The Beginning I caught the entrepreneurial bug during my early career in California’s Silicon Valley while working at Intel as a software engineer. I was just 32 years old and had a front row seat to watch the opening scene of the microcomputer revolution unfold around me. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had just launched Apple Computer, and IBM followed their lead a few years later with their own personal computer aimed at the business market. In the midst of this excitement, I saw an opportunity to create a business that would provide training services to large and mid-sized organizations that were beginning to use personal computers for the first time in their businesses. I launched my fledgling one-man training and consulting service as “Warren E. Anderson and Associates” from a spare bedroom in my house in San Jose. A year later, I hired a production company and produced a 45-minute video training course, took on a partner, formed a corporation, and launched “Anderson Soft-Teach, Inc.” Growing and Expanding Our product line began as a single video tape and grew to over 300 products and titles including SmartTrainer™ Personal Training Guides, SmartClassroom™ training materials, and a competency skills testing and certification program. Our crowning achievement came years before the Internet became ubiquitous when we introduced Just-in-Time Training™, a breakthrough in software design that allowed computer users to view video training lessons directly within Windows, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Our business was unique in the rock-and-roll Silicon Valley of the early 1980s where venture capital money was flowing like a waterfall toward any business plan on the back of a napkin that mentioned the words personal computer. By contrast, we survived and thrived for 13 years without any outside investors or venture capital. We were a 100% employee-owned company that grew from a bedroom startup to $6.7 million in annual sales. What started as one person with an idea eventually grew to a team of over 50 people split between California and our European sales office in London. Through it all and to everyone’s credit, we developed the financial discipline to earn a net profit in 12 of our 13 years of operation. Anderson Soft-Teach was recognized as a pioneer in the field of multimedia educational publishing earning national awards for our innovative products and for our outstanding customer service. In our sixth year, we were named to the INC 500 List of the fastest growing privately-held companies in America, and we earned a place on the list of Silicon Valley’s Top 100 Privately-Held Companies for three consecutive years. Our blue chip customers in business, government, and education included over 95% of the Fortune 500 as well as The White House, several departments of the United States government, and many prestigious colleges and universities. The End Thirteen years after starting out as a one-man operation in a small bedroom office, we were acquired by and merged with a larger public company from the East Coast. For me personally, it was the culmination of a dream to start, grow, and eventually sell a successful business. A year after the merger at age 46, I left the company and reoriented my attention to focus on being a teacher, a coach, a writer, and a nearly full-time father to my young daughter for the next 12 years. |