It was pretty fun to sit on stage recently with Techstars co-founder David Brown to tell our story in front of the newest class of Techstars founders in Boulder. Since it was our first time on stage together talking about how we built and sold our first company, Pinpoint Technologies, we put together a few short videos from the talk that highlight our entrepreneurial adventures.
Together we’ve had successes and failures over the last 25 years, and we’ve laughed a ton along the way. Here’s the quick story: in 1993, we founded our first company, Pinpoint Technologies, which grew from a basement startup to a successful multinational company with $50 million in annual sales and over 250 employees. Later we founded a company together called iContact, which failed (you may have heard of the one that was successful – we sold them the domain name after we failed). And finally, we founded Techstars together and it seems to be doing OK.
David recounts our experiences together, from founding Pinpoint to coming back as Managing Partner at Techstars just one year ago, in the updated and re-released version of his book, No Vision All Drive.
These short videos give you a glimpse into David’s book, which exemplifies what it was like for two young entrepreneurs who knew nothing about building a business to grow their startup into a real company with a successful exit.
The reason we started Techstars together was based on our experiences together. We sold Pinpoint Technologies for half as much as we later learned that the acquirer was willing to pay. Since then I’ve seen 48 Techstars companies exit. I’ve seen that pattern play itself back, and in some cases we’ve been able to double exit values for our founders. Sure wish we had that help when we sold our first company successfully!
Check out the videos and if you like what you see, grab a copy of No Vision All Drive, just released this week.
