In an earlier Seven10 post, the story of the birth of Seven10 was told anonymously. I prefer the firsthand experience. This time Renee Zellweger is not involved.
In late August of 2001, the Moulton Brothers and I were being treated to a “going away” party by our previous employer (OTG) as we had decided the time to move on was now. At that party, David Maxey (Smart Storage CTO), handed us his cell phone number and said, “If you guys are doing something interesting, give me a call.” Bobby, Jimmy and I were just recently married and starting a new life. No better time to leave your “paying” job and start a new company, right?
Everybody remembers where they were and what they were doing on 9/11/01. Two weeks after that going away party Bobby, Jimmy and I were all at our respective home offices when I got the call from Bobby at 9:00 a.m. “Holy Shit! Are you watching TV?” Starting a software company took a backseat that day. After we realized what had happened and thought about the indefinite uncertainty of the economy, did we ever question if maybe this wasn’t the right time? Never. Seven10 was incorporated on 9/13/01.
People ask us all the time, “What does Seven10 mean?” I would like to be able to say that it’s a very well-thought-out name, with meanings relative to the Greek gods, business fortune, storage software code, an avid bowler (the 7-10 split), or even the convenience store off by one number- but I can’t. Seven10 is simply two lucky numbers. We couldn’t do 3 lucky numbers and since mine is 21, it seemed more appropriate to go with Seven (Jim) and Ten (Bobby). Can you imagine a name with all three numbers? 71021. SevenTenTwenty-One. Doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue.
CTO-level engineers don’t work at entry-level salaries, so we started reselling storage products to earn money; we needed to hire Dave and move into office space. We received our first order from Abbot Laboratories on 12/1/01. We used this sale, along with money out of our own pockets, to hire our first employee (Dave Maxey) that December.
Prior to having an office, we would meet with Dave once a week at the Andover Inn Bar. He would update us on his work developing our flagship product. During those meetings, we would strategize how and where we would sell it. It feels like yesterday, the memories are vivid. I can still see us sitting there in an empty bar at 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon with a cold beer (a scotch for Dave), sharing a bowl of peanuts, and determining our future. The manager at the bar got to know us well. When you are making important decisions, there tend to be disagreements, times would get a little tense, and we’d draw some attention in the bar. But we knew we were all striving for the same goal.
It is hard to explain the feeling of starting a company: what you are about to embark upon is truly 100% yours, and you are no longer following the plan given to you by your President, CEO or VP. You are not selling a product developed by somebody you have never met. This was our chance to make our product, design a plan, and execute it.
With revenue coming in and Dave getting the only paycheck, we moved into our offices in May 2002. These are the times you remember for your entire life. This was nothing like the previous 10 years in the industry, going to work every day knowing what to expect and going through the same routine (those are the times I do forget). We now had limitless potential and everything invested – win or lose.
The summer of 2002 was filled with positive energy as the three sales guys feverishly worked to bring in revenue to pay our one employee and also allow him to hire engineers to speed up the development process. In previous years, with a quota of $2M, a $15,000 order was nice, but also routine and expected. In the infancy of Seven10, a $15,000 order meant a lot more.
Fortunately Bobby, Jimmy, and I had built strong relationships with the hardware partners from our Smart Storage days. That summer, in an effort to increase our revenue potential in the short term, we started reselling hardware (JVC, Pioneer, Plasmon). If somebody wanted a kitchen sink, I am sure we would have found a way to resell that too! By August, we had brought in enough revenue to hire additional engineers for Dave.
With Dave and his team working around the clock (more to come on that), we started to shift our focus to application providers (healthcare, banking, records management) as we now had a product to talk about. The product would not be ready until 2003, but we started pitching the application providers that needed a storage backend. The market was getting a little stagnant, creating plenty of revenue so the time to emerge was now…
- Gary Lafreniere, Vice President of Operations
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