From Window Magazine: 'Back from the Brink'

Chase Franklin (‘86 Economics/Mathematics) knows what it’s like to face catastrophic collapse. His Seattle-based dot-com software company Qpass was poised to go public in 2000 when the bottom fell out of the market. With $25 million in the bank, Qpass had just enough to pay its 200 employees for six months. Franklin quickly realized he needed to make some swift and difficult decisions.

So Franklin, a Microsoft alum who founded Qpass in 1997, made some brash moves to reposition and restart the company. In a software company, people represent the lion’s share of operating expense. So almost overnight, the company took steps to lay off two-thirds of its employees, released all of its customers, and began the difficult process of changing direction – all while maintaining the full support and confidence of the company’s investors. Qpass went from selling e-commerce services to more than 100 Internet sites to selling a similar product for a much smaller group of wireless carriers.

The move focused the company on a more viable market and positioned it to be sold for more than $300 million in 2006, which at the time was the third-largest acquisition of a privately-held, venture-backed technology company in Washington state.

Not bad for a company that was on the brink of failure just a few years earlier.

Window Magazine caught up with Franklin, who has been working with entrepreneurs for years, to ask him some secrets to start-up success.

Read the rest of this story on the website for Window magazine.