Running A Virtual Company

If the wave of the present is starting your own company, then the wave rolling in right behind it will be the rise of virtual companies. Times have changed so much that while you sit in your living room, your co-worker is in his home office room 10,000 miles away. Can such a business really run efficiently and succeed? I've been running a virtual company for three-and-a-half years, and I'm here to tell you it can be done.

The Virtual Company Model
Business is all about communication, whether that's between client and staff, management and staff, or coworker to coworker. Once upon a time, this could only be done when they sat next to each other. Then they were on different floors of the same building. Then they opened up an office in another city, using the telephone and postal mail (and later fax and email) to move materials and information back and forth. Now, we're looking at a model where basically no two employees of the same company are in the same building or even city.

My virtual company began when I stumbled upon a supertalented person named Ken. Although he lived 25 minutes west of me, we found that communicating over email and in the live chat rooms on IRC was much easier than meeting in real life (note: although it's called live "chat," it's really mostly typing and sending and receiving files - there is no voice communication). We were both major internet-heads, so that method of communicating was "old hat" and comfy for us whether the topic was business or personal. When a project came along, I could email Ken the specifics, and he would write back with his estimate and ideas. If it needed discussion, we'd agree to meet on IRC. We're both online fairly constantly, so our exchanges were and still are as quick and efficient as if I'd walked into the next room and spoken to him.

In the years since As Was® started as me and Ken, I've picked up Richard in California, Dana in Alabama, Kayt in Brooklyn and then California, Douglas in New Zealand, Mark in Colorado, and Eelco in the Netherlands. I'm also in the process of hiring Fran in Los Angeles to be a regional salesperson. I started in New York, moved to New Mexico, and am moving back to New York in December. For my internet business, I have found that few people care where I am or if they can ever meet me or my staff. As long as they have faith that my company can provide what they want at the price they want to pay, that's fine with them. And as long as I can get to email and respond to my pager, the business machine is rolling.

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