Ernst & Young Carolinas’ 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year
October 23, 2008
Aaron and I won the Ernst & Young Carolinas’ 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Emerging Category tonight at the ceremony in Charlotte. We were up against Virtual Heroes and Canvas on Demand, both from RTP.
The winners will be going to Palm Springs, California in November for the Ernst & Young 2008 National Entrepreneur of the Year Awards to compete against the other regional winners.
We’re really glad, and humbled, to have won. We are very appreciative of the support North Carolina and the Triangle community has given us the past six years and have to thank our family at iContact and our families at home. We have a lot lot lot more work still to do.
The full list of winners is below.
Ernst & Young Carolinas 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year Winners
Lifetime achievement. O. Temple Sloan. General Parts, Inc.
Financial Services
Robert Hatley
Paragon Commercial Bank
Health Services
Willam Cobb
JM Smith
Industrial Products
Christopher Kearney
SPX Corporation
Real Estate Hospitality Construction
Patricia Rodgers
Rodgers Builders
Retail and Consumer Products
Thomas Millner
Remington Arms
Emerging
Aaron Houghton
Ryan Allis
iContact
Software and IT
Matthew Szulik
Red Hat
Telecommunications
Eugene Johnson
FairPoint Communications
Video: Speaking at Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization 2008
October 23, 2008
Speaking in front of 1,500 people can be a little scary. Especially when you’re about to pull your pants off and dance in front of them.
When I was 16, I ran for President of the Manatee High School Key Club, a community service organization. I got up to give my speech. My knees knocked. My hands shook. My voice faltered. I lost to Mark Pinto.
Going into college, I was still a nervous public speaker. I tried to imagine the audience in their underwear but that was just awkward and didn’t help at all.
I didn’t get over the fear until my 2nd year when I had to speak to 60 attendees at the UNC Entrepreneurship Club every Tuesday at 6:30pm.
Finally, I could speak to a group of college students without nerves.
But them came speaking to ‘old people.’ You know, those scary adult-people. I didn’t really get over that fear until early 2006. I spoke to 500 economic developers at the Southern Growth Policies Board Conference in New Orleans and then 400 professors and administrators in Orlando at the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship Educators.
In 2007, I ended up speaking in front of about 3,000 people over the course of many different events. In 2008, I spoke in front of 8,000.
But none larger than the speech on November 8, 2008.
I had already introduced Robert Kiyosaki to the group the day before–one of the great honors of my entrepreneurial life. His book Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing planted the seed in my mind and provided the path at 17 to “build a company and take it public.”
I had been the emcee of the conference along with Gerry Hills for the past two days. It was my 7th time at the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization conference. I knew my audience. I was them–just four years removed.
But it was still scary. 1500 people.
What if I messed up? What if I fell while running onto the stage? What if too many clothes came off while ripping my dress pants off to reveal track pants for the Soulja Boy dance? What if, what if?
After practicing “Finding The Purpose of Your Life in 6 Lessons” all the way through in front of Jenna and some amused caterers, I was fired up and ready to go.
Here’s the video… (The dance to Soulja Boy’s Bird Walk is in part 3 at 1:20)
Speaking at ACG Research Triangle | Dare Mighty Things
July 23, 2008
I spoke at the ACG Research Triangle breakfast meeting this morning on How to Build a Company to $1 Million in Sales. If you wish to download the slides from the event they are available at http://www.ryanallis.com/ppt/acgpresentation.ppt.
How to Be a Public Company CEO
May 23, 2008
I’m out here at the Pacific Crest Technology Leadership Forum in Vail, Colorado this week. The 600 attendees here are a mix of public institutional investors, hedge fund managers, investment bankers, public company analysts, venture capitalists, public company CEOs and CFOs, and private company CEOs and CFOs.
The investors are here to meet the management of the public and soon-to-be public companies and to build relationships with the people that feed them data about these companies–the analysts. The analysts are here so they can publish research on these companies to sell to the investors. The investment bankers are here to build relationships with the management of companies they hope to sell, advise on acquisitions for, take public, or do follow-on offerings for. The CEOs and CFOs are here so they can raise money from the investors and get covered by the analysts. It’s a fascinating dynamic.
I’m learning how to be public company CEO. Here are some of the things I’ve learned.
The Process of Going Public
The general process of taking your company public in the United States is:
- Build your company to at least $40M in annual sales (the sort-of-hard ‘takes 7 years’ part).
- Reach breakeven or profitability and have solid positive EBITDA in sight.
