My Baby's Gone
Well, it finally happened -- I got rid of my Baby. She was an adorable, exciting, and demanding partner for over 6 years. Now she's gone -- and I'm not too sad.
"She" is the wireless hand-held solution for USDA compliance known to the Food Safety industry as Mobilitee, and she was a very cool software product. In the space of a few short months, she became the darling of the industry, and some called her the "gold standard." And she came about quite by accident.
Mobilitee started life as a brainchild of mine when I owned a consultancy with 2 partners that had grown to over $10MM in revenue. Life before 2001 was great, and we all felt the same immortality that the remainder of the information industry did. Everyone knew that it was a bubble, but we were having too much fun building houses and becoming rich to care.
In late 2000, my partners and I started being at odds over the age-old "product vs. services" discussion, and I opted for the product. They opted for the services. It turns out that neither of us were right, but we both went through the same pains in 2001 after Mr. Bin Laden was finished with us. Evey business in the country was affected by 9/11. I was in a taxicab last week, and the driver lamented how bad times were during that period.
After 2001 was over, I had employees to support, and expenses to pay, and life took on an ominous turn, and we all knew that it was going to go badly. Business fell off, customers looked for other options, and we found ourselves looking for another way to make a living.
It was then that I was told about a Kraft Foods plant in South Carolina that needed help with USDA issues. We went down to the plant, listened to the Quality people and promised to return in 2 weeks with a solution. We did that, and presented a solution that has now become Mobilitee. After 7 or so demos over the space of the same number of months, we sold the solution to Kraft. They funded our initial development, and allowed us to keep the intellectual property.
Over the next several years my sales guy and I saw every protein company in the country (it seems) and did demonstrations to over 20 different groups of people. 19 of them loved it, but we were unable to get any funding for the solution. Some say we were before our time.
About that time, a reseller in Virginia heard about what we were doing, and let us know that they wanted to sell the product. They took it on, we sold a couple of small accounts, and our customers seemed to like it. We didn't sell very many, but we knew that there was a market out there.
As of yesterday, the Virginia reseller has purchased the product from me, and now they will take it to the next level. I will help them make the transition, and wish them Godspeed as they make it the #1 solution in the industry.
"She" is the wireless hand-held solution for USDA compliance known to the Food Safety industry as Mobilitee, and she was a very cool software product. In the space of a few short months, she became the darling of the industry, and some called her the "gold standard." And she came about quite by accident.
Mobilitee started life as a brainchild of mine when I owned a consultancy with 2 partners that had grown to over $10MM in revenue. Life before 2001 was great, and we all felt the same immortality that the remainder of the information industry did. Everyone knew that it was a bubble, but we were having too much fun building houses and becoming rich to care.
In late 2000, my partners and I started being at odds over the age-old "product vs. services" discussion, and I opted for the product. They opted for the services. It turns out that neither of us were right, but we both went through the same pains in 2001 after Mr. Bin Laden was finished with us. Evey business in the country was affected by 9/11. I was in a taxicab last week, and the driver lamented how bad times were during that period.
After 2001 was over, I had employees to support, and expenses to pay, and life took on an ominous turn, and we all knew that it was going to go badly. Business fell off, customers looked for other options, and we found ourselves looking for another way to make a living.
It was then that I was told about a Kraft Foods plant in South Carolina that needed help with USDA issues. We went down to the plant, listened to the Quality people and promised to return in 2 weeks with a solution. We did that, and presented a solution that has now become Mobilitee. After 7 or so demos over the space of the same number of months, we sold the solution to Kraft. They funded our initial development, and allowed us to keep the intellectual property.
Over the next several years my sales guy and I saw every protein company in the country (it seems) and did demonstrations to over 20 different groups of people. 19 of them loved it, but we were unable to get any funding for the solution. Some say we were before our time.
About that time, a reseller in Virginia heard about what we were doing, and let us know that they wanted to sell the product. They took it on, we sold a couple of small accounts, and our customers seemed to like it. We didn't sell very many, but we knew that there was a market out there.
As of yesterday, the Virginia reseller has purchased the product from me, and now they will take it to the next level. I will help them make the transition, and wish them Godspeed as they make it the #1 solution in the industry.
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