UBC Lecture Series: Murray Goldberg
priss | June 13, 20102 weeks ago, Beau and I went to the UBC Alumni/Industry lecture series featuring Murray Goldberg, my computer science instructor (I really enjoyed having him as my instructor when I was in UBC) on Starting and Building a Company: The Ups and Downs. Learned a lot, and I’d like to share my notes with ya~
But first of all, I’m a PROUD UBC Computer Science graduate! I really think UBC has an awesome Computer Science program filled with great profs and instructors! I enjoyed the years spent there, and the experience definitely shaped the person I am today.
I miss UBC~
My Notes:
Company #1: WebCT
- Founded in 1997
- Got grant from UBC
- 30 employees in ~1 year
- By end of 1998, 2-3 millions students, 1000 units, $2.5M revenue, 20 countries, 70-80% of market
- Still no additional funding, sales people or business knowledge
- UBC took 6% of revenue and per sale
- Sold in 1999 -> $150M revenue, 350 employees
- By 2002, 14 millions students, $40M revenue, 40% market (because of competitors)
- Sold again in 2006
How did it achieve such success?
- luck, right timing, seed opportunity
- great people, enthusiastic
- fast decisions (although not always the right ones)
- traveled world to give academic talks -> which promoted the product
- treated customers really… really well
- wonderful, loyal community of users
Company #2: Silicon Chalk
- group of smart people founded the company without knowing what to do for 8 months
- then Murray stepped in with the idea that everyone likes -> improve classroom experience through students’ laptops… can record, take notes, search later on when studying
- technically challenging
- needed funding, raising money = tough
- released after 18 months, 25 employees
- growth was slow, expensive to build
- sold to Horizon Wimba (a competitor)
- never made money
Why did it fail?
- laptop usage in universities grew more slowly than expected
- require more robust networking infrastructure
- high cash needs with low customer growth
Lessons learned – the 5 Axioms
- Do what you KNOW!
- No making of online gaming software if you don’t even know how to play poker!
- help being the insider
- Partners should be chosen carefully!
- how to make decisions (different voting process for various levels/importance of decisions) -> need a roadmap that you just follow when facing tough decisions
- ownership division -> effort and time … all should contribute
- what to do when someone wants out, or someone should be kicked off the island when they don’t contribute
- Do you need the people to succeed?
- need a solid shareholder agreement documenting:
- Need a plan to fund the company!
- best funding is no funding, when you can self sustained at the beginning with paying customers
- angel investor
- a VC (company in business of funding)
- tough to get their buyins
- receive 500 business plans a year
- will look at 100 of them
- will invest 25
- 5 will barely make it
- only 1-3 will succeed
- money is time!
- know when to quit before start (so you don’t waste time and money while telling yourself “6 more months I’ll make this to work” over and over again)
- Easier if you don’t do it alone
- mentor
- challenge them and have them challenge you
- create a community
- Treat customer like you need them
- most self-evident, but most often ignored
- be human and approachable
- be nice and communicate with them
- they’ll love you forever
~*~*~*~*~
About the speaker
Murray was a senior instructor in the Department of Computer Science at UBC in 1993 and was awarded tenure in 1998. Murray was the founder of WebCT and took leave from UBC in 1998 to pursue WebCT full time. Murray later went on to co-found Silicon Chalk, which created software for use in laptop or computer enabled higher education classrooms. Murray is currently involved with Brainify, an academic social bookmarking site for higher education, as well as other learning initiatives. He has chaired or sat (and continues to sit) on the boards of companies in the technology space, and has delivered approximately 200 keynotes and invited presentations at conferences and universities since 1998.
Murray’s awards include the $100,000 Manning Innovation Award, the New Media Hyperion Award, the CANARIE IWAY award, and the UBC Killiam teaching prize. Murray also has been granted an Honorary Ph.D. from the Southern Cross University for his pioneering work in educational technologies.
From Murray –
Background:
Do you have the desire to start a company? Do you dislike the idea of working for someone else the rest of your life? Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? An inventor? An innovator? Well, if you do, then you are nothing like I was in November of 1995 (yes – eons ago) when the idea of WebCT came to me while lying in bed being kept awake by my crying baby daughter.
At that time, I was a faculty member in Computer Science here at UBC, loving my teaching, loving being at UBC, and planning to be there for the rest of my working life. I had no business background, and certainly no business aspirations. WebCT was my research project looking into the effectiveness of web-based learning.
It turned out that due to completely accidental (but good) timing, WebCT was something that much of the world wanted to have. So after the passage of several years, several more miscues, and still several more lucky catches, WebCT had about 350 employees and was serving roughly 14 million students per year.
After a few years I escaped WebCT, and have since founded several other learning technology initiatives with varying degrees of success, but all with great enjoyment. Now I am involved with three different initiatives I’ve founded, and I continue to teach at UBC whenever time permits.
What is this talk about?
It depends on what you want me to talk about J. I am as far away as one can be from an expert in business. However, I have had a lot of incredibly entertaining (to me, maybe not to you) experiences starting companies, seeing some succeed, seeing some fail, raising money, making money, losing money, and trying my best to learn as much as I can as I go along. I have learned a little about business, a little about how to start companies, a little about how to sell a company, a little about how to find investors, and a little about the art of serving customers and developing a user community. I have learned a little about the incredible joys of first success, as well as the difficulty of having to close down a company. I have also been successful at balancing my desire to succeed at business with my (more important) desire to succeed at being a father/husband. So apparently I have learned a bit about that as well.
I can tell you the story of WebCT, the story of Silicon Chalk, and the unfinished stories of Brainify, AssociCom, and other initiatives. And I can share some of the lessons I have learned along the way.
Most importantly, don’t expect me to lecture for the full hour. I will begin by telling some of these stories. But I would like you to come prepared with questions (and, if you have them, your own experiences). It is no fun if I am the only one speaking.
