Fresh out of college, Isaac Hall, co-founder of Recurly, was not lacking in career prospects, but he decided early on that big corporations couldn’t offer him the type of fulfillment that comes from growing with a startup. Isaac knew that he wanted to make a big mark for himself, so he set out to learn all that he could from his early experiences before embarking on an adventure of his very own. Though most of his experiences left positive impressions, Isaac did have to learn a few lessons the hard way.

After one of his first ventures exposed the wide-eyed 21-year-old to the shadier side of business, replete with dishonesty, broken friendships and inequitable wages, Isaac cut his losses and moved on. He had put his all into something that he believed in, only to watch it all come crashing down around him. Isaac would not be discouraged by the people he trusted but was betrayed by; he chose to learn from the experience, pulling something positive out of a painful situation. Isaac shares this experience and reveals what all starting entrepreneurs should know.

A Short Clip of My Conversation with Jude Gomila
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PROFILE

STATS
Companies Founded:
1. Recurly – August 2009
2. Syncplicity – 2007

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Hometown: Highland Park, IL
Currently Resides: San Francisco, CA
Age: 27
Bachelors of Science: Illinois Institute of Technology, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Hobbies/Interests: Photography
Biggest Fear: Working too much instead of enjoying life
Role Models: Eric Ries and Sean Ellis because they share their knowledge with other people and are changing how startups work today
Favorite Musician: Lisa Loeb

Isaac’s: Linkedin | Twitter | Blog

THE CONVERSATION:

Kim Ngo: Thanks for talking with us Issac. Let’s go back. Start by telling us how you got started, not with Recurly, but with your first experience of the tech startup world and entrepreneurship.

Isaac Hall: My first experience with a startup was right out of college. I worked for a computer consulting company, building eCommerce websites.

Before I worked for the startup, a few Microsoft recruiters prospected me for an interview. It seemed pretty cool. But at the same time, I was reading about startups and entrepreneurship, and those topics really resonated with me.

I turned down Microsoft and built this startup with these guys, knowing that I would be working at home with no salary and putting in 100 hours a week. We built a really cool product, an online asset maintenance system for Cisco hardware, fast. It was an interesting experience.

Kim Ngo: Were you a co-founder of this company?

Isaac Hall: I was 21, naïve, and fresh out of college. I thought I was a co-founder.

Nobody tells you as a computer science graduate what you need to watch out for. The two guys I started the company with were in their 30’s and were slick business guys, the kind you should be wary of. They would take me out and get bottle service, so I thought that they were treating me well. I didn’t know what my talents were worth; they took advantage of me and underpaid me, even though I thought we were equals in the company.

Kim Ngo: Did they say that you owned a third of the startup when they first approached you?

Isaac Hall: Yeah, but everything was verbal, nothing was written. I thought I was a co-founder; I just trusted that I was getting a third of the company. At the end of the day, all I had was a very small salary that I was tricked into taking.

Here’s my advice for startup entrepreneurs: if it’s your first time starting a company, get things on paper, get a lawyer, get advice outside of the company, and make sure you have equity or stock options.

Kim Ngo: Tell me about that experience, the moment that you found out “I’m screwed!”

Isaac Hall: I had been with the company for two years, then the two co-founders of the company started suing each other. They had been best friends for 16 years, so this was a major fight. One of them ended up getting kicked out.

After that, one of the other programmers left and things continued to fall apart. I continued to hold things together on the programming side. The two co-founders both wanted me to help them argue their story, so I was hearing two different things.

It was a very weird situation. I started to realize that I had no shares in the company; they each owned 45%, and the investor owned 10%. My salary was half of what they were earning, even though we were supposed to be earning the same amount.

Kim Ngo: Did you cry?

Isaac Hall: Oh, yeah I did. I was really upset.

I was naïve. I didn’t know anything about options or equity, and I thought I owned a third of the company. I sacrificed my time—100 hours a week!—and my own money to help build it.

Kim Ngo: Maybe you didn’t get the stock options and maybe you weren’t officially a co-founder, but the opportunity that they gave you allowed you to further develop your skill set and experience to have even more exciting opportunities in the future.

Isaac Hall: Definitely. I had free reign over the programming and how we built the product, as well as a lot of other things. I also gained a lot of experience working with clients, quickly iterating over product design, and I learned a lot about what not to do.