We are excited to bring you our latest startup spotlight, featuring Mike Potter! Mike Potter is the co-founder and CEO of Rewind, the leading cloud data backup provider. Rewind is trusted by over 30,000 businesses to protect their data on platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopify and QuickBooks. A veteran entrepreneur, Mike has over 25 years of experience building solutions for the software, cloud and data analytics space, including tenures at Adobe and Mozilla. He earned his MBA from the University of Ottawa and his B.Eng in Mechanical Engineering from McMaster University. Mike currently resides in Ottawa, Canada.
1. When did you realize that you wanted to take the entrepreneur route in your life?
I knew early on that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and work for myself. When I was young, my dad encouraged me to start my own business. I remember him suggesting I get a cart and sell soft drinks at my mom’s work that was just behind our house. When I was a teenager I worked by myself delivering papers and flyers in my neighbourhood. Later, during my second year of university, I applied to so many jobs and got rejected so many times I had enough rejection letters (yes, they used to send rejection letters by mail) to wallpaper my entire room. I knew I didn’t want to depend on others to give me a job, so I made my first “company” called Internet @Home - teaching people to use the Internet in their own house. That was my first summer job after 2nd year university. When I went back to school, I continued working for myself - starting a curling website, and then progressing to a contract with the Canadian Curling Association to do live scoring at the 1998 Olympic Curling Trials. Recently I’ve helped my son start his own lawn mowing business at the age of 12 - “Magical Mowing” (a play on Harry Potter).
2. What sparked the idea for your first company, and what became of it?
My first real company was “InTheHack.com”, a curling website that I started in late 1997. It was the most popular curling website on the Internet at that time, getting 10s of thousands of visitors per month. It was that company that I used to get the contract with the Canadian Curling Association. That website ran for 11 years, until I shut it down in 2009 due to time constraints when my first son was born. My first “startup” (ie. tech company that was trying to grow fast) was started about a year later (apparently I thought I had more time on my hands now that my son was 1!) and it was called AddIn Social. I ran that for just under 2 years until it was acquired by an email marketing company from the US in 2012. That “acquisition” wasn’t much of an outcome, although all of my investors received 100% of their investment back when I changed their ownership from equity to a loan to make sure they didn’t lose money. That decision paid dividends a few years later when those same investors invested again in my latest company, Rewind.
3. What are some of the qualities you value most in those you work with, and how does the Rewind team reflect them?
Rewind’s values match mine and James’ (my co-founder) quite closely. We’ve built a company that we’re both extremely proud to work for, and equally proud to be founders of. Rewind’s values include accountability, honesty and respecting people (both customers and co-workers), delighting your customers, respecting people’s time (both your own time and your coworkers time, and the company respecting your time by not expecting you to work more than a standard work week), being comfortable being uncomfortable and generosity (participating in open source communities and giving back to the community we live in). Most of these have come from previous jobs we’ve had, or people in our lives. Delighting your customers is one I like the most, as I really believe that these days customer service is lacking in a lot of areas, and providing great customer service can really be a competitive differentiator for your business. Both James and I are big believers in open source technology (I started the Mozilla Calendar Project a number of years ago), and so participating and giving back through open source communities, or via blog posts on our blog, is something we actively encourage all employees to do.
4. With the current business environment seeing rapid e-commerce growth and an increased dependency on platforms such as Shopify, how are things changing at Rewind?
The recent pandemic has been good for business at Rewind, but not much is changing. We’ve always been a fast growing company - later this year we’ll be named one of the fastest growing companies in Ottawa, and in the top 30 or so in Canada - so that’s not new. In our second year of business our revenue grew 10x over 12 months, it doubled six months later, and doubled again 6 months after that. So we’re used to running a fast growing company and the challenges that brings. The pandemic has helped the business in ways I didn’t expect - since we’re growing so quickly we’ve been able to hire some really good people from other companies that haven’t been so fortunate. We’ve never had more candidates than we do now, and the quality of talent that we’ve been able to attract lately has been a major benefit to the company.
