The Joeism Blog » Triangle

NCSU Computer Science Presentation on “From Code to Company”

Joe Colopy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:49:51 +0000

Last month I had the honor of speaking to NC State Computer Science students and faculty as part of their Executive Speaking Series. In the talk, I walked through a number of hard learned lessons in building Bronto Software. You can review the official writeup on the NCSU CSC webpage or here:

Joe will share lessons learned in building a company out of his spare bedroom ten years ago to a successful award-winning software company – entirely bootstrapped without any outside capital. Today, Bronto Software employs over 120 people in over 20,000 square feet on the American Tobacco Campus in nearby Durham. Bronto was recently named as NCTA’s Software Company of the Year and as a TBJ Best Place to Work.

I enjoyed giving the talk and especially mingling with the students afterewards. Hopefully they found it insightful … or at the very least entertaining. Personally I always found these type of talks rewarding back in my Harvard and UNC days.

So, without further ado, here’s the YouTube video for your watching enjoyment:

You can also flip through the slides with SlideShare:

NCSU Computer Science — “From Code to Company”

View more presentations from colopy.

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Adventures in Entrepreneurship

Joe Colopy — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:30:20 +0000

Last month we kicked off a new video series with the CED, the largest entrepreneurial support organization in the country. The series features local Raleigh-Durham entrepreneurs and their startups. I play host for the series and hope to go beyond the typical entrepreneur interviews and give viewers a better sense of life as a entrepreneur and in a startup.

Special thanks to Caroline Riddle, our community guru at Bronto, for all her help in producing this series. For the first episode, Eric Boggs and Adam Covati, two bronto alumni, discuss their startup Argyle Social. Now, without further adieu, here’s the first episode:

Carolina Challenge

Starting Bronto + Foosball

Joe Colopy — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:33:27 +0000

Lately we have been on an award streak here at Bronto. One of the more notable ones was being listed as a North Carolina Company to Watch — awarded to second stage growth companies in the state. Of course we were honored. It is a testament to the hard work of many Brontos.

One of the perks of being CEO is that I get to be the front man for the acceptance videos. In the video below, I describe what we do, how we started as well as briefly demonstrate my mad foosball skillz. You can also watch the video on blip.tv.

Enjoy!

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Bronto Summit 2010 Video Recap

Joe Colopy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:30:36 +0000

Last May we hosted our first user conference. We hosted about 30 email marketers from online retailers and other e-commerce focused customers and enjoyed a couple days of discussing email marketing, e-commerce and Bronto at UNC’s Executive Education Center in lovely Chapel Hill, NC.

As the inaugural year we kept the conference fairly small and focused. Mark your calendars now for an even larger and more compelling Bronto Summit in April 2011.

See the video:

Interviewed at the Bronto Tweetup

Joe Colopy — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:57:31 +0000

Last Thursday night Bronto hosted a Tweetup at its offices. Tweetup is a gathering of Twitter fans and enthusiasts. The event was a big success with over 200 attendees. And, as you can imagine it was very well covered in the the twitter-sphere.

Special thanks to Brontos Adam Covati and Caroline Smith for organizing the event. It as a herculean effort and they pulled it off without a hitch. You can find some more information about the event on BrontoNation.

While there, I was interviewed by one of our guests Tim Ladd. I spoke about Bronto, its success in tough economic times, the state of social media, and the parallels between email marketing and Twitter. You can see the video on YouTube or embedded below:

Bronto Celebrates Its New Digs

Joe Colopy — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:14:48 +0000

Three years ago Bronto moved into a 4500 square foot office space on the American Tobacco Campus of Durham, North Carolina. We had 15 people and it seemed like we would never fill up the space. 30 people later at 45 people it was a very different story. So, over a year ago, we started looking for new space. Ultimately, we liked where we were and orchestrated a grand plan to expand, which entailed having three other smaller companies relocate to other offices nearby. The grand plan worked and we moved into our new 12500 square foot space at the beginning of February.

