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The New Deal – Portland’s Startup Scene

Catt — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:44:09 +0000

If you are up and about and wandering the streets of Portland contemplating the businesses you watch come and go you may want to peek at the August 2010 Oregon Business Magazines article titled “The New Deal” written by Ben Jacklet. Yes! There are people working behind the scenes of Portland’s start up ventures and they are working hard to secure Portland’s economy in more ways than one.

These guys know small businesses drive the economy and in Portland that is just what we need now, being known as a pretty slow start up scene when compared with fast runners Seattle and San Francisco. They may not seem so glamorous to the naked eye but these small start ups need investors to get them off the ground and angel investors in Portland have not been so quick to spread their wings.

Oregon Business Magazine has just published the article to explain who is out there and what they are doing to get these small businesses and startups funded and on a steady growth pattern. The young business leaders featured here bring with them a wealth of new ideas to “ignite the startup scene”. These are the guys who are investing in Portland’s small startups not only financially but with new ideas and dynamic views on how to succeed.

Find out who they are and what they have been doing.

Inside eROI: Startup Grows Up – Transition (Part 4)

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:49:15 +0000

A transition: Three employees leave on good terms
The company has had almost no turnover in its 4 ½ year history. A couple employees haven’t worked out, but for the most part eROI is loyal to its employees and employees remain loyal to eROI. There are a few exceptions where employees moved states to be closer to family or chose family. But, on the whole, it was a steady growth of new employees to add to the stable community of old-timer employees (in the startup world, this is defined as the formative three years with the company).

Interestingly over the past 6 weeks, three employees left the company. They left for similar reasons and the 31 remaining employees are more aligned and stronger because of this healthy transition process. These three employees were in dual-roles to provide an opportunity to grow into an area they were passionate about, but there wasn’t enough work in the new area to sustain a full-time position. These employees were excited about creating their own job descriptions for half of their job, but ultimately lost the passion in the core area of the other role of their job. Furthermore, all three of the employees that left saw how aligned the whole company was becoming. The collective motivation to make our mark on the world and do amazing quality work meant a renewed commitment to the company, more attention to detail and more hours, in some cases. These were some of the subtle reasons why a couple of the employees chose to become freelancers. Here is an excerpt from one of the former employee’s blog:

“I resigned from my job about two weeks ago and I wanted to wait until everything was finished before I started blogging again. It’s been a really emotional (ahh damn I’ve gone emo) and stressful last few months for me. I’m sure many people have left jobs before and have gone through similar scenarios. You start getting really combative, you aren’t easily motivated; maybe you’re even unmotivated, you start affecting those who are around you. It can get ugly, and while I was definitely in a bad state of mind, I would like to think I pulled myself together enough to leave on good terms with my former company. After all, it was they who gave me my shot and fostered my learning for all of this stuff.”

Results and Ongoing Measurement
The pain we experienced over the past couple months has made us stronger. I’m glad to report that this story has a happy ending, although you’ll need to drop me an email to see if we have sustained our sense of internal alignment and emanating blissful exuberance. Here’s some of our results:
• The Process Team has implemented improvements between and within departments including ways to give each employee more ownership and voice in our client projects, operations, and company direction. In fact, we used these new processes to involve people at the very beginning of these three new projects. The results are phenomenal. I’m amazed at how much our strategy, usability, functionality, and creative has improved when everyone involved in the project is on the same page:
o Konami – www.musicineverydirection.com/americanidol
o Widmer – www.lemonyourwidmer.com
o CircleHoe ecommerce site – www.circlehoe.com
• Through the internal branding workshop, we found our brand voice and incorporated into the new www.eroi.com to launch 7/15/07
• The company all chose a community service project to get our hands dirty at an all-company urban farm clean-up and planting party at Zenger Farm on 7/6/07
• My favorite result is a personal one. As a business owner, I have an enormous amount of pride and satisfaction of reaching the next level of synergy of this growing family of connected employees accomplishing work we never thought possible.

Inside eROI: Startup Grows Up (Part 3)

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:41:41 +0000

If you missed Part 2 of the “Inside eROI” story, please read it before you read this blog post. Read Part 2 here >>

Next steps
On the evening of Day 3, I put in another late night and accumulated all of the process improvement ideas that employees had given me in our one-on-one meetings. There were over 50 improvements with the same primary objective: to get people from all departments talking to one another and involved earlier in projects to have more strategic input and ownership. The suggestion with the biggest impact was to create a Process Team with representatives from each department to roll out new processes across the company. All employees really liked this suggestion.