- Invite investment bankers to pitch you in what’s called a ‘bake-off’
- Buy labels and write on them the price of your cakes and cookies
- Select two of the following ‘bulge-bracket’ investment bankers to ‘bookrun’ your initial offering of shares: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, UBS, Citigroup, and JP Morgan
- Select two to three ’boutique’ investment bankers to ‘co-lead’ your initial offering of shares such as Pacific Crest, Jeffries, Piper Jaffray, William Blair, Cowan, Needham (there are dozens and dozens)
- These four or five banks form your ‘underwriting syndicate’ (the people who help you ‘make a market’ for the percentage of your company that you are selling to the public by taking initial orders from institutional investors).
- Meet with your bankers to write your ‘Form S-1‘ which is a couple hundred page document detailing every part of your business, every product, every management team member, every metric, every material agreement, every options plan, every differentiation, every risk etc.
- Determine which exchange you wish to list on. The NYSE has higher revenue requirements than the NASDAQ. The NASDAQ is weighted toward technology companies. NYSE ARCA and NYSE Euronext are also options for smaller offerings, as is the AMEX. The London Stock Exchange (AIM) is also sometimes an option, though it requires different filing steps and doesn’t presently provide the branding imprimatur or liquidity that a New York exchange does.
- Presuming you are going public on an American exchange, file your S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- Publicly announce your registration and your intent to go public.
- Respond back to the comments and questions that the SEC provides until they tell you you are good to go.
- Determine with your bankers which metrics and the definition of each metric you will report to ‘the Street’ (the institutional investors that will buy/sell your shares and analysts which will cover your company once it’s public). You will have to report all financials (bookings, revenue, GM, COGS, Cap Ex, R&D, Sales & Marketing, General & Admin, OpEx, Net Profit, EBITDA, assets, liabilities, ARs, APs) and numbers such as customers, growth rate, ARPU, retention/churn, LTV, and CAC.
- Work with your bankers to craft your story and prepare your slidedeck for the roadshow, emphasizing your strengths, metrics, and opportunity.
- If the market timing is good then prepare for your roadshow. The market is rather bad right now (August 2008) for IPOs. There have been no venture-backed IPOs to date in 2008, although there will likely be a few in Q4 and many in 2009.
- Determine your initial price per share target and how much money you wish to raise, and the percentage of the company you wish to sell to the public market.
- Hold an ‘IPO roadshow’ in which you and your CFO visit the major U.S. cities to present to the institutional investors and mutual fund managers who may wish to purchase your shares.
- At this point your ‘bookrunners’ will take orders for shares and help build interest among firms that they know have demand for businesses like yours.
- Based on demand (# of orders) you and your investment bankers make a final determination on price per share, amount of shares to sell, and who to sell shares to (ideally stable investors that won’t trade out of your stock right away) the night before or the morning of the listing.
- Ring the bell the morning of your offering and celebrate. Watch the wire of funds go into your corporate bank account. Now the work begins to properly manage expectations, overperform, and gain trust with your investors.
The Advantages to Being Public
The advantages to going public are generally greater access to capital to help grow the business, liquidity for pre-IPO shareholders (though not for at least 6 months after the offering), an ability to command a higher revenue multiple than most private companies can, and a greater level of trust and respect among larger customers or vendors.
The Disadvantages of Being Public
The disadvantages of being a publicly traded company include the 3 months of time you as CEO will have to be fully focused on going public and the 6 months your CFO will have to be fully focused on the process of going public–causing you to lose some focus on operations, having to report many of your key metrics and strategies to the public–including your competitors, having to ‘manage to the Street’ or in other words manage your results and report every quarter which sometimes causes short-term thinking, an inability to be fully flexible, the legal reporting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley that cost around $2 million per year in compliance costs, and a requirement to be profitable or within clear visibility of profitability that sometimes can limit ability to pursue growth.
Some Tips for the Public Company CEO To Be
Here’s a few tips I’ve picked up here at the conference on being a public company CEO.
- Manage Expectations Well: Become very good at managing expectations. As a public company CEO your job is to consistently hit or outperform your revenues and earnings per share (EPS) guidance every quarter. It takes time to develop trust with institutional investors. And if you go out saying one thing and end up not hitting that plan and doing another, it will cause turnover among your shareholder base, which will cause your share price to go down (bad). To become very good at managing expectations, make sure you have a solid financial model in place that can very accurately model future revenues, bookings, gross margins, and earnings projections. Don’t go out indicating you’ll have 10% net profits and then decide that you’re going to have 3% net profits so you can grow faster.
