Godard Abel

So that's not a great track record.

but he was very famous at the time still.

And, you know, so he was my first investor.

And then once I had him invest, everyone, and his advice to me was just like, just think about how to go public in one year.

I was like, that sounds awesome.

So we hired 70 people, didn't know what we're doing.

And frankly, in hindsight, it was a really bad way to build a SaaS business because I think in hindsight, starting to realize in one year, you never build a good product.

or a good company.

But then, and our journey got much harder, so a year into it, all of a sudden, like at the end of 2000, I'm like, oh great, we'll raise our next round.

But all the VCs then were like, no, you're a young, dumb, clueless kid.

And the internet was a fad.

And it went into like .bomb, that's what everyone was saying.

And then I'd call on customers, like, hi, we're from bigmachines.com.

Eventually we dropped to .com.

They're like, oh, when are you going bankrupt?

And then 9-11 happened, and all these manufacturers were like, well, I'm not investing in anything.

And the internet was a fad.

So goodbye.

So I think for a couple years, we were only selling like two or three customers a year.

I think my business plan to my investors was like, we're going to sign up 50, then 100.