Entrepreneurship doesn’t get easier, but it’s a fulfilling journey, one that can create jobs and build economies through homegrown headquarters.
And it’s happening in Raleigh.
That’s part of the take of serial entrepreneur Jesse Lipson, keynote speaker at the CED Venture Connect Conference.
Over the two days of the conference this week, held at the former Citrix building in Downtown Raleigh, 125 companies are scheduled to appear on stage. And in the crowd, they’ll be eyed by venture capitalists from across the Southeast and beyond.
It’s a critical event for local entrepreneurs struggling to find capital. And Lipson had a lot of advice for the crowd, walking them through how he created ShareFile in Raleigh, one customer at a time.
Building ShareFile from scratch
Lipson, who went from philosophy major at Duke University to a repeat founder, remembers the struggle well.
At the start of his jump into the startup landscape, he lived in a basement, no heating, no air conditioning, “and started this company called Easy Central.”
His second attempt at entrepreneurship was website development, which started with Googling on how to make websites. Clients were asking for password-protected areas for file sharing, and he built the answer: ShareFile.
But many questioned whether there was a market for what he was doing. "By the time a space is really hot, you’re probably a couple of years too late," he said.
Lipson spent several months coding from scratch, creating a business plan in html.
“Looking back, I can’t imagine anyone putting their credit card number in that,” he said, pointing to ShareFile’s initial website being rudimentary by today’s standards. He took the revenue from the first four customers and put it into Google Ad Words. He used his credit cards to go all in.
And it worked. But he said it was through work, not luck.
Inside Lipson's ShareFile strategy
“We were just incredibly data driven as I look back,” he said, noting there was a dashboard in the office showing a running total of the free trials and who was signing up, how many paid accounts were coming in. “We were measuring the success of all of our uploads.”
He used excel models in some form all the way up until he left Citrix.
And he was "obsessed" with customers.
He credits the attitude to his background in philosophy.
“I knew we weren’t going to code the most elegant, sophisticated website for customers … but most clients don’t notice that,” he said. “What they do notice is whether you pick up the phone and how quickly you respond to issues.”
The next facet that separated ShareFile was its focus on core values.
“I always thought core values was just something you put up on a poster,” he said. But over the years, it solidified. “You have a consistent set of principles that you use to hire and fire and make decisions."
Values like “integrity” and “success” were plastered everywhere, including bathroom mirrors. And ShareFile made “a bunch of T-shirts” to further get employees on board culturally.
The company had a “big hairy audacious goal” in 2009, to reach 50,000 customers in five years. It wanted 500 employees, its own building with a cafeteria. And by stating those goals, it made them happen, moving into the building downtown in 2014 that met that criteria, Lipson said.
“It shows the value of core values, creating a vision for the future and getting everyone aligned to it,” he said, calling the building "one of the things I'm most proud of in my career. ... It is a little bit sad today that the future is empty.”
But he said he’s confident the Citrix building, currently up for sublease, will be a new home for a company soon.
Post-Citrix, Lipson built relationship-building software company Levitate (which raised $14 million last year). Like ShareFile, it's headquartered in Raleigh.
Today, the ShareFile unit is part of a new company, Cloud Software Group. But it’s the commitment to Raleigh that fueled part of the message at the conference, that the Triangle is where big things happen.
Building the next ShareFile
Bill Spruill, investor and chairman of CED, told the crowd to stop thinking about quality of life and start “focusing their minds on the quality of work.”
Thousands of people move to the Triangle every month. But why?
“Pundits will tell you ... it’s our quality of life,” Spruill said. “We’re easy living. … We need to stop that messaging. The reason people come here is because of our quality of work.”
He said the region, already one of the “most diverse industry areas in this country,” is building the next generation of great headquarters in Raleigh, driven by entrepreneurs, such as those from innovators like Nala Membranes.
Spruill said more ShareFiles are on their way, to be created by the entrepreneurs in the room.
“We really need to remember, remind people, why here,” he said. “Because it’s one of the best places in the country to build a top-notch company. Yes, you can also enjoy your life here … but you come here to do big things, you come here to grow big things.”