Who knows if it will pan out, but perhaps it is worth a try?
A (not-so) brief introduction (that’s utterly engaging)
I am an addict: a surf-addict. Since I broke my first styrofoam board on a beach in Nazare, Portugal, at the age of 10, I have been addicted to catching waves.
Others might say that I am also an addict to startups and running my own business. But that would only be a half-truth. Fact is, being an entrepreneur never was much of a choice for me; I am simply not able to hold a regular job. On one hand, I can’t stand taking orders. And on the other, I do not particularly enjoy checking people’s homework. This makes me a bad candidate for both ends of the pyramid. In the worst case, I get stuck in the middle in some corporate bureaucratic mediocrity.
InboundLabs is my sixth “startup” and technically my fifth company. With some of my current partners I built MSM Interactive, a web integrator, in the late 90s and got acquired in 2000. In parallel, we created Santiago.cl, an early social network, that burst with the bubble. Then we screwed up Humano2, a Salesforce.com for Latam. Tigabytes, a large Google Enterprise Partner, just turned 10 years. And InboundLabs is the accidental brainchild of a failing startup called mon.ki, which was a typical Silicon Valley startup.
We had set out to solve some hopefully-massive unicorn-hatching problem. Great ideas, cool people, lots of code, office with a pool, provisional patents, VC money, government subsidies, TechCrunch feature: we had it all. Except user traction. Oh, and revenue. And by January 2014, it became apparent that our account balance would not float us much longer under the dark clouds of an ever increasing funding gap. We were just a tiny speck of dust.
When mon.ki became a HubSpot customer, we fell in love with a few HubSpot features and thought technology would save our asses. It obviously did not. HubSpot asked us to become a partner shortly thereafter, which allowed us to finally get exponential traction for our patent-pending technology.
Not.
It turned out to be a mere opportunity to enslave our sorry asses for petty cash and build a few stupid websites. It was totally embarrassing that after twenty years we returned to the exact same business we had started with: a web design firm.
Passion. Reignited.
While it was hard to find pride in the new business, we quickly found pride in our work. Starting with chandleyinc.com, we created one HubSpot website after another. It was a time warp and it made me rediscover the simple joy of crafting things for the Internet. Things you could be proud of. No big ambitions, just doing the best job we could. We embraced our customers with genuine care and they rewarded us with raving reviews and repeat orders.
In my personal life we kept growing and moving. As a couple, we moved from Santiago de Chile to Santa Cruz, California.As a party of three, from Foster City, California, to Punta de Lobos, Chile. As a family of four from Punta de Lobos to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. All of us from Puerto Aventuras to Las Palmas.
For my family, moving around the world was only possible (and necessary) because the business’s then-tiny team was distributed in multiple continents. The fact we only met online made me realize that the freedom created by the Internet was no longer just an a “nice to have.” The ability to work where and when I wanted became something I now feel entitled to. It became a fundamental right. Not a perk.
Abandoning the confines of the office was the one great side effect of our crisis. But I wont lie: transitioning from mon.ki to InboundLabs was hard.
I have never been depressed in my life. Ever. But I caught myself reading Feld’s blog more than once. Rainy days. Weeks. But the first rays of sunshine that broke through the clouds felt much warmer as a result. I rediscovered something I had lost along the way, something that had drowned in the ambition and struggle with mon.ki: my fascination for the Internet.
It began when I got the first 1200 bps modem for my Amiga. Little did I know back in high school about the future ahead. But a bit of geeky obsession was the drive for all my startups to come. This wild blend of unstructured learning combined with practical bricklaying reignited my sense of adventure. One web page at a time.
No matter how satisfactory it all was at first, InboundLabs seemed liked a doomed venture. My past experiences told me that the brief period of blind excitement could come to a grinding halt rather quickly. And I had promised myself to not go through that again.
Broken promises
Over the last almost-20 years, I participated in building three service business. I always ended up hating them. I loved brainstorming with the customers but then dealing with a bunch of mediocre mid-level management-customer-bots that had no idea about anything? No way, Jose!
These people cared so much about their jobs that they would literally sabotage the implementation of a meaningless company intranet. More show business then real business. This is why service business are a drain. Goodbye. Never again, I promised myself.
