We’ve all heard the story of the successful entrepreneur who starts his or her company in a college dorm room only to become a household name a decade later through struggles, innovation, and perseverance.
What happens when that dorm room dream fizzles out leaving a wake of emotional and physical pain?
One can get a “regular job”. The other option is to step back up to the plate and take another swing. Terminus’ CEO, Eric Spett, has been through more than his share of triumphs and valleys ranging from his college days where he and his co-founder won University of Georgia’s prestigious $50K business plan competition…only to eventually shut that business down. Down and out, he somehow regained his ambition and revived his operational brilliance to create one of Atlanta’s greatest software success stories in the past 5 years. From being recognized as Atlanta’s fastest growing software company, to Inc. Magazine’s Best Place to Work in the US, Terminus is becoming a market leader and is showing no signs of slowing down.
We meet Eric Spett in his new, Buckhead office at Tower Place 100. A big Terminus, wood carved “T” greets every visitor in the lobby where, depending on the time of day, a visitor can get a freshly brewed coffee or a high-end craft beer from the tap. The focus and determination across the company is felt when you walk in the door.
PART I: ENTREPRENEURIAL AMBITION
Many soon-to-be entrepreneurs have tall ambitions and want to start their own companies, but often don’t know where to begin. This is where a college-aged Eric Spett and his former co-founder find themselves two weeks before their senior year at UGA begins.
Jon Birdsong: Eric, you’re in college, you won UGA’s business competition, what was the business?
Eric Spett: Yes. FishList was the company that won the UGA Business Competition. How that came about was from my junior year where I had an internship at Newell Rubbermaid. It was a great company, but I was in the SAP implementation department in a dungeon-like office in Sandy Springs – not the shiny headquarters building. I’m not a big company person and it wasn’t a very fulfilling internship. While I did get paid well, they didn’t really care whether or not I was actually there so I went to the pool a lot instead. Great summer…just not fulfilling.
My roommate at the time, who I met the previous year through mutual friends, had a similar experience over the summer so we talked on the phone in July and said, “Let’s start a company when we get back to school next month.”
JB: So why did you go to UGA in the first place? Did you consider Georgia Tech?
ES: UGA has a great reputation and a lot of my friends were applying there. The HOPE Scholarship didn’t hurt either!
Regarding Georgia Tech…next question please!
We both start laughing.
PART I: ENTREPRENEURIAL AMBITION
JB: What was your major?
ES: Management Information Systems (MIS) within the Terry College of Business. Graduated magna cum laude.
So senior year, we got back to Athens, and sat in the Student Learning Center everyday for two weeks, thinking, “Alright what business should we start?” We were looking up, ‘How to make money while still in college’, ‘How to make money while at home’, and thinking about doing affiliate marketing, web development, tutoring…it was all over the map.
We get interrupted briefly by Eric’s Executive Assistant (Toni).
Toni: “The photographer is almost done, but before he leaves I want to get a picture of you and me so I can put it on your desk!”
They take a photo and Eric comes back into the office.
ES: So anyway, we were Googling anything and everything about how to start a business. Somewhere in there we start researching the antiquated seafood industry. Dave’s (my former co-founder) dad is a seafood importer in Philadelphia. He imports wholesale seafood from Vietnam, Chile, all over the world. The problem we identified was that his dad still used (and probably still uses) a fax machine. Seafood prices change frequently like a commodity that goes up and down all the time. You could read three different seafood price lists and they might as well be in three different languages. There was no standardization. Pair that with the lack of technology and that it was very difficult for restaurants and grocery stores to find new suppliers.
Our solutions was to create an online marketplace for wholesale seafood. Kind of like LinkedIn for seafood buyers and suppliers. FishList was born!
JB: Yep. It makes sense. Sounds like a lot to tackle at once. Where did you start?
ES: We started by working on a business plan. We wrote this 50 page formal business plan and then started building the marketing website. Things quickly became more serious, and we both decided to empty out our savings to hire a web developer to build the application. I actually started going into debt at that point and we both pretty much stopped going to class. This is where the 80+ hour work weeks began.
