Happy New Year Everyone!
The end of the year has passed. The calendar said so and so did the flood of orders from sales people looking to hit their numbers (thank you) and from administrators trying to spend their budget money (thank you again). I’m sure everyone looks back at the previous year and dramatizes it by at least 15 percent, but for me and for Tightrope Media Systems, this year was huge. For some perspective, consider that in 2001: I got laid off from my job at Visual Circuits (the company that bought Tightrope Media Systems only 9 months earlier), bought the company back with JJ, got married and bought a house. And JJ got Married. Then their house burned to the ground. And my wife and I found out we were pregnant with Thomas. And we got a dog.
2007 wasn’t quite that nuts, but it’s firmly in second place.
When 2007 began, we were growing very quickly and it was clearly time to add to our team. This would be a year where we’d add significant talent, expand our headquarters and work like dogs to improve every part of our company. We didn’t really feel it at the time, but the beginning of last year was where we would cross the Rubicon; there would be turning back.
With all of the needs that we had, no need was more pressing than the addition of some great people. The list of staffing moves in 2007 were many, but here are the highlights:
- Grayson Vangen started in January and immediately became a solid rock in our support department. We think that the phone has become one with his head, as I’ve never seen him off of it!
- Steve Israelsky was hired away from our number one competitor in broadcast automation and began his re-education (poor Steve…). He’s no longer the pain in my rear that he was as a competitor and he says he’s having more fun. Steve’s experience and passion have been very welcome. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a great guy, too.
- Amber Ward started in the spring and immediately put a new (and awesome) face on Tightrope as our designer. She’s been kicking out web sites, manual covers, literature, tradeshow signage, blogs… Amber has had a huge impact on my day-to-day activities (Rolene has too, but she joined us in 2006). Along with Amber came her husband…
- Jeremy Cleek, who joined Grayson in support and has been making sweet looking videos for us. You’ll see Amber and Jeremy’s work in our new web site, which will be up shortly. Be sure to check out Jeremy’s Carousel/Apple spoof on his blog. It was his way of telling me, “Hey, I’ll do support, but I REALLY know video and film production!”
- Aaron Parker came on board to tackle production and reign in our trade show gear. He has been an awesome addition. Mostly, I love how he gets mad when people mess with inventory or his work area. Speaking of discipline…
- Jennifer McCleary joined our development team to focus on our product quality and testing. So far my favorite Jennifer moment was when she yelled at me for negotiating custom programming work with a client without a real specification. I still have scars. She’s very opinionated and I absolutely love opinionated people (ask Keri Stocktad).
- Pete Tufigno came back from finding himself in Europe (he was only partly successful) and re-joined Jeremy and Grayson in support. Pete and I race to see who can get to the office the earliest. We’re also into seeing who can get the most frequent flier miles, but Rolene and Steve might have us both beat.
With the exception of Steve and Amber (who are just great people that we couldn’t pass up), every hire that we made last year targeted improvements to our products’ quality and to our precision as a company. I think that this is a stage that every small company goes through. You make do with as many people as you can afford, each wearing as many hats as needed. Then one day you reach a point where you can’t keep all of the balls in the air and you find a constant stream of crises threatening the relationships you have with your partners and customers. At that point, you either fail or you rise above.
Having spent about a year with these new people and with the staff that we already had, I can say that we rose above in a huge way. There isn’t a person here that could leave our company without me crying, which is to say that we have an awesome team. More than any other change last year, the investments that JJ and I made in our staff has made the biggest impact on our performance.
With the increased headcount, we needed new office space, a process that we started in February. To move any company’s headquarters is going to be stressful no matter how you slice it, but our move was especially dramatic, primarily because we did all of our own office build outs. It took us about three months of solid work, but in the end, we moved into a beautiful space that gives everyone plenty of room to get their work done. JJ, Aaron and Keri did an awesome job designing a floor plan that gives every department its own common area. It’s a pretty cool design (somehow JJ ended up with a window office… hmmm). Besides not having to step over people on the way to the copier, I’ve noticed big gains in everyone’s productivity due to the smart layout of our space.
On the digital signage front, Carousel 5.0 was born last January. The response that we got from this release surprised us all. Before, Carousel mainly supported Cablecast. After Carousel 5 hit the market, our dealer network more than doubled and by the end of 2007, sales between Cablecast and Carousel pulled to about even. I’ve also been blown away by the reaction that the broader digital signage market has had to Carousel, which will lead me to yet another future blog post…
We are all extremely passionate about community television, partly because 9 Tightrope staffers have worked for PEG centers. In the summer, we released the Cablecast SX video servers and I know it sounds self serving, but I’m really proud of these servers. First, SDI is always cool, especially when you can offer it without a price premium. But even cooler than SDI is our multi-format capabilities. It’s just awesome to be able to go from edit to air without needing to transcode. Also, it was a lot of fun making the codec comparison videos and seeing how thoroughly h.264 trounces MPEG-2 (we’ve got the only h.264 servers for under 50k!). We also added drag-and-drop scheduling, X-List exporting, podcasting, Facil import… It’s been an fantastic year for our broadcast automation products.
2007 was both fun and stressful. To be honest, we let too many things slide in the past and 2007 year was our year of repayment. John will talk in his blog about all of the things he’s done in development, but I’ll say here that a big part of why we are on the road to becoming an awesome company is the kicks in the pants that he’s been delivering. Also, JJ and Pete’s mission to whip support into shape has been fun to watch because the gains are starting to happen. I think that we demoed 3 CRMÂ (Customer Relationship Management) systems this year before settling on Salesforce. Improving our customer data and product documentation was a big focus of last year and our goal is to absolutely dominate customer service, making it the main reason that people buy our equipment.
