AddressTwo
Privately held company | |
Industry |
|
Founded | 2005 |
Founder | Nick Carter |
Headquarters | Indianapolis, Indiana, United States |
Services | Web applications |
Website | addresstwo.com |
Carter and Company, LLC (dba AddressTwo) is a privately held web application company based in Indianapolis, Indiana. The firm was founded in 2005 by Nick Carter as a marketing consulting company. Carter began developing applications for customers in 2007, including a small-scale customer relationship management (CRM) application that evolved into the company's flagship product AddressTwo.
Since August 2008, the company's focus has shifted from marketing consulting services to the development, sales, and marketing of AddressTwo and related products. AddressTwo was first commercialized in August 2008 as a Saas product, followed by ApplyTwo, PostTwo, FriendTwo, and HereTwo. Founder Nick Carter published Unfunded: From Bootstrap to Blue Chip Without the Fuel of Round-A Capital in February 2011 encouraging Entrepreneurs to follow his example of starting a business without Venture Capital.
The company's legal name is Carter and Company, LLC, an Indiana-filed Limited liability company, but assumed the legal DBA of AddressTwo in August 2009.[1]
History
The company's initial business model was centered on marketing services including graphic design, copywriting, as well as web development. By 2007, the company had 6 employees and was serving Fortune 1000 companies such as GlobalSCAPE and 3D Systems. However, as Nick Carter later commented in his book, "I could not work my way into wealth. I still had a job, not a business."[2] In 2007, the company began to introduce a series of SaaS-model web applications that each failed to monetize.
Failed product launches
- MyCADMash: a social networking website tailored for users of CAD software.
- AgentGrade: a consumer review website for real estate agents.
- BrandStakes: an bid-based platform for selling event sponsorships.
Commercialization of AddressTwo
In June 2008, the firm developed a simple web application to meet one customer's request for online lead entry and tracking. After two months of use, Carter decided to re-invent the application as a CRM product for public use and commercialized on August 11, 2008.[3] The name AddressTwo was reportedly selected because of an inane debate the developers had with the original customer over the inclusion of a second input field for the second line of addresses, arguing that the goal of the program was to maintain utter simplicity.[4] By September 2009 AddressTwo had grown to an installed base of 500.[5] Several new features were released at a user conference called the Hullabaloo held on September 16, 2009 in Indianapolis, IN.[6] The new features included email marketing module, task management, and a dropbox feature personified in the character Addy. As of January 2011 AddressTwo reported an installed base of over 5,000 representing 800 different companies.[7]
Refusal of venture capital
In his book Unfunded Nick Carter alleges at least three instances when venture capital was offered and refused[8] but no public record or securities filing can verify the offers. Nick Carter keynoted a business conference for Rainmakers Marketing Group speaking of his experience growing AddressTwo without venture capital on August 18, 2010.[9] Indiana Secretary of State filings do confirm that as of 6/1/2011 Carter and Company, LLC (dba AddressTwo) is a single-member LLC with the sole managing member being Nicholas R. Carter.[1]
Ancillary products
After the initial success of AddressTwo, several ancillary products were introduced to augment or complement AddressTwo's functionality. All of these are freemium model SaaS products.
- HereTwo: a geolocation service to find Wi-Fi hotspots nearby.
- PostTwo: an email marketing service that converts a blog RSS feed into an email newsletter.
- Free Contact Form: a free HTML contact form widget that stores leads in a freemium version of AddressTwo.
- FriendTwo: a data mining service that extracts contact information from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and combines them into a CSV spreadsheet.
- ApplyTwo: (extinct) a job board service for recruiters to generate leads from job requests and candidate listings.
- TweetTwo: a geo-targeting service that automatically replies to Twitter users based on Foursquare venue checkins.
- ZebraCard: a service that creates QR codes and/or barcodes to affix to business cards for the exchange of contact data and tracking purposes.
Awards and recognitions
- AddressTwo was a finalist for the 2011 MIRA Award from TechPoint in the Information Technology Company Gazelle category.[10]
See also
References
- 1 2 "Indiana Secretary of State". Retrieved July 26, 2011.
- ↑ Carter, Nicholas (February 2011). Unfunded. p. 139.
- ↑ "Domain Tools". Retrieved July 27, 2011.
- ↑ Carter, Nicholas (February 2011). Unfunded. pp. 142–143.
- ↑ Where We've Been and Where We're Headed (MP4). Indianapolis, IN: Vimeo. 2011-09-16.
- ↑ "AddressTwo Hullabaloo to be Held September 16th" (Press release). IndyBiz. 2009-07-28. Retrieved 2011-07-27.
- ↑ Host: Donna Amos (2011-01-07). "Unfunded". Solo Talk. 53 minutes in. blogtalkradio.
- ↑ Carter, Nicholas (February 2011). Unfunded. pp. 148, 149, 150.
- ↑ Unfunded (MP4). Indianapolis, IN: StreamThreeCreative. 2011-08-18.
- ↑ "MIRA Awards Winners Circle". Retrieved July 26, 2011.