5. Where do you plan to see your company in 3-5 years, and what approaches do you plan to execute to achieve this?
In 3 years the company will be about double the size it is now, and in 5 years about 3-4x the size in terms of revenue. Employee count will probably grow higher - I can see us being 100 people in 3 years, and 150 or 200 in 5 years as we’ll likely raise investment in the next few years to fuel growth. We’ve been fairly capital efficient so far and haven’t raised much money, but as we grow and hire great people we’re seeing new opportunities emerge that we’d really like to capitalize on. In terms of culture and work environment I don’t expect much to change. We’re fairly public about our values and the benefits we give employees (for example we’ve given employees every other Friday off during the summer since we first started the company), and I don’t expect those benefits or values to change as we grow. We communicate those values to investors, and make sure they’re aligned to how we want to run the business.
6. What urged you to pursue your MBA, and how has your experience at Telfer benefited you today?
I decided to get my MBA in 2003 from Telfer because I needed a way to separate myself from other software developers. I had taught myself how to code, but applying to jobs I was told that because I didn’t have a computer science or computer engineering background, I wasn’t a good fit. (My engineering degree is in mechanical engineering. I did an 18 month internship at an auto parts manufacturer between 3rd and 4th year university around the same time I was starting InTheHack. A week into that I knew I wanted to work with computers and wouldn’t ever be a mechanical engineer.) I figured an engineering degree and an MBA would be a good combination to get a job - and I was right. I got lucky when Adobe was looking for a technical product manager about 6 months after I graduated, and my MBA opened the door for an interview and they hired me quickly after that. My experience at Telfer was a perfect fit for what I do today - it gave me a general overview of most areas to run the business, but nothing too in depth - similar to my job today. I have a basic knowledge of HR, Finance, Product Marketing and Product Management, Development, and because of that education I’m able to understand most areas of the business. My MBA didn’t make me an expert in any field - but it gave me the knowledge required to start the company, grow the business and my own skills, and then hire much smarter people than me to run various areas.
7. What has been the biggest challenge you have faced as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge I faced was the failure of my first startup. I quit a 6 figure job at Adobe to start my company because I always wanted to run a startup. That was a huge mistake with 2 young kids at home, and my wife soon to be pregnant with our third child. Very little income with a mortgage and kids to take care of is incredibly stressful, and in addition to that the business idea wasn’t really that good. We had few (and I mean few, like 2) customers, and things were not going well. We applied to a startup accelerator in Toronto that offered $50k of funding, which we needed, so I accepted, and left my 4 month pregnant wife at home with 2 boys aged 3 and 4. I travelled back every Friday night on the train to spend the weekend with them, and then went back to Toronto on Sunday to work on the business. We did this for 3 months. When we got to Toronto and into the startup accelerator, everyone thought our company was shit, they thought I was a shitty CEO, and urged us to quit what we were working on and start fresh. That’s what prompted me to sell the company. I ended up nearly divorced, and promised my wife that I would never start another company again. That promise lasted about 3 years, when I emailed James and asked him if he wanted to do a small project on the side.
I really believe that failures are what make you better, as long as you learn from them. So I took the “George Costanza” approach on Rewind - if everything I did in my first startup was wrong, do the opposite. So with Rewind, I didn’t quit my job - I stayed in it and worked nights / weekends (for 18 months!) until it was obvious that I had to quit my job and work on it full time. (That was an easy conversation with my wife, since we were basically working 2 jobs - 9 to 5, and then 8 to 11 / 12 or 1 AM after the kids went to bed). I took investor money early in my first startup - with Rewind we've taken as little as possible. I didn’t apply to any startup accelerators. And so far it seems to have worked out well - maybe there’s more to that George Costanza theory than I thought. :)
