Hey, it’s Brent.

We’re obsessed with the overnight business success.

Sure, it does happen. But it’s RARE.

More often, entrepreneurs struggle to get traction early on.

Is that where you’re at?

Today’s featured entrepreneur was no different.

Nick Newby, and his partner Anthony Wong, have built NuView Analytics into a thriving business.

But it didn’t happen overnight.

3-months in: they land their first client…only to have the contract abruptly canceled a few weeks later.

Early on, they often thought about quitting and looking for jobs. But they decided to stick with it.

6-months in: they land a big contract with a client they had “no business pitching let alone winning”.

This first large contract was for analytics staff-augmentation…not exactly what they wanted to do. But it gave them enough revenue to make their first hire.

12-months in: they finally land their target client to provide their target solution. This was the basis for everything they’ve built since.

By year 2, they were able to replace their salaries.

Since then, they’ve DOUBLED revenue each year.

But it wasn’t until year 4 that he felt they had finally figured it out.

Anyways, I’ll shut up and let Nick tell his story in his own words.

Nick Newby on how he built NuView Analytics along with his partner

Tell me about NuView. Who do you help and how do you help them?

We develop data and analytics programs for PE backed companies in the middle market.  We help them to bring together data from key source systems within their business where they have limited access to or limited ability to combine data across systems.

We figured this out through developing this process for our prior company and then focusing on the key industries that are attempting to be more data driven in their decision making while still being nascent in their use of data tools.

What did you do before starting your business? What’s your background?

What were you doing prior to NuView?

Prior to starting this business I was focused on data and predictive modeling roles in financial services.  My prior role was with a VC backed start-up that focused on the moving and storage industry, but quickly turned into a focus on getting data to the hands of leaders for decision making, which was the genesis of my company.

What made you decide to strike out on your own?

There was a pivotal moment in that our prior VC backed company turned cashflow positive meaning we focused on winding down growth which included my and my cofounders roles at the company.  This pushed us out of our roles and into a decision to take on corporate jobs or venture out on our own.

Tell me about the business early on. What were your main challenges? Did you ever consider giving up?

The biggest challenges in the beginning was finding new clients and steering clear of becoming an “anything for a buck” consulting firm.  It’s easy to take on projects that are not in your focus just to make money, but we found it important to stay focused on our planned end consumer.  

This didn’t prevent us from taking on a project building a clients investor deck, which was clearly outside of our purview or from running the marketing department of a number of our clients because we had the ability even though we didn’t want to focus in that area.

We thought about giving up all the time, the beauty of the US is we have a huge safety net to try and fail and still have a huge leg up if we chose to apply to other corporate jobs again.  That huge safety net helped to remind us that there really is not much risk in going forward through the challenges.

How did you get your first 3 clients?

We got our first client about 3 months in - they signed a 3 month contract and canceled without notice after 1 month, it was sad to have signed “recurring” revenue and immediately lose that contract.

Our first client of size was signed after 6 months and was an 18 month 1.5 FTE project with a Fortune 500 company doing staff augmentation for a company we had no business pitching let alone winning.  This springboarded us to a plateau that allowed us to hire our first employee.

It wasn’t until about 12 months in that we got our first client in our area of focus in middle market PE.  It was hard to think we had waited 12 months to get there, but it was the basis on which we have built everything since then.

Were there any key decisions, strategies, etc. that helped you get traction with customers?

The key strategy that we have used to gain traction is to narrow our focus on types of clients(PE backed middle market), and narrow our product offering so we can keep it streamlined.

How do you get clients now? How has your strategy evolved?

We now have a few areas that we get business, partners in the market are the main one for the past 5 years, but we are now expanding into our own internal lead gen through content marketing and event based marketing.  Both are now making up ~50% of our business.

Early on our business thrived off of partnerships.

What do you like most about running your own business? 

I like the opportunity to try new things, test if they will work and scrap them if they don’t.  Thinking about growth is really exciting, planning things that others haven’t tried or wouldn’t try is fun.

What is your biggest challenge today? 

The biggest struggle is HR, hiring, team management, team planning etc.

Do you ever think of quitting and doing something else?  

The idea of quitting is never far off in my mind, but I don’t think that’s any different for most entrepreneurs.  It’s been key to find the reason for pushing through, be that fortune, fame, product whatever it is.  For me that’s getting to a place that will allow me to step away from the business and have it sustain without me, affording me time with my family, while the business continues.

Was there a moment when you realized this was going to work?

I think we realized this was going to work about 4 years in when we had generated clients outside of partners in our target space.  That proved that we could get clients with no connection and they were interested in what we offered.

What’s your current business model? Do you have employees?

We are a projects based model that bills on fixed fee projects with ongoing maintenance agreements.

We have 15 employees.

Let’s talk numbers… What has your revenue trajectory been like over time? Are you making more than you were full-time?

We were fortunate enough to replace our salaries in year 2 of our business, so we didn’t take that long to make more than we did full-time.  We then doubled our top line revenue every year since that point.

What advice would you give to yourself if you were just starting out? What would you do differently?

I would hire consistently through the good times and the bad times, if you have a plan to scale, stick to the plan, you need the team members all the time, so stay the hiring course and sell like hell if you have teams that are underutilized.

That’s a wrap!

I hope you enjoyed this first edition of data founder chronicles.

All the best,

Brent

P.S. If you know someone I should interview (or you are that someone) please reply and let me know!

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