Overcoming
Age Barrier: Young Founders of Broadwick Drive It to
Success
Special To LTW
Editors Note: Ryan Allis is CEO of Durham-based
Broadwick Corp., a provider of software that improves
communication efficiency for businesses. Broadwick was
recently selected as a presenting company at the Council
for Entrepreneurial Development’s (CED) Venture 2006
Conference (www.cednc.org/venture). CED recently sat
down with Allis to ask him about his experiences as a
young entrepreneur. This Entrepreneurial Spirit column
is one of a series done in partnership with WRAL Local
Tech
Wire. ________________________________________________________________________________________
What
do you feel makes Broadwick a unique
company?
The fun, relaxed atmosphere is one
of the most unique aspects about
Broadwick. We have a ping pong table, a
foosball table, and even play miniature golf in the
hallway during and after office
hours. However, I can only attribute this fun
atmosphere to the great employees we
have. The people are incredibly smart,
energetic and hard working. I also must add that our
company stands out because of the age of its founders,
who are presently 21 (Allis) and 24 years old
(co-founder and chairman Aaron Houghton).
Ryan
Allis
Has your
age impacted your experience as an
entrepreneur?
I have experienced both
advantages and disadvantages to being a young
entrepreneur, but overall the positives have outweighed
the negatives. Initially it was sometimes
hard to get people to take me seriously as an equal in
the business world, which served as a major roadblock to
acquiring financial backing. However, this
was offset by the willingness of others to give advice
to a young entrepreneur. Internally with our
own team members, age really has not been an issue. I’ve
found that your team members will respect you as long as
you first respect them and consistently work hard to
grow and improve your company.
How have you
managed to balance the numerous responsibilities of
a CEO and consistently grow Broadwick's customer
base?
I realized early on that one cannot
single-handedly run and grow a successful
company. As soon as you are financially able
to hire employees, get great people and train them
well. The first employee that I hired was
responsible for responding to the numerous e-mails and
phone calls that had begun to take up all of my
time. Hiring just one employee gave me the
time I needed to focus on developing and expanding
Broadwick. Overall, I recommend that aspiring
entrepreneurs plan on investing a generous amount of
time on the Human Resources process as well as to
devoting attention to building effective systems and
processes within his or her company.
What is
the greatest challenge that you have had to overcome in
developing your own company?
The greatest
challenge that I met was building Broadwick without any
outside investment capital. This meant that we had to
grow organically, trying to reinvest all sales back in
to the company in order to succeed
financially. In essence, we had to be
creative to keep costs low. In the beginning,
I took measures such as sleeping in the office on a
futon during the summer of 2003 to cut costs and save
money.
What is Broadwick's vision for the
future? Are there any upcoming deals or products that
you are looking forward to?
Our mission
is to become the leading worldwide provider of
e-marketing communications software. The future
looks promising, given that within only two years we
have become the third largest provider of e-mail
marketing software in the small business
market. Currently we are anticipating the
launch of our new enterprise e-mail marketing product,
IntelliCampaign.
CED recently selected your
company to be a presenter at its Venture 2006
Conference. How do you think this opportunity
will impact your company?
I am very excited
that Broadwick has been selected to present at the
Venture 2006 Conference. I have spoken with
other entrepreneurs that have presented at past
conferences, and they have all indicated that the
conference opened doors for securing new partnerships
and investments. We hope that presenting will
help build awareness of and excitement around our
company and provide us with opportunities to build
partnerships.
What is the most important piece
of advice that you would give to rising entrepreneurs in
the area?
My first suggestion is that all
beginning entrepreneurs should have a bias toward
action. Don't put off necessary tasks or spend too much
time overanalyzing them, either. Take the
necessary steps to be proactive in jumpstarting your
company--this may mean going ahead incorporating,
building your first web site, hiring an employee,
etc. Just take action!
Secondly, once
you have a good idea, stick with it. Certainly refine
it, but stick with it. I see a lot of aspiring
entrepreneurs that seem to have a new business idea
every month, constantly jumping from one thing to the
next. Find something that works and then
focus your energy on developing it. It may
take at least 3-4 years of devoted work for a company to
succeed.
.gif){kind=spacer}
