Chris Cera
JAY AIGNER
0:06
This is the first customer hosted by Jay Agner. 2s Hi, everyone. Welcome to the first customer. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by the great Chris Sara. Hello, Chris. How are you, buddy?
CHRIS CERA
0:20
Really good, Jay. Good to
JAY AIGNER
0:22
see you. It's good to see you, man. Chris is a local legend. If you've met anybody in Tech, in Philadelphia in the past, what, 10, 15, 20 years? I mean, I don't want to age you, Chris, but everybody knows Chris, so thank you for taking some time. I really appreciate it. And full disclosure, Arcweb was one of my first clients at Jdaqa. And I bought a suit to walk down to your office for the first time, and we landed the deal, and it's been an awesome time, and we love anybody that works for Chris, so thank you for that. But let's get started, dude. Let's talk about who is Chris Sarah. We're not going to bore everybody with a bunch of background, but I want to build up to how we got to the monster today. Where did we start? Where did you grow up? Were your parents entrepreneurs? What was your kind of teen years looking to college?
CHRIS CERA
1:19
I grew up in Delaware County, right outside of Philadelphia. My dad is an entrepreneur, was an entrepreneur in the shoe. He had a shoe store, so he was a retail entrepreneur. And, yeah, I've had a number of 2s influences in my life that were business owners, so I felt fortunate. So I kind of had the bug early, even though I didn't really know how that would be implemented later in the world. But even though I went to college and got a job, like a lot of people try to do right after college, after a little while of bouncing around on a few different jobs, decided to have the confidence to take the plunge finally.
JAY AIGNER
2:07
Awesome. So what was the first business after college? I mean, did you go out and start your own thing? Did you dip your toe in? How did you get into kind of what was the first kick off? And I don't think it was arcade butt. You had something before that?
CHRIS CERA
2:20
Yeah, I've done some consulting. I also had a number of at least a couple of businesses that didn't really go anywhere. Some that never even made it to being incorporated, another that was incorporated but never got a customer. And then I also did some of my own consulting work, which I didn't have a separate corporation for some period of time. So I had been essentially tinkering. I was doing the founder dating, just talking to a lot of people that also wanted to start a business and trying to see could we work together. So I did a substantial amount of that and that was also the reason for a bunch of starts that stopped fairly quickly. But that's also how you get started. You try to work on something with people and it's always best to realize that if something's not working, you go do something else. There was a number of those, but I think what you were trying to get at too, is the first company that was sort of told my sister, friends and family about that I was going to quit my job and that sort of thing is a company called Use It. 1s Which I can't really pitch this company to save my life anymore. It's been a long time. It also has pivoted 70 times. I'm not even sure which version of the pitch to give, but it was essentially a document management system that initially started with a cloud based document viewer that allows you to view documents. Yes, we're documented your browser, which more than a decade ago, that was something 1s interesting. And we created a company around it called views. It raised some money in the philly area locally, hired a few people over the years, but it never really got to we never realized the vision and didn't really get too far. We had a lot of customers and some traction, but ultimately, it wasn't anything to write home about. We did end up ultimately selling the business to a company called akisoft. But entrepreneurially, it really was a failure to a large extent, and we were lucky that we were able to get most of the investors back. Their money that they had invested to through essentially becoming a consulting firm.
JAY AIGNER
4:35
Was that solo, that effort? You said we. Who else was in on that with you?
CHRIS CERA
4:41
There was initially, 1s I think, a lot of businesses. There's usually sort of like one key founder. That was not me. That was another person, brett mansell. And then initially, there was four other cofounders, but ultimately, once some funds had been raised, there was really only three of us that basically quit our jobs and took the plunge. So that was used, and that was sort of my first cut into the philly entrepreneurial scene. So that was like 2007 and the 2008 arc technology is the next company that, I'm sorry, was in 2011. So between using an archive was approximately four years that I was working sort of full bore. And then in the process of trying to sell the business, that was sort of another two to three years afterwards. And I already started arkweb, but I was still technically doing some work with you over that time period too,
JAY AIGNER
5:38
right. 1s So I want to rewind a little bit. So you got out of college, and then 2s you kind of started doing the consulting. Talk to me a little bit about that. What was your degree in? How did you go from a guy who has a degree to a guy? I had the confidence to go, 1s I mean, consulting requires some fortitude to go out and, like, kind of pitch yourself and, like, you know, how did you make that transition from, like, a college kid to do consulting work?