Last Thursday we celebrated by having an open house and invited the local business community, customers, press, social media gurus et al … even Bill Bell, the mayor of Durham, showed up. It was a fun evening and a great opportunity to share our new space and our long-term vision for Bronto.

Here are some blog posts covering the event:

Wayne Sutton’s post and video interview: Email Marketing Booming In the Recession
Laurie Ruettimann’s post: Networking Sucks Do It Anyway
Lenore Ramm’s post: Bronto Open House

Thank you to everyone who visited us. A special thanks goes out to Stacy and Caroline of Bronto for ensuring the evening went off without a hitch. Hopefully, in a few years, this space will feel too small and we’ll be able to have another one.

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My “Miscue” with Billiards Celebrity Black Widow

Joe Colopy — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:34:03 +0000

Yesterday was a strange day.

Yesterday the Women’s Professional Billiards Association descended on the American Tobacco Campus for the Carolina Classic 9-Ball Tournament. To kickoff the tournament, the world’s top 12 women players teamed up with amateurs to play in a pre-tournament ProAm contest. Fortunately, Chaz and I got to be two of the amateurs.

Joe "Urban Slim" Colopy shooting 9-ball

The evening started simple enough. We went down to the tournament area at a little bit before 7. As we entered, we each received a complementary cue that we would play with for the rest of the evening. I was teamed up the #5 ranked player, Sarah Ellerby. She was a true professional and did a great job in putting up with my serious lack of talent.

Right off the bat, Sarah suggested that we just share her cue because it was much better than the one that I had. Made sense, although I don’t think that the cue was much of the problem with my play. After playing for a while on a number of different tables, the main competition ended and it was time for the final. We didn’t make the final but the pro player and celebrity billiards person Jeanette Lee, the “Black Widow”, did.

Right before the final, all the amateur players got our cues’ autographed by our teammates and the other top players. Since I hadn’t been playing with my cue, I went back to my first table, where I had set it down. Coincidentally, this was the same table where the final match was being played. Ok … you see where this is going. Yes, it is bad.

Me, Sarah Ellerby (#5), Anna Kostanian (#7), and Chaz

So, I had Sarah and another professional autograph “my” cue and then walked over to the final. Just when I was strolling past the table, the “Black Widow” glanced around to look for her cue and saw me holding it. Then, this reality hit me. I just had her very nice and very expensive cue ($2k?) permanently autographed by two of her competitors. Needless to say, it was a very awkward moment and initially she was pretty mad, which was completely understandable. In the end, she played in the final and her team ended up winning the whole event.

Fortunately, she and the WPBA folks had a good idea. They had the cue signed by all the players and they’ll auction it off to charity. Nice twist to a very big mistake.

This episode was about as awkward (and comical in hindsight) moment as you can imagine. So, “Black Widow”, if you are out there, let me know how I can make things right — drinks, shoes, bronto, free core edition account, etc. Let me live another day. I have a small children.

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Bronto Featured in Triangle Business Journal

Joe Colopy — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:03:01 +0000

Old picture with Joe, Chaz, inflatable Bronto, and my belt buckle

Bronto was featured in this week’s Triangle Business Journal (TBJ). The TBJ used an old picture of Chaz and me from a couple years ago. Fortunately, I am proudly wearing my Bronto belt buckle.

The article is fairly short and speaks broadly about our growth.

You can read the full article on their website or inline below:

Durham’s Bronto Software Takes Off

DURHAM – Bronto Software, the company named for a dinosaur, is looking to expand its stomping grounds.

The Durham company is set this month to start work that will triple its space on the American Tobacco campus to 13,000 square feet by the beginning of the year, says CEO Joe Colopy. Bronto currently employs 45, up from 29 at the start of the year, and Colopy anticipates adding more workers.

Colopy says Bronto’s expansion comes as more retailers turn to e-mail as a way to communicate with customers. He says Bronto also is getting new business from companies that had been doing their e-mail marketing in-house.

