Francis Fischbach Interviews Dave Stubenvoll of Wowza Media Systems
Add comment January 25th, 2008
Francis interviewed Dave Stubbenvol of Wowza Media Systems in late November of 2007; they talked for more than an hour about bootstrapping and Dave’s experiences as a serial entrepreneur/intrapreneur. Dave has been to several of the Bootstrapper Breakfasts and is an energetic and articulate bootstrapper. So with one thing and another we finally got it transcribed and posted today; it makes for inspiring reading.
Here is one excerpt to give you a sense for Dave’s thinking.
There is a great book, “The Origin and Evolution of New Business” by Amar Bhide. It’s a very dry academic tome that talks about how small businesses get to be big. He looked at the Inc 500 instead of the Fortune 500–which I think is a more accurate approach than looking at a big business–and wondered “how did it get that way?”
What Bhide found was that there are basically three sources of new businesses: large businesses creating new businesses, venture backed startups, and the crazy entrepreneur. What was surprising was that you get the greatest returns from the crazy entrepreneur hitting it big. Large businesses only invest in other businesses that are guaranteed to be large: think about Toyota investing billions to develop and introduce a new car. Venture capitalists invest millions in a startup but only if they believe their return is going to be large: they have to see a billion dollar market from the beginning. With so much money at stake they can’t take large risks.
When you look at the businesses created by entrepreneurs–which include Cisco, Intuit, and arguably Google–it wasn’t with the expectation of a large return but structured for survival. These entrepreneurs didn’t quit their day jobs. They took an evolutionary approach that spread a large risk over many small experiments. When Google started, Yahoo owned search. Who in their right mind would start a search company? I haven’t met the founders but they are certainly very smart and they created something that was interesting and ultimately compelling: when they made it available people were clamoring for it. They wouldn’t have received Venture Capital funding if that hadn’t happened, right? They were able to prove success on a shoestring just with their interest. Then they had to decide whether to build the company or finish their doctorates. That’s what success looks like: you can consider quitting your day job because your side project has taken off to the point where you can make that decision.
Read the whole thing at Founder Story: Dave Stubenvoll of Wowza Media Systems