CHRIS CERA
6:14
Yeah, it was more of like a friends and family 1s was how I got gigs. And ultimately, all of the gigs came from a single individual that had sold multiple different clients on different projects. So I'd done several overspan of a few years. 2s Initially, I worked for GlaxoSmithKline. I worked in drug discovery there. I worked there for two and a half years. I worked there while I was in and out of school. So part of the program, but I also worked there part time while I was in school. So I was in a typical, I would say, software development job in a lot of ways, only working on, you know, really scientific applications, which are a lot of fun. And then 2s I work in a research lab at Trex University while I was in school. And then also after I got my bachelor's in computer science, I got an offer to stay in the research lab that I was working to get my master's degree essentially for free while I did research work and work in the lab, I stated. So I got my master's degree. I did research in the areas of period design and some elements of some other things. 3s But it was ultimately I was in essentially like a software CAD lab. 2s And then after that so I had a decent amount of job experience sort of coming out. And then I had some friends of mine who were doing some consulting for this. Museums do a lot out of custom technology development, as I'm sure, and there's a number of museums there. And so this person had essentially sold some projects to Children's Hospital, Philadelphia, Franklin Institute, and they were ultimately video games, kids video games. And I was working basically I was hired as a software developer working on those video games. And I was producing everything from parts of the operating system to the software that was running on it to doing some of the game development, game design. It was a really awesome gig.
JAY AIGNER
8:17
Those aren't the ones that were the my kids, unfortunately, I have five of them, so I've been to shop plenty of times. Is that the one that, like, the big projection went onto the floor and they could walk around on and interact with it?
CHRIS CERA
8:32
There was three different excuse me, kiosks in the emergency room, and I'm blanking on the exact time period. My hunch is that when you are a dad, those machines are already gone and they have been replaced by other systems. But the company I was consulting for is called Museum Interactive Technologies. They were on 11th and Buttonwood in the I guess that the Caller Hill area of Philadelphia. And I did consulting there, and that was where I did a number of projects, but I didn't have to do the really hard things, which is the business development to find a consulting client. It was more that I was a good engineer and had some of the skills that were needed for the job, and my friends were working with them. And so fortunately, I just got a connection and it was pretty relatively easy in the grand scheme of things.
JAY AIGNER
9:20
Okay, all right, yeah, that makes a lot more sense now. And then you kind of kept that vein going. So let's fast forward back pre Arc web. 2s How did you make the jump? You've used it kind of fizzled, I think we're where did you end up in this four years? And how did you start a way after that?
CHRIS CERA
9:47
We raise money. And it's pretty complex scenario because ultimately the business wasn't profitable enough to a point where it could return a capital to the investors. And so it became more of how do we exit gracefully? And so the investors ultimately had to get out. We also had a lot of customers on the platform, and we didn't want to just send them a notice for shutting everything down in 30 days. Good luck migrating your application. So we didn't want to do that at all either. So we wanted to find someone who would buy it, knowing that it wasn't going to make the investors whole, but ultimately to try to see how far we could get. In the meantime, we decided to start doing consulting in and around document management software. So we were lucky that an investor of ours was in a group that also included an executive at one of our clients excuse me, an executive who labor became one of our clients at Ing Direct. And we were able to get an introduction there. And ultimately, they had a specific challenge involving check processing. And we had proposed to them that we could deliver a solution to in a time period that they really needed it. And so we got sort of a blue bird first project. 