Matt Tucker and Bill Lynch's Success Story

Founders of Jive Software

The year is 2001. Matt Tucker, together with his high school buddy Bill Lynch, decide to found their own company, named Jive Software. They developed an Enterprise collaboration and community software way back before the Web 2.0 standards emerged on Internet. In a way, they were much ahead of their time and they continue to keep their lead. Their community software helps employees easily connect with customers.

Bill is a year older than Matt, but in the run of turning Jive Software into a multimillion dollar company that actually didn't matter. While they were still students at the University of Iowa, they pooled in money to buy their business cards for $70. They say that ever since that first investment, their business ventures have been profitable. In fact, Matt and Bill were debate partners in high school and they still have a trophy they won displayed in their Portland office. They did a few stints in Iowa, where they studied and then some in New York, before moving over to Oregon. It was in Portland where they received venture capital from Sequoia Capital. This helped them to almost triple their employee strength within a year. Although they started as a bootstrapped company, Matt says that they knew that at a certain stage of the company’s development, they would have to need some outside investments to step up the pace of growth.

The easygoing and cosy office with a keg in the break room is something that Matt is proud of. He says that keeping employees happy with a good natured approach helps his company to attract talented people from everywhere. When his employees are happy and satisfied, they work better and the productivity increases several fold. Matt says that that is one of the main secrets to the success of his company.

Matt is happy that they were forced to bootstrap, because it helped them to stay lean as well as profitable during the initial days. They could also use the time to learn how to really run a business well.

Although their company has seen a good level of success and the founders are happy about it, they still want to climb further and keep the going challenging. Matt says, “We like to look back and celebrate, but we're always continuing to climb at the same time.”