Hi, Untuk pertamakalinya setelah bertahun-tahun Arvel bercerita banyak mengenai Alt-N, suka dukanya saat menjaga agar perusahaan tumbuh dan berkembang.
Begin forwarded message: Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 01:17:00 -0500 From: "Arvel Hathcock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "md-beta List Member" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [md-beta] History Lesson??? > 1. Did you ever think that Mdaemon would ever take off as well > as it has? Not really. But, we got into the game very early. I thought that if the program was really good and if we listened and implemented the suggestions of our customers we could do well. Doing as well as we have though is just due to God's favor. We were held back actually for a long while by our association with Deerfield. In the beginning things were fine but at some point the Deerfield management team shifted away from being a company that worked to promote us and our products to a company that used us and our products to promote themselves. When that happened an instant conflict of interests was created which eventually led to me canceling their contract and revoking their rights to our product line. I believe it is also why most/all the original authors and partners that created Deerfield.com have either broken ties already or are now in the process of distancing themselves in some way. Contrary to the mind-set of the management at Deerfield, it was the authors and their products that created the opportunity for a Deerfield.com and not the other way around. We built their business for them. Anyway, that chapter, thankfully, is history now. I figure dealing with them toward the end cost me about 2 years of good development work and innovation. I'm making up for it now though :) We are already a recognized leader in the SMB marketplace. I am in contact with some of our competitors at high levels and they respect us and acknowledge our place as the leader. We are aware of the market share some of our competition has/had and we are ahead of them in this market. This isn't to say that someone can't catch up with us though. We have to keep working hard to stay where we are. By the end of this year we will begin to go after the large ISP and Enterprise markets with an MDaemon that will be undisputed as the performance leader. This will take allot of hard work but we've got nothing better to do. ha ha. As for our company, it has never been healthier or more productive. Each quarter that goes by validates our decisions concerning Deerfield, product planning, staffing, organizational planning, etc.. Our revenues and cash-flow have never been better. I'm humbled by and greatful for all this. > 2. What is the early history? How did you decide to write it, > etc? Well, in the beginning I worked for a computer data file processing company called Mailing List Systems (MLS) in Arlington TX (http://www.mlsc.com). Several of the staff here came from there or has ties to that company also including the other three owners of Alt-N, Jerry Donald (who you all probably already know), Bob Daniels, and Ed Lalone. The last two have been in the computer game since before computers I think. Anyway, we needed an email system back in the early days for MLS and so I researched it. Back then you could get the freeware (I think) SMTP server that later became SLMail from Seattle Labs (I can't remember the original name for it) or you could get IMail. I looked at both and they were too primitive. There was no way they could fulfill our needs. So I looked at the big boys - Microsoft and Novell. They had products that would work (basically) but cost a fortune! So, I figured, I know how to read, and I am supposed to be a programmer right (that was one of my jobs at MLS also). So, I got the RFC's out and started working on it. Eventually it became very interesting to me and was all that I really wanted to work on. So, to make a long story shorter, the partners of MLS and I formed a new company to exploit the potential of this new software. I retain a controling interest and am still sitting in the center seat some 6 years later. For several months I ran the company alone and could only take checks (no credit cards). I remember getting mailboxes filled with checks for $89.00 every day from all over the world. I still have copies of all of those order forms. I decided it would be nice to be able to take credit cards too and would probably increase my sales! ha ha.. So, I hired a company called TransSecure. Now, this was an interesting period. Back then I was also my own web master and HTML coder. So, I integrated a credit card ordering page from TransSecure into my web site so people could use credit cards. This worked pretty well and for several months I would call the lady each Monday to see how things were going and they would send me a big check at the end of each month - minus a very small processing fee. It was really good. THEN myself and several other people using TransSecure discovered that they had mysteriously vanished and stopped answering the phones etc.. well, I heard later that they got in trouble for using our money to play the stock market during the time between when the orders were placed and the checks were cut. Eventually they lost big and couldn't pay anybody. So, I guess they took off. I still have a very long overdue bill that I'll collect on in the afterlife. In the very beginning I had a friend named Chad Wilson who helped me some and was around at the very beginning of everything. He was a decent guy and was the original programmer for NDaemon. We were good friends back then but we couldn't see eye-to-eye on money issues which sometimes happens with people so we basically stopped being friends and have only spoken once or twice in the last 6 years. That's all I have to say about that. I recognized pretty early on that I would need some help because doing everything by myself was fun but tiring. So I hired a guy in the beginning named Joe Sauder. Now, this was a really interesting person. This guy was a decent coder but he was allot like George Castanza (sp?) from Sienfeld in his approach to life. He would come to work - maybe - maybe not. For long periods I wouldn't know what was going on - did