I Am Not Afraid

I am giving a closing keynote next week on Thursday the 7th of October at DemoGala (http://bit.ly/bCuvDA), entitled Audacious Innovation: My Formula for Capturing Ideas and Making Them Real. I’m really excited about presenting as it will be the first time I have shared publicly my story and how I rapidly build out all my ideas. So far in my speech I am talking about serial killers, Gene Simmons, Superman, whales, John Elway, stickers, the desert, crayons & more. You will have to come to DemoGala to figure out how I weave all these together. :>)

Everyone was wondering why I went totally silent a few weeks ago in regards to Odojo. I had reached out to one of our competitors, SafetyWeb, who happen to be located in Denver, and we scheduled a meeting to see if there was any common ground between the two companies to do a joint venture. Over the years I have always taken the appraoch that competitors are not my enemy but just a group of people trying to solve and monitize the same problem as me. I usually have more in common with my competition than others as we both believe in the same thing. Anyways I met with Michael & Geoffrey at SafetyWeb and had a really good talk. I found them both to be highly genuine in solving the problem that Odojo was going after as well. They are both the kind of people I wish I had more of in my life. Near the end of the meeting I did a quick calculation in my head with the solution being difficult to accept. I asked my self “Can these two solve this problem better than me? Can they do a better job launching technology to keep kids safe?”. The answer was “YES!”. So I was faced with a choice, try and compete or do the right thing and find a way to join forces with them. Mike and Geoffrey made it very easy for me to decide, I liked them and I believed in them. So I was my typical blunt and truthful self and asked them if they wanted to take what we had created and roll it into SafetyWeb and allow me to help them out into the future. I do not want to get into the details but both parties were very fair with one another and we came to terms quickly. They wanted to think about it little more and I was late for a lunch with Alex from Next Big Sound in Boulder so I took off. All the way on the drive from Denver to Boulder I felt really good. I had made a choice that was more about creating a great technology solution then ever thinking about my own personal gain.

Later that afternoon Geoffrey called and invited me to dinner with himself and Mike. I had a great time hanging out with them, talking about our past’s and where we thought SafetyWeb was headed. We talked about solving real world problems and not wealth creation. After dinner I popped into their offices and signed a LOI to get the ball rolling. Over the next week I was highly impressed with their lawyers and mine. For the first time it went extremely smoothly with only 1 revision (this is my fourth company I have sold and the process can be soul crushing. Lawyers have a uncanny ability to suck all life out of you. Just joking Rob). Then we were done. Gave them the keys to car (digitally speaking) and went down to their offices to to congratulate Mike and his team. Geoffrey was out of town so I met with Mike and they both did something for me (I want to keep this private as it was something very special) that was indicative of how classy these two guys are.

So whats next….SafetyWeb is a awesome product that is going to be highly successful. I am thrilled to be a advisor and hope to aid them in anyway I can. If you are a parent then you HAVE to use this tool. Their next release is amazing!!! Go to http://www.safetyweb.com and signup.

Whats next for me? After my life changing race across the Atacama Desert I decide to try and build a series of companies that “Make the World Better”. Similar to the Foundry Group in Boulder I am a entrepreneur who builds multiple companies around a theme. Skinit, Original Wraps, Bottle Wraps, and soon CleanPad are all companies I created around the theme “Personalization”. My first “Make the World Better” company was Odojo, but last year I had two ideas, Odojo & Andoma. Odojo was to “Save the World”, while Andoma was “To Inspire the World”. I thought building tools that “Save the World” was more important than tools “To Inspire the World”. I think I have accomplished all I can building technology that “saves the world” and am glad what we have built will now be apart of a much larger tool at Safetyweb. So now I get to build out Andoma, a piece of technology that helps people inspire one another. I am very excited about this tool because I am building it directly for me. I will be customer #1 and it will be so very cool!! Stay tuned… ANDOMA launching early fall 2010.

Mike Stemple