We had just been washed up high and dry on the great wild shores of Startupland. We met each other through a previous startup company that didn't exactly work out the way we all expected it would. After we both left, we realized that we needed each other to find work to survive from paycheck to paycheck. So, we decided to start a software company together.

We were told we had to have:

• A business plan with a clear value proposition and target market;
• Connections to decision makers in our target market;
• At least 6 months of operating and living expenses in cash.

It was sound advice. We gave it our best shot:

• Our business plan was to do custom software development for anyone who paid cash;
• Our lifeline to the industry movers and shakers was Craigslist, where our hit ratio was 1 out of 50;
• We slept on friends' couches and ate the traditional Founders Diet of ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to match our expenses to our cash reserves.

There were more challenges to overcome.

Vivek was in India, half-way around the world from where Tim was. It would be two full years before Axero made enough money to fly him to San Diego to work with his co-founder face-to-face for the first time.

We had customers and employees whom we'd never met, doing all kinds of projects at all hours of the day and night. Yet we worked well as a team, and our customers were getting surprisingly personal service.

With each custom software development project we worked on, we began to learn more about:

• How we liked to work. And how we didn't.
• How our customers liked to work. And how they didn't.

We wrote our own intranet-slash-collaboration software to keep everybody honest and on-track, share knowledge, and have conversations in real-time. It started with a file manager, an issue tracker, and a forum section.

We let our customers sign on. And one day Tim had this conversation ...

Customer: Hey Tim, can we use your software?
Tim: Yes, of course.
Customer: I mean, can we use it for our internal projects?
Tim: Hmm. You want to use this for your company??
Customer: How soon can we have it?
Tim: Really ????

And that's how Communifire became a product.

Our customers helped to write the roadmap. They told us what they needed to work with confidence and ease -- and we built it. We've done it the same way ever since. Every new feature is requested by a customer and is easy to turn on or off.

And how has that worked out for us so far?

More than 4,000,000 people collaborate on Communifire every day.

• They are salespeople, software developers, HR professionals, marketers, writers, philanthropists, musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, etc.
• They work at startups, non-profits, government agencies, local businesses, and global organizations in all kinds of industries.
• They come to us with different protocols and work styles, but similar challenges collaborating, communicating, and sharing knowledge with each other.
• They sign on to get things done their way -- more efficiently, without losing sight of key documents, big goals, mission-critical milestones -- or stepping on each other's toes.

Once they start, they discover that they also enjoy each other and have more fun at work. You can read their stories here.

It's been a while (almost 10 years ago) since we launched Axero with no money, no strategy, and no help. It turned out that all those things were secondary to something more fundamental -- the way we felt about each other and our work.

As a company, our biggest goal is to do good work and enjoy it. From this, our company values and our reasons for doing business became clear:

• We are on a mission to enable people to lead their own social initiatives.
• We are extremely passionate -- we  what we do.
• We are based in sunny San Diego, but we work from all over the globe.
• We believe that intranet software isn't about technology -- it's about people.
• We value transparency, respect, and sincerity in everything we do.
• We consider pleasing customers the most important part of our job.
• We listen to you, our customers, who drive our product innovation.
• We're a small company that works very hard to keep your trust.
• We are profitable and debt free.
• We owe neither money nor allegiance to anyone else.
• We owe everything to our customers.

In the early days our mission was about surviving. Then it was about social networking. Then social business. Now it's about bringing people together to work smarter -- and building a workplace they can claim as their own.

We are still a small company. We care about each other and love what we do. We are thrilled to support all the organizations and individuals who use our software. Our goal is to give them the freedom to work and connect the way they like. Are we close?

99% of companies who have implemented Communifire are actively using it five years later.

On the other hand, we are not in a hurry to declare victory. We want more stuff to do and there are many more things to come, our story is not over yet!

Give Communifire a try and tell us what you want us to change to make it perfect for you.

Thanks!

Tim Eisenhauer
Vivek Thakur