Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech & Live Events 7.17.23
Kissing frogs in the early days, Surprise job applications and more
Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech and Live Events
1. Kiss a lot of frogs.
It's summertime and, for us, that means a lot of time on the road for our team. We've gotten pretty good at identifying where to put our time, but that wasn't always the case. There were so many wasted meetings and wasted trips while we built TicketManager.
Bad ones too. Like the time we flew to NYC to have MSG cancel our meeting as we were walking into the building - with no reason given. Or the time we flew to Charlotte to have the Hornets cancel a meeting at "the Hilton Downtown" b/c we went to a different Hilton - there are two downtown.
In those times, those cancellations made so I would question going at all. Why fly all the way for a meeting that has a low likelihood of success? Especially when we have a limited budget and travel is expensive.
But if we didn’t take them, we wouldn’t have gotten the good ones - especially early on.
And we still try to.
Facebook recently reminded me of a trip we took with a low likelihood of success in 2010. I had been on the road all week at a conference in New York City, and a venture capital firm in Boston wanted us to add to the trip by heading up their way.
We went. And it ended up being the firm that did our Seed round.
Have you lost your mind? It ain't 'just business' to us: Part One.
Starting TicketManager is the hardest thing I've ever done. The memories of months 13 to 25 feel like they're shrouded in darkness as the economy imploded, and our first investor left us.
As we grew, every new customer and partner mattered. A lot. It was personal for us, so we did everything we could to do our best and be honest. And, as businesses do, we lost sometimes.
People like to be friendly to those they do business with. So, the few customers we did lose would sometimes act as references for our competition. They'd tell teams and other customers about their experience. And that's fine.
But sometimes, they'd tell them things that weren't true and were hurtful to us. Both professionally and personally.
So imagine our surprise when they call us asking for a job or asking for help finding their next move.
One example: I ran into a team executive at a conference in 2011 who had chosen a competitor and had been very vocal about us. He was friendly. So I tried to speak to him about some things he was saying about us and how they weren't true - and that it was okay that he would continue to help his friends. All seemed fine.
No more than 15 minutes later, I heard him, in the bar, repeating the same things about how "we were broke" (we weren't) and how unhappy one of our partners was (they're still happy partners today). Lesson learned.
That same person has applied for several jobs with us.
So have many others who have done hurtful and dishonest things to us.
It is personal for entrepreneurs. It always will be.
I learned it's okay to help friends and be a reference. But that bridge is burned forever if I say something negative or dishonest.
I learned to find gifts others aren't sending. I have way too many Yetis. I need to find something new.