HQ with some trusted friends, and business associates. It went very well, and in less than an hour, the product was named Ignite, and the commercial software product was born.
Getting Completely Off Track
In March of 2005, Dan and I decided to take a nine-day trip to Coimbatore, India to present our Ignite software to five universities and a huge motorcycle parts manufacturer.
We had just spent significant money building out our new headquarters in Orion, MI. But with all the buzz about outsourcing, it seemed like India was the place we needed to visit.
This experience opened my eyes to how other people live, giving me a real appreciation for another culture. I remember driving down Coimbatore’s dusty dirt roads surrounded by a sea of motorcycles while witnessing families of 4 to 5 people on one bike clipping down the dirt road at 40 miles per hour. The lack of safety concerns was mind-blowing.
The objective of the India trip was to demonstrate to several universities and corporations our CATIA V5 e-learning courses we built with Ignite (RCDS).
Our first University stop was something to be remembered. We were brought into a huge auditorium and asked to connect to an old projector and a 14,400 dial-up modem. If you don’t know what 14,440 is, let’s say the slowest Internet speed known to humanity at that time.😉
As I fiddled around trying to connect to the modem, hundreds of people were now entering the auditorium. As the large audience settled into their seats, Dan began to speak and introduce me to the massive group of faculty and students. Meanwhile, at the edge of the stage, I frantically continued to start the online course for the demonstration.
But, it wasn’t working!
It was taking over 10 minutes just to bring up the main course webpage on our web servers located in the USA. I looked over at Dan shaking my head, inferring that this was not going to work.
Nervously, I moved to the center of the stage and began speaking, apologizing, and explaining that if the modem was faster the CATIA courses would come up far quicker and it would be interactive. Meanwhile, the CATIA eLearning course was still loading on the screen behind me. Suddenly the entire group stood and started applauding.
What is going on, I thought to myself, I haven’t done or said anything.
Then I looked back at the screen, and the course had finished loading and was running interactively as designed. You see, 10 minutes was rapidly quick for them, especially something interactive and moving. This taught me that everything in life is perspective.
After that, we were treated like royalty and continued presenting at three other universities and four corporations over the next five days.
On the last three days of the trip, our hosts asked if we wanted to go to the Munnar resort area up in the mountains or another resort by the ocean. We decided to go to Munnar which travelled through wild elephant country and a huge crocodile reserve. While ascending for over four hours it started to get dark and rainy. In addition, we were on a windy dirt single-lane road that had a 1000-ft drop to the left. Our driver thought it best to see if we could stay somewhere for the night. After pulling up to what seemed like a small, old lodge, we were escorted inside by an older fellow with one eye. Until seeing the movie, Slum Dog Millionaire, I did not know why he and many others I had seen only had one eye.
The reason is human trafficking and I won’t get into the details, but it’s incomprehensible.
The lodge turned out to be an old English tea plantation and this fellow was the keeper. I took the back bedroom and Dan took the front one. As I stepped into the bathroom, I noticed a spider, about the size of my hand, directly under my foot. After taking photos of it, 😂 I chased it under the sink. Exhausted, I tried to go to sleep on an antiquated and musty-smelling bed that was worse than a hockey locker room.
When I woke in the morning, I had a 104-degree Fahrenheit temperature. Our chauffeur decided to forget the resort and rush me down the mountain to see a doctor. This is where it gets interesting. This illness was like nothing I’d ever had before, and as I lay down in bed back at the hotel in Coimbatore, I thought I was going to die there. Then the Doctor brought in two medications.
Hydroxychloroquine and an anti-parasitic medication called Ivermectin.
The next day my fever was gone and Dan and I were able to fly back to the USA. As we sat on the plane, I noticed that Dan had also been bitten on his left cheek. At this point, we both wanted to be home and 24 hour trip was grueling.
Upon arrival in the USA, my temperature started to spike again, hitting 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, the doctor in India didn’t give me enough medicine to get home. So after a night of ice packs, Tylenol, and Motrin from Laurie, my temperature finally broke. This time, leaving me with the worst fever blisters I’ve ever had!
Nine days after returning from India, I was driving to work when I received a call from Dan’s wife. She was hysterical and yelling something about a car accident and a seizure. After she finally told me where Dan was, I drove directly to the hospital where he lay in a coma. The doctor explained that Dan had a brain tumor and they were going to operate. I told the doctor about our trip to India and the bite mark, but he was dismissive and wasn’t listening. When I went back to the hospital later that night, Dan’s vitals were failing fast. After doing a quick search on my Blackberry, I found that they had him on two conflicting intravenous medications.
I rushed to tell the nurse and she asked, “How did you know, are you a doctor?”
“No, I’m just a friend with mobile Internet access,” I replied, and she quickly removed the IV.
The next morning I went to see Dan and he was now awake. Freaked by the medication screw-up from the night before, I called Dan’s brother, Perry, and insisted that he get Dan out of that hospital. Perry agreed and quickly had Dan airlifted to the Mayo Clinic where they immediately diagnosed his condition as encephalitis and operated on the left side of Dan’s head to remove an infectious mass. Though they could not prove it, I believe wholeheartedly that it was caused by the insect bite on Dan’s face.
Dan spent the next year regaining his memory and trying to pull his life back together. Even though I really loved the people, the food, and the culture in India, the time and resources might have been better spent in our backyard, but then I wouldn’t have this incredible story to tell.
Fast forward to 2024, there’s only one other time I’ve ever been as sick as India and that was in November 2021. The symptoms were almost identical, then I remembered what the Doctor had prescribed in India. Fortunately, I have an outstanding Physician in my area who gave me a script for Ivermectin, even though the treatment was being politized. Several days later my illness was gone, while many others I know weren’t so fortunate.
Tip: The grass is not always greener on the other side.
Tip: People are placed in your path for good and bad purposes, but either way you will learn from the encounter.
Tip: Don’t be too hasty to take investment money, boot-strapping builds character.
Tip: Don’t be afraid to accept help from others. It is impossible to know everything and that’s OK.
Something to Consider: Are you good at receiving help?