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Soti – A $1B firm built in a basement
- zachruss92 9y agoThis is a very inspiring story and the quintessential manifestation of JFDI. It takes some serious guts to quit your job and say "i'm going to build a software product", with no ideas to start with. I hope Carl can keep growing Soti or even start something else once he gives the reigns to his managers.
- onion2k 9y agoThis is also the quintessential manifestation of survivorship bias - for every company that succeeds there are plenty of examples of people who quit their job, start a company and then fail after losing a pile of money, and have to get a job again. The important thing is to understand that and then use it to motivate yourself to work harder on your idea.
- cyberferret 9y agoThat was the overriding thought in the back of my mind too, when I read the article. I sincerely mean "Well done" to Carl for what he has achieved, and how he did it, but I think that more than one person who reads this article will quit their job shortly and try and achieve the same thing to the same scale that he did. It is still somewhat a game of chance. Nothing is guaranteed. I've been there, and I know the scene well.
- jlangenauer 9y agoAnd maybe they will.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago"somewhat" a game of chance? For each garage millionaire there's ten million penniless garage tinkerers. It's a lottery.
- onion2k 9y agoIt's a lottery. I don't think that's a reasonable interpretation of what makes someone succeed where others fail. There is an element of luck involved, but you can greatly improve your chances by doing things like working hard, understanding the problem you're solving, really talking to your customers, getting a mentor, saying no to distractions, etc. Those things wouldn't have any impact if it really was a lottery.
- ajuc 9y agoIt's a lottery with some requirements to participate.
- nunobrito 9y agoThree years ago before doing a startup I would say it is more talent than lottery. After three years I'm bound to believe in the lottery. Sometimes those calls do fall out of nowhere and dictate the survival or death of your company (so was our case). Related to this, there is a Portuguese saying: "A sorte favorece os audazes", meaning: "Luck favors the bold ones". This was derived from the Roman empire, so for sure there has to be some reason to stick around for so long.
- NumberCruncher 9y agoFor me the takeaway is not "quitting the job" but the positive impact of "locking oneself up in a distraction free environment".
- valuearb 9y agoThen building a business where you stick all the employees in a distraction rich open floor plan.
- golergka 9y ago> there are plenty of examples of people who quit their job, start a company and then fail after losing a pile of money, and have to get a job again Have done it two times so far, about to do it a third time (hopefully, with a different outcome). Wouldn't call it "failing".
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoYup. You now know two ways it won't work :-)
- JabavuAdams 9y agoI JFDI with VR. Had a stroke, got separated, sold the house in the posh neighbourhood. Now I live with my kids (part-time) in a 1 bedroom apartment ... moving to a 2 BR. The same impulsivity that made me JFDI also made me terrible at focus and operations. Now I make apps that make toddlers giggle, work in an almost no-stress environment where people really do leave at 5pm, and get paid twice a month. Of course, I still have ideas and side projects...
- technics256 9y agoAnd do you regret doing it? And what would your advice be too people considering it now?
- rz2k 9y agoHave a stroke and get separated? I imagine the advice would be to do what works for you with the hand you're dealt. The context sounds like part of the decision to leave his or her old lifestyle and start something with VR, but also why it didn't work out. Making apps and small games sounds like a third career after the JFDI one, but one without complaints, since it is pleasant and stress free.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Osiris30 9y agoXKCD explains it the best: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1827:_Survivorship_Bias https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1827:_Survivorshi...
- spinningarrow 9y agoYou mean explainxkcd explains it the best ;)
- CalRobert 9y agoXKCD does explain it very well indeed, but I submit that SMBC might do so even more amusingly. http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/path-of-a-hero http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/path-of-a-hero
- michaelbuckbee 9y agoTo take nothing away from this gentleman and his accomplishments, but consider if this timeline seems plausible: 1. Works in IT, daily faces all kinds of problems. 2. Quits job to make a software product 3. Suddenly realizes: I should make a product for the problems I faced back when I worked in IT! I'm not a lawyer. I don't know the true circumstances of what happened here. But, it's much cleaner and makes it much more unlikely for his former employer to come back at him if the narrative is: "I left. I was struck with inspiration the next day" than "While I was working for this other place, I built a prototype that I thought would work. When I was sure it did, I quit."
