Small Town, Big Ideas

Johnny Birkitt

Johnny Birkitt, a friend and member of our team here at Webmail.us, passed away last weekend at the young age of 28. Johnny was one of those people that everyone liked. He was a very cool guy and a great coworker. He was laid back, always positive, and just fun to be around. He was with us at Webmail for close to a year and in that time his contributions were felt in a big way (he was the core of our small business sales team and we broke sales goals and records every quarter he was with us). His attitude and demeanor made him a great guy to be around whether it was around the office or downtown drinking beers (usually at the Rivermill). I will always remember the sales goals he helped us beat, the celebration dinners we had, the tailgates, hangin out at the Mill, and the good times we all shared.

If you knew Johnny and want to sign his online guest book, you can do that right here.

Howard Kossak

Howard Kossak, a friend and mentor of mine, passed away last week. He lost a long battle with cancer, one that he had beaten several times over the years.

I still remember the first time I reached out to Howard. I sent him an email one night in late 2001 while sitting in our Foxridge apartment / office. He emailed me back within minutes, which is always a good sign (I like working with people that are motivated, passionate about what they do, and organized, and I think that people who return emails quickly tend to have those characteristics). A couple of days later we met face to face to talk about our business plan, progress we were making, and to determine whether or not Howard would be able to help us raise money. After getting acquainted with one another, Howard gave me some great business advice. He told me that we weren't ready to go out and raise money. We took his advice.

The next thing we did was come up with goals and we agreed to revisit the possibility of capital raising once we hit some of those goals. That was when I learned that Howard was a straight shooter and someone that I could trust. Over the next couple of years, Howard and I became good friends. He gave me tons of business advice. He definitely believed in me and he made me further believe in myself. He repeatedly told me that he thought I had the potential to be the best CEO in our region. Even if he was just pumping me up, it was nice to have an older, wiser, very experienced person instill that type of confidence in me. And sure enough, we went out and achieved our goals and milestones and shortly thereafter, we raised our money.

During that capital raising process, Howard helped me through some discouraging moments. Prospective investors would kick me down and Howard was always there to pick me right back up. When someone would reject us or display a level of arrogance, Howard would remind me that we don't need them anyway or that "they're just some pricks that could never run a business anyway." He was definitely a guy that wasn't afraid to speak his mind and if you know me, you know that I like and appreciate that.

Even though Howard was a tough, straightforward guy, he was one of the most positive people I've ever met. I know that some people even defined him by the answer to the simple question, "How are you?" Howard's response was always, "I've never been better a day in life." I know of at least two people that say something similar as a result of Howard's influence. I'm sure there are many more.

Howard was a great guy and I'm a better person because of him.

My Eurotrip Story

I'm starting this blog entry about a week before I will end up posting it. Right now I am riding a train from Lugano, Switzerland to Venice, Italy. I'm with my mom, brother, and sister—I'm on my first ever trip to Europe. We've been here since September 14th and we get back to America on September 27th (tomorrow).

Here are the destinations we visited on our trip:

· Munich, Germany: 3 Nights
· Salzburg, Austria: 2 Nights
· Innsbruck, Austria: 1 Night
· St. Moritz, Switzerland: 2 Nights
· Venice, Italy: 3 Nights
· Trieste, Italy: 1 Night

Here are some of the best things about this trip:

· Spending two full weeks with my family ;-)
· Partying with crazy Germans in Munich
· Going on a tour of Munich and learning a lot about Hitler
· Trading watches with our waiter in Munich who really liked my sister
· Going to dinner at a great restaurant in a back alley in Salzburg
· Learning all about salt on the salt mine tour we took in Salzburg
· Partying like a rock start at Blue Chips and Jimmy's in Innsbruck
· Taking a tram to the top of the Swiss Alps with my sister
· Riding a bike through the Swiss Alps (man, I'm getting old!)
· Finding a pub with wireless internet access in St. Moritz
· Sleeping in youth hostels for the first time in my life
· Running in foreign cities (I wish I would have run more)
· Driving through some of the most beautiful parts of the world
· Driving really fast on the autobahn
· Eating enormous sausages at 3:00 in the morning—a couple of times
· Eating really good fish and pasta in Venice, Italy
· Staying in our first hotel of the trip in Venice, Italy, after our first night (see below)
· Partying and taking crazy shots with our waiters and their friends in Venice, Italy
· Christmas shopping in September in San Marco's Square
· Having pigeons crawl all over me while I fed them in San Marco’s Square
· Taking a boat tour with my family and riding the Gondola with my sister Venice
· Chillin at an outdoor café and eating a nice dinner with my family in Trieste
· Taking more than 1,000 pictures of our escapade throughout Europe

Here are some of the worst things about this trip:

· Being reliant on complete strangers for every day things, every day
· Not being able to understand the native languages of the countries we visited
· Using public computer terminals with slow Internet access and expensive rates
· Using public computer keyboards where the 'y' and 'z' keys are reversed
· Using computer keyboards where many characters are hard to find
· Driving in foreign cities, especially when we first got to a new one
· My brother hated Europe until we got to Italy—our last stop
· Running around Venice on our first night trying to find a hotel and not succeeding
· Sleeping in a room with 16 dudes in a youth hostel on the first night in Venice

Here are some of the things I learned quickly:

· Communicate as much as possible with as few words (and no slang) as possible
· Ask several people for directions to the same place
· Have my sister jump in a taxi cab and lead us to our destination
· When ordering water, make sure it "has no gas"
· Service in Europe sucks; they don't work for tips so I guess that's why
· Most people in Europe are very friendly and willing to help
· European businesses take it easy—stores open late and close early

Here are some of the things I missed most about home:

· My Blackberry
· Work
· English
· Webmailers
· Internet access
· Miller Lite
· Football
· Tailgates
· My bed
· My bathroom
· Real sleep
· Laundry
· Dollars

Our trip was an amazing experience and one that I will never forget. This is was my first time overseas and there were many surprises along the way—some good, some frustrating, but overall, I had a great time.