- Build Relationships Before You Need Them: Just as with raising venture capital, build the relationships before you need them. Start going to the analyst and investment banker conferences at least 18 months prior to your offering and build relationships with both the ibankers and public investors. Make sure they know who you are and like you and the company story many months prior to the roadshow.
- Pick Sticky Investors: When you are going out, you’ll decide which institutional investors get to purchase your stock and which do not. Ask in your contract with your investment bank that you significant input if not have final say as CEO. Get to know in advance which firms are long-term investors and which are not. You can use a service like the ‘Business Intelligence’ offering from Thompson Reuters to determine which institutions are looking at your deck and materials. Pick the firms that are going to hold your stock and not have high share turnover. Be wary of hedge funds who have high portfolio turnover.
Hope you enjoyed the post! I’ve still got a lot to learn so please let me know in the comments what I’ve mis-stated or altogether missed. Man I love this stuff.
Under 30 CEO Summit This Weekend in Utah
April 23, 2008
I’m out in Alta, Utah this weekend near Salt Lake City for the Under 30 CEO Summit being put on by Elliot Bisnow.
We’ve been skiing at Snowbird, heard from Ted Alemayhu from U.S. Doctors for Africa, chatted with Scott Fredrick from Valhalla Partners, and talked a lot about business, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and how we can work together to make a difference in the world.
Blake from Tom’s Shoes (which donates 1 pair of shoes to children in developing countries for every pair they sell) debuted his video “No Polo Window” announcing the launch of his leather boots campaign to reduce a foot disease called Podo in Ethiopia. Blake gave us each a pair and I’m quite happy to report they are awesome for breakdancing.
The people that are here include Dan Melinger (Socialight), Cristina Miller (Store Adore),
Sean Belnick (Bizchairs.com), Ben Lerer (Thrillist), Blake Mycoskie (Tom’s Shoes), Cameron Johnson (The Big Give), Ben Kauffman, (Kluster), Josh Abramson (CollegeHumor/BustedTees), Rob Jewell (Gratis Internet), Joel Holland (Footage Firm),
Lin Miao (Tatto Media), Ricky Van Veen (CollegeHumor/BustedTees), Jud Bowman (Motricity), Sam Altman (Loopt), Anthony Adams (CreditCovers), Nathan Stevens (Yodle), and Jeff Fissel (KZO Networks).
Yesterday I skied for the second time and went from extreme beginner to beginner. It’s been a great time so far and I’m looking forward to tonight.
Podcast Interviews on Entrepreneurship
April 15, 2008
Here are two recent podcast interviews on entrepreneurship done by Written Voices and Daxle. Enjoy!
Written Voices Podcast Interview With Ryan Allis (17min 38 sec) – A discussion with Allan Hunkin from Written Voices about:
- Building a team
- My personal motivation
- The importance of finding mentors
- An overview of Zero to One Million including opportunity evaluation, raising capital, marketing and creating sales, giving back, and setting goals
- Finding your core motivation
- Focusing on providing a great product
- Social responsibility
- The Entitlement Generation vs. The Enlightenment Generation
- The Enlightened Entrepreneur
- Finding Your BHALG – Your Big Hairy Audacious Lifetime Goal
Daxle Interview with Ryan Allis (17 min 02 sec) – A discussion with Brian Oates from Daxle about:
- The entrepreneurial itch
- Finding a partner
- Evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities
- Ensuring demand for your business idea
- The value of teamwork
- How internet sales are different from door-to-door sales
- Generating leads from the web
- Bootstrapping and doing what it takes to keep expenses low
Two More Interviews on Entrepreneurship
March 23, 2008
Here are two more recent podcast/radio interviews on entrepreneurship done by Dr. Alvin Jones and Start-Up Spark. Enjoy!
