Early-stage startup success often comes down to luck. In fact, IGN, a company that IPOd and was acquired for $650M, only exists because of a CD I bought years prior...
The first dance music compilation I ever bought was Moonshine's "Speed Limit 140BPM+" in 1993. Changed my life. I spun drum 'n bass in Moscow and when I went to the University of Florida, I chose bpm140@ufl.edu as my email address (you can't start a username with a number in Unix).
In August of 1995, I bought the first issue of The Net magazine, and at 5am, sent an email to the editor in chief, telling him how much I liked the magazine and how I wanted to help them improve the quality of their cover-mounted floppy disc.
Later that morning, the EIC read my email, thought to himself, "what the heck is some kid in Florida doing telling me, in Silicon Valley, how to internet?!?"
But instead of deleting my email, he forwarded it to the CEO of the company, who further forwarded it to the publisher of two of their games magazines, Game Players and Next Generation.
Which is how I ended up talking to a random Brit less than 12 hours after I sent my initial note.
"Eric, I got your email and I want to chat with you about getting our magazines online. But first, 140BPM is pretty fast. You must be into the Omni Trio."
We chatted about dance music for nearly an hour, after which he invited me out to SF to talk about putting his magazines online. Before the month was out, I had dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco. A year after that, in September of 1996, we launched the Imagine Games Network, aka IGN Entertainment, which became very, very big.
Jonathan Simpson-Bint and I are still friends and years ago he admitted he only reached out because of my email address, that I only had because of a random CD that I bought because the cover looked cool.
Yes, I took the initiative. Yes, I reached out cold to the EIC of a magazine on the other side of the country. Yes, a ton of extremely talented people built IGN into a powerhouse over the next several years. But, simply put, Eric doesn't buy that CD, Eric doesn't work at Imagine, IGN never exists. A hurricane triggered by butterfly wings...
The universe is chaotic. And the things that truly send you off in the right direction are rarely in your control. The best thing you can possibly do as a founder is talk to everyone. You might just get lucky.
#startups #founderstories #luck