LAUNCHING AN INTERNET STARTUP is like covering a war. It consumes your life.
Both experiences can be exciting yet scary, demanding yet exhilarating. The difference with an Internet startup is that the work is around the clock and there is no second crew to take the next shift.
Ask Tom Ashbrook.
Four years ago, the former international reporter and editor at The Boston Globe left his familiar rung on journalism’s corporate ladder to join an old college friend in a business venture.
Today, that business, HomePortfolio Inc., is a leading Internet distributor of home design products and services. Ashbrook is the company’s cofounder and publisher.
In his first book, The Leap: A Memoir of Love and Madness in the Internet Gold Rush, Ashbrook chronicles the company’s birth and his white-knuckled journey through a mid-life career jump.
Ashbrook says he saw the book — which hit bookstores last month — as an opportunity to share his life-altering experiences and lessons with readers who contemplate career changes.
“I wanted to communicate the intellectual and emotional process that I went through in taking off the journalist’s collar,” he says. “It was an extremely profound step for me.”
After almost 20 years in the newspaper business, Ashbrook, 44, says he began to notice that the press seemed to lack the influence it had in the days of the Civil Rights Movement and Watergate. The industry was changing, and somehow his work as a journalist did not seem as consequential.
“I knew there were vital stories to be covered,” he says, “but I didn’t feel like the press was at the forefront of what was going on. The big changes were being driven by economic organizations rather than news organizations. I wanted to be where the action was.”
And now he is.
HOMEPORTFOLIO IS IN ITS THIRD ROUND of venture capital financing, led by HGTV, CondéNet, Meredith Corporation, and Excite@Home — four of the most powerful home design media companies in the United States. To date, the company, which created HomePortfolio.com, has raised more than $70 million in capital.
Even with big-name investors, 120 employees, and offices in five major cities, Ashbrook is hardly backing down. There is still much to be done, he says. The market HomePortfolio is after is worth $250 billion.
“I’ve learned to respect the skills I learned as a journalist and understand that they can take me many places,” Ashbrook says of the invaluable skills he gained as a foreign correspondent. He points to the constant change and deadline pressures in both his old profession and his new.
“I was really surprised at how many similarities there are between the tempo and demands of journalism and this new economy,” he says. “It made me grateful to have come out of a news background.”
Although he continues to work as hard — or harder, now — compared to four years ago, Ashbrook says his whole outlook is more optimistic.
“I have a greater sense of controlling my own destiny,” he says. “I am at the forefront instead of chasing from the rear.”
Still, he admits that part of him will always remain rooted in journalism.
“I’m sure I’ll always be an observer and an explorer. I’ll always care about doing the right thing. Those are the traits from journalism that I hope I never lose.”
