News

CEOs tell why their dot-coms survived

Leaders of a pair of dot-com survivors acknowledged Thursday that some of their companies’ success can be attributed to taking risks, learning from mistakes and making adjustments.

Speaking during the annual member meeting of the Utah Information Technology Association, Tom Stockham, president and chief executive officer of MyFamily.com, and Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Orem-based Omniture, cited several reasons for their companies’ growth as other tech companies floundered.

By Brice Wallace
Deseret Morning News

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595053163,00.html

"We like taking risks, and there are certainly some big risks we’ve taken, but a couple of them have really paid off," said James, whose company specializes in helping clients track Web traffic.

Stockham noted that Provo-based MyFamily.com started as a book-publishing company and later moved its family history databases from CD-ROMs to the Internet. It had to adjust when advertising revenue shrank, more than making up for that by seeing huge growth in Web-based subscriptions.

"A lot of that trying and pushing on what you think will work and then going on to what does work is just part of the nature of building any company," Stockham said.

Both men acknowledged their employees’ contributions. Stockham illustrated a point by using an analogy of a manager and engineer who did not see eye to eye.

"Building any good company is really mostly about fixing that stuff — having a lot of good folks, each of whom has their specialty and their focus and their set of insights and their diverse opinions about what goes into getting good stuff out of the other end of the company," he said. "It’s figuring out how to get them to work well together."

MyFamily.com’s history is full of "just figuring things out, bumping into things, getting good people to go execute on getting more stuff done," he said.

By the end of 2003, the company had more than 615,000 subscribers and $99 million in sales for the year.

"Really, in any business, the key is getting some folks, assembling a great team of people and helping everyone understand what’s their piece in building the thing and then having them go off and do it," he said. "I feel really fortunate in this company in particular to work with a pretty remarkable group of people."

James’ 75-employee company had revenues of $3 million a few years ago but saw it rise to $8 million last year. Revenue is expected to hit about $20 million this year.

His company started before the dot-com bubble, and he and his partner founded it with their own credit cards and student loans. That led them to understand the value of capital, he said.

"We figured out after a year-and-a-half of our first business that we lived on 25 cents an hour. But when all the money was coming in and everyone wanted to throw money at you, . . . we just didn’t take it because we didn’t understand what we were going to do with it," he said.

Another curious approach was having a lack of focus. "So we kept on shifting. We had three or four different variations before we landed where we’re at today," he said.

E-mail: [email protected]

News Catrgory Sponspor:


Dorsey & Whitney - An International business law firm, applying a business perspective to clients' needs in Missoula, Montana and beyond.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.