We have done a number of blogs about our culture, such as Built for the Long Run and Technology Really Does Matter and the Three Leg Stool of Customers-Employees and Owners being equal partners in RunSignUp.
In this blog, I (Bob) wanted to review the actual legal structure of the company. Back in 2002 I created a Limited Liability Company named Bickel Advisory Services, LLC as a low cost way of having a consulting business. It also served to separate my business interests from our family’s personal assets.
Bluestone Software, the company I had been at for 10 years had gone public and been acquired by HP and I was serving as the head of the HP Middleware Division when HP decided to shut the division down. I had to lay off about 600 people, and of course I left as well. At the time I never wanted anyone to work for me again so I would never be in a position to not being able to continue to provide jobs to employees. So I hung up a consulting shingle and helped advise a number of startup companies mostly in the Internet Infrastructure arena so they could avoid some of the mistakes I had made.
In 2009 and 2010 when we first started RunSignUp, we did it under this umbrella. We were not sure it would be successful and if there would be any long term employees other than Stephen and myself. Feedback from customers was great, and we grew to the point where we are today – 23 full time employees and about a half dozen part time people working to bring great technology to our customers who put on over 14,000 races per year.
We never went back to formally change the name, so that is why you see in our contracts things like “Bickel Advisory Services, LLC dba (doing business as) RunSignUp”. Not because I have some sort of big ego – we were just too cheap to change the name formally.