1s And that we had to hustle really hard from a business development perspective to get the proposal on there, figure out when we can actually deliver the system and make sure that the proposal was very good, and then leverage everything that we could in terms of relationships and our experience in the area in order to and convince them that we were the right company for the job. And so we were lucky that we successfully did that and then we ended up doing several more projects after that and ultimately that was enough to fix the financial gap that we needed in order to get the investors out in a way that everybody would agree to 2s part of that. So anyway, so I'll get to your question. I had to basically give my notice that I was going to go do something else as part of the negotiation with the investors to essentially allow me to go with my chin up. And so I created arcade technologies, really just to sort of symbolize that I was moving on. I was starting a new company and. 1s It was essentially for real. I had assumed that I would work on some other startup with our technologies but I really didn't know exactly what that would be. So that was how it happened. And then after so we continue to do consulting work through the reviews 2s as I had created Mark Web and I made another essentially deal with my two co founders and I said we're paying off the investors and then whatever profits are left you folks can basically have it. I'm going to go do this other thing. And that's the executive summary version. It was a bit more complicated than that. 2s Exiting company is really complex. You have to figure out how do you make it work for everybody? And this was just going through all the different notions of what I needed to do to kind of gracefully exit and that worked out really well. So they continued to operate it for some period of time. We actually found a buyer through the investment banker that we had hired but then the deal fell through. So they ended up operating that company for a few more years until we eventually accused of bought it and it was bought by our biggest competitor when we were really toiling in the weeds and his company acquired by Iceoft and then he was coming along and basically buying the fumes that were left of our company. So it was a bittersweet moment but actually one of the things that I really learned from that experience was if you're thinking about exiting your company you should really be talking to your competition probably at some point earlier than what we did in that instance, which is way late. And I think there's certainly approach and a strategy to when it makes sense to do that. In our case I think we waited too long because I think we would have been able to get even more out of the deal and we just sort of like said we're going to do it sooner but we're all kind of personally a little grumpy that this person kind of 2s wiped the wall with,
JAY AIGNER
14:13
right 1s so. 1s You do all that, you kind of say, sign our guys, I'm going to write off into the sunset. And is this the first time 2s you kind of get it on your own? Like you were kind of this is just Chris's show and Arc Grab is going to be my deal. And first of all, where did Archer have the name to come from? 3s Just from a design perspective, I wanted it sort of like a meaningless term that wouldn't have a lot of collisions from a trademark perspective or whatever. 4s My cousin had a company that he had named after another person by using our initials, so I wanted to try to tie in my grandma's initials into the name. So Arc is actually the first real my grandma's initials. That's
CHRIS CERA
15:07
where the art comes from. And then the web, I felt like, was just another way of describing a lot of what we do, but I didn't want people to think we were, like, necessarily a web development firm. But I felt like the web to most people, and at the time, web two had already happened, so I felt like the web had a much broader name. And so our web, to me, is what made sense.
JAY AIGNER
15:29
There was way more really significant meaning behind that than I've ever heard. That's, like, such a great story, dude. 3s I can't wait to tell Autumn that story because 1s she's such an arc web cheerleader. So you stepped aside and now you're doing your own thing. What the hell do you do from there? Like, did you have clients that you pulled in from existing places? You have a queue of work on lined up that you wouldn't have at this point, it's not exactly Chris Sarah, the consultant, who's kind of got some experience and jumping off to do his own business. This is like Chris Sarah, who's done the dance, knows how business works, and it's kind of ready to do his own thing. What does that look like?
