The Leap of Destiny

Today is my last day as a Bronto. I suppose it is fitting then that I spend my last minutes at my desk detailing my last official act of business on behalf of Bronto Software.

Our downtown Durham office at The American Tobacco Historic District has a "river" that runs through the middle of our courtyard. After we moved our offices here in 2004, the mystery and intrigue of said river brought about countless "meaning of life" type questions, including:

• How does the water get from the bottom of the river back to the top?


• Why are those poor guys cleaning the river every single day?


• Do you think any dead bodies have been dumped in the American Tobacco river?


• Would I get arrested if I skinny dipped in the river on a 90 degree Friday afternoon?


• Do you think that I could make the jump across?

Today - after some encouragement trash talk from Carolyn - I put the latter question to rest. Here are the videos to prove it:

• Preparing the landing.


• Pumping up the crowd.


• Making the leap.

'Twas truly my proudest moment with the company. The legend of the leap will live long in Bronto lore.

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Thanks to Michael for writing a great farewell post on the Bronto Blog.

My First Phone Call As A Bronto

Back in the day, Bronto wasn't very good with new employee orientations. Most of the hires came on board during the salad days recieved the "Here's your laptop, here's your phone, bathroom's down the hall, sodas are in the fridge, let's make it happen." orientation - especially the new employees that worked with or for me.

(Nowadays, we actually have an orientation program that eases our noobs into the organization through a series of planned activities. Yes - this makes me a little jealous.)

I don't recall the specifics of my orientation to the company, except that I started on a Monday and Chaz declared that I would be on the phone trying to do deals that Friday morning. So I spent my first week learning our product, shadowing both Joe and Chaz, and doing my best to not look like an idiot.

When Friday came around, I was feeling pretty good. I had watched Joe and Chaz make calls and felt like I could replicate what they were doing. Plus, I knew that I would start out by calling through a massive list of companies that have already said that they didn't want to buy Bronto, so I didn't really have anything to lose.

That Friday morning, I milled around for a bit trying to find reasons to not make that dreaded first cold call, just like countless sales professionals before me. After piddling around for a while to identify my first target - which ended up being a local golf course - I finally manned up and made the call. It went down as follows:

Golf Course - (Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.) Hello - you have reached Blah Blah Golf Course, blah blah...

Eric - (Sweet! I'll just leave a message.)

Golf course - ....after the beep. (Beep!)

Eric - Hello. This is Eric Boggs, calling from BrontoMail - a local email marketing software company. Blah blah blah. You can return my phone call at... ...

(Covers mouthpiece)

Joe! What's our phone number?!

(Joe looks at me like I'm an idiot, smiles, and writes our phone number on the whiteboard.)

Our number is 919.806.4421. Thanks.

(Hangs up.)

Obviously - they didn't call me back and I got better with time.

Finding Bronto

I REALLY wanted to work for Red Hat when I was a starry-eyed, job-searching senior at UNC in 2001/2002. I recall thinking that the company seemed "cool" and appreciating how it had built a business around the open source concept. (How does a company sell free software?!?)

After submitting my resume through the UNC career services office and, I presume, passing the initial resume screen, I interviewed with the company in February 2002. I was interviewed by a newly-minted Kenan-Flagler MBA, Chaz Felix. I don't remember much about the interview, other than feeling really nervous and Chaz asking me a question about Red Hat's competition:

2001 Chaz - Which of the following do you think competes with Red Hat - HP, Compaq, or IBM?

2001 Eric - Uhhh. IBM?

2001 Chaz - Why?

2001 Eric - Uhhh. Because they are a services-based company? They compete with Red Hat for large scale enterprise implementations?

2001 Chaz - Exactly. At Red Hat, we blah blah blah...

2001 Eric - (Sweet Jesus. I can't believe I was right...)

I managed to muddle my way through the conversation such that I felt pretty good leaving the interview. Per my Kenan-Flagler undergraduate brainwashing training, I emailed a "thank-you for the interview" note to Chaz after the interview. His reply:

(Yes - this and the others are screenshots of the actual emails.)

Unfortunately, I didn't hear from the company after a few weeks, so I emailed Martha in HR. (Not sure why I didn't email Chaz.) She replied saying that Red Hat has decided against hiring for their MBA Associate Rotational Program. I remember thinking that it was not a good sign that they weren't hiring MBAs - surely they weren't hiring undegrads either. I replied saying that I wasn't an MBA student and that I was interested in the Analyst Rotational program. Sure enough, I got my ding.

(Based on the ~350% increase in share price between then and now, I should have just sunk my life savings in the company and left it at that. But I digress...)

Through a pretty funny set a circumstances that I'll perhaps detail later and (mostly) good luck, I ended up getting a gig working full-time for the Kenan-Flagler IT department as a Computer Consultant. However, I never gave up on my Red Hat ambitions.

After emailing a few folks in Red Hat HR and keeping tabs on their website, I got word of a career fair. I didn't qualify for any of the positions that they were trying to fill, but that didn't matter to me - I had an "in" with my "relationship" with Chaz Felix. So I took a half-day and rode over to Red Hat HQ in Raleigh to make something happen.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the career fair wasn't one of the "show up and work the room" type. They had a gatekeeper that screened your resume and asked you a few questions at the door. If you were legit, you made it in. If you weren't, you made the walk of shame back out the door.

