Founders at Work.pdf

244 Founders at Work
Fletcher: Sure. Why do you start a company? Do you start a company to get
rich? Do you start a company for the fun of it? That’s going to play into it also.
And then, what’s your definition of rich, I suppose is another thing. It doesn’t
take a lot of money to let you live without working ever again, if you do the
numbers. So what are your goals in life? You have to think that through.
Livingston: What other practical advice would you give to would-be founders?
Fletcher: I guess, get a lawyer. With ONElist, I incorporated not using a
lawyer. There’s a company in Delaware called the Company Corporation, so I
created an LLC by myself before I had a lawyer. Then we went online and fixed
things after the fact . . . it was a big hassle because VCs want a C-corp—any sort
of investor generally wants a C-corp because that’s what they understand.
With Bloglines, I had an accountant, at least for a good part of it, who was
fairly cheap. One of the hassles of ONElist was that I was the one managing the
books the first year, as well as answering the 200 support emails every night, as
well as doing all of this other stuff. I guess I’m torn with how cheap do you want
to go with a startup. Having an accountant is kind of a nice frill.
I also think a lot of people don’t know about all these outsourcing sites,
which are absolutely wonderful. One of the things that I did do differently with
Bloglines was rely upon an outsourcing site, in this case eLance, for a lot of
things. Not a lot of coding, but other things. So, if I wanted to put together a
presentation and I needed a couple of graphics, I put up a proposal on eLance
and ended up working with some lady in Australia, who turned things around in
6 hours, for $50. So sites like that are so amazingly powerful, which is just one
more reason why it’s really easy to do very small companies, because you don’t
need a graphic designer necessarily.
Livingston: Can you remember any moments in ONElist that were harrowing?
Fletcher: Sure. Many times. The first year especially when I was still working
the full-time job at Sun and doing this on the side.
Livingston: You were still working?
Fletcher: Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? In most aspects of at least my
fiscal life, I’m very conservative. I had a mortgage and didn’t want to take the
leap of faith to do this without a salary, and so I started ONElist while I was still
working full-time at Sun and did that for the first year.
Livingston: Weren’t you worried they would claim they owned the IP?
Fletcher: Yeah, and I talked to a lawyer about that. Because ONElist was not at
all competitive with anything that Sun was doing—and I certainly wasn’t working
on it while I was at Sun—it was thought to be OK. But that is absolutely a
valid concern. But I was, at least in that regard, very much risk-averse, because
I had a mortgage and didn’t have much savings back then. So the first year was
incredibly stressful. The whole thing was stressful, but the first year especially.
For example, it got to be the summertime and we’d take off for the weekend.
I’d come back and have 500 emails to answer for customer support on Sunday
evening. And I’d just curl up into a fetal position . . . and I had to go to work the