President & CEO
January 1995 - September 1998
I
serv was started as an Internet Service Provider (ISP). It grew from about 50 customers in June of 1995. By the time I left Iserv, our talented staff and infrastructure was serving up the internet to over 30,000 desktops. During that time my contributions included business start up management, organizational development, sales, and marketing.
Read on for more about the history of Iserv and how it came about.
C
orporate Information Systems (CIS) developed a product called LaserCOM - a document management system. The sales channel for CIS was through Value Added Resellers (VARs).
In the Fall of 1994, during one of my trips to visit a reseller, I went to Blackburg VA and talked with a micrographics company. While there, I found out they were renting office space to a group of three guys that started an ISP.
Background: Back then the internet was just deregulated and small groups of techies were connecting their private bulletin boards on the internet. Also during that time, my programmers (I had 3 back then) wanted me to start an ISP; "It'll be really cool." I briefly researched it and found it would cost no less than $1,000 per month just to connect! Aaah - No.
Anyway, I scheduled a few minutes with one of the ISP guys and asked if he would show me this thing called the World Wide Web. I read about it, but never saw it. Our internet usage was mainly for code sharing, gopher, usenet, and email using command lines. Back then there were hundreds of sites on the internet - only hundreds.
I sat down across from his monitor and watched him bring up Mosaic (the first browser). He showed me a couple of sites with graphics and formatted text.
There was no doubt in my mind what was going to happen...
I stopped gawking and started asking questions and taking notes: What do you have to buy? How do you connect? Where do you get a domain name? What do you charge? The few minutes lasted much longer.
On the flight back to Grand Rapids, I came up a name and an idea for a logo. It looked something like this...
Click the picture to see an OLD Iserv home page from December of 1996.
When I got back to the office the next day, I rounded up the troops and said, "We're starting up an internet service provider business called Iserv."
They all looked stunned - I never committed to any big expenditures and was generally considered "cheap."
None of us new anything about how to set up internet servers, modem banks, routers, DNS servers, so I had to go find someone.
Grand Valley University was close to Grand Rapids and a young buck named Bob Anderson applied for the job. I hired him and said, "go make it work." The first day he came in to work, I told him we're moving offices, so he lugged boxes and computers for the next couple of days. Then in January of 1995 we bought servers and a few external modems and Bob spent hours and hours on the task.
Three months later we dialed in, got tone, and got connected on the web!
At CIS I learned Kevin Costner was wrong. The famous saying from the movie Field of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come." was not true. Enter marketing...
Because the media was just beginning to talk about the internet, the natural course would be to approach them and "trade" on-air mentions with a website and a few dial up accounts. They loved the idea. Iserv signed up all the local television stations (except one), and all the major market radio stations.
The Iserv brand was launched.
During that first Summer we heard a small college (5,000 students) wanted to internet
Of course timing is important and Iserv's time was then. But the biggest advantages Iserv had were the people.
They spent hours and gave their talent whole-heartedly.
All the success of Iserv came from those exceptional individuals working as a team.
service. We met and proposed a comprehensive solution to connect their campus network and offer dial up to their students. They selected Iserv over MCI and Ameritech (now AT&T). This anchor client, our marketing and the world-class service fueled Iserv's hyper-growth.
Our marketing and advertising consisted of
- media exposure (trade)
- purchased drive time radio advertising
- round table forums
- community involvement
- radio and TV interviews
- innovative billboards
- free classroom training
Iserv quickly became profitable and stayed profitable - unheard of during those early days of ISP growth. We grew and grew faster than anyone would have expected. Our growth was mostly funded by sales margin, although we did do some leasing and small loans for equipment - not cash flow.
Our biggest business problem was billing. There were zero ISP billing systems to buy and standard billing packages didn't hold up to the uniqueness of our model. We had to "grow our own" and once again Bob came through with even more hours of blood, sweat and tears. We kept ahead of the onslaught and doubled sales every year for 3 years (from $600K to $1.2MM to $2.5MM to $5MM)
Our customer based exploded. Even though we were known on the street as a B-to-C business, our gross sales volume was balanced with 60% from consumer accounts and 40% from business services (e.g. dedicated lines, hosting, etc...). Our gross margins, however, were 60% from businesses and 40% from consumers. So our sales efforts began focusing on business-to-business opportunities. We began transitioning to more data center operations, hosting and VPN network services.
We expanded into four other cities and provided excellent customer service. The staff grew from the one full time employee to 100 employees in three years. This kind of growth tests everything about people. Fortunately those people worked at Iserv.
In 1998 I was approached by an investor to purchase the majority of my stock. I couldn't refuse the offer. To put it generally, the actual return on investment was way over 5,000%.
Then of course, after the transaction, my days were numbered. The new owners wanted their own management team.
After I left, Iserv moved to a fantastic new facility.
... and their history continues to this day.
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