e2e Interview

 

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur Interview

 

Jack Sunderlage, President & CEO, ContentWatch and Jerry Ropelato, CEO, TopTenREVIEWS

 

The following is a condensed transcript of a peer-to-peer conversation between two of Utah's entrepreneurs. Visit www.luminpublishing.com/GUV_podcasts/index.html to download an MP3 file of the entire interview including expanded discussions and topics not included in this transcript.

 

Jack Sunderlage: My name is Jack Sunderlage and I am president and CEO of ContentWatch. I had the opportunity to join ContentWatch in 2005 and had been on the Board of Directors for a few months prior to that time. Before ContentWatch, I had a very long career in the IT industry for some 40 years that extended from Burrows Corporation, which we know today as Unisys, and then with Digital Equipment, who was acquired by Compaq Computer and then acquired by Hewlett Packard. I only made one job change during all those years but I had the opportunity to work for five different companies. I took an early retirement from Hewlett Packard and at the time was vice president of our global accounts for the west region.

In terms of community involvement, I have been involved with the Utah Information Technology Association (UITA), which we know today as the Utah Technology Council (UTC), and was one of the founders of that back in 1991. I have had a lot of experience to interact with the community there. I was the chairman of the board of trustees there for a period of time.

I'm also involved with the World Trade Center Utah. We want to make Utah more of an international player. I am serving as chairman of the board of directors right now. We have had a great experience thus far bringing the private sector and government together.

 

Jerry Ropelato: I am the CEO of TopTenREVIEWS, an Internet company that reviews technology and entertainment. I have been involved with seven different startups over my entire career, four of which still exist today. One of those was ContentWatch.

 

Jack: Jerry, I have been impressed with what you have done with TopTenREVIEWS and it looks to me like you have a wonderful market opportunity. Could you talk about how you started the company, what your vision was and what it is today?

 

Jerry: When we first started, it was to be an Internet marketing consulting company. On the side, I used to do a lot of Internet safety seminars and one of the questions I was always asked was what is the best Internet filter out there? One day I sat down and I put a little Web site together to answer that question and we had some good success with that so we built a second product site and a third and a fourth and about three months into our company, we realized we were having more fun building review sites.

We actually threw out our 50-page business plan and changed the name of the company. We headed in a new direction and we have never looked back since. It was an interesting way to start a company.

 

Jack: Business plans have to be a living document and I can speak from experience here that we have had to modify what we originally thought our company was going to be and where we are headed today. When you started TopTenREVIEWS did you have to bootstrap the company?

 

Jerry: That is exactly what we did. Out of the 12 co-founders, none of us started out full time. I very quickly became one of the full timers. My wife pulled me aside as we got this going and she said, "I'll let you go one year without a salary, but that is it. If you can't make a salary within a year then we are done."

Guess what? I held her to that entire year right to the day.

We have never taken an investment round as far as growing our company and we were very frugal when we started. At first, we were a virtual company so everyone worked from home. We would have our staff meetings on Saturday mornings at Village Inn.

Even today we are a very frugal company. Our offices are in a 70-year-old warehouse and we still use a lot of plastic worktables. That has allowed us to be a profitable company and grow very quickly.

So Jack, tell me a little bit about what traits you think makes for a successful entrepreneur vs. maybe the traits of a great leader. Do you think they are different?

 

Jack: I think that is definitely the case in small business vs. a larger corporation. I was fascinated by a presentation by Jeff Dyre, who is on the faculty of BYU's Marriott School, and Clayton Christensen who we know from Harvard Business School who wrote "The Innovator's Dilemma" and "The Innovator's Solution."

Jeff and Clayton are working together on a book. They set out to determine what makes a successful entrepreneur vs. someone who can be successful in large corporate America.

I think that what it really boiled down to for them was that the entrepreneur is more discovery driven.

Entrepreneurs look at many different situations and say, "I think that I can make some money at that." They are wired 24/7 to think of ways to make money. The chairman of our company, Brent Bishop, is very much that way and he is in my office several times a week to talk about new ideas that he has.

In contrast, the people who are more delivery driven succeed in the corporate environment. They won't have that same vision, but once that vision is created they can come in and say, "I can organize around that vision and execute a plan."

The two skills seem to be quite complimentary in that regard. I'm coming in as the role of CEO and I know I should be strategic and have some vision, but I think that my strength is coming from my large corporation experience. I have demonstrated a track record of being able to execute plans.

 

Jerry: I have noticed the very nature that makes entrepreneurs successful can sometimes be a hindrance because sometimes they are looking for that next opportunity before dealing with the existing opportunities in front of them.

Sometimes those glittering objects make entrepreneurs really go all over the board and I know that can be a challenge. It can be a great asset but sometimes it is very painful.

 

Jack: One of the points that Jeff makes is that the typical entrepreneur comes in very confident in their ability, but so much of it is intuitive or a gut feel to the extent that many times they will even ignore data which runs counter to what they really want to be doing with their instincts. They will go with their instincts as opposed to the data. There are times when that can be good and times when that isn't so good.

Jerry, if you could give advice to a would-be entrepreneur, what would be the best advice you could give?

 

Jerry: I think entrepreneurs should go after base hits as opposed to home runs. I think entrepreneurs have this huge idea and they are swinging for the fence and sometimes that is very difficult to do. Go after the base hits. Find something that is successful and build on it. That will work out a lot better for you.

You also need to answer the question, "Does my family understand what I am getting into?"

Starting a business is hard and you need to have a sit-down conversation with your family or your spouse and go through the realities. Can your family handle not getting a regular paycheck? That happens more often than you think. If you have a very supportive spouse, it can make all the difference in the world to a successful entrepreneur.

Lastly, I have learned both in management roles and running your own business, the toughest decision is to fire someone. The old saying, "Be slow to hire and quick to fire," sure comes into play. I have fired a number of individuals over the years including some good friends. Every one of those has been a tough decision but they were the right decision. You are not doing anyone a favor by keeping someone on staff who is not producing or is not working out. I think a lot of entrepreneurs have a difficult time doing that. Trust me, it is difficult, but it is the right thing to do. What advice to you have Jack for young entrepreneurs?

 

Jack: It really is important to hire the right people. When I was a first-time young branch manager in my early 30s I can remember my boss saying to me that the most important thing you can do as a manager is surround yourself with good people. As I walked out of his office, I thought, that makes a lot of sense, and I have never forgotten that advice. I have come home many times at night around the dinner table and said to our kids, "You know your dad has a good job right now but I have to tell you that everyone around me is much smarter than I am and I like it that way."

Another important skill for entrepreneurs is building relationships — whether it is intracompany, with your customers or your partners — those relationships are going to carry through for you for a long time.

Finally, my last bit of advice is to not compromise your integrity. It has been my experience over time, as we have built relationships with customers and with partners, that if we demonstrate integrity, it really does build trust and loyalty and it serves you very well.

 

Launch - Spring 2008

 

 

For the full "digital magazine" version of Spring 2008, visit: www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/growutah/launch_2008spring/