Preparing for Utah

The Broadwick executive team and Directors are heading out to Utah Thursday through Sunday to brainstorm about the future of the company. Today I spent much of the day preparing.

The bulk of the preparing came in putting together a notebook containing information on the topics we’ll be discussing. It’s broken up into six categories–the Company and Product Vision, Creating Growth, Managing Growth, Key Documents, Broadwick Day Information, and Competitors.

Today, I updated the revenue projections, created a projections sheet, put some ideas together on our evolving mission and product vision, brainstormed on how to create revenue growth in the company in 2007, brainstormed on how to manage that growth in 2007, updated our strategic intiatives sheet, updated our staffing plan, reorganized the feature timeline, reviewed 28 of our competitors websites, and created up a list of improv games from my treo notes at improv class that we may play during our down time in Utah.

We’re really thinking at the moment about the company and product vision and hopefully will have some big announcements in a couple months stemming from what we’re discussing today.

I also I re-listened to Built to Last today, which I’ll be posting some notes from in a couple days.

Here’s to learning how to ski for the first time!

Yes, it is 4:16am and I’m still in the office, and yes, I will be at work by 10:30.

post frequency change

now that ive got the moblogging going the post frequency is likely to go up around here… the novelty of this will probaby wear off soon enough… but the ease of making a post any time ive got 3 minutes to kill will likely cause a couple posts per day

in the coming months and years ill likely be writing about technology, intellicontact, books, product reviews, entrepreneurship, politics, public policy, travel, sports, improv, venture capital, marketing, lessons I’ve learned, experiences growing broadwick, and conferences i attend like SES, Ad-Tech, CEO, and Brainstorm… i hope you enjoy whats to come

thanks to the hundreds of readers that have already subscribed to the feed… it’s www.ryanallis.com/blog/index.xml if you havent subscribed yet.

blackjack vs treo… blackjack wins

i’m listening to xm radio on my samsung blackjack (while blogging from it), the smartphone the cingular rep recommended to me this afternoon when I went into their store with the intention of getting a treo 680 to replace my broken 650… ive had the blackjack for 12 hours now and must say i’m impressed… the streaming xm radio, that’s now livening up my living room at 6:24 in the morning, works because of the superfast 3G internet access, that makes downloading email and web surfing (and moblogging!) much faster… other differences with the treo include the 1.3 megapixel camera and the windows mobile os (the treo 650 and 680 have the palm os). the windows mobile os seems to just be better designed than the palm os. the sales rep shared with me that the bugginess of the windows os on treos is what is causing the delay of the treo 750 launch, but it seems to work fine on the blackjack.

The only complaints I have with the blackjack are that it doesnt have a copy and paste function and it doesn’t automatically capitalize the first letter of each sentence like the treo or add apostrophes where needed, but oh well at least the keypad works… and did I mention the xm radio? 3G has it’s killer app.

blogging from treo

I’ve finally got web access on my treo going, so i’ll probably be blogging more often. treo 650 keypads break way too easily by the way. i’ve already had to replace the phone once. i’m making this post with a stylus on the on screen keyboard. i’ll have to pick up the 680 soon. 20 days past warranty expiration.

30 Things I’m Especially Thankful For This Year

1. My family
2. My friends
3. My life
4. The God that made my life possible
5. My health
6. My co-workers
7. Our 7000+ clients
8. The natural world that inspires me every day
9. Improvisational Acting
10. Kickball
11. Flying in Airplanes
12. Smoked Salmon
13. Sprite with ice
14. Treos
15. The Internet
16. Electricity
17. Central heating
18. Good Football and basketball games
19. Catchphrase
20. Jenga
21. Call of Duty 2
22. The Daily Show
23. The History Channel
24. Good music
25. The books I’m currently reading (End of Poverty, Understanding Power, The Man Who Fed the World, Collapse, Good to Great)
26. The continued tireless efforts of my heroes (Jeffrey Sachs, Muhammad Yunus, Bill Gates, Jeffrey Skoll, George Soros, and Marc Benioff)
27. The changing tide in our world toward caring for all humans, not just those from your country
28. The sacrifices of so many business, political, and social leaders over the past 100 years that have make it possible for us to actually end extreme poverty, ensure proper nutrition, and provide basic health care for all human beings in the next 25 years.
29. The creative instinct in humans
30. The opportunity to lead people toward doing something Great

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

2nd Annual BusinessWeek 25 Under 25

This week BusinessWeek announced their 2nd Annual selection of their Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25.

Congratulations to my good friends Michael Simmons and Sheena Lindahl of the Extreme Entrepreneur Tour for being selected this year!

Vote for Michael and Sheena if you get a chance!

Congrats also to Kevin Sproles, founder of Volusion, one of IntelliContact’s partners.

