MessageMedia founders Entrepreneur of Year

BOULDER — Listen up all you budding entrepreneurs out there. If you want to know how to succeed in business, take a few tips from someone who’s been there and done that … Andrew Currie.

Ever since he left the University of Southern Mississippi with a degree in computer science, Currie has worked as a cutting-edge software developer and by the late ’80s was an everyday user of the Internet long before most people had even heard of it.

He brought all those talents together in a series of small, successful business ventures until, in September 1996, he teamed with Brian Makare and Brad Feld to launch the legendary Boulder company, Email Publishing.

Initially they planned to sell software capable of publishing personalized electronic newsletters and magazines. Instead, it wasn’t long before they found clients asking them to handle the daily publishing and distribution of millions of electronic messages.

Two years later the company employed around 20 people and had revenues of $2 million. At that point, through a process of corporate and financial merger, Email Publishing morphed into one of Colorado’s most notable Internet companies, MessageMedia Inc.

Having completed his creative role in the start-up and development of the company, Currie, then vice president of product marketing, left at the end of August to spend more time pursuing numerous other personal and professional interests.

At the age of 38, Currie now owns about one million shares in publicly traded MessageMedia, a stake worth around $13 million on recent NASDAQ quotes.

So, what’s the secret behind that sort of stellar success? To begin with, says Currie, you don’t set out just to make a million dollars, two million or whatever. If that’s your only goal, you’re going to fail.

Instead, the aim should be to start a successful company, be prepared to work hard, look after your staff and, above all, take care of your customers. If you do all those things right, then that million dollars eventually will happen by itself.

Another tip is that good ideas alone are not worth much. “They’re a dime a dozen,” says Currie, who rates three other things as much more important, one being timing, another luck.

In between those two is the all-important element of having the right people. “I believe that with the right team you can achieve anything. On the other hand, with a mediocre team you’re never going to be successful no matter how much money you spend.”

Today, MessageMedia employs around 200 people nationwide, most of them at its headquarters in Gunbarrel, and offers a suite of services based on the phenomenal worldwide explosion of e-mail and other electronic messaging.

These include the original core business of publishing and distributing information, plus online marketing. There is also a strong focus on customer service, consumer and employee surveys and increasingly on programs arising from e-commerce transactions.

These services, involving tens of millions of mailings, can be highly personalized and customized, while MessageMedia says all communications are strictly permission-based and that it does not deliver any unsolicited e-mail.

So, what’s next for Andrew Currie? He says he might invest in a few fledgling ventures, maybe try for a seat on some boards and would like to apply his skills for the benefit of some non-profit organizations. Also, he’s not ruling out starting up something new again himself.

But after what he calls many “obsessive” years spent building businesses, he’s looking forward to having more time with his new wife, Diane Brinkmane, and for things like mountain biking, public speaking, reading and travel.

The success story behind MessageMedia will be recognized when the Boulder Chamber of Commerce announces Currie, Feld and Makare as winners of the 15th annual Esprit Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Currie is delighted by the prestigious award, partly because of the classy company he and his colleagues shared just by being among the five finalists. “There are not a lot of awards for entrepreneurs and this one certainly means a lot to me,” he says.

Michael Platt, an attorney with Cooley Godward in Boulder and chairman of the awards selection committee, says the three men stood out as innovators in the Internet industry as well as being founders of the Colorado chapter of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization.

“Another notable factor is that Currie, Feld and Makare were able to create the core technology now being used by MessageMedia on very limited venture capital resources,” he says.

“Their success also presents an opportunity for the Boulder technology community to get some national recognition. It reflects well on Boulder as one of the Internet capitals of the world.”

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