None of the companies I ever built became really big. They did, however, become big enough to make them a pain in the ass. When companies grow to over twenty people, the mid-level-management-disease appears. Like “feature creep” for products. Your sweet startup starts feeling like the customers you hate working for. Big companies suck big time. Rather become a Instagram with 13 people and sell for a billion. Promise.
It seems like yesterday, when I was sitting in my fancy office having a coffee (like a boss does!) and this project-manager-dude comes in telling me that we ran out of pens then asking me what to do about it. At that very moment, I came to realize three things:
- Finally I had the job I never wanted.
- My presence in the office allowed him to just casually assault me.
- He was no exception. My day was filled with bullshit and I was sitting in the center of a city. Two hours drive from the next beach (a tough realization for a surf addict)
The next day I moved 10 stories down to work from a Starbucks knock-off. A week later I moved down one block to a real Starbucks. And next, to the beach — promising myself to never, ever have an office again. Ever.
I have to confess that at that time I believed the solution was building a product company: a small team, no office and — obviously — a big exit. InboundLabs made me break my promises and confirmed, again, that no matter how sure you are about your path you are really stumbling around in the dark.
First, I never thought that working in a team of true craftsmen could be that enriching. I am proud, proud, proud of the team we have assembled. And this “team” includes many of our customers. It is from them that we learn every day. A priceless privilege.
Obviously, we too have to deal with launch hysteria, unpaid invoices, and crashing Skype calls. But I learned that a service business can be at least as much fun as any product business.
Secondly, today I have a tiny bit of hope that it is possible to build large organizations that just might feel like small startups. New insights into how organization can work, like holacracy, show that we are not alone in that. With +thirty people on our team, we are still the same tiny speck, but we have clearly left the safe confines of a small team of peers.
Thirdly, I got the idea of “having no office” wrong. The problem was never “the office,” but rather “the employees” who need an office. Today, I share the joy of going to an office now and then. A co-work that is. No interruption from the people we love for an entire work day. Awesome! An office can be a great personal choice, but it should never be an obligation or collective necessity. When it is, you are screwed.
Breaking and rethinking my promises spurred my need for beers, which in turn, spurred more questions. Is it possible today to build a larger service business that works very differently from what I have known? Could such a company provide me with anything else beyond a salary, which I could make easily freelancing? What would that company, or rather, my role there, have to look like to make it worth a try?
A new way to work
Strangely, the answers were simpler then I thought.
First, — doh — I want a job that I enjoy doing. For me, this simply means that I can keep satisfying my intellectual curiosity for all things Internet. I want to work with no-bullshit professionals to produce stuff I can be proud of. I want to exercise my right to work where, when, and how much I want.
Secondly, I want a job where I make money. Not because I want to be filthy rich, but because I have wandered through the dark shadows of the no-cash-effect. Today, I like to provide my two kids with a proper education and prevent my wife from second-guessing my decisions. I have learned that I need an increasing reward for long nights and inherent long-term uncertainty. I like to have an option — albeit one I might not exercise — to pursue other still unknown plans in the future without starting all over.
Thirdly, take it easy. I am obviously a failed and frustrated founder of an ambitious tech startup. However, I have also simply heard enough pitches to change the world through new technologies and business models. I have seen these pitches turn into pretentious bullshit, imploding bubbles, or — in most cases — never even launch.
At this point in my life, I could hardly get on stage pitching the next revolution without being the first one laughing out loud at myself. As a result, rather than thinking about the next global fast food chain and pitching it as salvation to humanity, I prefer to focus on cooking outstanding food, maintaining a great atmosphere, and having a laugh with my guest in the corner restaurant.
Finally and most importantly, I want everybody else at the company to have the same opportunities. Only when my peers enjoy work as much as I do and make money doing so, the unavoidable day-to-day stress becomes bearable…maybe even fun. By its nature building this beast can only be a collective effort.
Dear almighty corporation, set us free! Protect our rights to work when, where, and as much as we want. Allow us to put our personal lives first. Save us from corporate work-life-balance and forgettable company-culture-slides. Just let us do our **** job. Thank you.
Jokes aside, let’s build a service organization focused on making ourselves happy. When we are happy, we do better work. When we do better work, we get more (and happier) customers. With more happy customers, we are in a privileged position to grow. If we want. It’s as simple as that. It’s worth a try.
PS: Thanks to Christian, who made sure this text is totally search engine unoptimized and doesn’t follow any content marketing best practices.
