Bootstrapping A 130 Million VAR In The Midwest: Ahead CEO Dan Adamany (Part 3)

Sramana: How did Ahead evolve from you being a consultant doing sales for EMC to where the company is today?

Dan Adamany: The money I made as a paid consultant helped me fuel the business and hire additional people. As we hired additional people, they either brought existing relationships with them to Ahead or they helped us find additional customers. We focused on the mid-tier market because that was an area where we could establish a presence and conduct business. We could buy and sell the technology rather than getting paid as a consultant. As we built the business we slowly started to gain momentum and move up market again.

Sramana: What you are saying is that you acted as consultants to the larger accounts, and you were doing full valued added reselling to the mid-tier accounts that you brought into the EMC universe. Is that correct?

Dan Adamany: Exactly. As we gained momentum, we were able to get back into larger accounts.

Sramana: When you were doing consulting for these larger accounts what kind of numbers are we talking about? How much money was EMC willing to fork out for those relationships?

Dan Adamany: It was based on performance. The more that I sold, the more I made. The day I started the business I took $400,000 and I put it into the business. I essentially told myself that I would run operations on that money, and if I ran out of that money then I would go get a job. That is how it started.

I set myself up in a way that did not require me to really earn anything for a while. I figured that the $400,000 would roll me for a while so I could continue living off of my investments. I let that roll and then as I would help them execute transactions on the larger accounts it would fuel the bank account.

Sramana: How much revenue did you make during your first year?

Dan Adamany: In the first year we had some consulting dollar and a few mid-tier account resells. We did about $3.5 million of revenue. The majority of those funds were reseller revenues. In the first year I probably did about 1 million dollars of consulting and about $2.5 million of resells.

Sramana: That is a very good ramp. How many people did you hire?

Dan Adamany: Exiting the first year I had about 10 people.

Sramana: Who where they? What kind of people were you hiring? Were they former EMC salespeople that you knew?

Dan Adamany: Aaron Nack, who helped me get going, eventually left the company that purchased him and he joined me. We hired an administrator, and I hired a sales rep who was an ex-EMC guy. I hired two technical consultants who helped with the technical aspects of transactions. I also hired two services implementation people. That was in 2007.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping A 130 Million VAR In The Midwest: Ahead CEO Dan Adamany
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