I think that somewhere in here I’m supposed to tell you how awesome 2008 is going to be. I might write something about all of the kick-butt projects we’re working on and how we’re poised to grow even faster. But, we have a long road ahead in our quest to create the company that we believe we can be and to make the best experience for those who work with us and our products. Maybe that is how we will always feel. I hope so.
We’re content to let 2008 play out on its own, without any bold predictions. You cannot work on customer support and product quality as hard as we have and not have it show up in the results. As Mr. 100 Dollar Bill once said, “Well done is better than well said.” Instead of predictions, I’ll say thank you. Thank you to all of you who have decided that we offered the best solution to meet your needs and picked our products. Thank you to all of you that have decided that Tightrope is a great company to work with and offered our products to your customers. Thank you to our fantastic reps who truly believe in what we are doing and have great passion to see Tightrope succeed. Thank you to the people who joined our company this year and thank you to those who have been here to see how far we’ve come.
In the final analysis, 2007 wasn’t as dramatic as 2001. We didn’t get fired or have to buy our company back. Nor did JJ’s house burn down. But we did grow in every way imaginable. Tightrope Media Systems is a company that is very different from the one that started the year and the change has been wonderful.
It’s been a fantastic year and I’m truly privileged to work with such great people. Have a fantastic 2008!
-Andrew Starks :: Co-Founder, Tightrope Media Systems
PS: 2007 is like in 2001 in one other way. Heather and I are pregnant again, this time with number three. But no dog. 
Tightrope’s 2007
Happy New Year Everyone!
The end of the year has passed. The calendar said so and so did the flood of orders from sales people looking to hit their numbers (thank you) and from administrators trying to spend their budget money (thank you again). I’m sure everyone looks back at the previous year and dramatizes it by at least 15 percent, but for me and for Tightrope Media Systems, this year was huge. For some perspective, consider that in 2001: I got laid off from my job at Visual Circuits (the company that bought Tightrope Media Systems only 9 months earlier), bought the company back with JJ, got married and bought a house. And JJ got Married. Then their house burned to the ground. And my wife and I found out we were pregnant with Thomas. And we got a dog.
2007 wasn’t quite that nuts, but it’s firmly in second place.
When 2007 began, we were growing very quickly and it was clearly time to add to our team. This would be a year where we’d add significant talent, expand our headquarters and work like dogs to improve every part of our company. We didn’t really feel it at the time, but the beginning of last year was where we would cross the Rubicon; there would be turning back.
With all of the needs that we had, no need was more pressing than the addition of some great people. The list of staffing moves in 2007 were many, but here are the highlights:
With the exception of Steve and Amber (who are just great people that we couldn’t pass up), every hire that we made last year targeted improvements to our products’ quality and to our precision as a company. I think that this is a stage that every small company goes through. You make do with as many people as you can afford, each wearing as many hats as needed. Then one day you reach a point where you can’t keep all of the balls in the air and you find a constant stream of crises threatening the relationships you have with your partners and customers. At that point, you either fail or you rise above.
Having spent about a year with these new people and with the staff that we already had, I can say that we rose above in a huge way. There isn’t a person here that could leave our company without me crying, which is to say that we have an awesome team. More than any other change last year, the investments that JJ and I made in our staff has made the biggest impact on our performance.
On the digital signage front, Carousel 5.0 was born last January. The response that we got from this release surprised us all. Before, Carousel mainly supported Cablecast. After Carousel 5 hit the market, our dealer network more than doubled and by the end of 2007, sales between Cablecast and Carousel pulled to about even. I’ve also been blown away by the reaction that the broader digital signage market has had to Carousel, which will lead me to yet another future blog post…
2007 was both fun and stressful. To be honest, we let too many things slide in the past and 2007 year was our year of repayment. John will talk in his blog about all of the things he’s done in development, but I’ll say here that a big part of why we are on the road to becoming an awesome company is the kicks in the pants that he’s been delivering. Also, JJ and Pete’s mission to whip support into shape has been fun to watch because the gains are starting to happen. I think that we demoed 3 CRMÂ (Customer Relationship Management) systems this year before settling on Salesforce. Improving our customer data and product documentation was a big focus of last year and our goal is to absolutely dominate customer service, making it the main reason that people buy our equipment.
I think that somewhere in here I’m supposed to tell you how awesome 2008 is going to be. I might write something about all of the kick-butt projects we’re working on and how we’re poised to grow even faster. But, we have a long road ahead in our quest to create the company that we believe we can be and to make the best experience for those who work with us and our products. Maybe that is how we will always feel. I hope so.
We’re content to let 2008 play out on its own, without any bold predictions. You cannot work on customer support and product quality as hard as we have and not have it show up in the results. As Mr. 100 Dollar Bill once said, “Well done is better than well said.” Instead of predictions, I’ll say thank you. Thank you to all of you who have decided that we offered the best solution to meet your needs and picked our products. Thank you to all of you that have decided that Tightrope is a great company to work with and offered our products to your customers. Thank you to our fantastic reps who truly believe in what we are doing and have great passion to see Tightrope succeed. Thank you to the people who joined our company this year and thank you to those who have been here to see how far we’ve come.
In the final analysis, 2007 wasn’t as dramatic as 2001. We didn’t get fired or have to buy our company back. Nor did JJ’s house burn down. But we did grow in every way imaginable. Tightrope Media Systems is a company that is very different from the one that started the year and the change has been wonderful.
It’s been a fantastic year and I’m truly privileged to work with such great people. Have a fantastic 2008!
-Andrew Starks :: Co-Founder, Tightrope Media Systems
PS: 2007 is like in 2001 in one other way. Heather and I are pregnant again, this time with number three. But no dog.