The challenge of getting a Tech Company off the Ground
Hello everyone! My name is John Murphy and I’m an entrepreneur. I didn’t set out in life or my career with starting my own business as even a goal like many entrepreneurs. It happened to be more a matter of circumstance and the people around me that convinced me that it was something i should pursue. My company is small specialized software company providing smart manufacturing solutions to the Aerospace and Defense sector. We are going into our 6th year since I started TAMS and really its the first year i feel like we are actually getting started.
For 6 years there has been a ton of challenges, small amount of success, moderate amount of failure and an incredible amount of perseverance by the entire TAMS team. The experience has definitely not even close “easy” and i think it went far beyond what anyone who thought it was a good idea would have considered to be a good idea. To be clear, I never thought it would be easy, I went into business knowing I didn’t know nearly enough about manufacturing, engineering, software, industrial controls, electronics, industrial networks, cybersecurity, accounting, business, sales, marketing, state/federal law, tax law, compliance (itar/fedramp/cmmc), and personalities for starting a company to be anything but ‘almost’ impossible. There has definitely been days where i thought it was impossible and TAMS wasn’t going to make it, but I would take one more step forward, with the teammates that were willing to continue the path and we would make it one more day.
TAMS has changed significantly since we first started. Some of the original founders discovered that being an entrepreneur wasn’t for them and other members were discovered that believed in the company and product as much as I do. I started TAMS from the basement of my In-Laws with zero funding and today we have sold our product to 4 out or the 7 largest US Defense companies and we have exactly what we need to make the impact I hoped i could when we first started.
Looking back on the past 6 years there are three things that I have learned to do and have enabled me to be semi-successful as an entrepreneur:
- You can’t ever turnaround or you won’t ever move forward.
- Make mistakes, expect some failure
- Move past it, around it or over it.
- You need to think of everyday as “day 1, week 1”, even if you are 6 years into your venture.
- When you have a major setback and you feel like you are going back to the beginning you won’t be overwhelmed because its your normal mindset.
- Failure is fine, but quitting can’t be an option.
Leave a Reply