June 2nd, 2010 8

The Opportunity Donkey

Some people are graced with the ability to predict technology and market shifts. Do I posses this inner “genie-in-a-bottle” where every wish I touch comes true? <cough>Steve Jobs</cough>

NO.

My superhuman abilities come by way of being able to withstand continual, hard knocks (or kicks in this case) from opportunity… Pretty impressive eh?

It was thru this series of blows to the head that the idea of “my opportunity” (FireHost) manged to break through my thick skull and become the up and coming secure hosting company it is today.

After several years at an absolutely fun job with a fast-growing agency (where I was building large websites for large clients during the dot-com hay day), I set sail and started my own interactive marketing agency. Soon after, the dot-come bubble burst <pop>, and all the large clients with large agencies pulled back on spending. Good thing for me because I was now an agency of one and could undercut any Gucci wearing group that had monstrous overhead to feed.

Building websites and doing online marketing for the next couple of years, I was building a solid portfolio, working with fun people, and growing a reputation as a so-so marketing guy. I was happy and comfortable. Then, an email came in from an associate saying we have an opportunity to do a website for Qualcomm. A couple of dog and pony shows later, we landed the account.

We were to build an eCommerce website for CDMA Technology training DVDs, and each DVD would have several minutes of preview footage, and I knew my current development environment wasn’t going to cut it. I politely asked Qualcomm IT to set me up with a development server. DENIED. Luckily, my project contact (Jim) understood the requirement and agreed to pay me for buying a server on which to develop their new web application.

<Donkey Kick One – my thought at the time, “Cool, I’m going to have a development server that I didn’t pay for.”>

So I went to Dell.com and bought the biggest server my credit limit allowed – one whose price I hoped wouldn’t cause Jim to choke. I threw the server in my office, and it was connected to my newly purchased (fast at the time) T1 line. Three months later, I’m presenting the finished site to Jim, and the user experience is horrible. The T1 connection was too slow to adequately test the site under “normal usage conditions”. Jim demanded we put the web application on a fast network immediately because the project was at a standstill.

<Donkey Kick Two – my thought at the time, “Dang, what the heck is this going to cost? and Now I have to FTP to make site updates.”>

Quicker than you can imagine, I was collocating space in a newly built data center. Thinking that I’d be pulling the server back to my office after the site launches, I contracted for a month-to-month agreement with the DC… crisis averted, for now.

A month later, it’s time to launch the site. I deliver all files to Jim and the Qualcomm IT staff deploys the site on their network. VERY shortly after, Qualcomm’s marketing team sends an email announcement to over 50,000 of their partners. The site brings the network to its knees.

In an emergency conference call, IT says, “we were not expecting this kind of traffic, and we’re not capable of handling video content!”

Someone on the other side of the phone says, “Where’s the development server hosted? Can we use that and see if it helps?”

I reply, “It’s in a datacenter, and we can give it a shot.”

They re-point the site to the development server, and it handles the traffic like a champ. Voila! I’m in the hosting business, and my next biggest challenge is determining an equitable fee for the new service offering – on the spot. <gulp> I throw out a price, and Jim approves – without hesitation.

<Donkey Kick Three – my thought at the time, “I left money on the table!”>

That remorse was quickly replaced by frustration because my new powerful development server was long gone, sitting in some data center. Yeah, I know. Our first hosting client was Qualcomm, and I was pissed for losing my development server. #dumb

My very next client was in a hurry to get his site launched, and the hosting company (who shall remain nameless) failed to install some critical components. So fed up with the hosting company’s lackluster skill set and customer service, I offered to throw him on my server for $50 per month until his hosting company could figure it out.

Without hesitation, the client answered, “yes”! The hosting income was just a fraction of what I was already charging them for their site. The extra money was great but the real value came in time savings and trust.

<Donkey Kick Four – my thought at the time, “There really is a market here.”>

I continued to offer website hosting as a supplemental service in the interactive agency, and over several years we built our client base from agency customers. Things were going great and then…

RING RING – The CTO and CIO from one of our larger clients, Butterball Turkey, called (with their legal team). This conversation went like this, “Chris, one of our websites was hacked.”

Me – “Oh No!”

Them – “We need it fixed ASAP. We need to know why it happened, and we need assurances it will not happen again.”

Me – “I’m on it.”

My stomach was in knots. I began to worry that the agency would lose one of our largest web development accounts because of a hosting problem. Ugh! As application developers, we quickly diagnosed that the site was SQL-Injected and was delivering “drive-by downloads” to all their site visitors. It was a pretty serious problem.

In a panic, I called all the largest hosting companies and explained what happened to my client’s website. ALL of their responses were basic and unacceptable – “We can install Antivirus.” “We can restart your server.” They weren’t any help at all, so I turned my sights to another option – enterprise technology.

After intense research, I found that web application firewalls (WAFs) could help protect Butterball from this kind of attack. Without hesitation, I bought the equipment, read all the documentation and installed it to protect the site. Right in front of my eyes, I watched the WAF block all sorts of bad activity. It was working!

<Donkey Kick Five – my thought at the time, “What about all our other clients? They need protection! And why aren’t other hosting companies protecting websites?”>

Bingo. Combine a huge problem with a very large marketplace. Add in hosting companies who are unwilling to step up and respond, and you’ve got a (growing) niche. From that moment on, we reinvented ourselves, rebuilt our entire network, and devoted our business to protecting websites who need protection.

So to wrap up, I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who are killing themselves to come up with the next idea. That’s all good, but I must say. If you’re like me, you may be getting kicked in the head with an incredible opportunity everyday.

• Pull-Quote: Catching lightning is tough. Stop for a second and look up, the lightning just might catch you.

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