The Startup Playbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8If You Build It, They Will Come

Our customers at JumpCloud kept asking us for help with updating their computer software. I (Rajat) couldn't figure out how to build this functionality along with everything else we were doing, so I decided to start a new company, called Automox, with a separate group of people.

Given that the concept was adjacent to what we were doing at JumpCloud, I really felt that we could reuse so much of the business model, go-to-market approach, and technical architecture that was already figured out. With all of the customer requests and calls we had done, we knew that there was a market need for the idea.

Once I made the decision to start the company, I also knew that I couldn't build the company myself because I was running JumpCloud. So, I searched for the right technical skillsets and hired a small team of people to help build the first prototype. We were able to get it to market, albeit lacking in a lot of functionality. That first prototype proved that we could eliminate a great deal of the technical risk in the business. And, with all of the customer conversations, we felt that the market risk was minimal.

After building that prototype, and with confidence that we could technically solve the problem, I embarked on building a team around the idea. We found a CEO and hired a number of leaders to join the team. This early team was able to ...