From the minute he formed Youtech & Associates, Inc. in his parent’s basement, Wilbur You started cold calling 100 companies per day. “That was my goal, and I made sure that it was done every single day,” says Wilbur. It was hard in the beginning, and the rejection rate was high. After two weeks he had two projects to develop websites at $500 each. After three weeks he had to stop making calls to do client work. Referrals started rolling in from there, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Wilbur You is a Chinese American that immigrated to the U.S. when he was two years old. He credits his mother for the motivation, discipline and determination to become successful. When Wilbur was young his widowed mother, who immigrated to the U.S. at the same age Wilbur is now—23—worked at Baskin Robbins for $5.50/hour to raise him. She didn’t know any English when she came here. They landed in the Chicago area to be near her father who was a nuclear physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. She started her life over in the U.S., went to college, got her CPA and is now the accounting manager for Senior Flexonics. She recently got her MBA.
When he was 10 years old, Wilbur got into computer gaming. He developed an online game and released it to the public. Within a few months he had over 10,000 active users and was generating about $5,000 per week. But then, as a naïve 10 year-old, he was shut down for copyright infringement. Ever since he knew he wanted to build something.
He started a company at 18. It failed. He started another one at 19. It failed. Then he went to work for American Invsco as Marketing Coordinator while attending Northern Illinois University. After a year at American Invsco he struck out on his own to start Youtech, and American Invsco became one of his first clients.
After a few months of building websites, he had about $2,000 saved up. He persuaded two friends to join him at Youtech even though they took huge pay cuts for the privilege. Deciding it was time to get out of his parents’ basement, he signed a lease for office space in Naperville, Illinois knowing that he had only two months of rent covered and his back was against the wall.
“As soon as we moved into the new office space, we started getting phone calls from people that heard of us through the previous clients we had. We started to increase our prices to $1,500, and it got rolling. It was a very hard grind in the beginning. Frank and Shawn were making a couple hundred dollars per week, while I was not taking any money at all,” says Wilbur telling his story animatedly.
After about six months of networking, meeting new people and a relentless focus on relationship building, Youtech was ready to hire another web developer and had to expand. They moved to their second office (about 1,200 square feet) and hired another developer at a pay level well below market. “I can’t stress how important it is to find good people, and people that really support the vision of Youtech,” says Wilbur.
My opinion is that the ability to recruit people, have them take huge pay cuts and be grateful for the opportunity is one of the truest hallmarks of entrepreneurial excellence there is. As I talked to him Wilbur repeatedly made reference to his team members as being the source of Youtech’s success.
They stayed in their second office for only about ten months because they were growing rapidly. With a waiting list of clients, they increased their prices and became a premium provider of website design and marketing. Some of their client engagements today are as high as $200,000. They had found their market.
“Youtech started off as a web development company and then I realized the gap between technology and marketing and decided to transform the business model into a creative ad agency. We brought on more sales people, and we now we are in our third office space in less than two years, and have grown over 1,000% since the first year,” Wilbur tells me. Youtech is tracking to hit over $1 million in revenue in the next 12 months. Wilbur still lives with his mother and adopted father.
It’s hard not to be impressed by Wilbur’s persistence and determination to succeed. But as I talked to him I probed and probed to identify the trait that has allowed him to build his company successfully. Finally it hit me. While it is easy to characterize Wilbur as a youthful programmer with a computer science degree and a Tiger Mom, he understood from the moment he started his company that building relationships with customers, solving problems and earning their trust would be the keys to success. In an industry with many competitors, relationship building is their point of differentiation. He also cites the importance of hiring great people.
Wilbur says that he’s a good enough programmer so that he can manage them, but he knows many programmers that are better coders than he is. But for a technical founder, his focus on customers, rather than on technology, are what sets him apart. How else could someone discipline themselves to make 100 cold calls per day to get their business started? “Every “no” was discouraging, but if we got one “yes”, it was the best day ever.”
Lessons from Wilbur You:
- Hire the best people you can find
- Focus on building relationships with your customers
Neil Kane (@neildkane) is the president of Illinois Partners which helps companies, universities and investors with innovation strategies and technology commercialization.
