BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
10 Oct 2008

I agree with John Furrier 100%: look for people who can sell, and better yet, be a salesperson yourself.

In January 2006: we launched WatchMojo.com and spent much of that year creating content, building distribution; so sales were a bit moot.

Then in May of that year, my old colleagues and employer sued me, so I got busy with that.  Once the lawsuit was settled (I won), I began to look for financing.  Call it the “Roadshow to Nowhere”.  Having financed the company myself from January 2006, by December 2007, I was pretty much broke even though we were generating six-digits worth of revenue.  Broke?  Really?  To quote Seinfeld: not really.

But our costs were higher than our revenues, so that path was not sustainable.

But the point was: I saw the light.  If I continued to play the VC game, I would eventually go broke.  So I gave financiers the cold shoulder (after they gave me the one finger salute, mind you) and look to sell, sell, sell.

That was my strength: I had sold $10M of ads during the worst advertising climate since the Great Depression (2001-2005) so that was what I decided to focus on.

In 2008’s first nine months, we generated more revenue than we did throughout all of 2007.  And we’ve already booked more revenue for 2009 than we will generate throughout 2008.

Regardless of boom or bust times, you should always think of sales… investors’ mood are fickle, but cash flow isn’t.