Member News

April 11, 2014

What it does: Web-based platform for marketing campaigns.

HQ:  San Francisco.

2013 revenue: $7 million.

Employees: 25.

Founded: 2005.

Source of startup capital: Ira and Jackie Shapiro invested $75,000.

Background: Started 2003 mobile gaming company called Pixiem and was an early developer of video games for cell phones.

First job: Pumping gas at his grandfather’s service station in Birmingham, Alabama, at eight-years old.

Age: 43.

Residence: San Francisco.

Website: phizzle.com.

Big Picture

How’s business: Business is good. We were very focused on sports and sports media and the goal was if we can do a great job in sports we can do a great job anywhere.

Biggest challenge for your business at the moment: Communicating who we are. We are a tech-driven company that has morphed into an enterprise software company.

What’s going to change at your company in the next year: We’re going through a phase from boyhood to manhood. We have to put structure and process into the company and really implement varying levels of accountability.

Are you hiring: We’re in the market for a president and always have a need for tech and sales people.

Important skill needed to be a successful entrepreneur: You’ve got to be able to compartmentalize and push aside the emotion and deal effectively with whatever issue without clouding your judgement because as an entrepreneur you wear so many hats.

Business  Moves

Reason for starting business: After 10 years with big companies I caught the entrepreneur bug. I wanted to start a company that I could be passionate about. I love sports and technology so my goal was really to combine those two passions.

Most difficult part of decision: Not making any money for a couple of years. Going from a nice salary to not making anything.

Biggest business strength: Our strength is our agility and that is a result of having robust architecture from a software standpoint. Because we have such an advanced data model we can build new functionality quickly and efficiently.

Biggest business weakness: Our product marketing strategy is weak. The execution has been weak.

Biggest mistake: Moving away from our core business. A couple of years ago we tried to institute a B2C product and it didn’t work. We ended up wasting a lot of time and money.

What do you wish you had known from Day 1: We should have built the platform to capture and manage data from all engagement channels. I knew cellphones were an unbelievable source of data, but I wish I had the insight to build the platform for other channels.

Work Routine

Favorite task: I’m a sales guy at heart. I love talking to potential customers and talking about our vision.

Least favorite task: Managing conflict. Sometimes conflict is good, but when it’s trivial that is no fun.

Biggest frustration: The pace of decision-making at large companies. All large organizations have protocol and process that they have to adhere to in order to make a decision. Things take much longer than they should.

Dreams

Key business goal yet to achieve: Scale. It’s absolutely the one piece that is missing from our vision, being able to scale revenue.

When will you know you’ve achieved it: When our revenue is $100 million and when we have to hire a lot more customer support people.

First choice for new career or venture: If I was starting over, I would go into biotech. There are some crazy things happening with DNA and gene technology.

Personals

Most-admired entrepreneur or role model: My dad. He was one of the first cable TV owners and operators in East Cleveland in the early ’80s.

Favorite pastimes: Playing basketball and watching my son play basketball.

Favorite book: “Rule by Secrecy,” by Jim Maars.

Favorite film: “Working Girl,” directed by Mike Nichols.

Favorite restaurant: Burma Superstar, San Francisco.

Favorite Bay Area destination: I love going to Mendocino.

Favorite Bay Area business: Twitter Inc.

Favorite music: Lupe Fiasco and electronic dance music.

Car: Volkswagen Touareg 2005.