CHRIS CERA
16:14
Yeah. Thanks. So there's a few things that I had learned on the business development side in the course of doing reviews that were really valuable. One is just building a list of people that you need to contact and need to engage with and then executing it right. And I saw it really done well when we hired the investment banker. And watching this individual kind of cut through a list that we had provided was really impressive because I had never actually seen it before. Even though I work in organizations where I'd been on the same floor as salespeople. But I really hadn't seen it in a big organization. And so I was getting busy at that time. So kind of knew. Like. All right. I need to do a certain amount of business at all of an activity. So I'm going to spend a certain period of my time every day 1s doing business development. And what I did was I later called this the awesome pipeline. I basically built a spreadsheet of everybody I knew that was awesome. 1s And whether I knew them or not. Right? 1s And I had basically sort of three things that I was pitching. I guess if I met with somebody I was telling them, one, just updating them about my last company, two, saying that I was looking for other opportunities to coach of out of business or whatever else. Three, I'm doing consulting in the meantime. So I basically met with as many awesome people as I could. I said what I was doing and just to see is there any synergy with others. I actually still have the spreadsheet, or at least like a slightly later version, it might be maybe a year after I was doing this, but basically I noted in the spreadsheet I didn't have a CRM, I just noted in the spreadsheet. But last time I contacted them and I had the first three things like emailed, one call and I put inside the date and then every day I can't remember exactly what time, but generally speaking I try to do my core priority, high priority work in the morning. So let's just say it was nine to ten or nine to eleven. This is now more than ten years ago. I was basically making sure that I was working activity inside that spreadsheet during that time period because I knew that eventually, like the consulting work, I would find some. Now to get to your question Jay, so it ended up being that I got referrals from a lot of people. One of the best ones that I got was the investment from one of the partners or investors and one of the investment groups that invested in my last company who I basically said that same story to the three things and he basically said oh, I know somebody that's trying to start a new company and I think it would be perfect if he starts working with you. And that happened, I was also trying to work. So I had multiple things that were looking like as good as that sort of at the same time. It took me, definitely took a few months and I was consulting, still consulting for my last company and for Ing Direct to basically put food on the table while I was doing this and then looking for other consulting projects. And it sounds insane, but I was actually working on another start up while I was doing all this too. So 1s I was really obsessed with CRM as a concept and I was working on what I was calling PM at the time, personal Relationship Management. I feel like it is somewhat of a category now, but I feel like it's probably different than what I was envisioning, but I was basically trying to make a glorified address book that some someone would be so enamored with that they would actually bounce the phone icon on your phone and use this because it would be better of course. So I was working on that until I had close to nine or ten. 3s At least three projects going simultaneously with like multiple contractors. And I finally said to myself, actually, this consulting is actually working better than any other business I started before. And maybe I'll just stop working on the CRM thing after a while. But I jumped ahead there a little bit. So I was getting projects. It looked like the thing was going to happen. That was the referral from the investment group. There was another person who worked for a private equity advisory company. He was starting a company 1s and I basically convinced him to do a project with him. And then the third thing that had sort of hit around the same time was MakerBot, the 3D printing company. 2s The great story there is I had an engineering manager at MakerBot who I knew for many, many years. So I was leveraging a known trusted relationship and then their head of product or their procurement. I think it was procurement, I can't remember. He actually knew the procurement person at Ing Director. I was already consulting and then that was a reference. And then I got MakerBot. 1s The other project that I mentioned with the entrepreneurs from the investment group is what became to track with Gary Shanks. Gary Shank was that person, and he's an investor and entrepreneur and a great person. 2s Yes, I learned a lot and I had to basically hire people pretty quickly. But I was only hiring 1099 contractors and and I had a mix of things where I was hiring people for the company I was consulting for, and I had. 3s Another situation that was developing where I was hiring my own. And 1s very, very early 2s in the process, I actually had a project that went kind of sideways. And it went sideways, and it's funny because I remember having conversation with the founder and he had showed me a PowerPoint deck that literally was an app with three screens. So after we had been in production and built several versions, this thing had way more than three screens and a ton of stuff. And it was just getting more and more complex 1s and it was getting expensive. So we were way over the budget that we had forecasted. And then he said that he wanted to call it quits and I had to sort of make amends with the scenario and everything. And what I realized was that I was kind of fooling myself into thinking that 1s I was hiring people for him. So I wasn't taking any accounting or legal risk, but I was still taking essentially a reputational risk and that it was my reputation on the line. And so I sort of fooled myself into thinking that if I wasn't taking the financial risk or legal risk or whatever, then I was somehow in a safer place. But what I realized is actually that my reputation is even more important than those other things. And so I'm just as much at risk. And so that was the last project where I was hiring people for my clients. And instead, from that point on, I decided that I was just going to hire the people myself and manage myself. 1s That way the risk would still be on me reputationally. And ultimately I could have a lot more control too, because sometimes projects fail because the manager is directing you to work on the wrong things. And as an engineer, I can't tell you how many times I worked on products that I knew were absolutely not going to work because they had terrible design. They did no testing, there was no product management or whatever. And people are like, well, you're the engineer, just build this thing. I'm like, keep going away.
JAY AIGNER
23:40
So. 3s Where does this take us in the arc web journey? 2s You know, what I see today 2s may not be an accurate representation of where it was to start for sure. Where was the kind of in between where you guys evolved over. And so talk about going from 1099 to w two, and maybe that's where some of that stuff started, right? Because I've personally dealt with 1s that situation and grappled with all the both sides of the pros and cons. So that had to be a pretty big change for you.
