My name is Jeff French and I am a technology entrepreneur from Columbia, SC. Welcome to my new weblog. I'll use this first post to summarize my background and bring it current. Here goes...
My Early Years:I grew up in rural South Carolina. My mother prepared meals in the school cafeteria and my father was a factory worker and truck driver. I attended public school and rarely missed a Sunday in church. I was taught to love God and my family. I was also taught at a young age to work hard and always do my best.
I attended Coker College, a small private liberal arts school in Hartsville, South Carolina, with the help of a few scholarships and grants. In 1997, I earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting. I was the first in my family to finish college.
From the time I was a teenager I dreamed of someday working for myself. My first entrepreneurial endeavor was a small events services company I started in school. It helped buy a few textbooks but that was about it.
Late in college I became fascinated with the Internet. By graduation I was seriously considering a few business models but life was quickly sending me in another direction. I was blessed to have an opportunity to join PricewaterhouseCoopers upon graduation and serve in the firm’s Audit and Business Advisory Services (ABAS) practice and to marry my high school sweetheart shortly thereafter.
Hello Real World:Working 12 hour days at PwC and trying to be a good husband didn’t leave much time for moonlighting but I literally spent every spare moment trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to start my own business and I knew it would be on the Internet.
My career with the firm was going well and, by making Senior Associate in less than 2 years, I was on the fast track. Then, in the summer of 1999 a unique opportunity arose to join one of my clients, Netbank. Despite becoming a recent casualty of the 2008 crash, the company's claim to fame was being one of the first Internet only banks. They had recently experienced attrition in their high-risk asset division, primarily sub-prime mortgage securitizations and mortgage servicing rights assets (things I specialized in modeling and valuing at PwC). I was forthright with the management team that I intended to start a company in the near future but they asked if I could commit at least 6 months and we worked out a deal. I joined Netbank as AVP of Risk Analysis & Management.
Until this point my wife had been passively supportive of my entrepreneurial desires but she has never shared my risk tolerance and was afraid of what leaving the workforce could mean if I failed. I remember well the night in early 2000 I told her I was going to “do it”. I was going to resign from Netbank and raise money to support my idea of creating “Sunday sales flyers” for online stores. These stores often had sales just like their brick and mortar counterparts but unless you were on their mailing list, or happened to visit their site the day of a sale, you would never know about it. This was a problem I knew I could solve.
My First Real Start-Up:I recruited a few partners to join me and we built a 30,000 member subscriber list and signed a few advertising commitments to prove the concept. The name was PriceJester, and it was our time…my time.
My wife was scared, but she agreed the plan was solid and supported me. As a sign of commitment to potential investors I was the first to quit my job and we quickly raised a $750,000 angel round. I’m proud that most of my managers from PwC and Netbank invested along with several clients and some people I’ve known my entire life. We were off to the races.
Bubble 1.0:We had no idea what the years ahead would hold and in early 2001 the dot com bubble burst. Most of our advertisers were unable to raise additional funding and they went bankrupt. Our advertiser contracts weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. We had burned through half our capital and the odds of raising more money in this climate were zilch. Times were hard and we had to go back to the drawing board if we wanted to survive.
At this point, our subscriber list was already approaching 1 million. It was obvious that our ability to build and manage opt-in email databases was our best asset. We positioned the business to take advantage of this competency.
In less than 30 days our systems were retooled, the company was rebranded and we became a direct marketing firm. Our services helped clients build their own opt-in databases and deliver email advertisements. These changes enabled us to survive the recession following the crash.
In 2003 we launched the AdDrive Affiliate Network and it soon became our flagship brand. It was synergistic with our existing business by matching email publisher clients with a growing list of merchants seeking new customers on a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis. Our publishers would promote the merchant’s advertisements while earning a commission for every lead or sale. By serving as an intermediary, and facilitating these transactions, we would receive a fee. The early results were good but not great.
The Big Bang:By 2004 a new type of online promotion was gaining popularity. It allowed consumers to earn a reward by fulfilling various requirements including trials of various products and services. These were often referred to as “free iPod promotions” because many of the first iterations allowed consumers to earn one of the revolutionary new MP3 players, which had also just been released.
We already had a wide network of publishers and third party merchants in place. The only thing missing was a system to administer this new breed of promotion, which we quickly developed.
Finally, all the pieces of the puzzle came together. We had innovative promotions for our affiliate publishers and we were able to deliver high volume leads and sales to our advertisers. The business exploded to post over 1,000% revenue growth in 2004.
The next several years found us scaling infrastructure, iterating promotions, working with investment bankers to plan an exit strategy and navigating the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. Times were hectic and stressful but, as an industry leader, the company was consistently delivering over 20 million new leads and customers to our clients every year.
