The Start of Something Big
In 1982, when I graduated from law school and passed the California Bar Exam, the personal computer software industry was just taking off and supplying the custom 3-ring binders used for computer software manuals seemed like a great opportunity.
So, I changed my legal and real estate career plans and co-founded Bindco, which quickly became the world’s largest supplier of custom binders.
Rapid Growth
As the computer software industry grew, so did Bindco. We added printing, packaging, media duplication, assembly, order fulfillment, and distribution, and most importantly, Bindco developed the leading-edge technologies to tie it all together in a seamless global operation.
Emerging Technologies
In the late 80s and early 90s, I became particularly interested in two emerging technologies that would add to Bindco’s print production and distribution services: E-Commerce and On-Demand Printing.
E-Commerce Pioneer
E-commerce has been a passion of mine for over 35 years.
In 1988, long before the World Wide Web, Bindco used the Internet with modems and a Bulletin Board System (BBS) to process our clients’ manufacturing and fulfillment orders.
In 1994, Bindco manufactured the software required for the Web browser pioneer Mosaic (which became Netscape) to “launch” the World Wide Web. Because I had already seen how the Windows Graphical User Interface (GUI) completely revolutionized the text-based MS-DOS, I immediately knew that adding a Web GUI to the text-based Internet Bindco was using for its BBS would cause e-commerce to explode.
Shortly after Mosaic’s launch, Steve Jobs introduced me to Bill McKiernan who had recently started CyberSource to provide Web-based order processing and software downloads. We quickly partnered and began offering turnkey solutions using their e-commerce technology and Bindco’s manufacturing and fulfillment. One of our early projects, Hewlett-Packard’s first e-commerce site, was so revolutionary and successful that it was featured in Time and Business Week.
On-Demand Printing Leader
Perhaps my first experience with on-demand printing occurred when I was 10 years old and answered an ad in a comic book and secured my own franchise selling custom-imprinted Christmas cards.
More realistically, it was in 1992 when Bindco was awarded the on-demand printing contract for Tandem Computers. At that time, the Xerox DocuTech Network Publisher had just been introduced and Bindco received the first one on the West Coast.
In 1991, Bindco began digitizing expensive bulky manuals and putting them on low-cost CDs for mass distribution. After we had our DocuTech, we could now print the “must-have” hard copies in low volumes.
Within a few years, Bindco had 10 DocuTechs networked together, running 24/7, that produced 40 million unique on-demand pages per month.
In 1996, we began integrating additional on-demand printing and distribution locations in the US and Europe so we could route and concurrently print a document in multiple locations which reduced our clients’ shipping costs.
Intangible Personal Benefits
Bindco’s Silicon Valley location also afforded me intangible personal benefits because I was able to meet, work directly with, and learn from so many bright and talented entrepreneurs during their startup and early growth stages.
Many of the entrepreneurs I was fortunate enough to work with and learn from became industry leaders: Steve Jobs (Apple and NeXT), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Bill McKiernan (CyberSource and Authorize.Net); Phillipe Kahn (Borland and Starfish Software), and Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics and Mosaic/Netscape).
From Bindco to Gung-Ho
By 1998, Bindco had grown into an international company with annual revenue of $78 million. I sold my Bindco equity and retired at age 41.
In 1999, bored after only 6 months of retirement, I decided to create a virtual company I named, Gung-Ho, that would utilize the power of the Internet to integrate disparate best-in-class brick-and-mortar suppliers to provide one-stop printing, packaging, software manufacturing, e-commerce, and fulfillment solutions.