An Extraordinary Four Weeks

It’s been an extraordinary four weeks. I’ve been hypnotized, performed in an improv show, visited New York, Columbus, and Chicago, seen one of my heroes speak, spoken in front of 500 people, and seen IntelliContact grow from 36 to 42 employees as we’ve added Sarah, Leah, Elsa, Jeffrey, Desmond, Richard, and Natasha.

On October 15, I met Rye Barcott in person for the first time. Rye is as class of 2001 UNC graduate who has been an officer in the Marine Corps for the past five years and now is doing a Masters in Business Administration/Masters in Public Policy Joint Degree at Harvard, which is exactly what I want to do in a few years. Rye is the founder of Carolina for Kibera, which I have blogged about recently on my Anti-Poverty Campaign Blog. It was a transformational experience to speak with Rye and pick his brain for a couple hours at Franklin Street Pizza & Pasta and East End Martini Bar in Chapel Hill.

After six weeks of Level I Classes at Dirty South Improv in Carrboro, NC, I performed in an improv show with 13 other class members on October 16. I played in four scenes. I was Luigi, a plumber from the mushroom kingdom with a superiority complex, a french man in a ski lodge, a kissing cousin from Alabama mad at his wife about a mayonnaise sandwich, and a rambunctious little kid on the top floor of the Sears tower. I love doing improv and feel like it’s almost the other half of me. After acting like I’m 35 every day running a company, it’s nice to act like I’m 10 for a few hours every week.

I went to New York October 23-25 to go to the ClickZ Email Marketing Summit, meet a friend Ilia Nossov from Buffalo, meet with IntelliContact customer Jed Freifeld from Treats4Pets, meet with our largest customer, and have a press tour interview with Fortune Small Business magazine. I went to Columbus on October 27 and 28 to speak at Ohio State University with Adam Witty, Michael Simmons, and Sheena Lindahl as part of the Extreme Entrepreneur Tour, and to Chicago November 2-5 to speak at the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization conference and judge their Elevator Pitch competition, which was won by Jordan Clancy of Embry-Riddle with his idea for a multi-university student union in Daytona Beach, Florida. The three other judges and I listened to fifty-two 90-second pitches over the course of six hours.

Speaking at the CEO conference was such a rush! The room was packed, with about 150-200 attendees. There was so much energy and passion in the room that day. I started by running from the back screaming, got everyone up out of their chairs to get the energy up, tested some new material like the who got lucky line and the motivation jump for $10 (borrowed from Michael Simmons), got those with business ideas who had business cards up in the front to exchange contact info with people looking for business partners who didn’t have ideas, talked about my passion for reducing poverty and hunger in developing nations, and went through my 10 steps to build a company to $1 million in sales presentation.

This Friday I had the opportunity to meet one of my heroes for the first time. Jeffrey Sachs, a development economist from Columbia, came to UNC to speak at Memorial Hall in front of about 1000 attendees. He gave a moving presentation on How to End Extreme Poverty by 2025 based on his book, The End of Poverty. The event was put together by the Millennium Village Project at UNC, Duke, and Bennett College. I’m really moved by the work of the student members who’ve created this organization. They created it based on Sachs’ response to a student question during a video conference with Sachs in Fall 2005. The question: "What can we as students do to help the fight against global extreme poverty." The response: "Help start a Millennium Village." The result: A year later the first-ever student led project is well on its way to raising the $1.5 million needed to make Sauri, Kenya the first-ever student-led Millennium Village Project.

Sachs noted that we live in a great moment and have the potential for the first time in human history to end extreme poverty in our lifetimes. He said eloquently, "the us vs. them mentality is absurd, and it’s over". Sachs gave six steps toward achieving the goal.

1. Grow more food.
2. Control malaria
3. Ensure clinical health services.
4. Provide safe water
5. Provide food at schools
6. Provide connectivity to end isolation

At work, it’s been hectic yet engaging. Our growth remains very strong and above our projections. We’re up to 6,763 customers as of today. I’ve spent the past few weeks managing the growth and dealing with some situations that come up when you’re growing very rapidly. In addition to traveling, I’ve been working on interviewing and training, planning the next iteration of our product and brand vision, planning for office space needs, and interfacing with one of our larger customers. It’s a very exciting time to be at Broadwick. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to continue to lead 41 people every week toward reaching our goal of becoming the leading worldwide provider of communication software.

These past few weeks I’ve hung out with a lot of great people while traveling including Amy, Sam, Anthony, Demetrius, Joel, Hayes, Caitlin, Jason, Zola, Jesse, Josiah, Yuri, Jed, Adam, Michael, Sheena, Katie, Brock, and Ilia. Thanks to all of you for making my life invariably richer and for some great times.

Here’s to the Rutgers’ Scarlett Knights, with hope they can continue their miracle season, to the San Diego Chargers, who just beat the Bengals 49-41 and kept me half occupied while writing this post, to the Florida Gators, for holding on to a 17-16 victory and their hopes of a football national championship by blocking two field goals and an extra point, and to the fact the basketball season at UNC is about to be underway.