Summary of his journey
– His first big leap into entrepreneurship was launching Optiwave, a fiber optic consulting company. He had few customers and thought that it was because there was no money in consulting. Then he realized that the real problem was that he lacked sales skills.
– He ended up closing the company. We talked in the interview about how entrepreneurs have optimistic personalities which keeps us from accepting when things aren’t going well sometimes. Getting married helped Darrin decide to close Optiwave and it helped explain the closing to his friends.
– Darrin went on to work at Geographic Data Technologies (now Tele-Atlas), a job with I called his “do it yourself MBA,” because he went into it with a determination to fill in the gaps in his business knowledge.
– One day, while jogging, he got the idea for Maponics. He realized that local businesses didn’t have a way to target their customers through direct mail. The local dry cleaner, for example, couldn’t rent the mailing addresses of people who lived within walking distance from him. So Darrin created a mapping company that would allow this kind of targeting.
– Darrin still wasn’t a rock star salesman when he launched Maponics, but he used online ads to sell his service. And the business WAS a service at the time. There was little automation, and orders were personally serviced by phone.
– As a service business, Maponics did about a million dollars in sales and was profitable, but to grow, it needed automation. So he hired Cory Martin, whose work helped roughly double the company’s size.
– Then came failure. Maponics’ automation was going so well that they thought of themselves as application developers. They tried to get investors to fund a map application that they wanted to make, but it’s a good thing they didn’t. When Google opened up its mapping API it made Maponics’ Flash-based idea less appealing.
– After Google came out with its product, Maponics shut down its Flash-based product. It was a low point for the company. (If you’re an entrepreneur or working for one, you really need to listen to this interview. The candid way Darrin talked about his feelings at the low points of his career is not something you’ll see in the popular press. As a result, it’s a perspective most people don’t understand until they experience it for themselves.)
– In every failure are the seeds of a bigger success. The application that Maponics created helped it learn that there was a market for data on neighborhoods. Today, if you’re doing an online search and want to restrict your results to a specific neighborhood, there’s a good chance Maponics is behind your search. The company works with Google, Trulia, infoUSA, Yellow Book USA, CitySearch, and other big online brands.
– How important is Maponics’ Neighborhood Classification? Imagine you wanted to find your new home. Without this service, you’d have to search by city or zip code. Searching by city will give you too many results — including listings in the bad part of town — and zip codes are meaningless because few of us know them and they often cover multiple neighborhoods. For most of us, it’s more natural and helpful to say something like, “I’m looking for a new apartment in SoHo” than to say, “I need to live in 10022.”
– How did Darrin go from having to close down a company (Optiwave) because he lacked sales skills to running Maponics which sells to big, prestigious companies? He told us that he worked on his sales skills, even taking a class at the Sandler Sales Institute. And he hired people to help him out, like Mark Friend, the company’s Director of Sales.
Full program includes
– You’ll learn when closing a company or abandoning a product might be your best move.
– You’ll hear how being driven doesn’t have to mean ignoring your family, and learn how to make them both work.
– You’ll see how Darrin learned to sell and how you can too — even if you’re not a “natural born salesman/woman.”