Dr. Alvin Jones Radio Interview with Ryan Allis – (9min 17sec, WMA file) – A March 26, 2008 radio interview on WCBQ-AM 1340 and WHNC-AM 890 with Dr. Alvin Jones from the Paradise Radio Network about:
- Starting in business
- Going to UNC
- Being the son of a priest
- What iContact does
- The quote about taking action by Scottish Mountaineer W.H. Murray
- Setting big goals
- Understanding the entrepreneurial system
- Evaluating business ideas
- The three questions to ask prospective buyers
- Accessing the world of equity capital
Start-up Spark Interview with Ryan Allis (17 min 38 sec) – A discussion with Shannon Cherry from Start-up Spark about:
- Growing up in Florida
- Advantages/disadvantages of young entrepreneurs
- The MAR system
- Bootstrapping and living in the office
- Doing whatever it takes to keep expenses low
- How we hired our first employee
- Using equity initially to reduce cash burn
- The importance of systems and building a team when scaling
- How to avoid creating a job for yourself
- Why hiring people smarter than you is critical
- The definition of an entrepreneur
- Figuring out the purpose of your life
- What will motivate you to get through the hard times
- The mission of The Humanity Campaign
Giving Back As an Enlightened Entrepreneur
February 23, 2008
Giving Back As an Enlightened Entrepreneur – Book Excerpt
October 14, 2007 · Print This Article
Below is an excerpt on Giving Back from the updated version of Zero to One Million, coming out in February through McGraw Hill…
Giving Back
I did an exercise when I was 20 years old that changed my life forever. I wrote down how I wanted to use my life to make a difference in the world—to help build stronger communities and societies here at home, and also work to end poverty and hunger globally. When I learned from reading an annual world health report from the World Health Organization that over 18,000,000 people die every year (49,365 per day) from preventable diseases and starvation the gravity of some of the most important issues of our day hit me.
When I learned from a World Bank report that as of 2001, 2.7 billion people lived on under $2 per day (42% of the humans in the world), the realization made me want to spend my life working entrepreneurially to address these issues. When I read The End of Poverty, by Columbia Economist Jeffrey Sachs in 2006, I further committed to being a leader of my generation to address the problems and ensuring that by the end of my life at least 95% of the wealth I create goes back to creating societies with greater access to opportunity and sustainably assisting people who have not had the opportunity I have been so fortunate to have.
As I added to my knowledge through travel, reading, and speaking with people who live in developing nations, I updated my mission statement and began to write what I call a Purpose Statement. Along the way, the added depth of purpose has given what I strive to do every day deep personal meaning. For me, entrepreneurship is not about making lots of money and living an extravagant life, it’s about being able to make a positive impact in the lives of thousands, and hopefully someday, billions. If you can find how starting and building a successful business can help you have a larger meaning in your life and allow you to give back to your community, you will be able to more easily find your core motivation and align what you do, with what you love.
Finding a deeper meaning and core motivation for doing what you do is a critically important part of getting through the difficult times along the way to becoming a successful businessperson. I have found this meaning for myself. As I wrote in the introduction to this book my Purpose Statement is:
I wish to spend my life working through entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, investing, philanthropy, public policy, and politics to end poverty in developing nations and at home, ensure environmental sustainability, help people understand that we are one humanity and that our commonalities are much greater than our differences, and help expand access to opportunity, healthcare, and education across the world for every human of every nation.
Right now, please take a moment to write down how you hope to use your talents, resources, and time on this planet to make a positive difference in the world. This can be a powerful exercise, so please take a couple minutes to complete it.
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Action Item 11 – Finding Deeper Purpose in Your Life |
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Take a moment and write how you hope to use your business, time, energy, and resources to make a positive difference in the world.
I wish to spend my life… ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ |
Many extremely successful industrialists and entrepreneurs over the past 150 years have chosen to give back. Andrew Carnegie funded libraries all over the United States and created his foundation to ‘promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.’ Rockefeller created the Rockefeller foundation to ‘promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.’ Ford created the Ford Foundation to ‘promote democracy, reduce poverty, promote international understanding, and advance human achievement.’ Bill Gates has created the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ‘enhance global healthcare and reduce global poverty and expand access to educational opportunity and technology.’ Gates has said many times that he will give 95% of his wealth back to society before he dies. He considers himself a steward of wealth, as should any successful entrepreneur.
As an entrepreneur, score is kept by who can create the most value. Money comes to you directly in proportion to how much value you create by rearranging the resources of land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurial ability into the outputs that society desires. If we are successful, we can create millions, perhaps billions of dollars of value to society and in turn become wealth through stock appreciation, going public, or selling the company.
I hope you will give back as well what you can, along the way as you build your company—and especially after you have become wealthy. It is our job as enlightened entrepreneurs to give back to the society and world that has enabled us to succeed, to work to create fuller access to opportunity. Giving back can make our lives full of meaning and purpose, and make us more driven entrepreneurs at the same time.
I know if you set your mind to it you will become an extremely wealthy individual and make millions of dollars in your life. You may not see the way now, but if you commit to the goal and believe it, you will achieve it in time. It may take ten or twenty years, but if you choose to be, you will become a multi-millionaire. Knowing that you will become a multi-millionaire someday if you make the choice to be, I ask right now that you commit to contributing at least 90% of any wealth you make by the end of your life into a foundation or endowment of a charitable organization that can work to make our world a better place.