Tomorrow we head home... ah, I cannot wait!

I will post pictures soon.

Whitewater Rafting

OK, so this is really off topic but if you're bored and want to check out a video of some of us Webmailers and our significant others whitewater rafting, I just put it up on YouTube (which was amazingly easy to do by the way). If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, check out 1:00 to 1:30—that was some crazy stuff!

On the raft it's me, Lainie, Kevin, Velvet, Marisa, John, and our crazy tour guide.

It's a lot better too if you turn up your volume and listen to the pot smoking hippy sounding guy who does the film shooting and voice over. :-)

Here is the video.

Banker's Hours

My good friend from college (and our BB&T banker), Rob Berger (second from the left in the photo, dressed in red), got to play golf last weekend with Michael Strahan. How cool is that? It must be nice living that cushy banker’s life! ;-)

How I Bought My First New Car

I’ve needed a new car for a while. But I’d been putting it off, mainly because I didn’t want to deal with the hassles (or at least the perceived hassles) of buying a new car.

I’m not one to “talk about” buying things. In fact, I’m probably one of the most spontaneous buyers I know. If I want it and I can afford it, I buy it.

I’m also not a “car guy.” I know nothing about cars and frankly, I don’t want to learn.

But the time came. Although my 1994 Nissan Altima has been a great, it didn’t pass inspection last month (which was eight months after the old inspection expired). Since the inspection expired, I’ve been pulled over four times accumulating three tickets (one time I was able to convince the officer that I really didn’t need another ticket since I’d gotten one the day before—luckily, he complied).

So this week I realized it’s time to buy a car. I’m sick of dodging cops, I’m tired of driving a car that sounds like a go-cart, and summer is coming and I won’t do another one without air conditioning. So now what do I do?

Well I first listened to about twenty people feed my brain with car advice overload. One of the things that stuck out more than anything though was the advice I got from one of my best friends: “buy a Volvo S40—they’re hot and a lot less expensive than most of the luxury cars out there.” Enough said.

So Tuesday night, I configured my car online. I woke up the next day and called three dealerships. One in Roanoke, VA, one in Greensboro, NC, and one in Winston-Salem, NC. I told them what I wanted and when I wanted it. Roanoke and Greensboro said they’d get back to me. Winston-Salem listened to what I wanted, found me the car I wanted, approved my financing immediately, and most importantly, said they would deliver my car THAT NIGHT and pick it up any time I needed service. What more could I ask for?

Without seeing the car, without ever test-driving a Volvo S40, without doing anything but going about my daily schedule, I bought my car and had it delivered—all before the other two dealers got back to me. Sell me what I want, make it easy for me to buy it, give me good service, and I’ll be the best customer you can ask for—slack on me and you’re out.

So after eights years, 185,000 miles, and three summers without AC, say hello to my brand new 2006 Volvo S40. I couldn’t be happier.

Update: March 2nd, 10:19 a.m.
Roanoke finally called me back (about 24 hours too late).

VTQuest

I learned about a pretty cool web app last week while recruiting on the Virginia Tech campus. If you're a Virginia Tech student or just visiting campus and need help navigating, check out VTQuest. The site provides a very detailed map of the campus even taking you through the insides of different buildings, as well as directions between campus locations. This would have been pretty useful for me ten years ago. :-)

It looks like they've recently added voice interaction, although I didn't test that out.

I Hate Losing Contact Information

Although I’m not proud to admit it, I managed to lose my Blackberry on my first night in Las Vegas (I’m celebrating New Year’s out here in Sin City with some friends).

Over the years my track record for losing cell phones hasn’t been stellar and as they get more expensive, it hurts that much more. But moving beyond the expense and the fact that I’ve been without my cell phone and text messaging capabilities for the past few days, losing all of my address book information is what hurts the most. Every time I manage to do this, I’m reminded of how much room for innovation there is around web-based address books and contact information storage. I mean, why can’t we come up with some ultra-simple solution that somehow magically synchs my Blackberry to my address book in my webmail account? Why do I have a separate address book in webmail, a separate one in Outlook, and a separate one in my Blackberry? I have no doubt that is there probably some really expensive and complicated solution out there, but I’m convinced that if me (a *relatively* tech-savvy guy AND the CEO of an email hosting company) and many of my friends (I happen to hang out with a cell phone losing crew) haven’t found a solution, that spells opportunity.

Most great solutions are born out of a personal need to solve a problem, right?

My mom would just tell me that the real solution is to stop losing my cell phone but I think there is a bigger opportunity here. In the meantime, I need to go get another Blackberry.

Roanoke.com on the New River Network and Online Dating

Roanoke.com columnist Krisha Chachra wrote about the New River Network (a social group I’ve helped to form here locally) and several of our attendees’ perspectives (including mine) on online dating. If you’re interested in this recent Southwest Socialite column, go here to check it out.

Tailgating

If you happen to be local, we’re having a company tailgate starting at 3:30 p.m. to get ready for the Virginia Tech vs. Boston College football game. Should be a good one. Here is the tailgate info from Bill:

We will start at 3:30 p.m. Come hungry, and feel free to bring friends. It will be in Lot 10, which is on Washington Street to the left of the tennis courts. Look for the attached .

We will have tamales, bean dip, burgers and hot dogs, a keg of Bud Light or Miller Lite, and other random drinks and food.

The best place to park is in the metered spots on Roanoke Street. Also, we have two canopies and a log burning heater in case the weather is not so nice. I hope you can make it!

Even if you don't know us, stop by anyway. The more the merrier.

Go Hokies!