A Time for Change:Everyone who lives long enough will have a few life changing events. For me, one happened in the fall of 2007 when I blew out my Achilles tendon playing basketball and needed surgery. For the first time in my life something managed to slow me down. I’m not comparing a sports injury to the types of serious health problems many people face but for me, it was an eye opening experience. After the surgery I began to reflect on life and my professional career. I realized I wanted to go in a new direction for a few reasons.
Creating something from nothing is my passion and being in a start-up environment is where I thrive. AdDrive was fairly mature and its needs no longer aligned perfectly with my strengths. Likewise, the company wasn’t feeding my creative desires.
I was also frustrated with the pitfalls of direct marketing and taking grenades for my clients and publishers. Throughout its history AdDrive has been an active member with various trade associations and the company adheres to, or exceeds, all regulations, marketing best practices and advertising disclosure guidelines. The company also maintains an A rating with the Better Business Bureau. Despite these facts, some people become annoyed or angry at various forms of direct marketing. In addition, successful campaigns require creative delivery and when people only hear the sizzle, and don’t look closer at the steak; they sometimes end up with buyer’s remorse. Unhappy consumers often voice frustrations on blogs and comment boards with the marketer taking most of the heat.
Direct marketing is an important industry. It accounts for billions in annual sales in the United States and millions of jobs. However, if you look up “thankless profession” in the dictionary you’ll find a direct marketer’s picture.
To sum it up, seven years of direct marketing had left me jaded and I wanted to feel like my professional efforts were making a difference in the world. It was time for me to make a change.
Bubble 2.0:Shortly after working with the board of directors on a transition plan, I announced to our shareholders that I was stepping down. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do but I was excited, energized and ready for anything. I had a sense of euphoria and optimism I hadn’t experienced for years. The last time I felt this good professionally was just before the crash in 2001.
History has a way of repeating itself and after backing a few start-ups, and beginning one of my own, the banking system froze, the stock market crashed and the government bailouts began. It was eerily similar to the last time I was in a start-up, but worse because I had more to juggle personally and professionally this time around.
Back at AdDrive difficult decisions had to be made and the board decided to cut headcount by over 60% and aggressively reduce fixed costs. Market conditions forced me to pitch in significantly and support the business. I stopped short of stepping back into a full time role but the demands on my time were meaningful. I already had a team building a new product and I found myself working two jobs along with several board positions. For a while I was barely able to breathe.
A New Beginning:Despite the demands on my time I continued to press forward on my new project. It’s called Lifefitter and the company’s mission, to create friendships, is one of my most ambitious ever.
Social websites like Facebook and MySpace have done a great job keeping us hyper-connected with the people we know but these services don’t do much to help us make new friends. Our strategy is to develop web applications that enable people to meet others who share their interests. We planned to develop a broad social platform while creating buzz by announcing a series of active lifestyle brands and allowing people to request beta invitations for the upcoming release. The response was good but several months into the project it became obvious our strategy was flawed. We were not getting enough traction in specific geographic locations to fuel a social network that was reliant on bringing people together for offline meetings. Once again, I found myself back at the proverbial drawing board.
Another Iteration:We needed to provide immediate value to early adopters so they wouldn’t abandon the product before we were able scale. I tried to evaluate the most basic ways people use social tools looking for an angle we could attack. I locked myself in the office and spent days looking for answers. I found thousands of social applications that had failed to gain meaningful traction. Then finally, it hit me.
Every time I began a new web session Google was there, staring me in the face. I took time to look at other ubiquitous start pages and found two basic extremes. On one end you have Google with just a search bar and on the other end are portals like Yahoo with an information overload. A few start-ups have tried to innovate by developing widget based products that allow users to customize their page but, despite heavy venture funding, none have achieved scale beyond the large players with products like iGoogle and My Yahoo.
While promoting Lifefitter we focused on active lifestyle interests like hiking, SCUBA diving, golf and several others. We found an audience that desired to learn more about their interests and meet others who share their passion. If we could build a start page focused on these interests, I believed to we could offer people something better. Just like that, Startlike was born.
Startlike is a simple browser start page covering a topic you are passionate about and you get a new photo and a few relevant hotlinks every day. It has the basics you need like Google search, quick links to your favorite sites and custom news feeds. It also features a discussion board where you can meet other Startlikers who share your passion.
At its core the product is simple and relevant. We hope this combination will acquire and retain users and, as it scales, we will add more social features to create friendships. So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. People like it and the praise from our users is a refreshing change from the world of direct marketing.
The Road Ahead:I will be working hard to manage my personal and professional commitments while focusing on the continued development of Lifefitter and the Startlike project. We have some good ideas to make it better and increase distribution. I’m looking forward to the road ahead and you can follow my progress here and on the
Startlike blog.
