Bootstrapping Using Services from London: Conversocial CEO Joshua March (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next in 2009?

Joshua March: In 2009, we suddenly find ourselves with this prospering agency. In 2008, I managed to pay off all of my debts and move into my apartment. I never set out to build an agency. I was much more excited by the possibility of building a software product that we could scale up. That was the original vision, but we were sidetracked by this awesome opportunity. I still had this vision of building a big business. I was also thinking a lot about the future. Are Facebook apps still going to be around in couple of years? I was not sure. At that time, I didn’t think that Facebook believed they were the future of the Internet. Although there was a lot of excitement around the applications and the campaign, I felt like a lot of that was because it was the latest. It was exciting and innovative, but I wasn’t really sure how much of it was tied to fundamental business value.

I was concerned that it was a fad. I didn’t see it as something that we could really build a big business off over the next 5 to 10 years. So I did a lot of searching most of 2009. I was thinking, what is the most important thing? How can we build a really scalable software product that is deeply tied to real business value? It becomes very valuable because you add huge core sustainable value. It’s that thought process that led me to my current company Conversocial.

Sramana Mitra: Did you shut down this consulting work that you were doing or did you use that cash flow to come up with the Conversocial product?

Joshua March: At the end of 2009, I came to the conclusion that, although I didn’t know specifically what product I should build, I did have this strong vision and belief. That was that the biggest and most fundamental change that was happening was in how people communicate. Social media was the leading edge of this big transformation where people were going away from traditional, mainly desktop-based, communication channels and moving into the smartphone world where mobile messaging and social media was the primary source of identity and communication, where people were comfortable speaking publicly.

I really saw this as the start of a major shift that was bigger than Twitter. It was a fundamental shift in how people communicated with each other. I didn’t know what that would mean in terms of possible products but I really believed in that vision. At the end of 2009, I was so sure about this that I essentially quit the agency and put a team together. I didn’t know exactly what that meant. I said, “Let’s work out where the opportunity is.” The agency kept going. My agency partner was still involved. I actually used money we were making from the agency to fund this team. In the end, it took a year and a half before we raised external funding.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services from London: Conversocial CEO Joshua March
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