You don’t hear much about guys that take their shot and miss. But, I’ll tell you what happens to them. They end up in a dark place trying to figure out how they came up short.
I came up short.
When it was all said and done, I have learned this: entrepreneurship is a compulsive-obsessive addiction that will leave you destitute if you are not careful. It is a drug worse than heroine, crack cocaine, or crystal meth.
At least those addictions give you the courtesy of killing you. Startups take you to the brink of death, but let you live on to let you think about what could have been.
My story could fill a book. I would like to give the Reader’s Digest version of my startup story that began June 12, 2002 and ended December 31, 2009. Here is the good, bad, and ugly:
The Good
The hardest thing in the world to do is to create something out of nothing.
I accomplished things that have never been done before. And for a dumb kid from Detroit, I am proud of that.
I am the first and only person to ever calculate the price for a custom product in real-time and do it on the internet from a standard web browser.
In order to accomplish that feat, I became the first and only person to build a solid model assembly on the web. From scratch. In real-time.
We had over 1,000 companies in 30 countries as registered users. I did not seek them out. They found me. After enduring over 1,300 rejections for 5-1/2 years, the market acceptance was gratifying.
Along the winding road of this journey, I learned to read people. In a matter of seconds, I can tell if someone is the genuine article or a poser. This came from years of dealing with lying sons-of-bitches.
I have also learned how to pitch. How to boil down a message so it is compelling, clear, and concise.
The coolest things I got to do was be interviewed on television and radio. It was those experiences that I learned that I really do have a face for radio. And a voice for newspapers.
Above all, I learned how precious time and money are. Because, once they are gone, they are gone.
Most people dream of being entrepreneurs while they sit in a cubicle at some shitty job. I lived their dream. The dream had a twist ending that turned out to be a fucking nightmare.
The Bad
I have a knack for spotting and coaching talent. But, I have always held to the concepts of balance and tradeoffs: people with extreme gifts and talents also have extreme problems and issues. It is the price you pay for greatness. The blessings are balanced out by curses.
I have paid that price.
My first CTO was incredible. He not only could bring my dream alive on a web browser, he could actually keep up with me. Most guys half my age do not have the stamina or drive to hang with me. This guy could. We would work two days straight.
We finished our first proof-of-concept for a customer. This technology is still running today. The customer was on board for phase two: ecommerce.
That is, until my CTO left town. He attempted to extort $60,000 from me and my customer to pay a drug-related debt to the mob.
It took me another year to find a CTO. While looking for a CTO, I am also seeking a company that “got it”. Once I did, it took a year for them to seal the deal. We kicked off the project on the same day this company decided to acquire its largest competitor.
The CTO was a big name guy in the solid modeling programmer world. We started small with a three phase plan. This plan and customer would have gotten me to critical mass.
The CTO washed out. After alot of time and money, it turns out this guy was a poser. Sure, he had all the Microsoft certifications and credentials. But, he could not get the job done.
Now, I have the biggest custom components manufacturer in the world as a customer and no CTO.
I search high and low for someone until I find a rock star out of Canada. Things go well. This guy could make a web page dance. His work ethic and focus were second only to my own.
As we come from behind to finish phase one on-time, my senior management champions are fired from the new company. The division we did phase 1 for was sold off. The new company wanted the brand name and not the plant. They closed the plant and threw our servers in a dumpster.
The parent company and their recently-acquired competitor had other issues that damn near put them out of business. With all the systems problems they were having, my $1 million deal to automate die set designs and estimating got canceled.
Starting over again was bad. You have to find a way or make one. I had to make one. Again.
Then, my CTO developed wife problems. He was out.
Another year goes by before I find the “right guy”.
I change the business model slightly, find a customer to get on-board, and get started.
My new partner thinks it will take three months to get phase one done. Sounded reasonable to me.
Flash forward 18 months, we still were not done. A few months later, we get our software released and start generating sales.
At this point, I have many other companies in the pipeline. They patiently waited nearly two years for us to START with them.
Well, my partner could not take the pressure any longer. He disclosed a number of mental health issues. He was out.
I came too far for too long to quit. After six years on this journey, it was time, once again, to start over.
The Ugly
I head back to Detroit to find my CTO. All the money is gone now. I went from financially secure to broke. To feed my family and keep the business running, I took a quasi consulting / job fiasco. It was the worst experience of my life.
All the money went back home and into the business. For the first time in my life, I was homeless. Instead of offering help, my friends made fun of me. Maybe they did not believe what was happening, but it was real.
I slept in the office. I lived out of my car. Spent some nights in my parents’ basement. But, mostly I slept in the office and car.
My desire to keep the business alive meant using food money to pay for server time. On a good day, I could afford to eat on about $2. If I could not swing a free meal, I had to eat out of dumpsters. You can actually find edible food in the dumpsters behind grocery stores.
I was 1,300 miles away from home; lonely and broke.
Having already been committed to do a talk at an industry event where the participants had to pay to attend, I pitched Speedraft.
There were concurrent sessions. About 80% of the paid attendees came to my talk.
I had one guy build a custom cam unit on his Apple iPhone during the talk. It was a huge success – my best presentation ever. I was in the zone.
Now, I had been ignored from the die and stamping media for years. They did not get it.
After my talk, I am in the main hallway signing CDs and magazines for people when the editor to one of the magazines approaches me.
“I owe you a huge apology, Tim. I did not really understand what you were doing until I saw it today. You are going to change the world of manufacturing. I hope you forgive me,” she says.
Maybe this journey will end up being worth all the pain afterall.
