I'm often asked what makes us (me and Josh) tick? What makes us want to build companies? The answer, I think, is what separates entreupenuers from the rest of the population.

If you don’t have the entrepeneurial spirit, an entrepreneur seems irrational. If you’re smart enough to run a company then you’re surely smart enough to get a stable job, right? What kind of lunatic would trade a steady paycheck, a house in the ‘burbs and luxiorious meals for the unknowns of entrepenurial life (and ramen, lots of ramen)? 

I’ve been working fulltime with Josh since I graduated college. I packed up my car in New York and drove to Chicago where Josh and I immediately got to work. We discovered that we love solving problems and, more than that, we love providing the solution. Nothing beats a day when Josh and I can sit, drink PBR and talk about things that suck and how we’d like to fix them. Often times we can’t immediatley think of the solution. Other times, we’ve identified the solution but can’t piece the ‘how’ together. The best calls that I get come at 2am when Josh woke up with a solution. We don’t hang up and discuss later, we get into it. I play devils advocate and try to smash the idea. When we show up to the office the next morning I’ve come up with a couple of nifty tools to fill out the idea and we’ve got a solid idea. 

At the office, we outline, yell, build, yell, rebuild, yell and eventually sleep. People ask me how often Josh and I yell at each other and if I think it hurts our relationship. We yell at each other pretty often. Josh’s wife jokes that she’s become his second wife and I his first. People don’t understand. Josh and I yell at each other when we feel passionately about our own ideas. At this point, we have no pride of ownership, after all, owning a piece of stupid is worthless. Josh thinks his idea is better and I think mine is so we fight about it. I tell people that Josh and I don’t have yelling matches, we have intense business meetings.   

We split up into our offices. Josh starts programming and I write the content. We each have questions and ideas that we’ll pitch to each other most of which begin with “What if we let you…” but they’re rarely winners. And so we make more coffee and we get back to work. I’ll work on a mockup of what I think the the front page should look like and Josh will rip it apart and take the one little thing he likes. Sometimes it’s only the font. :()

When we finally emerge, we have a new company. It’s tiring and exiting. We love executing on our ideas. It’s not just because we love building things, it’s because we’re building services that help people and we like helping people.

Phaxio defines Josh and me.

Faxing sucked for programmers. We decided to fix that. We built Phaxio.