CHRIS CERA
24:22
Yeah, so there was, I believe the number was eleven. So I had eleven contractors that were all working close to 40 hours or more depending upon the project, and 1s I was still working on that CRM product or PRM product. And I had basically made that decision that I mentioned earlier where I'm like, this is really working. 2s Maybe I'll just start working on this other startup and see how far I can take this consulting company. 2s The next hire was essentially an operations person, so the first hire of arcade was essentially an operations person who also had a legal background. And so he just really helped in a lot of ways get the fabric of the company going from being able to hire employees and whatnot moving forward, benefits and all of those things. And eventually 1s we stopped, we stopped hiring contractors and moved everybody to be a w to employee and have focused on really, how do we build a place that's one of the best places to work for employees over time. So it's certainly a lot different now than it was back then. And that time period I would say, is probably like six or seven years ago. We grew pretty fast in the first few, so it was dormant for a few years because I was just basically a shell company while I was consulting for one client, my former company. And then when I started consulting in it for real, it grew pretty fast. So it's probably six or seven years ago now at this point is where we are where I'm hiring my first employee. And then over time, we hired more than 20 people in the next few years 1s and then like I said, over time, actually ratcheted down our contractor pool. 1s We didn't tell anyone that they weren't hired anymore. We stopped hiring people and then eventually people just like any other gig that they're working on, they decide to go somewhere else. Were you able to do that? Because you would kind of. 3s De risk like the other side of the business by having like a constant flow of clients and all. Because that's the real concern, right? When you switch from W or ten nine nine to W Two is 2s now I'm liable for everything all the time, 40 hours a week, etc. Benefits and everything else. And these people's livelihoods that dependent on it. When the contractor stuff is almost like, it feels like there's an unsaid agreement where it's like you're a contractor and it's scalable and with that comes with flexibility on their side to be a contractor, just like I was for a decade. So
JAY AIGNER
27:15
was that the way that you were able to kind of make that change? Like, all right, I'm just going to W two now. I'm going to pay everybody salary and do that sort of thing? Is that because you knew you had established a business that could kind of survive the ups and downs of W Two employment compared to having 1099, which are more flexible?
CHRIS CERA
27:34
So I would say it was more about just accepting the risk than having confidence, knowing that there is a pipe there.
JAY AIGNER
27:44
That sounds like a very recurring theme for you. Just think that you want it and take the risk. I like that's why you've been successful. 1s So, interesting enough, your first customer was kind of an existing previous customer, which happens to be the same frequency. I hear that very often a lot. You know, it's the first customer or somebody's first consulting thing or something. Which is why when people ask me how I do marketing or I do whatever, and I've done it for years, and it's like just pick up some consulting work to start. You got to pick up a side project, go to Upwork, go to Five, or go to do some project for somebody, you know, that runs a business. That's my recommendation. 2s You and I have sent each other people and talked about stuff. What is your suggestion to those people that are in? That coming up. 1s How do people get into consulting in 2022? It may be even a hard question for you to answer at this point because the landscape has changed.
CHRIS CERA
28:49
Well, I think the landscape certainly has changed. However, I think 1s so much of business development is around relationships and trust. And the thing is, when you decide that you're going to be a consultant at any point in your life, by that point you probably do have people, people that really do trust you. If you think of childhood friends and people that have known you your entire life, they don't know you professionally, but they trust you. Right. I think leveraging that to the extent that you can is so important. And people often forget that they do actually have a network that they can leverage. They just never have leveraged. So they're not even thinking about how to leverage it. It was very much me reaching out to, like I said, the awesome pipeline.
JAY AIGNER
29:40
I love that. Dude, you should patent that, man. I have my versions of those too, over the years. I have my stupid color coded that means nothing that gets outdated. And there's just a bunch I love the autobiography. That's a great way to describe it. Let's switch to Chris Sarah today. The dad doing a million things. He's got a bunch of stuff going on. 1s I can't be the only one. 2s I'm going to go ahead and say, Chris, you're a little bit older than I am, which I'm fine with, but people at our age, 1s how are you staying healthy, dude? What are you doing? What are you actually trying to do to live longer for your kids and for, you know, just to keep doing stuff forever?
