The Method
Outline:
Intro
Origin Story
Results So Far
Current Focus
How You Can Help
We created a startup validation process that is 200x more efficient than
Y-Combinator
Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention
I was living in Chicago when I declined to join a job offer at the acquiring company. 18 months prior, I was hired by the CEO of Yesmail to turn the business around. We did so successful in 15 months and sold it to InfoUSA three months later. There was more I wanted to do in email marketing so I decided to create my first, pure technology startup in my house with a $5K investment.
It was 2003 and there were two venture captial firms in town at the time. I met with both of them. The meetings lasted a total of 17 seconds. “Too early, not our space,” the typical rejection language that I later became all too familiar with.
I asked my wife at the time if she’d consider moving to the Bay Area. Her response told me I’d have to get divorced first. (That came later, but not at this time.)
So here I was, just a few years into my corporate career in tech, starting up in my house with virtually no money, no resources, no co-founder, no CTO, no Customers, no product and no revenue. It was a dream come true.