What Does it Take to Succeed? Ask Chris Bradley.

Yesterday, Agent Logic was acquired by Informatica, the leading independent data integration company.  I have worked at Agent Logic in sales and new market development for over three years.  This is very exciting news, an end and a beginning.  Agent Logic and Informatica are going to bring something very special to the market in the combination of events and data, all of which is articulated well by Chris Boorman, CMO of Informatica.

What does it take to succeed?  When building a company, can you have an idea before you start of what it will take to get over the goal line?  Now that Agent Logic has done this, I wanted to offer some early reflections, as it all feels so near and clear.  I write this to all entrepreneurs, and especially my friends in the DC Venture Community.

My first reflections on this event are personal and have to do with a very good friend, whom I will describe below.  I hope those who love entrepreneurship take note of this person’s example and find motivation to press on when one’s vision and the possibility of achieving it seem too far apart.

Second, as a 10+ year veteran of the DC area venture capital and startup community, I see this is a win for our community, the kind of win that will become more and more apparent over time.  I cut my teeth in this community with the world class team at eIncubator and then Milestone Equity Partners.  We launched at the height of the bubble, when it seemed good exits were around every corner.  Now I know better, and yet I am no less motivated to be an entrepreneur in this community.  For after this experience, my goals are not just monetary.

And third, what we have in Agent Logic is a model of what can uniquely be done in the DC venture community moving forward, IF we are patient and determined.

In these days of economic uncertainty and government expansion, the DC venture community has a resource in the defense and national security communities that is unlike any other.  I’ve learned that while playing in these communities is an insiders’ game, there are ways into it if you bring value and stay focused on the customers’ mission.  Avoiding the startup hubris all too frequent in Silicon Valley, you can break through.   We are certainly not the first to do this, but I think Agent Logic offers a model for repeat success.  With great patience, focus, and the right combination of product + services, this can be done again.

So how did it start?  Agent Logic’s founders, Jeff Garvett and Mike Appelbaum, started the company while students at Georgetown in 1999.  They endured the dot com bubble and came out the other end—through Steve Walker, In-Q-Tel, and the national security community.  They adapted to deliver needed innovative capabilities following the 9/11 attacks: support the end-user analyst.

Jeff and Mike had always seen “smart push” technology as essential, taking real-time information from all available sources,enabling the end user to define what is of interest to them, and delivering that actionable intelligence to them in whatever interface(s) they choose.  Following 9/11, they found the place where urgency was high enough to turn that vision into product.

This was a winning vision for more than the IC, and a very special man, Chris Bradley, knew it from the beginning.  Chris is a veteran of enterprise software and the DC venture community.  He began advising Mike and Jeff while Chris and I worked together at Milestone Equity Partners. Milestone was my first job in the early stage private equity arena.  I loved it from the beginning.

I was responsible for sourcing new deals for Milestone, a services-for-equity venture incubator.   Chris brought Agent Logic (then called Vital Contact) to Milestone for evaluation as a prospect for our services.  The date of Milestone’s introduction to Vital Contact was September 9, 2001.  Milestone did not see a near term fit with Vital Contact, but Chris’s long-term vision and patience were unwavering.  He wanted Mike and Jeff to succeed personally, and he saw their vision had great promise.  So he gave his time, thought, and relationships to help them.

Chris advised Agent Logic for many years, until they eventually were able to bring him in 2006 to run product, marketing, and commercial market development.  But what Agent Logic really got in Chris Bradley was the rarest blend of traits: a laser-focused company builder, a true technology visionary, and a humble behind-the-scenes leader.

Without that set of traits—without Chris Bradley—yesterday’s big event would not have happened for Agent Logic.

As a close friend to Chris, who hired me into Agent Logic when we had only 25 people, I have seen him do all that is necessary to ensure a winning organization was built around Jeff and Mike’s vision.  Chris is tough, humble, and focused.  As Harry Truman observed, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Chris knew what it takes to be successful and he did it, day after day, despite the fact that he was pulled in a hundred different directions all the time, well beyond his job description.  Some may have seen him as distracted.  But in reality, he was the least distracted of all of us.  Chris was undeterred in his original commitment to Mike and Jeff, to see them achieve their dreams.  And yesterday they did, in grand fashion.

While Silicon Valley has many examples of startup successes, the DC venture environment has had relatively few.  That need not be the case.  I believe we have a model for the region in Agent Logic, with its small amount of capital raised, our old school focus on driving revenue on the customers’ terms, and, our ability to win the trust of the most trusted community in the country.  It takes patience, but in the example of Chris Bradley, we see what can happen when a leader gives up that desire for credit that drives our political capital.

I am thrilled for Mike and Jeff especially, and the rest of our management team, to have played a very small part in this success story.  I came into Agent Logic as a deal guy wanting to really learn what it takes to get from idea to exit.  What I received is so much more than that, and none of it more important than having a behind-the-scenes look at Chris Bradley’s behind-the-scenes leadership.

Words cannot express my gratitude for the privilege to have been part of this.

I feel that I have reached a decisive milestone in my working life, one that started when I met Chris Bradley while working with Nelson Cooney, Giles Somerville, Allan Kaplan, and the rest of the Milestone Equity Partners team a decade ago.  And now, if I may be philosophical for a moment, I find that “the exit” is really a new beginning.  With my knowledge watching Chris, and now with a global platform in Informatica, I feel like an entire world of opportunity has just opened up for me and for my fellow Agent Logic friends and colleagues.

So with that—and at the risk of turning his face as red as fire engine—I want to thank my friend Chris Bradley for the opportunity of a lifetime—both the one that just ended, and the one that has begun.  Like Chris, I plan to take this experience forward to serve all those customers, partners, investors, and co-workers—and especially wild-eyed visionary entrepreneurs—with whom I have the privilege to come into (vital) contact.

Thanks Chris.  May your reward be great now and in the future.  You’ve earned it.