On Day 4, I called an all-company meeting and printed a copy of the 50 improvement suggestions for each employee. We reviewed the first five suggestions as a group then decided to have the Process Team continue the discussion and create an action plan for implementing the chosen process improvements. These improvements all fell into the following categories:

1. Training and education improvements
2. Project strategy process improvements
3. Support tracking
4. Q/A improvements
5. Project launch improvements
6. Better centralization of resources

A week later, we held our annual departmental goals meeting. In this meeting we review and discuss the strategic and performance related goals each department establishes for itself. Normally this is a very dry, low participatory event but this year, it was much different. The energy and enthusiasm that began with the one-on-one interviews carried over into the meeting where the annual goals we discussed. There were some phenomenal takeaways. Despite being out of alignment as a company, it was clear that we all had similar ideas for getting re-aligned. Each department presented and talked about similar concerns, goals and even ideas for reaching their goals. The energy continued to build.

The next week, the Process Team was formed. They met, outlined their rules of engagement, some of their objectives and agreement on weekly meetings. I am not in these meetings, but received a presentation (along with the rest of the company) with an explanation of what was covered and next steps. Ultimately, I’ll be in the loop on all process changes, but the Process Team is truly driving these improvements.

Internal Branding Workshop at Black Butte Ranch, Central Oregon
In years past, we had always utilized this retreat to review the forecasted goals each department had set for itself. This year, I had decided to do things differently. Even prior to the one-on-one interviews, I felt our time at Black Butte would be better spent diving into a company-wide branding workshop. Call it fate, planets aligning or dumb luck – the timing couldn’t have worked out better.

In the weeks leading up to the retreat, I challenged our VP of Client Services, Maureen Pimley, to pull together a branding workshop that would involve the entire company. She assembled a team of five folks that all had branding backgrounds. As important, they represented a cross section of new and old-guard employees.

There were three objectives for the workshop: establish a clear and consistent brand voice, define our core brand attributes and define our corporate values. They narrowed down and assembled a dozen branding exercises that would each in their own way begin the process of meeting the objectives of the workshop. Also, to level the playing field for the non-vocal vs. vocal employees, each person was presented with their own workbook to write their answers on. But this was not all business. They incorporated a fun ice-breaker exercise with prizes, used a lot of visuals and inserted a couple of exercises towards the end that prompted group interaction to come up with their thoughts. Each exercise, bit by bit, helped to narrow the focus on the essence of the eROI brand.

The brand team led the workshop in the morning, introducing each exercise and guiding the discussion to keep things on track. Once each exercise was complete, the company broke for lunch and the brand team regrouped to compile the results for presentation back to the group in the afternoon. The purpose wasn’t to provide the answers to meet the objectives, it was to share and discuss our answers. It was here that the benefits of the one-on-one interviews again came into play.

While I had the benefit of hearing each employee’s constructive information and opinions in those interviews, for the most part, the rest of the company had not shared them with each other. What ensued was a very lively, mostly constructive, three hour long discussion about our brand, our values and our direction. I sat back and let the discussion happen – participating when appropriate. Okay, I was ‘instructed’ by the brand team to do this. It was very difficult at times but I took a ton of notes to keep myself occupied. Were there periods where we got off track and wandered into prickly topics? Yes. But in all, the information that came out of the entire day was then and is now proving to be invaluable for our culture, our company and our brand. Not to mention, as the founder of this company, it was an awesome sight to see that the majority of the people working here are truly passionate about eROI. We all want nothing less than to be the best.

Inside eROI: Startup Grows Up, Heartfelt Email to Employees (Part 2)

Ryan Buchanan — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:44:54 +0000

If you missed Part I of the “Inside eROI” story, please read it before you read this blog post. Read Part I here >>

Part 2 (in a weekly blog series that is a 5-part case study of “A Startup Grows Up”)

Meeting one-on-one with each employee
The first day of one-on-one meetings, I met with 15 employees and I was blown away by their insight and aspirations to make eROI the best company possible. It was amazing! We all wanted the same thing – to produce top-quality creative work online with innovative software tools to support it. But, there was huge friction to get there because we were out of alignment internally. We grew so fast that we began to create silos between departments. For example, the Creative department was not feeling valued by the Sales and Account Service departments. Nearly half the company did not feel they had an equal voice in the direction of the company. There was a lot of merit and reality to what everyone was recognizing. The big realization was that I was a significant part of the problem.