Obviously, this was sub-optimal - my resume was a joke. (It actually listed that I was proficient in MS Office, among numerous other pedestrian software applications.) So I gave it my best shot:

2002 Eric - Hi. I'm Eric.

Red Hat Guy - Hi, Eric. Do you have a copy of your resume?

2002 Eric - (Clears throat.) I'm here to see Chaz Felix.

Red Hat Guy - (Smiles while scanning my resume.) Chaz doesn't work here any more.

2002 Eric - ...

Red Hat Guy - Thanks for your interest.

So that was pretty embarrassing, not to mention a waste of a half-day.

Once I figured out that I would be there for a while, it didn't take long for me to realize that I hated working at Kenan-Flagler. I loved my co-workers, but hated the job and the "state employee" mentality. So, I trolled the career listings daily in search of my escape.

One fateful afternoon in the Spring of 2003, I came upon a "Sales and Marketing Associate" position for BrontoMail, Inc. The hiring manager was none other than Chaz Felix. My email exchange with Chaz:

I interviewed with BrontoMail that Friday. I showed up at their "offices" in Meridian Parkway and waited around until "they" showed up - I didn't know what to expect. After I had milled around in the lobby for a few minutes, Joe and Chaz popped out of the elevator - Chaz in shorts and a t-shirt and Joe in his trademark white-button down, jeans, black belt, black socks, and black shoes. (Some things never change...) Chaz says "Hey - there he is!" and away we went.

The interview went down at BrontoMail's "Headquarters", which was actually an over-sized utility closet. Seriously - it was an interior room with no windows and a few small desks. The first thing I remember thinking to myself was "Where am I going to sit?"

I don't remember very much from the interview. I recall trying to focus the conversation around my efforts to start Aerea Consulting, a home/small business technology "consulting" (read: home wireless router installation) company a few friends and I were trying to get off the ground. I quickly realized that extreme "start-up-iness" at BrontoMail, so I figured they would appreciate the experience. Plus, talking my way into after-hours home tech support gigs with Kenan-Flagler faculty and staff comprised the extent of my sales experience, so I had to let it ride.

It seemed to work. Later that day, I had the gig:

We met that Monday and I joined the team. A few thoughts/memories:

- I knew I would accept the position when they offered to meet at Pepper's Pizza on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Either we connected subconsciously such that they mysteriously knew that I loved Pepper's or they picked up a hint I must of dropped in the interview. Regardless, any friend of Pepper's was/is a friend of mine.

- They quick turnaround was a mistake on their part. For one, it scared me. "Are they desperate? Do they know what they're doing? Is this a real business? Am I going to get paid?" For two, it gave me a (small) sense of leverage in the "negotiation". Thus, I felt validated asking that they at least match my Kenan-Flagler salary - which they didn't at first, but did by the end of the first slice. Though the difference was only a few grand, it meant a lot to me because Kelly and I were going to married a few months later and had already booked a fairly pricey honeymoon in St. John, U.S.V.I.

- After a single interview, I had an offer to take a position for which I had very little relevant experience. I was lucky because Bronto doesn't hire like this any more. Having made a few (hilariously bad) mistakes with shake and bake hires in the past, Bronto now requires that applicants. interview with at least 3 or 4 people at least 3 times before we will even considering offering them a job.

- Deciding to work at Bronto turned out to be one of the smartest decisions I've ever made.

More about my time at Bronto later this week.

Sales Punishment

I spent my first ~2.5 years at Bronto as the company's only salesperson. I hawked our email marketing snake oil medicine to every marketing agency, law firm, health club, and university on the east coast - (at least it seemed like it at the time) - and learned a lot in the process, including how to motivate a sales team.

Bronto, unlike typical sales organizations, often set a sales "punishment" in addition to our sales goal and stretch goal. Obviously, the punishment kicked in if we didn't hit our number and was meant to spur us on to victory. As far as I remember, we only punished ourselves twice:

The first time, we met at Meridian Parkway corporate park in the middle of the night and swam our 9ft tall inflatable Bronto mascot across the disgusting office park pond.

From left - Joe, Chaz, Britney, and Eric swim Big Bronto across the pond. (Not pictured - Caroline)


The fun continued as we convened in the parking lot for a beer after the swim. As I recall, Meridian Parkway security showed up and we proceeded to have an awkward exchange in which we explained why we were wet and he essentially told us to never swim in the pond again. (The details are a little fuzzy on this one...)

The 2nd punishment we endured was more of the public humiliation type. Essentially, we set up shop at the front door of our office building - who's tenants included numerous stodgy business types - and accosted those entering and exiting the building with something like the following:

Hi - we're Bronto Software, a local technology start-up. We didn't hit our sales goal and would like for you to dole out the punishment by pelting us with water balloons or squirting us with a water gun. You can either roll the dice to punish a random victim or you can just pick the department you think blew it this month.

Don't you think it was the sales team's fault?

As you can tell from the photo below, it ended up being everyone's fault...but mostly mine:

Front row, from left - Brandon, Chaz, Eric, and Jack.
Back row, from left - Danielle, Brad, Joe, and Oliver.

Looking back, the punishments were just as fun - if not more so - than the rewards. That said, I'm glad that we avoided the following "punishments" as crafted by Chaz:

- November Halloween. All Brontos would have been required to dress up in outlandish Halloween costumes...on November 1.

- Carolina Wolfpack. The plan was to don the most obnoxious NC State gear we could find and then eat lunch at the UNC cafeteria.