CHRIS CERA
30:24
So I have sort of bout in and out of taking better care of myself right now. I'm doing pretty good, so I try to run. 1s It's one of the easiest things for me to do because I just walk out the door and start running. I certainly stretch for a while, but running is a key part of my life at the moment. I can run somewhere between six and 10 miles, generally speaking. Also do a frequent practice of meditation and try to do that for five minutes a day. And those two things keep me pretty sane and I highly recommend to anyone, generally speaking.
JAY AIGNER
31:06
I love it. I think ten to 30 minutes. Somebody said it one time. I was watching some talk show. I think it was Harry Konick Jr. For some reason, he was like he's like, ten to 30 minutes of exercise a day, regardless. And I try to do that, and it does make just the physical part. And the meditation is huge, too. This is app. You tried the waking up app with what's the name? Sam. That's what I've been using, 1s free plug for him.
CHRIS CERA
31:33
I use Insight Timer. But honestly, since I've been doing it so long, I feel like I've done it more than a thousand times at this point. So I just basically have silence. I don't use a dictation, or 2s at least generally speaking, not most days. But again, I only keep myself to five minutes, which is pretty short, but for me, it's more about frequency.
JAY AIGNER
31:57
Have you done any training in it or anything, or is it just kind of you picked it up over the years?
CHRIS CERA
32:02
Mostly just that app and guided meditations
JAY AIGNER
32:07
through it. Okay. All right, so I've got one last question for you, which is one of my favorites, which it's fun asking a really successful person this question, too, because I'd love to hear the answer. What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? 5s I love the silence because I'm not going to rush you through it. I'll give you a second. But it's one of my favorites and I'll tell you one of my favorite answer in a minute. 2s Or do you want the answer first? No, I don't do that. I don't want to leave the witness,
CHRIS CERA
32:41
you know, so, so much of my brain gets bent more towards 1s social issues and justice. So when you say something like that, I immediately think along those lines and not necessarily about business, 2s but I feel like consistent, high quality education is so 1s important and so needed in the city, in the state, and across the country. So I would love to see that happen, but it's not really my area. But if I could choose, I would probably pick some big problem like that and that's where I would sink my teeth for a while.
JAY AIGNER
33:23
All right, I like it. 2s No, it didn't have to be business related, but I like that you picked a cause. My favorite is from my wife's cousin Kim, who listened to one of my episodes and texted me and said, climbing Mount Everest. I was like, that's a great one. That's like maybe the best one ever because I would definitely try to if I knew I couldn't fail. So I like that one a lot. But yeah, 1s I grapple with that too. I have five kids, obviously, like I said, and education is a huge part of that. 1s I saw a bunch of weird stuff with being successful and unsuccessful during the pandemic on virtual schooling, so it made me kind of wonder, like, is the traditional model, does that work? Could virtual be? I don't know. But I like that I like that answer. All right, I'm going to let you get at it. You've probably got three more startups to start before the end of the day, I'm going to see you. Give me the details on your archweb ten year anniversary.
CHRIS CERA
34:30
So we are having an open house next month, and I wasn't ready to plug the date because I don't remember. I think it's
JAY AIGNER
34:40
November 18. No. Is that right? Hold on.
CHRIS CERA
34:48
We turned ten during the pandemic, and so we're sort of denied having an open house. So we're making up for it now even though we're a little bit older than ten. But we're having our ten year open house.
JAY AIGNER
35:02
We're going to find the date before we end this. 2s If I find the date before you, Chris, with all your plans. 3s I see the invitation. 1s November 18. I was right. 04:00 p.m. Look at that. All right, so November will definitely try to be there, and I think Autumn is going to be there, and I'm sure half the city of Philadelphia is going to be there because we all love you, Chris.
CHRIS CERA
35:30
Thank you so much,
JAY AIGNER
35:31
young man. Thank you for coming on. I appreciate you giving me some of your time today, buddy. I'll talk to you soon, okay?
CHRIS CERA
35:36
My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Great talking to you. Have a great
JAY AIGNER
35:40
day. You the man, Chris. Thanks.