Entrepreneur: At 13, he worked 40 hours a week

INSPIRING PERSPECTIVES

Each Sunday, the AJC brings you insights from metro Atlanta’s leaders and entrepreneurs. Matt Kempner’s “Secrets of Success” shares the vision and realities of entrepreneurs who started their dreams from scratch. The column alternates with Henry Unger’s “5 Questions for the Boss, ” which reveals the lessons learned by CEOs of the area’s major companies and organizations.

Find previous columns from Unger and Kempner on our premium website for subscribers at www.myajc.com/business.

Mashini’s tips:

— Be open to opportunity in unexpected places.

— Adapt to your market. Listen to customers.

— Be the hardest worker at your company.

Catavolt

Based in Alpharetta.

George Mashini, CEO and co-founder (with three others).

Launched website in 2008.

Annual revenue: about $2 million in 2013. Projecting $4 million this year.

Staff: 35 employees.

Funding: $6.5 million from venture capital.

Ownership: Mashini and his three fellow co-founders own a majority of the business.

Family: He and his wife have three boys, ages 2 to 7.

“I had stability, health coverage, a great job …. The big decision there is: Do you jump into the abyss?”

“If you are going to chase your dream you can’t do it in a partial manner, because life is going to scare you.”

Soon after George Mashini’s family moved from the Middle East to the United States his father became incapacitated.

That forced Mashini to work long hours even as a young teen. Now, at 35, he is chief executive and co-founder of an Alpharetta-based tech company started in 2008 at what might have seemed like the worst possible time.

But, so far, it’s worked. Catavolt outfits big companies with software to allow mobile devices to work with big, bulky corporate software systems. Catavolt has 35 employees and revenue that’s doubled each of the past two years, Mashini said.

I grew up in Jordan. Part of the reason we wanted to move to the U.S. is because of the opportunity, education. It took over 10 years to legally get the whole family moved over here. I was about eight years old. When we moved to the U.S. we had a lot of great hopes, but about four days after moving here my father suffered a heart attack, a pretty debilitating one. The main breadwinner wasn’t able to work anymore. He passed a few years later.

We all went to work. I was about 13. I found a restaurant that wouldn’t necessarily check my age. I started busing tables. I started working during school probably about 40 hours a week, during the summer about 55 hours a week. What that shaped me to do is work really hard.

The biggest impact it made is seeing hope when there is a challenge in front of you. Back then the challenges seemed insurmountable.

We were poor. You get very few decisions. The odds are against you. Average is what you are striving for at that point. I was trying to figure out how in the world do I go to college.

I was in New Jersey. We moved to Atlanta in my senior year of high school. Because I was working so much, my grades weren’t exactly spectacular. I went to Kennesaw State on the HOPE scholarship. I had two jobs (in college), one of them was at Blockbuster. I meet this guy named Glenn at Blockbuster. He’s a customer. He says, “You are at Kennesaw studying computer science? I have a software company. Do you want to come by and check it out?” They hired me. That’s how I got into the software field.

That company, Paragon, was bought by another company, giving Mashini a six-figure payout and a good paying job at the acquiring company.

But (Glenn and I) saw an opportunity. We spent a lot of years installing big legacy software in these giant companies. The iPhone just came out. The Androids were hitting. The iPads were a couple of years later. So the way people wanted to do business was going to change really fast. But the way their back office was going to work was going to change slowly, if at all. There was going to be a gap. We had the expertise to fill that gap.

We started going to Starbucks during off hours and on weekends. We were talking about different things we could do, and we started drawing on the napkins. We spent six months doing that. The last few napkins that we drew on are actually (the diagrams) for our patent at Catavolt. We came up with this way to map how people wanted to use mobile devices against horrible, old back-end systems that were not built for this.

I had stability, health coverage, a great job. My wife and I had our first baby. My wife had a really great career at Coca-Cola that she decided to give up to stay at home. I wanted to do this Catavolt thing. The big decision there is: Do you jump into the abyss?

I realized what I like is acceleration. I’m really almost addicted now to the velocity of moving up, of accomplishing something that I thought potentially was impossible.

So I quit this nice job. And next thing you know, the stock market crashes.

Before he left his employer, the company had offered to keep him on at least part time. Mashini had declined.

If you have a safety net, it doesn’t make you as aggressive. If you are going to chase your dream you can’t do it in a partial manner, because life is going to scare you.

As the economy sank, large companies that Catavolt co-founders had targeted as potential clients froze capital spending on their computer systems. Mashini began doing IT consulting for companies, which allowed him to generate money to pay something to himself and his colleagues as they worked on programming for Catavolt’s new product. The consulting gigs also got them close to companies that might become Catavolt clients.

Each of the co-founders had invested $200,000 in the venture. That left Mashini and his wife with only enough savings to cover about four months worth of living expenses.

It was scary. When you think about starting a business, you think of the glamorous part of it. You think about, “I don’t have a boss. I can do whatever I want.” If you think about the reality of starting a business, there’s no guaranteed paycheck. I didn’t have a safety net.

Mashini’s pay — which was sometimes sporadic — dropped to about $70,000, less than half of what his last employer had paid him. Customers didn’t want to lay out lots of money for Catavolt software. So the co-founders changed plans and let customers subscribe to use the software on a monthly basis, employing a model that had been used with other kinds of software.

It became our differentiator. Our competitors couldn’t adapt.

Your great idea has to fit the market. (It’s) a starting point. The market will mold it. If we had stuck to our guns and said, “No, we are going to have to figure out a way to make our idea work as is,” I guarantee we would not be here today.

We were all working 60 hours a week, putting this together. Any disruption would have hurt. If any one of the four (co founders) gave up, the company would have failed.

As Catavolt gained customers, the co-founders sought investors who could pour in cash to accelerate the company’s growth and gain market share faster than competitors. But in return, the investors got part ownership in the company.

We had to get our head around that. Try working for 60, 70 hours a week, for no real paycheck for three years and then take a piece of what you built and give it to somebody else. That’s a hard decision.

Why would you do that? If I’m building a house, if I continue building it, it’s going to be 1,000 square feet. But if I take outside money, I could make it into a skyscraper. That’s the only reason you ever take outside money, because you have a vision that you think could be that skyscraper.

Mashini said he has a low six-figure salary from Catavolt now. So even though he’s the chief executive, he’s not one of the company’s five highest wage earners.

I’m in it for the big growth.

My goal is to build a company and a brand that lasts a long time or that makes an impact on a major market. … I started out with not a lot of legacy. I’d like to build a legacy.