- cyberferret 9y agoAmazing story. Well done Carl. I don't think I would have had the strength of character to turn down an acquisition offer from Microsoft like he did. Good to see a company with turnover in the $80M/yr range and still being 100% owned by him and his wife.
- sitepodmatt 9y agoThat to me would be a red flag unless the pay and other comp was phenomenal. Not talking about a facebook IPO or taking VC money, but thought train would be forget about any equity/options the company has been going for 15yrs, $1b turnover and thousands of staff and the owners haven't diluted any of their shares to even reward the longest most loyal executives.
- yitchelle 9y ago"I don't think they realised that they were talking to just one guy in a basement, so when the person asked to speak to someone in sales I came back on the phone with a slightly different tone." This takes the "Fake it till you make it" mantra perfectly!
- matteuan 9y agoJared does the same in the fourth season of Silicon Valley :O
- bigato 9y agohmm, i need a software to alter my voice for me: secretary voice, sales voice, support voice, etc :)
- shitgoose 9y agostartup, anyone?
- flyingcoder 9y agoworking on the MVP as we speak
- 9y ago
- majani 9y agoJust to balance the hagiography out, the company has mostly bad reviews on Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/SOTI-Reviews-E156148.htm https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/SOTI-Reviews-E156148.htm
- dsgriffin 9y agoPretty cutting reviews even for Glassdoor, esp. the one accusing him of writing the reviews himself (a point that wasn't addressed in the reply). As people say, there's always two sides
- 59nadir 9y agoI know from experience that comments on GlassDoor usually tend to err on the side of caution because people are afraid that saying too much will reveal too much of them. I've seen it first hand, having worked at a company owned by a german game developer that was having some major issues. Not once did I see anything untrue or misleading on GlassDoor, but had probably 2-3 things I could add to their posts. In the meantime, you end up reading posts like these from people who would rather think that companies don't just suck. It's really annoying, because it's not as if you can reveal the whole situation to people just to prove that their "No, no, companies wouldn't just act like that / be so mismanaged".
- dsgriffin 9y ago> people who would rather think that companies don't just suck I think most people have worked at somewhere that sucked, but even some cases (e.g. Uber) can still make a lot of us step back and wonder how a workplace managed to become that toxic.
- 59nadir 9y agoUber strikes me as a particularly bad example of this, to be honest. It's a company that's built on ignoring and circumventing the law and growth at any cost. Them not respecting worker laws and basic decency doesn't surprise me in the least.
- 2manyredirects 9y agoI met somebody the other day who works for a tiny start-up and said their MD frequently hires a couple of extra actors to make the office look busier when they have client meetings.
- mabbo 9y ago> One problem Mr Rodrigues says the company has faced, is struggling to recruit enough good computer programmers. Well yeah, he's trying to run a software business in Mississauga. As a developer who used to commute to the 'Saug every day: very few of us want to work there. No decent food, no after work fun, just suburb hell for miles around. He's competing with the banks and Amazon downtown in Toronto proper. He's also competing with Google Waterloo 30 minutes in the other direction for people not interested in living in the city. And he's going to be competing with them on pay as well as location. Edit: woo, this may be my most controversial comment ever based on the point swings. I welcome counterpoints! Discussion is always good.
- DKnoll 9y ago>No decent food, no after work fun, just suburb hell for miles around. ??? I live in Port Credit (south Mississauga)... I can tell you absolutely that is not the case. Also it would be hard to name a culture that didn't have food here. https://www.insauga.com/ https://www.insauga.com/
- mabbo 9y agoSpecifically my food problem in Mississauga was that lunch sucked. You had to drive at least five minutes from my office to get anywhere, and then it was just fast food. Maybe go a bit further to streetsville, get something a bit better. It was just corporate mid rises and suburbs everywhere else! In Toronto, I am walking distance from everything after work, plus the subway to get me home. Port Credit may be cool, but it can't compete with that. Also, as you said that's south of Mississauga- again, we're going to have to drive everywhere. That's just not there lifestyle I want, and very few in my office did- which was why we pushed so hard for a downtown office instead.
