Titbits from Frank Addante's FounderBlog: From a 29-year-old college drop-out

Frank has written a nice blog piece on his experiences with startup (http://strongmail.com/). Strongmail is in very interesting space - which you must track if you are in email space.

Some really interesting points made there:

About sensing capabilities in people ...

"This was one of the largest, most demanding IT infrastructures ever built, and Tim conquered it; a guy, who less than 2 years prior, was hired to be our recruiter. This proved to me that smart, motivated people, with a passion for learning, can accomplish anything if given the right opportunity..."

About how SPAM, which in traditional way of looking, was going to be bad for their business, but then became opportunity for the company ... since everyone wanted even better control over email.

"At first, I thought this was going to destroy our business – email was no longer trustworthy. Then, the opportunity became clear. With all of the changes came new laws, new protocols, new industry standards and a whole lot of complexity. These things would require every company in the world to adapt their existing email infrastructure to deal with the changes, and keep up with the rapidly evolving requirements. It turned out that this drove even more demand for StrongMail. This became the immediate compelling event."

On cultural differences between LA an Silicon Valley ...

"We did not fully appreciate or understand the different nuances in the work culture between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. With tech companies in Los Angeles, people show up to work in jeans, are laid back, work hard, have diverse work experience (beyond software) and simply focus on results. In Silicon Valley, people are much more competitive, have more focus/experience in software backgrounds and often focus more attention on the methods first, then the results."

On importance of gut-feeling; when trying to "go-by-book" didn't work ...

"I promised myself that I would always trust my gut and my instincts –right or wrong- and move forward. I needed to feel confident in my decisions. That’s exactly what I did and almost overnight, the entire company was transformed – we started growing quickly, exceeding our targets and we have been seeing extremely positive results ever since."

If you are on enterpreneureal track, don't miss it!