From Yext to Arc4: The Journey to Co-Founding
Why I left a stable role to co-found Arc4, and what I learned along the way.
I spent 8 years at Yext. I was promoted 5 times. I made President's Club multiple years. I led one of the largest enterprise implementations in the company history. By any measure it was a great run. And then I left to start something from nothing.
Why I left
The decision was not impulsive. I had been building expertise in Yext implementations for nearly a decade and I could see that the market needed a specialized partner that could deliver at a level the generalist agencies could not. My co-founder and I had complementary skills and we both wanted to build something we owned.
The first six months
The first 6 months were the hardest. No salary, no clients, no reputation as a company. We had to convince enterprise buyers to trust a brand new firm with their digital presence. What worked was leveraging every relationship we had built over the previous decade and being radically transparent about who we were and what we could deliver.
Every role at once
The thing nobody tells you about co-founding a company is that the work is not harder than a corporate job. It is just different. Instead of one role you have every role. I was the salesperson, the solutions architect, the project manager, the HR department, and the accountant all in the same day. That never fully goes away even at 17 people.
Patience paid off
Looking back I would not change anything about the timing. 8 years at Yext gave me the technical depth, the enterprise relationships, and the operational instincts that made Arc4 possible. If I had left after 3 years I would not have been ready. The patience paid off.