8. What is the proudest moment in your career to date?
My proudest moment - tough question. There’s so many. The first time we helped a customer restore their data and help their business recover from a disaster, just a few weeks before Christmas, was really special. Their store’s products had been completely deleted in early December, and we were able to help them recover everything exactly the way it was before the problem happened. The first dollar we made a few weeks later when we decided to charge for it, and realizing that people will actually pay for our product, and the little side project was starting to become something. The first “hires” we made, when we convinced Sean and Julian (two members of our founding team who are still at Rewind) to give up their nights and weekends to help us build Rewind into something bigger. Then later, as we grew, and we started hiring full time employees, and then seeing those employees accomplish goals and objectives that they didn’t think were possible. We have a Slack channel called “personal wins” where people post their personal accomplishments - and every single one of them makes me really proud. And then finally the reputation that the company has in Ottawa of being a great place to work makes me incredibly proud. I know all our employees are amazing at what they do - and so they’re being recruited constantly. But very few of them leave Rewind (we’ve only had one person leave voluntarily in 3 years), and the fact that we’ve given them a place to work and grow professionally is incredibly rewarding. I love seeing how their careers are progressing - knowing that they’ll be the future leaders in Ottawa startups 10 to 20 years from now.
9. What drives you?
I’m driven by a constant desire to win, improve and to learn. In my personal life I constantly want to get better at any sports I play, and same with the sports I’m coaching my kids in. For Rewind, I’m driven by constantly striving to get better - better at marketing, better at sales, better at converting customers, better at keeping those customers. This sometimes drives my coworkers crazy - they’ll look at our amazing conversion rate from trial to purchase and see we’re crushing it compared to other Shopify Apps. I look for ways to get even better. I also believe in constant learning. I’ve always enjoyed school, and in my role as CEO it’s a never ending course of how to do new things. When we first started, the focus was on building the product, and marketing to customers. Then the focus changed to sales, and increasing revenue. Every year or so has required a new set of skills that I didn’t know I had. Now with 30 employees there’s a focus on recruiting, building culture, and retaining our employees - building the business, rather than the product. And like most engineers, I really love building things, and love that I get to do this every day.
10. Outside of work, how do you spend your free time?
Outside of work I enjoy coaching the teams that my kids play on. I’ve coached my sons and daughter in hockey, baseball and soccer. Similar to the pride I get in seeing employees accomplish amazing things, it's really rewarding to see kids execute plays in a game that you’ve been teaching them in practice for months on end. Without sports these days I’m spending more free time with my wife, and have gotten into building and collecting Lego sets.
11. What do you think are the most important characteristics of an entrepreneur?
I think anyone can be an entrepreneur, and so I think the characteristics vary widely depending on what type of company you’re building. But a few general beliefs work for any business. First, a desire to delight your customer. If you’re focused on a great customer experience your business is likely to do well. Think of the great customer experience that you get these days - there aren’t that many in my mind. Go into The Bay these days, and you’re unlikely to find anyone that can help you in the section you’re in. The inventory is bare. There’s no advantage to being in the store vs. shopping online. They’ll be dead within 5 years. Contrast that with Farm Boy - when you go grocery shopping and ask an employee where the tomatoes are, they stop what they’re doing, walk you to the tomatoes, and then ask you if there’s anything else they can get you. They do about $500M in sales, with an industry profit margin of < 1%. And they recently got bought for $800M.
Secondly, building a business where people want to work is really important. It’s incredibly competitive for talent - especially in technology. There’s a 13% annual turnover rate in technology - meaning you need to retrain 1 out of every 7 employees every year. Build a business with a 5% turnover rate, and suddenly you’ve got an incredible advantage - less recruiting costs, less retraining, more internal knowledge etc… Make your business a place that people *want* to work, and you’ll see the results in better customer service and higher revenue. My son needs a lot of help here as he is firing his younger brother from his lawn mowing business on a weekly basis.
Lastly, I think entrepreneurs need to be confident and determined, and not care too much about what other people think. You need to push through the tough times if you believe in what you’re doing, and dismiss the feedback that others might give to you. After all advice is just that, advice - not rules that you have to follow. (At the same time, you do have to recognize when to give up on bad ideas - Rewind was the second project that James and I worked on. The first one we spent 6 months on before abandoning because people weren’t using it.)
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