An Introduction from 35K Feet

My name is Russell Jurney, and I am a degenerate serial technology entrepreneur. I was a bad student. I’m a terrible employee. Yet, despite an entrepreneurial career that might so far best be described as a negative feedback loop, I can’t stop founding companies. Being an employee without a stake is like playing poker for monopoly money. After a while, there is no thrill. I’m just going through the zombie motions, counting the days and the dollars in my account until I can drop out, start a company and feel alive again.

Accompanied by Awkward Personal Confessions

As a teenager I had panic attacks on airplanes, so I would take greyhound across America to meet my family on vacation. I met a lot of good people and came to know the vastness of America. These days I’m not afraid of flying, and I’m sitting comfortably at thirty five thousand feet as I write this. These days, my panic attacks are about wasting time and missing out. Every six months or so I have one, usually after staying up for twenty four hours or more, consulting double time to dig myself out of the financial crater of my last venture. I become convinced that I’m missing what is happening out west, and determine to move to San Francisco immediately.

I calm down after some sleep, tell myself I can make it here, that I’ve gotten my street MBA from my repeated failures, and my next startup will fare better. I’m a southerner, and I’m not going anywhere. I’d like to die on my farm. So I review my failures, what I learned from each, and what it means for the next startup I am saving for. Lately when I do so a theme emerges.

A Brief List of Personal Failures

Lucision 1 – Attempted to enter the legal document management market, got exactly nowhere. Never even contacted prospective customers.

Lucision 2 – Spent two years trying to sell casinos out west an analytical appliance they didn’t want. Needed to be in Las Vegas to cultivate customers and refine our product.

Star Caller – Spent a year building and marketing novel multimedia/telephony marketing campaigns for films, that nobody wanted. Spent one week in LA where we got all our leads, none of which came through. Needed to be in LA to cultivate customers and refine our product.

On Geography

In both cases location played a fundamental role in my failure, although it was not the only factor. I screwed up in many, many ways. When I talk to investors in town, I cringe at the idea that they remember some of the business plans I sent out with my name on them. I only take solace in the fact they probably don’t remember, as the plans were totally unexceptional.

Still, I can’t help but feel that if I had been closer to my market I could at least have failed faster. What pains me about these startups is that they ate up three years of my life. Three years I could have spent building things people wanted. What keeps me up at night is that most code I’ve written in my life so far has lain dormant, not being executed by anyone.

One of the things I’ve learned in interviewing many entrepreneurs in Atlanta for this project is that I’ve been a fairly slow learner. It took me three man-years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure out a very few things, but one of those that I’m sure of is that location matters.

Atlanta’s Renaissance

In the last several years, ATDC opened its doors to the community at large, and as a result and through the hard work of many, Atlanta has undergone a fundamental shift from a place hostile to a twenty something hacker looking to found a startup, to a network of support to nurture the budding entrepreneur and help him (or her) transform an idea into a product into a business. Tech Square has the hum and buzz of high tech commerce. It is a source of inspiration and a cornerstone of the community.

I still, however, have the panic attacks about Silicon Valley: time passing me by as I spend long hours consulting my way out of debt incurred during my last bootstrapped startup. I’m tired of the panic. Through this project, I’m going to try to exorcise those demons. I’m going to face the beast head-on to resolve this conflict within myself. In doing so, and by laying out my vision for our future based upon what I’ll learn, I hope to do my small part to improve our business environment. I am determined to harness our own regional advantage in my next startup. To do that, I need to discover what it is. And to do that, I need to experience the ‘promised land.’

The next piece in this series is entitled, ‘The California State of Mind.’

Tagged as: Entrepreneurs, Russell Jurney, Silicon Valley, South, Startups, TechDrawl

Adam Wexler

good luck russell. interested to hear what your thoughts & what we can do to continue the positive energy in atlanta...don't forget to come back now...

Scott Kozicki

First, congratulate yourself on being brave. Not many people, entrepreneurs or not, would have the courage to be as transparent about their "failures" as you have. Second, pat yourself on the back again for acknowledging what you perceive as your strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. Most people don't even make it this far in thinking about why they do something or how best to do it. Finally, tip of the hat for focusing on the one thing that will always serve you well: learning from mistakes. In that you've tried something and not necessarily gotten what you consider a positive outcome, you actually have. You've learned, and that process should be repeated over and over again as many times as possible. Consider that almost no one will ever just walk up to a bicycle and ride it. We fall down. A lot. In learning to ride, we master many skills through practice and sheer desire to do it. Period. There's no other real direct motivation. Now consider that most people, once they've figured out how to do this, stop learning. They stop learning the limits of the bike. How it can be jumped and tumbled and spun. And that's a tragedy. I'm not saying everyone should be an icey hot stunta, but being addicted to learning and pushing yourself to derive more out of something will always serve you well. In life and in business. And if you think that spending 3 years pursuing some things and learning from that experience was a "waste", then watch Flash of Genius and ask that question again. If you're not risking "failure", then you aren't doing anything that's truly worthy of your time. Whether it's relationships, work, or cooking.

Craig Cuddeback

I agree with Terry that you need to find the need and fill it, but often-times, you go out, talk to people, define the need, give them what they say they wanted and they don't buy it. Defining a need is an ongoing process that requires "connecting the dots" and extensive questioning. If people could really tell you what they want, somebody would have given it to them. Look for what they really want but can't tell you they need...therein lies a successful product. or service. The process is more invovled than that but talk to a broad cross section of people and probe for the answers that you don't want to hear, don't just seek out reinforcement from early feedback. good luck

Terry Culling

A couple of comments. I think you're absolutely right that you need to be closer to your markets - but not (necessarily) in geographic terms. It sounds like you may have developed products and then tried to sell them (I'm sure that's an oversimplification, but...). Peter Drucker said it best; "Find a need and fill it". It's so simple and so obvious and everyone knows it - but when we are enamored of our solutions (and I include myself), it's easy to lose perspective. We then try to convince prospects of the brilliance of our solutions and forget that they have real-life pain that we are not connecting with. If we can identify with our markets and seek to serve them by understanding their needs, we can come up with a compelling purpose for our venture. The other side of that, of course, is being able to match the need with something we can provide in a distinct way. That matching process means understanding what we have to offer - all the resources at our disposal. You mentioned that you are "determined to harness our own regional advantage" in your next startup. That would be part of the matching process. I'm sorry if this sounds a little like basic B-school lecture, but it's actually founded on years of experience and the understanding that very few adhere to these fundamental principles - because it's hard work! Good luck - I hope that you obtain the enlightenment that you are looking for.

Kumar

I've been told that in the US, compared to other countries, prior startup failures can be worn like a badge of honor, as it means one has actually tried, taken a risk, and has the drive to improve and do it again. In any case, good luck on your trip.

bob

Some people marry a number of times and do not learn what they need to do to change themselves so they do not repeat the past, i.e., divorces, so those tht do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, so either you are a successful entrepreneur, or you repeat mistakes? . :)

An Introduction from 35K Feet

Twitter Mentions

Recent Posts

Blogs We Follow