PART II: EARLY TRACTION LEADS TO HIGH HOPES…AND BROKEN DREAMS
A cool idea and winning a major business plan competition would make any first time entrepreneur giddy. However, in the midst of feeling like they are making real progress, key market insights, and valuable customer feedback was overlooked.
JB: So you’re amped?
ES: We were very excited about what we were building.
UGA had an entrepreneurship program which culminated each year with UGA’s Next Top Entrepreneur… and a $50,000 investment prize. My co-founder and I signed up for the program and went to maybe one or two out of dozens of sessions. We preferred to do the work on our own time although we did spend two days cramming everything we needed to meet the criteria for the the competition. After pulling an all-nighter, we went to the competition and ended up beating out the 20 or so other companies.
We turned down the $50,000 investment prize and just took home the trophy.
JB: Why did you turn down the money? Was there dilution?
ES: We think so, but didn’t know the details. We just turned it down.
In retrospect, it was a pretty arrogant move to not even explore, but we were just not interested in giving up equity. Most people were pissed off because we weren’t even engaged in the program and then we turned down the money that others would have killed for. I really hope they ended up awarding the investment to another company.
JB: So what happened from there?
ES: We did graduate from college in 2010. Our parents were happy about that.
Dave and I turned down multiple solid job offers to pursue FishList full-time. We both moved into my parent’s basement in Dunwoody, GA which is where we spent the next two years. Dave’s dog moved in too.
We also started looking for angel investors in Atlanta which is how I got connected to David Cummings. There is a pretty funny story about my first meeting with David.
JB: Do tell.
ES: We were pitching to David at the Pardot office. Pardot already had millions of dollars of ARR and at least 75 employees at the time. After our presentation and demo, David gave us some really helpful feedback. Things like, “Focus on customers and revenue versus building the app,” and “Don’t worry about expanding to other industries until you nail seafood.”
The only problem with his feedback is that we were reasonably arrogant and extremely un-humbled. I’m unsure if that is a real word but I’d like you to keep it in there.
We walked out of David’s office (after he passed on investing) and I turned to Dave (my co-founder) and said something to the tune of, “That guy has no idea what he is talking about. By the time we’re his age, we are both going to be billionaires. He’ll regret not investing.”
I still laugh about that one…
JB: How about the business? Did the traction continue?
ES: We certainly thought it was going well…but it wasn’t. Let me just sum up the next two years for you from my perspective:
JB: How did you get out of it?
ES: I was getting progressively more depressed and I didn’t even know what depression was. I was in New York visiting my mom and I could hardly move or get off the couch. I was absolutely miserable. After New York, I went to Philadelphia to stay with Dave (co-founder) and his family. Same story. Miserable.
Shortly after I got back to Atlanta, my mom called me and said, “Eric, it is time to go get a normal job. Call Dave and tell him you can’t continue to pursue FishList. Enough is enough.”
I’m pretty sure I hung up with my mom and called Dave seconds later. He was completely understanding and supportive of my decision.
My mom “gave” me an entire week to brush off my resume and just add a section about my FishList experience. I must have been 23 or 24 years old and needed an entire week to add one section to my resume. That’s where I was at mentally.
After getting my resume updated, my mom told me that I needed to reach out to one company or person each day and to go find a job.
PART III: A REAL JOB, SELF HELP, AND A DEFINING MOMENT
Self help is real and anyone who disagrees can look to the story of Eric Spett as testament to it. Spett knew he had to get back on solid ground which included paying off debt, getting out of depression, restoring his physical health, and much more. Have questions about exercise, nutrition, meditation, journaling, executive coaching, boosting productivity? Eric is your guy.
Andy Stanley walks through Eric’s story on his leadership podcast with nearly a million monthly listeners (Episode 13 – Courageous Leadership Part III).
JB: So now you are on the job hunt?
