Background

I’m a geek. Some computer hardware design, but for most of my career software. I always thought I’d be the “individual contributor” who brought in so much value that he became rich and retired early to do some as-yet-unspecified Important Work that didn’t pay much (or anything). That was around 1996, when I first graduated from Georgia Tech.

A couple of jobs and a Master’s degree later, I ended up in a startup doing software for computer hardware design. I was a “Senior Systems Engineer,” but that was mainly due to title inflation at startups. I discovered that I liked the startup vibe. I liked knowing that my work was appreciated and made a huge impact on the trajectory of the company.

I did not like running out of money and getting laid off. Nor did I particularly enjoy failing at making a go of the technology of the business on my own. And I especially didn’t like going back into corporate America, into a career track that terminated as a Corporate Software Engineer. Ick.

So I worked a couple of other jobs. I read The Four Hour Work Week. I wanted to build a business now, not just work in one. I started speaking at (software) conferences and wrote a book. I quit my job and became a consultant/trainer, hoping to find that golden idea that would make everything come together. I wrote another couple of books. It was the fall of 2012, and the “pipeline” of contracts started to dry up. Was I going to need another job?

Enter the Business Guy

Out of the blue, I get a call from a fraternity brother who had just done a Startup Weekend. He’s also a geek, but he’s a geek with 4 kids (I only have 2) and a steady job, so he couldn’t take the idea further. He offered to introduce me to his partner Mike for the weekend, where they took 2nd place despite being a team of 2.5 (their other programmer left). They had a business model. It was lean and validated. Sounded great, so we decided to get together and I’d hear him out.

Mike came in with an idea for marketing optimization. Not automation, but optimization. The idea being, lots of folks are automating their digital marketing but have no idea whether they’re even moving in the right direction. Mike had run a test, and it said he should be able to get $20k revenue per month. I did the (very simple) math — assuming a 50/50 split (it wasn’t) and immediate $20k revenue per month (it wasn’t), I’d have plenty to live on from day one. So Spring of 2013, we formed an LLC and started work on this thing which we called Synapp.io (like synapse, but with applications, and the .com was taken).

Stay tuned for what happened when the idea met reality….