Colopy says Bronto will reach $6 million in revenue this year, and he projects that the company will reach $10 million next year.

“E-mail marketing is not just e-mail,” Colopy says. “It’s real marketing.”

Corporate interest in e-mail marketing has picked up over the past five years, says Heidi Hennink-Kaminski, professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She says companies use e-mail marketing to try to learn about customer preferences – a goal similar to the one businesses have had with traditional mail marketing campaigns. But with e-mail, Hennink-Kaminski says, feedback comes much faster.

Colopy started working on what would become Bronto’s software in 2000. He and company co-founder Chaz Felix both worked at Red Hat before starting Bronto in 2002. The company has taken no outside funding, though Colopy says he receives inquiries from venture capitalists.

Colopy says that in the early part of the decade, e-mail marketing was just sending e-mail messages to lists. But the industry has moved toward providing messages targeted to particular individuals.

Bronto’s software allows a retailer to measure e-mail campaigns so the content and the frequency of the messages can be adjusted. Message content also can be tailored to customer interests.

E-mail marketing is getting harder because spam filters block a lot of messages, says David Buffaloe, president of M-pact Marketing in Raleigh. Even if a message does get through, Buffaloe says, it must contend with dozens of others filling customer inboxes. M-pact works with clients to formulate their messages but does not offer e-mail marketing software.

Buffaloe says the value of software such as Bronto’s is its analytical power. Being able to measure how many messages get opened and whether users clicked on items in the message can help a company further refine its marketing efforts.

“Every time you do an e-mail campaign, you want to learn from it,” he says.

Bronto has not been trouble-free. A software upgrade in 2006 turned up numerous bugs. The company worked to fix the problems and offered the service to customers free for a month.

Bronto now claims 800 customers. Clients include the Duke University Alumni Association and seafood company Gorton’s. Waterloo, Wis.-based Trek Bicycle has used Bronto for two years. Web Marketing Manager Casey Kohner says Bronto helped Trek move from blasting e-mails to sending targeted messages. Kohner says the software allows Trek to segment messages, so the entire customer list doesn’t get the same message.

“Frequency is determined by what we know about them and how specific they want the information to be,” Kohner says.

Hennink-Kaminski does not see e-mail marketing replacing traditional advertising. Print and broadcast advertising helps build brand identity, she says. E-mail marketing gives more specific information to customers who want it. “I think you need both parts of the equation,” she says.

Product Team Goes Hollywood on YouTube

Joe Colopy — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:14:49 +0000

We’re looking for talented software developers over at Bronto. The best and brightest kind of thing. As part of our recruitment effort, we thought that it would be helpful to put together a short YouTube video. One thing led to another, especially on a Friday afternoon, and presto … we have one. It’s pretty good — especially for doing it with a small digital camera in only one take. One take! I’d like to see Speilberg or Tarantino pull that off.

You can view the video on YouTube or right here:

Help us spread the word to anyone who might be interested in joining the product team — particularly PHP and MySQL developers. You can read the official job posting on bronto.com.

Thank you to Haley and the rest of the product team for putting this video together. I see a little bit of Hollywood in everyone’s future.

Top 40 Under 40 + Best Customer Service Team

Joe Colopy — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:02:02 +0000

Bronto is on the move and we’ve won some notable awards lately. Here’s a rundown:

Earlier this month Karalyn and I went to the awards ceremony for the Triangle Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40. The event was good and like a very big wedding. In presenting the awards, the announcer ran through a short bio of the awardee while their theme song played. I chose “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin. It was awesome.
View a list of the other winners.

More importantly, Bronto was announced as a Stevie Award finalist for the Best Customer Service Team. At Bronto, we really pride ourselves in the high level of service that we give our clients so I am really thrilled to see this recognized. Big kudos to the entire Bronto Client Services Team for making it happen!!
View a list of the other finalists.

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