ES: Yes. Day 1, I called Deloitte and set up an interview. Day 2 was McKesson. Same thing. Day 3 was an email that I sent to David Cummings. This was about two weeks after his $100 Million exit of Pardot to ExactTarget. I still have the email.
The very next day I walk into the Disco Kroger Starbucks to meet with David. We sat down and he asked me a lot of questions about my FishList experience, told me about the concept for his next company called Kevy, and then said, “I’d like to hire you as a software engineer. Can you start on Monday? I’ll send you an offer letter in a little bit, we can negotiate, but let me know if you can get started on Monday.”
I replied back, “David, I’m not really a software engineer. I’ve dabbled but I’m not an experienced engineer.”
He smiled and replied back, “You’re smart, you’ll learn.”
It was the best possible place I could have landed from a professional perspective. I had a solid salary, was surrounded by great people, and had the privilege of moving into the Atlanta Tech Village on Day 1. I even went to IKEA with David during the first week to buy furniture. ATV had some very humble beginnings.
JB: How did you recover personally?
ES: From a personal perspective, I was just starting to learn about depression and just how deep in it I was. I’ll spare you most of the details but let’s just say there were 2x week psychologist appointments, antidepressants, countless self help activities, and a few very loving friends and family members who really invested in helping me recover. It took over a year to get back to my former level of ambition and motivation…and I remember the moment that it happened.
January 3rd, 2014. The first day back in the Kevy office after New Years. I’m walking through the ATV parking deck and I stopped dead in my tracks. A heavy wave of emotion came over me and I just stood there thinking, “Oh my god. I’m back. I’m back to normal.” There were tears running down my face. I had never had a moment like that in my life…and I haven’t had one since.
Coincidentally (or not), David Cummings and I were scheduled to have a catch up lunch at Houston’s that day. Something significant happened.
At lunch I asked David, “Do you think I’m going to be able to be on the executive team at Kevy?” He replied, “It’s way too soon to tell but my guess is that in 6-18 months you will go start another company.”
I must have looked at him like a deer in headlights. I had just recovered from all of the personal pain and depression, I had this sweet job at Kevy, and I had equity in David Cummings’ next thing. I was in a pretty awesome spot. In my head I’m thinking, “I’m not going back down that rabbit hole, I’ve been there and know what it does to me.” At the time I just didn’t think I had it in me.
He planted the seed at lunch that day. Whether it was that day or the week after, I started talking to you (Jon), to Kyle, and to Craig about the possibility of starting a new company with David.
A couple months later, David and I were the last two in the office one day. As he was standing up to leave I turned to him and said, “David, I’ve been thinking about our lunch from early January for a couple months now. Specifically what you said about starting another company.” He turned around with a grin and said, “Let’s get lunch tomorrow or the next day.”
We went out to lunch, negotiated a deal, and started Terminus.
PART IV: TERMINUS IS BORN. RECORD GROWTH FOLLOWS.
Getting a chance to start another company after a big failure takes courage and perseverance. The lessons learned from the first failure are brought to Eric’s new company and he starts with a much bigger market opportunity and systematically assembles a great team that builds the company with their customer as the centerpiece.
JB: What was the original idea for Terminus?
ES: Honestly there wasn’t one. Just funding from David and a great name—Terminus is the original name of Atlanta. For the second time in my life I was starting a company without a specific idea. I did learn a couple lessons from the FishList adventure and knew where I wanted to start.
I was searching for a huge market with a big problem that I was extremely passionate about solving.
At the time, B2B Marketing Automation was developing into a great market that was very focused on engaging prospects through email. Nobody out there had touched B2B Digital Advertising in a way that was software-first, automated, and scalable for B2B use cases. I quickly realized that digital advertising in B2B was actually the quickest and most efficient way of driving engagement into an entire buying center at a target account…and the market was basically untouched. This concept very quickly led to something much, much bigger.