Mentally exhausted after day 1, I spent all evening writing a heart-felt email to all employees. I realized that many employees were new to eROI, to the agency world, and even to the working world (coming right out of top creative, interactive, and technical schools to work at eROI). So, this email provided some context of how we got to this point, recognition that there was a problem, and most importantly, that we were going to do something about it. Here’s what I sent:

—–Original Message—–
From: Ryan Buchanan [mailto:ryan@eroi.com]
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 10:42 PM
To: All Employees
Subject: Day 1 of learning, Improvements to make us Stronger
Team,
While completely mentally drained from stepping into each of your shoes (albeit only 15+ minutes at a time for the 15 employees I talked with today), I have learned a lot today and last week. The process has been phenomenal, healthy, philosophical, and challenging simultaneously. Coming up with the questions got me thinking about how we as a company can approach each employee’s life holistically and value how eROI plays a part in achieving your life and work goals.

It stimulated some phenomenal conversation that began with some very candid discussions between Maureen, Dylan, and I last week of some known areas of improvement. But today was even more eye-opening on many levels. I was inspired by each and every employee I talked to today – the majority of each discussion was overwhelmingly positive and provided a whole new perspective that I hadn’t considered.

I also learned a few lessons:
1. I made the huge mistake of thinking that walking around and talking to folks informally meant that I knew what was really going on in people’s lives and how people interacted within the company. Formalizing these one-on-one meetings at least twice a year with me and managers outside of your department will become a MUST for eROI moving forward. Having a confidential format to share ideas is critical and something we have been missing for a while.

2. There is a perception based on a lot of reality that eROI is a sales-driven company. Let me take that one step further, there is a strong perception that I lead the company but ultimately default to a sales mentality on nearly all decisions. Therefore, I’m perceived to play favorites to the Sales team and don’t empower other departments equally. I understand that perception and think there is some truth to it from a historical perspective.

When I founded the company in Dec ’02, I had just come off of a failed startup that lost a considerable amount of my own money and 2 ½ years of my life. I learned a ton and did not want to make the same mistakes twice. One of those mistakes was to spend well over a year developing the content for a product from scratch and being far too patient with slow (and almost non-existent) sales. Along came emailROI (now eROI). We brought in over a dozen clients in the first few months including Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and Cingular. We also leveraged our old product to become the new ecommerce and event registration engines and started selling websites for $3k, then $5k a year later, then $10k a year after that, and now $60k or more in many cases. Sales was how we survived as a tiny company and how we were able to start feeding our families and for me, also paying off debts from the failed startup.

Now, it’s 2007 and we’re no longer a startup. At the very beginning of this year, I outlined 3 top priorities for the company (Technology Reliability, Quality Work, and Customer Service) and none of those were sales-related because the thought was that clients would come back to us more and more if we executed upon those. The funny thing is that it’s working – we’re getting a ton of new work from existing clients because we are doing AMAZING work by designing and producing cutting-edge sites, blogs, and social networking projects by insanely talented designers, production artists and programmers. We are making a name for ourselves locally and at some point noticeable on a national scale. Even now, there is some recognition among the rest of the company of the value of sales, but this could be vastly improved by formalizing internal training meetings of sales scenarios and client meetings. In short, sales should be valued highly, but not at the expense of other departments.

While my mind was in the right place, my actions were NOT. I clearly emphasized Sales numbers too much (they are still important, but I will discuss these less often publicly). I’m sure I verbalized a certain pride in the team bringing in a new client or project. I’m sure there are other examples as well. Also, there are over 100 clients where I am the salesperson. That won’t change. What will change is everything that I’m aware of. I’ll also be much more cognizant of supporting ALL teams equally. If you’ve read this far, I’m going to BOLD this statement so it stands out: I am actively working on changing my demeanor, actions, and ultimately your perceptions so that you feel that you are each being listened to and empowered equally. It’s really easy to complain, but I need you to take some initiative and work to implement solutions so we can improve this across all departments.

I need each of you to make changes as well, but I will wait until I meet with each employee before being specific about that. As we continue to have these one-on-one meetings this week, please keep being candid in your conversations. It is most helpful.

3. There is some friction between certain departments (not just the sales dept). I understand that and think there are many specific solutions that have been suggested by a lot of you and we will likely implement many of your suggestions.