- DKnoll 9y agoIt's the southernmost neighbourhood in Mississauga, not south of it. I live and work (in IT) here. I can walk to several award winning restaurants within a couple minutes from my office at the marina here. Just look on Google Maps, this place is more walkable than most of TO and my rent is <$1000.
- digitalshankar 9y agoSoti ONE platform, explained by Carl Rodrigues: https://youtu.be/MUXlTnFBOu8 https://youtu.be/MUXlTnFBOu8
- jliptzin 9y agoYet another surprising aspect of this story is that someone born in Pakistan and now living in Canada is named Carl Rodrigues.
- joaodlf 9y agoI was interested in this too, so I keep on reading and finally understood: "Born in Pakistan to a Roman Catholic family that had its roots in the former Portuguese colony of Goa". Rodrigues is a common Portuguese surname. Once again, the empire strikes back :).
- plg 9y agoI don't get it --- why would a supermarket chain be interested in software that allows one to control a mobile phone from a computer?
- freehunter 9y agoI don't think the BBC article really explains what Soti's software does. Especially considering the story took place in 2001, we're talking about Windows CE. A lot of stores and warehouses used (some still do) Windows CE devices to scan products and manage inventory. I'm not terribly familiar with the product, but it sounds like Soti would be used to track all of these handheld scanners, possibly read what they're scanning and add it to the master inventory database, let the helpdesk reboot the device or push updates if something is malfunctioning, etc.
- nunez 9y agoUPS and FedEx still use CE
- sixQuarks 9y agoThis company, while impressive, was not built in a basement. It merely started in a basement, which is way different. That's like saying "Apple - A $700B firm built in a garage" I'd like to know what the actual largest single-founder business is that's being run out of a basement
- dasmoth 9y agoIt sounds like he was still solo in the basement when he got his first big order. That's good enough for me. I don't know if a literal basement was involved, but Plentyoffish was solo for about four years and had a fair few users before hiring any staff.
- sixQuarks 9y agoyeah, I think POF may take the honors. Not sure about the guy that started Minecraft - he was also making a ton of money but not sure if he was solo.
- mullen 9y agoPoF is the Unicorn of all the Unicorns. In fact, I would really call it the Mother of all Unicorns. There is no way you can get away with comparing it to anything and anything to it.
- sixQuarks 9y agoOK, I think you're going a tad too far now
- mullen 9y agoNot really. Can you name a website that sold for anywhere near $500 million that required so little effort by the founder who was the only person working on the website? The creator of PoF had a work week that consisted of 1 or 2 hours of work. He did not even hire a another employee for 4 or 5 years after he started the website and the site was pulling in a million dollars a month at that point. The amount of work he put into the website is pretty amazing for the amount of money he got from it.
- pavement 9y agotl;dr: He [...] spent a number of years working as a consultant, before launching Soti in 2001. [B]ack in 2001 he [...] started to try to dream up something. [...] After a month of working[...], Mr Rodrigues had come up with [an] idea - a software system that allowed the user to control his or her mobile phone from their laptop. [M]ost people have never heard of the firm - because it sells its mobile technology software systems to companies instead of consumers
- Siecje 9y agoWhat is the use case for controlling your phone from your computer? To enforce company policy on company phones? Or Tech support? Like the Amazon Fire phone?
- _nedR 9y agoI am still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a Roman Catholic Pakistani-born Canadian named Rodrigues.
- sakshyamshah 9y agoIn Nepal, with 100k USD, one can rent decent office space, offer in-work benefits/recreations and employ 15+ professionals (including tech and non-tech), for 2 years. Yes, you can literally trade salary of 1 engineer with entire company fund.