If you ask Ricci Wolman, founder of Written Word Media, she’ll tell you there’s more than one way to build a profitable startup.
Even in a tight fundraising environment, there’s the pressure to raise capital. But this fall, Written Word Media, the 15-employee firm in Durham that Wolman built from scratch, will celebrate its ninth year in operation – all without raising a single dollar in venture capital funding.
How Written Word Media was born
Wolman moved to the Triangle in 2007, having recently finished her MBA in Boston. She was following her husband, Ferol Vernon, who had been accepted to Duke University’s MBA program.
Wolman built a successful career, taking on a role with the Body Shop, then headquartered in Wake Forest. Wolman was tasking with working in the cosmetic firm’s then-fledgling e-commerce department – and it clicked, so much so that her next role was at Lulu.com (founded by Red Hat co-founder Bob Young), managing online customer acquisition and retention for the self-publishing firm.
When she became pregnant with her first child, however, she decided to be her own boss – that way she could set her own hours.
She started a marketing agency called Agile Marketing Group, focused on online customer retention, “which at the time was really new, Facebook was barely a thing,” she said.
As she was running the company, her mother was making her own dreams happen.
“My mom published her book, which she had been working on for awhile,” Wolman said. “She needed some help with the marketing.”
It was through that experience that Wolman realized there was a real demand from independent authors “who didn’t have the budget or expertise to market their own books.”
So, still at Agile, Wolman set up a Facebook group called FreeBooksy to highlight indy titles. That page, which built a large audience, was the beginning of what would become Written Word Media.
Around the same time, her husband, Vernon, was at ReverbNation, another homegrown Durham company.
Wolman believed in the opportunity – so much that she asked Vernon if he wanted to quit his job and help “build this idea to scale.”
That’s where it got really hard. When Vernon quit his job, Agile was what was paying the bills and the mortgage – and by then the couple was also supporting a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old.
An NC IDEA grant came at the right time.
“Within a year, we had really scaled the business, were doing significant revenue,” she said.
The new company, initially going by the FreeBooksy name, was profitable and began to hire full-time employees. The success led Wolman to sunset Agile and go all in on Written Word Media.
Without outside backers to be beholden to, Wolman could implement a slew of employee benefits – including a profit-share program. But the biggest benefit is freedom, she said.
“I knew when I went out on my own to start my own company a big part of it was freedom,” she said. “For me, that meant flexibility to work the hours I wanted to.”
Venture capitalists expressed interest along the way, but Wolman resisted the urge to pitch.
“I think a lot of entrepreneurs don’t realize it’s an option,” she said of not raising capital. “They spend so much of the initial time and energy they have on talking to investors.”
It takes a mindset shift – the serious question of, if we don’t raise the money, what happens? And for some, there’s still a pathway to success – you just have to find it.
“There are other ways to get the idea off the ground,” Wolman said.
Her advice to firms considering capital raises? “Look really hard at your business model and ask yourself, is this really something that needs outside capital?” she said.
Her advice – consider all the possibilities. That includes grants offered by Triangle programs such as entrepreneurial support organization NC IDEA. The possibilities also include incubators “where you’re not giving away equity up front, but that enable you to connect with advisers.”
She also recommends coworking. Written Word Media had its offices at American Underground pre-pandemic (it's now remote), and Wolman credits it with meeting fellow founders who "are a part of my sounding board network to this day."
Keep networking and keep having conversations, Wolman said.
