Sarver.org*

11 August 2005

Next Chapter

Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Personal .

As some of you already know, I have notified Xplana that I will be ending my tenure here as of the end of August. It was an incredibly tough decision that I struggled with for many weeks, if not months. Xplana has been a huge part of my life for the greater part of 3 years. I have been a part of the growth from a 5-person creative agency to a 55-person strong Educational Software company. We went from a group of people lacking a real focus or plan and taking on almost any work we could get, to building a world-class team of people and clients and developing some amazing products and projects. With that being said, my role within the company has changed as it has stabilized. I wish only the best for Xplana and the team there. They have been great friends and it has been a true pleasure to work with them through the years.

I personally have grown tremendously during my time here, and learned so much about myself and who I am in my professional life. Most importantly of all the things I learned, is that I learned I love start-ups. I thrive in an unstable world where decisions have to be made on a whim and people perform herculean tasks based on their belief in a vision. I love the crafting, the molding, the turning on a dime, and I love the rush after pulling an all nighter to accomplish something that we didn’t think we could do. Inevitably, as a company grows it stabilizes and process sets in to replace the whimsical decision making, and rightfully so. A larger company with many moving parts can’t be expected to survive and become healthy with a true start-up mentality.

So back to the drawing board I go. I will be taking the next few months to define, and hopefully build a new company. In my young career, I have already been a part of 3 start-ups where I joined at varying points in the growth of the company, but I have never had the opportunity to start from scratch. I am very fortunate to have a great group of friends who I consider true mentors. Some have been VPs at public companies, some have started companies and taken them public and others have taken their start-ups through acquisition. It gives me a unique view into a world which I am only beginning to get into. I thrive in that type of environment, and I look forward to the great challenges that lie ahead, as I feel that we are shaped by the challenges that we overcome, and only by challenging yourself can you truly grow.

I am lucky to also have a great partner to be working with in Tim Walling. He and I are on the same page, and he has the same entrepreneurial spirit that I do and I look forward to what we can create. He is incredibly talented and I have full faith that he will be an invaluable as we build and grow the company.

Another important factor in my decision was the fact that no other time in my life, will I be in a position to lay it all on the table with relatively no consequences. I have no mortgage, no family, no car even (scary) and no real obligations other than my basic monthly expenses. I am also fortunate to have an network of family and friends that support me no matter what I do. So all in all, what’s stopping me? The answer is now, NOTHING.

So here goes the crazy, unpredictable journey. I am going to keep posting to this weblog as thing progress so that I can hopefully give everyone a transparent view of what it is really like to dive in headfirst.

In the meantime, if any of you are interested in entrepreneurship I have found some fantastic weblogs that really motivate me and reinforce everything that I have been thinking:

http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/

I also recommend picking up New Venture Creation by Jeffry Timmons. He his part of the Babson Entrepreneurial program and has written what amounts to a full MBA in 800 pages. As an added bonus, he features both George’s company, Color Kinetics, and Gary’s company, Internet Securities Incorporated, in their case studies.

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