he quit? What's up? Finally, after I didn't see him for several weeks I figured, oh well, he must have quit. About a year or so ago he called me up on the phone. I thought he was going to ask me what time he should come to work. He basically called to say sorry for not calling. Also during this period I hired my lifelong friend Mike Mason who is still working here now. He and I were: (a) garbage men at a bowling alley together (b) carpet cleaners/installers/wet carpet/fire pack-out/clean the dead body odor out of the old mans car workers together (c) parts guys at Pep Boys together (the list could go on) Anyway, this was a big benefit because I was doing all the documentation and help files myself up until this point. He now takes care of all of that. He really does a good job considering that we have 6 programmers now, multiple products, and you know how we love to put out new stuff and change things. He basically takes care of all that alone. I am careful to put more descriptive text into the relnotes.txt file for him these days to save him time. These days I don't get to talk to him enough. For a brief time, I think before Mike started, I had a "secretary". Ok, this was the daughter of a dear friend who shall remain nameless. Anyway, this girl was really really weird and was always getting into trouble and so, as a favor, I gave her a job. Now, looking back this is really funny, but at the time I was afraid for my life sometimes. She was really scary and had some scary friends that would come up to the office and hang around with her. I thought for sure I was going to get beat up if I fired her so I had to keep her around. Eventually, she found other interests and decided that the software business was not her dream job. Alt-N dodged a bullet there for sure. Anyhow, all these adventures took place at a $300.00/month 2-room "office" which was formerly a dance hall. So, it was one really long rectangle shape. There was one very small room just inside the front door. >From there a door led into the other room which was just a big rectangular open shape. The building was in a sort of run-down part of town but I loved it and still miss it sometimes. At the far end we had a TV/VCR and two sofas. Mike and I had two desks next to each other and we decided to keep Joe Sauder's desk also "just in case". When it rained the police would close off our street because it flooded - and I mean flooded. Police would gaurd the road in case anyone tried to get in or out. On the immediate other side of the wall was a business that either used or worked on big trucks and forklifts. We could hear the engines going throughout the day and sometimes I would have to leave the office because the fumes came through the wall and could kill you. Ha ha. I did most of the breakthrough work here. This is where we invented DomainPOP and web-based access to email (WebPOP). We also perfected the basic architecture for Mdaemon that it still has today. This was the Pantego office in Pantego TX. I just have the best memories of working there. Most of the time I was alone and either had the stereo blasting Metallica as loud as it would go or else had the VCR playing my Alien Autopsy or UFO/crop-circle tapes (yes, they are real!). One day a good customer friend of mine whose name I can't remember because I think he lost his job and we fell out of contact - anyway, he told me that he just had to get his Mdaemon working with his proxy server called Wingate. All he needed was for MDaemon to have configurable ports for SMTP/POP (there was no IMAP back then). So, I did that work for him. He was so happy and suggested that I contact the Wingate people because they were about to sign up with a company to help them with tech support and order processing. So I did and eventually I had a phone call with Mike Deerfield. He was forming his company at the time and so we worked out a deal and I signed them up to do my technical support and order processing on a quarter-by-quarter basis because I didn't know how that would turn out. At this time Deerfield had two clients, Adrien (Wingate) and me. They had two employees - Mike Deerfield and Mark Richards. There might have been one or two other employees but I don't know how they were getting paid (ha ha). Adrien and I signed up within a month or so of each other. Like I said, things were good in the beginning and I don't consider it a mistake to have hired them to help Alt-N in the early stages. They benefited from a steady revenue stream due to our products and we benefited from not having to worry about handling phone calls or processing orders. Things developed quickly for Alt-N during this early period. We began to gain recognition around the world. Resellers and distributors lined up to sell our products. We paid Deerfield to manage all this. One of the best things about this period was visiting Deerfield headquarters in Michigan to spend time with the tech support staff and distributors. This is where I first met most of them and now allot of them are working together with me directly (without Deerfield in the middle thank God). I didn't really care much for meetings with the management at Deerfield. These meetings were simply a formality most of the time and very little of a constructive nature came from them that I recall. It was usually just a pressure session to get me to drop the Alt-N name from my products and put "Deerfield" everywhere - that sort of thing. I was just like "uh huh, yeah, that's a good idea" ha ha ha. Anyway, it was during this time that a very important Alt-N event took place, an event that every business needs in order to move to the next level. Jerry Donald, one of the owners of Alt-N who was still working at MLS at the time decided to try a career change. He asked me to meet him for lunch one day. Now, close to the Pantego office there is this excellent Texas bar-b-que place called Cokers so we met there. He told me that he would be willing to work full time for Alt-N starting in a few weeks if I wanted him. He really wanted to come work full time with Mike and I. I asked him, "You aren't going to make this into a real work environment are you - I mean with regular hours and 401k's and all that crap?". He said no. He lied. ha ha.... Anyway, Jerry