4. Nearly everyone in the company is aligned on ONE primary goal – to be known for our Quality Work (creative + innovation from every department). We all want to make our mark on our community, society, and the online marketing WORLD. We are in the process of doing that. I need every employee to send me opportunities (unpaid and paid – especially unpaid) to submit our creative to relevant places to get recognized for Design, for CSS standards, for Viral campaigns, for Web 2.0 awards. More importantly, we need to formalize how we celebrate creative within the company. We have dozens of email and web creative launches every month, so we need to formalize the process of educating employees on the one thing that is most inspirational to all of us – creative (from a work and product feature perspective).
There are a lot of other things that we will cover this week and the next few weeks leading up to our Black Butte Retreat, but I didn’t want to wait a month to address some frustrations that are in some areas of the company. I wanted you to know that I am open to all of your thoughts and ideas and these conversations are making an impact – they are creating change. I ask that you open your perspectives to change as well, because ultimately there will be compromises to get the solution everyone is happy with. But, it will create better process, a better company, and a better life for all of us if we can implement these changes effectively.

Looking forward to our conversations tomorrow and Wed this week!

–Ryan

One-on-one meetings continued on Day 2 and 3. There was a huge relief and high level of appreciation that I recognized the problem and wanted to do something about it. Employees opened up more about specific process that we should implement which would improve things greatly and overall discussions were even more powerful and constructive. Employees (across all departments) started to feel more ownership of the future direction of the company.

Inside eROI: A Startup Grows Up (Part 1)

Ryan Buchanan — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 06:14:28 +0000

Over the past three months, I met with all 34 employees in my company and asked them tough questions about the role work plays in their lives and ended up receiving more tough answers than I was prepared to hear. My e-marketing agency, eROI, is 4 ½ years old and has been growing fast and furious from the start. We’ve had growing pains and transition times before, but nothing like this. If you are a company owner or an employee of a growing startup who likes the company but are frustrated about aspects of it, then you will get a lot out of my learnings.

The following story is a transparent view into my company’s transition with growth. The story starts with preparing for our four-day retreat in the snowy Cascade Mountains in sunny Central Oregon. All the preparation and internal discussions took place in Portland, Oregon six weeks before the actual retreat happened in late May. The goal of the retreat was to go through an internal branding discussion to get internal alignment on who we are as a company, as a brand, and where we want to take the company in the next year. However, the preparation work produced information that I was oblivious to.

Preparing for our Annual Company Retreat
In early April ’07, I requested one-on-one meetings with all of my 34 employees. I asked them to answer in advance five questions in preparation for their meetings. The email that I sent out to the team requesting this was:

______________________________________________________________

From: Ryan Buchanan [mailto:ryan@eroi.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 3:00 PM
To: All Employees
Subject: fun + important exercise leading to Black Butte – personal branding + eROI

Team,
I know I talk to almost everyone a bit here and there on a daily basis, but I want to ask a few questions in one-on-one meetings with each individual person (you + me for 15 minute meetings next week) where your answers will remain anonymous. Collectively, your input will help inform a much larger branding discussion at Black Butte (all day Friday) around what eROI should be in the near future.

You don’t have to answer these questions, but it’s going to be a little awkward if you don’t and we just stare at each other for 15 minutes. Please do NOT reply to all. You can prepare your answers and bring them to our meeting, or you can email them to me in advance.

Questions are:
1. What do you want out of your life (top 3-5 things) and how can eROI help you get there?
2. What do you want eROI to be – your personal perspective and how it impacts you? As a company? As a brand?
3. What gets you most fired up about what you do (for me, I enjoy creativity and innovation in what we do, and I also like our connection to the community and the positive impact we have on people, companies, and ultimately the world)? What is it personally for you?
4. What are your top 3 personal priorities (at either work or life – your choice)?
5. What do you think the top 3 priorities for your Department should be?
Bonus Question: How important is community service to you? If important, what 1 program should eROI get involved with?

I’ll walk around now to schedule these 15min meetings next week w/ folks.
Thx,
Ryan

The day before I had my first set of one-on-one meetings, I started to hear from a couple vocal employees that they appreciated the email and had a lot to share with me. Something about how they said this made me a little nervous of what I was about to hear. My huge mistake, before this transition process started, was that I thought I was connected to the thoughts of each employee and each department by socializing frequently. Every other month, we treat the company to a “happy hour;” appetizers, pool, and a dozen or more fun gifts to team-players and individuals who really go above and beyond their job. Everyone has a blast and gets along together in social settings. Additionally, we have a fun, edgy annual company party and our annual retreat where everyone socializes heavily as well. I also walk around the office several times a day and check in quickly with each department.

While socializing and walk-around managing are good techniques, I was clearly missing an equally important element – carving out formal, professional meetings with employees to create a more private, intimate setting to hear what they loved, hated, or most often what they were frustrated with (i.e. processes, projects, or misinterpreted communication with other employees).