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Action Item 12 – The Enlightened Entrepreneur’s Commitment |
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I, _______________ _________________ commit to contributing at least ninety percent of any wealth I earn during my lifetime into a personal foundation or endowments of charitable organizations that will work to address the major issues of our world such as poverty, hunger, education, healthcare, environmental sustainability and any other area that I believe will make the world, my nation, my state, and my community a better place.
X __________________________________ Date: ____________ |
Now #2 on Amazon! | Dare Mighty Things
February 6, 2008
Zero to One Million reached #2 on Amazon around 5am this morning and is still there as of 1:30pm! We’re still pushing to get to #1. I’m up against Oprah-backed Eckhart Tolle. That guy is amazing! My only hope may be to get on Oprah!
Check it out at http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books
My plane got re-routed and I’m sitting here in the Detroit airport working on getting back to RDU. Boarding now!
What We Accomplished Today — #3 overall on Amazon
February 5, 2008
Blog Readers—
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support of the launch effort today of Zero to One Million!
We reached #1 in Business & Investing, #1 in Marketing, #1 in Entrepreneurship, #1 Mover & Shaker, #2 in Non-Fiction, and #3 overall on Amazon today, only bested by Oprah-backed Eckhart Tolle and the perennial favorite John Grisham. We beat out Eat Pray Love, Good to Great, The Tipping Point, Blue Ocean Strategy, Ready, Fire, Aim, The Four Hour Workweek, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, Getting Things Done, The E-Myth Revisited, and well, every other book in the world other than Tolle’s A New Earth and Grisham’s The Appeal.
The momentum we built today will spread a message of entrepreneurial possibility to tens of thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs across the United States and the world for many months to come. You’ve also helped with the beginnings of a lifetime effort to reduce poverty and hunger by increasing access to health care, education, technology, and entrepreneurial opportunity through The Humanity Campaign.
It’s been an amazing day in so many ways. It is truly amazing what can be accomplished through word of mouth in the name of changing the world and spreading a message of entrepreneurial opportunity.
I wanted to publicly thank Carlos Garcia, Buck Rizvi, Shawn Casey, Tom Bell, Cindy Turrieta, Nana Gilbert-Baffoe, Keith Baxter, Derek Gehl, Dearl Miller, Matt Gill, Michael Simmons, Mark Shay, Rich Sloan, John Jantsch, Adam Gilbert, and Ilia Nossov for recommending Zero to One Million to their lists today.
To have the #3 bestselling book in the nation on Amazon on launch day is an over-the-top successful book launch by any measure. Thank you very very much for making this possible!
Here’s a list of some of the blogs we reached today…
- http://www.wral.com/business/local_tech_wire/opinion/blogpost/2395410/
- http://voyager.gaia.com/blog/2008/2/entrepreneurship_and_ending_poverty
- http://blog.lawsonforcongress.com/2008/02/05/how-to-change-the-world-by-buying-a-book/
- http://taylorbarr.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/swan-dive-into-the-blogging-world/
- http://we-love-durham.com/news/2008/02/04/durham-entrepreneur-releases-book-does-good/
- http://bigwinner.org/2008/02/04/zero-to-one-million/
- http://thepayitforwardchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/02/super-tuesday-of-another-color.html
- http://brandonmilford.com/2008/02/05/ryans-book-launches-today/
- http://raisingentrepreneurs.org/blog/2008/02/06/young-entrepreneur-giving-back-already/
- http://hospitalinformatics.blogspot.com/2008/02/ryan-allis-book-release.html
- http://techtownnc.com/2008/01/23/ryan-allis-wants-you-to-help-end-poverty-and-buy-his-book/
- http://www.woodymaxim.com/fat-wallet-tuesday/
- http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/entrepreneur-ryan-allis-makes.html
- http://www.3tailer.com/entrepreneurship/buy-ryan-alliss-book-zero-to-one-million-tomorrow
- http://www.chooseabetterlife.net/world-of-work/zero-to-one-million/
- http://www.jamieratliff.com/zero-to-one-million/
- http://www.thegooglecache.com/rants-and-raves/launch-of-zero-to-one-million-book-today/
- http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/2008/02/do-you-want-to-become-multi-millionaire.html
- http://rolereversal.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/changing-the-world-one-email-at-a-time/
Thank you sincerely for your help!
-Ryan
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