In the summer of 1999, I was twenty-seven years old and on the cusp of starting my second career, this time as an entrepreneur. Jereme Pitts and I had already developed a business plan for Accordent, we had mostly convinced Mike Lorenz to join the company as the third founder, and Mike had already spent several months prototyping our original ideas. We were supremely (read "naively") confident that we had an original idea and that, as conventional wisdom then held, the winner would be the first to market. It was going to be a race and we all agreed there was no time to dip our toes in the water.
By late September, we were all fully committed to Accordent and on September 29, 1999, the State of California officially acknowledged our existence as a corporation.
Looking back, that presumed race-to-market proved irrelevant. As we launched our first webcast presentation product, Accordent PresenterPRO, we were greeted by probably fifty competitors with fifty presentation products that - to me - all seemed pretty good. Several of these companies were public, many others had raised significant private financing and, as far as I could tell, we all kind of showed up at the same place, at the same time, with what - on its face - looked to be the same product.
Fortunately for Accordent, our original products were at least slightly distinguished from the competition in that we were focused on power users, a somewhat neglected market given its size compared to the "ubiquity play," easy-to-use products designed for the broader consumer market.
Fortunately for us, the experts within organizations - the people charged with producing the large earnings releases and town hall meetings - were the only ones using content creation products, and so we were afforded a unique opportunity to steadily build our relationships, our reputation, our customer list and - as a result of an immense amount of expert feedback - the quality of our products.
Those early relationships with many of the most visible experts in enterprise streaming were defining for Accordent, and we've remained committed over the years to developing products that met very high standards of reliability and scalability. We've also remained committed to running Accordent as people, with high levels of accountability and a personal investment in the success of our company, our industry, and our customers.
Over the last ten years, I've watched Accordent grow like a young child, every day looking and acting a little bit differently, getting bigger, more mature, perhaps more serious and reflective - but always maintaining those same essential qualities that - as is the case with people - make them who they are.
Looking back, I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work with some great people - as colleagues, as partners, and as customers - and I look forward to building those relationships and further nurturing Accordent as we embark on our second decade.