A week later I found my first co-founder and CTO, Eric Vass, through a recruiter name Doug Kling who coincidentally was the first person to hire Kyle Porter out of college. Small world in Atlanta.
Vass signed on the dotted line the day after we met and we were off to the races. Eric and Eric.
Sangram [Vajre] (our third co-founder) joined just a little bit later after convincing his wonderful wife that it was a good idea to leave a cushy job at Salesforce with a 1-month old daughter and go join an early-stage startup. I’ll share more about Sangram in a minute.
JB: At this point in time, you started the company and are obviously sitting at $0 in Annual Recurring Revenue. Fast forward to today, less than five years later, and you have an insane amount of ARR. What did you do to get there?
ES: We have focused relentlessing on solving the biggest problems that B2B Marketers face in today’s business landscape. Our path has always been one of disrupting the status quo, and thankfully there was a big problem that needed a new approach.
Another thing we have done well is hiring an amazing group of people. I am grateful every day for the people at Terminus and we all work very hard to build an enduring culture and company that is worth being proud of.
One other strategy that has been critical to our explosive growth is creating and leading the category of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). This is where Sangram did the unthinkable. Sangram had been leading marketing at Pardot since the ExactTarget acquisition and helped us see from a marketer’s perspective that what we were doing was actually a building block of Account-Based Marketing. Sangram went on to start the #FlipMyFunnel community and helped us drive more than 10,000 people to our events over the last few years. He literally, like actually literally, created a category from an idea that he drew on a napkin during a flight home from San Francisco.
JB: Describe to us what is ABM?
ES: It is pretty simple actually.
99% of B2B leads don’t turn into paying customers which means that companies are spending a lot of their time, money, and resources inefficiently.
Rather than casting a really wide net to only close 1% of them, Account-Based Marketing helps companies focus on best fit accounts and use their resources in a much more efficient way. We help our customers easily build, operate, and measure account-based initiatives that result in higher quality and more efficient growth. It leverages new ways to identify and prioritize target accounts, drive engagement into entire buying centers, align marketing and sales teams, and measure the results.
ABM is how nearly every B2B company in the world aspires to drive growth and is quickly becoming the new status quo. Pretty cool stuff.
JB: What about today and beyond?
ES: In 2018 we continued to grow rapidly while transforming our business to support our newly developed ABM platform. We also shifted our business model further up-market and hired a number of seasoned executives and leaders. Our culture matured. We’re more resilient as we’ve been through more battles and have more scars.
2019 is about leveraging all of the investments and changes we made last year. Our integration of BrightFunnel (company in San Francisco that we acquired) is complete and we’re ready to charge the hill.
We’ve had to fight tooth and nail to get recognized as a ‘real’ category but it’s working. As a testament to ABM’s legitimacy, Forrester and Gartner have recognized Account-Based Marketing as a category. We even had a customer in our office the other day that said Terminus has the potential to make a greater impact than Marketing Automation has over the previous decade.
Our broad vision is to lead the B2B marketing revolution and we know the way to do that is by continuing to put our customers at the center of everything that we do. The marketing team is the heartbeat of every B2B company and we are going to help them do the best work of their lives.
Terminus started with a massive market and a unique thesis around the future of B2B Marketing. A motivated team, great market timing, and operational ingenuity that Eric Spett has a knack for—personally and professionally—is why Terminus is where it is today. Nearly a decade has passed since Eric started FishList in his dorm room at UGA. Five years into Terminus and their record setting growth, Eric’s perseverance and operational gifts have lead to much more than just job creation. The company is committed to challenging the status quo of what it means to be a great business, from company-wide philanthropic activities to a forward looking stance on diversity and inclusion, Terminus is building the type of company they should be very proud of.
In January of 2019, Eric took the stage to accept an award recognizing Terminus as being #1 on UGA’s Bulldog 100 list of fastest growing companies. After his acceptance speech, he lead a room full of 1,000+ UGA fans in a “Calling the Dawgs”!
Story by Jon Birdsong