takes the credit for turning the company into a real business. Basically, he does everything except the programming. We make a very good team. Now, I'm not really sure how long we were in the Pantego office, I think about 1 year or so. After that I really wanted to move to a nice building. We were making plenty of profits and I wanted to spend some of it. So, we leased a space in an office building on the 6th floor of the WBAP building in Arlington TX. This was a nice space because it had lots of windows and looked out onto Six Flags over Texas (a theme park). This move kick-started a boom in advancements with our software. During the next two years or so we created some of our best work. We made RelayFax and WorldClient and even better versions of MDaemon. We also hired several employees during this time. Bryce Edwards (who now heads up all the things Deerfield used to do for us) started as a programmer and network engineer during this period. Mouk Silhareth who is the programmer extraordinaire for MDAV, parts of MDaemon, the Content Filter, and loads of other stuff (although I still catch him making elementary mistakes sometimes ha ha ha), and also Jon Merkel who does all the things too complex for the rest of us like the multi-threading in WorldClient, all the complicated new parts in MDaemon like IMAP, SSL, and that sort of thing. It was me, Jerry, Mike, Jon, Mouk, Bryce, and my brother David - which is a story in itself right there - working in a space that was ok when we first got it but was way too full with all these people. I'll never forget seeing Mouk, Jon, and Bryce packed into a workspace so tight that it was like being in your bathroom shower or something. Literally, they could probably feel each others breath. They were crunched in so close together that the whole scene bordered on the pornographic. There was only room between the desks for one person to get out at a time. Ha ha! If I needed to visit one of them and they were all three in there I couldn't fit! Anyway, it was during this time that two important traditions got started. The first one is going out to the movies together during working hours. Everyone who knows me pretty much knows I'm a big Star Wars fan. So, my ex-friend Chad Wilson called me one day and I was shocked because I hadn't spoken to him in years. Anyway, - AM I BORING YOU? - GET ON THE TELEPHONE! <inside joke there> Anyway, Chad said that George Lucas was doing a charity premiere at such-and-such theater a few days before the public opening of Episode 1. So, I called around and got a lady on the phone. Alt-N ended up sponsoring the charity premiere along with a few other companies and this was big fun. We got to go to a reception after the show and they even had the Alt-N logo on the movie screen and mentioned my name from the screen (an announcer guy did that). This is when my kids finally believed that I was the "boss of my work" and an important guy (which really I'm not). Anyway, I'll never forget it because they looked at me and were amazed at the thought that all the things Dad said about his work and so on might actually be true! My daughter didn't believe that I knew people from all over the world until one day when I brought George Bronten from Upstream in Sweden (http://www.upstream.se) home with me from the office. I tell her about you guys and that this list talks to people everyday who are everywhere in the world. She used to find it a little hard to believe and, you know, I can't say that I blame her for being skeptical. It's really amazing when you think about how, in just a few short years, it has become so easy to communicate virtually instantaneously with anyone, anywhere in the world. The second tradition was going to Las Vegas. When we go, we go big. We take every employee which was ok in the beginning, but now we have allot more than in the past so this tradition might need some adjustments in the future. But, last December we all went and had a big party at the VooDoo lounge. Anyway, Bryce, Mouk, and Jon begged me to let them out of the bathroom so we started looking for a new space. So, I was driving to work one day and drove right past an empty free-standing building about 3 blocks from our WBAP office. It ended up being perfect for us and we've been here ever since. When we ramped up for resuming the duties previously outsourced to Deerfield we ended up filling this building with people. After things settled down, half the crew moved into a really beautiful space in a brand new building really close by. So, now things are as they once were. We have the development staff at theAlt-N HQ building where we've been for several years. The technical support, web site, and customer service staff are in the shiny new digs down the street. Today I think we have 20-25 people including several remote employees like Dave in Canada (you all know him from this list) and Robin from Michigan. This works out well for us except they aren't always here when we go to the movies. Our newest is Steve Bardenhagen who is our first developer working remotely (also, like Robin, an X-Deerfield employee working from Michigan). So far, I'd say this is working out well also. That's about it except for mentioning the most important part of the company and that is you guys. Without your feedback and support our products would be nothing. I'm no great person really. I didn't think up half the things that are in that software - you all did that - so, if you want to go to the movies (or Las Vegas), I'll meet you there. -- Arvel Hathcock CEO, Alt-N Technologies, Ltd. Helping the World Communicate! http://www.altn.com http://www.mdaemon.com http://www.relayfax.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- MDaemon 6.8 is coming soon! SSL security for SMTP/POP/IMAP users, Heuristic & Bayesian AntiSpam, WAP/WML/XHTML mobile support. http://www.altn.com/press/press_release.asp?ReleaseID=64 ----------------------------------------------------------------- -- syafril ------- Syafril Hermansyah<syafril-at-dutaint.co.id> . -- --[MDaemon-L]------------------------------------------------ Milis ini untuk Diskusi antar pengguna MDaemon Mail Server. Mohon tidak posting dalam format HTML! 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