Then, I am approached by the person that moderated my session. He says, “My company is flush with cash. We are interested in what you are doing. I am not authorized to do a deal, but I can introduce you to those that are. They are actively seeking technologies to fund and companies to acquire.”
Perfect.
My partner and I are invited to pitch to executive management. He is traveling from Florida and chats with the guy next to him for the entire flight.
They both had something in common: manufacturing entrepreneurs.
As they land, my partner finds out he was talking to the son of the founder of the company we are hoping to partner with. I take that as good karma.
A month after we pitch, I am on a conference call with this company. It turns out they want us to customize our technology for them. For free. Then, let them use it for six months. For free.
I was devastated.
I was emotionally distraught. It was like watching a gang of thugs rape and murder your family, leaving you for dead after the crime.
I take one more shot.
I find a CTO guy from hundreds of folks that I talked to. He turns out to be another poser. It was a frustrating waste of time.
I am now a year into being away from home. And I have nothing. All of my personal possessions, except the clothes on my back and my car, have been pawned for cash.
By July 2009, I had enough. I worked every single day since June 1, 2002 on this startup. That was the lowest point in my life. I started giving away my technical books – the only possessions I had left. I was preparing to die, thinking that my family could at least recoup half of the $2 million I pissed away on this in the form of life insurance.
I blogged about quitting on my now defunct startup blog.
That same day, I get an email from a guy begging me for a shot. I turn him down for three weeks before I give in. I complied with his request to see the source code.
An hour later, he sends me an email with his findings, suggestions, and plan to move forward.
In that hour, he found a significant security issue. He also took 60 lines of existing code and rewrote it down to 6 lines to perform the same function.
This guy had startup experience, too.
A few more discussions later, he is on-board.
The initial collaboration was wonderful. Just like we had worked together for years.
I ended up promising a nice compensation package, and gave him nearly half the company’s stock.
He and I attended an investor pitch meeting to watch other startups pitch. We start talking about how these companies are all wrong.
Then, we independently rate the companies from best to worst. To my delight, he and I had exactly the same ratings. This guy “got” the business side.
The plan was to get the new software done by January 2010. The new business model guaranteed revenue upon release.
Weeks go by. No word from this guy. No emails. No returned phone calls.
I knew what happened. I just fucking knew.
His wife gave him an ultimatum: Get a real, paying job, or get a lawyer.
We were, again, weeks away from critical mass. And now it was all gone.
Up until now, people from industry were telling me how cool the technology was. Hell, people not in my industry were telling me how sweet it was. That kept me going.
Not any more. I even stopped blogging for a couple months while I tried to sort things out.
Then, I figure if industry liked it so much, they can pony up the money for me to pay some programmers to get it done. As it turns out, the suppliers are strapped for cash, too.
During this time, I am still working at the quasi consulting / job gig doing technical support, services projects, and training.
My gauge of success with training is if the students have the ability to confidently perform the task on their own after the training ends.
On one occasion, I had a room of former co-workers from GM in class. They did about 7 days worth of projects in 4-1/2 days. I tried to end class early on Friday, but these guys would not leave. They wanted more. And more.
We finished an hour AFTER my normal class end time.
On their way out, they are thanking me. Even the guys that never liked me expressed their gratitude.
A couple guys that knew of me but never met me were grateful.
A couple more had tears in their eyes when they had to say good-bye.
By all accounts, the training was a success. To everyone, that is, except my employer. “That was the worst training I ever saw in my life,” was the judgment.
I poured all I had into this, but was laid off shortly thereafter. Just what I needed. I did not have enough gas money to drive 13 minutes to my parents’ house, let alone 1,300 miles across the country to go home.
I mean, does the average die guy really give a fuck about how transversal shear stress gets calculated by a piece of software? Or, do they care about how to get the job done? Apparently, you can lose your job over such things.
Can things get any worse? As it turns out, they can.
Just as I was about to lose my house, a buyer came along. I only lost 50% of what I put into it in a three year span. I lived in that house 11 days over the course of three years.
Even if I broke even on the house, I would of had $250,000 cash to finish Speedraft. But, the offer was to basically pay off the mortgage to avoid foreclosure. I took the offer. And it broke my heart to lose the house, on top of everything else.
It broke my son’s heart, too. He cried for a week from his new home: A tiny, beat up rented apartment in a burned out neighborhood.
We went from living in a nice, quiet neighborhood with unobstructed views of the Rocky Mountains to a fucking ghetto with unobstructed views of police cars in the parking lot every night busting some criminals.
With Speedraft out of my system, I got three job offers in the matter of 24 hours. When it rains, it pours I guess.
An older, wiser me chose a great opportunity with a company that is well positioned to dominate the Tier 1 global stamping market.
Timing is everything. Had this opportunity not come along, my entire family would have been on the street April 1, of all dates.
Ironically, one of the things I will be doing is estimating – the very thing I have been working to automated since 2002. Of course, this department reports to the VP of Technology.
Would I do it again? Yes. But, I would have waited about 5 years. I came to the market way too early, and it burned up alot of cash.
My only regret is not having the cash to keep some incredibly talented individuals on-board long enough for us to be successful.
Then again, simply surviving this expedition was a success to me. Other aspiring entrepreneurs continually seek me out for advice. If I can use my experience to help just one person hit it big, then I fulfilled my purpose.
Of course, my critics will continue to judge me as a failure. But until you find something you believe in so much that you are willing to risk it all when the odds are stacked 1 million-to-1 against, I will choose not to let the armchair quarterbacks and self-proclaimed know-it-alls get inside my head.
Events, Rants 
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