A cancer diagnosis before he turned 21 changed Hayes Drumwright’s perspective on life and pushed him to take chances on business ventures.
“In a way, it was a blessing,” the 43-year-old entrepreneur told the Business Journal in a recent interview at the Irvine headquarters of IT service provider Trace3. “I think I grew up a lot faster than my friends.”
Drumwright launched the company in 2002 with $100 in his pocket. It closed out last year as one of Orange County’s fastest growing private companies, with revenue topping $500 million, up more than 20% over 2014.
In September, he transitioned to executive chairman to devote his full time and energy to a new crowdsourcing startup called POP that he co-founded with Sanjiv Gupta.
The POPin app allows management to ask one or more specific questions to a group of invited employees; bundles the responses from open-ended questions and through likes and dislikes; and generates consensus on a topic within a few days. That type of sampling traditionally has been handled by consultancies, which spend months interviewing hundreds of employees.
“The stuff that’s voted to the top is the stuff that everyone feels like is the biggest issue,” Drumwright said.
Every POP survey begins with a selfie video of a manager, because emails and similar inquiries are largely ignored, according to Drumwright.
POP, which raised $6 million in a Series A round in November led by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Nexus Venture Partners, has notable customers that include DirecTV, Red Robin, Taco Bell, Ford and NASA.
Irvine-based CoreLogic Inc. Chief Data Officer Robin Gordon launched a pilot session with the POPin app in November with 100 invited employees to better understand the culture of the application development team she inherited after taking the job in May.
Gordon launched the pilot with a video selfie asking employees how the group could become more collaborative, effective and supportive. The initial response rate was 80%, compared to the standard 15% to 20% rate she said she experienced in prior jobs.
“It created conversations among a group of people that would have never occurred in any other form,” she said. “They had never been engaged at that level before.”
The property information and analytics provider posted annual revenue of about $1.4 billion and employed 485 local workers and 4,847 companywide through March 2015, according to Business Journal research.
The POPin app attempts to apply the crowdsourced culture of today’s social media era to the conference room, where many promising initiatives die.
More than 70% of corporate change initiatives fail, according to more than a decade of Gallup research on the topic.
“It really is kind of an epidemic,” Drumwright said. “And POP can help you figure it out and help you figure it out quickly because you can ask that very large group why this isn’t getting traction.”
The message appears to be resonating; the product has more than 30,000 users at 60 companies. Different generations of workers use it differently. Millennials typically engage through smartphones, and veteran staffers primarily log in through Web browsers.
Wine Venture
Drumwright also is working on two other ventures that are bearing fruit: a high-end winery in Napa Valley that he formed with two school friends.
Memento Mori, which specializes in bold Cabernet Sauvignons, has quickly built a name for itself in Northern California’s wine country. Its 2012 edition drew a 95 rating from well-followed Robert Parker and Wine Spectator magazine, and the resulting publicity quadrupled membership.
Drumwright, a self-confessed wine snob, launched the brand in 2010 after co-founder Adriel Lares spent two years researching wine makers, crushing facilities and high-quality grapes in the region.
Lares, who recently joined POP’s board, was the chief financial officer at data storage systems and software maker 3Par Inc. when the Fremont company raised $105 million in a 2007 initial public offering before being sold to HP three years later for $2.3 billion.
The third partner, Adam Craun, manages the operation and tasting room.
The trio knew little about the industry and set out to create a fine wine for themselves.
“We just knew that quality was the only thing we were shooting for with the venture, and if it broke even, then that would be great,” said Drumwright, a 2011 Business Journal Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award winner.
The founders have invested more than $700,000 in the brand, which is now producing about 700 cases a year.
“It’s a blast. It’s really kind of a passion,” Drumright said, “and I’m doing it with two of my best friends.”
Another Drumwright venture, InstantScale, has put $5 million to $6 million into 14 tech companies primarily in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area since it launched in 2010. The companies’ technology has been vetted by Trace3 customers and accredited investors.
Not all of Drumwright’s ventures are winners. At 25, he launched Tech Fuel, an Irvine value-added reseller that raised $7 million from angels and venture capitalists. The business crashed when the tech bubble burst, and Drumwright lost nearly everything.
A year later, he said he was back on his feet after a stint in sales at another IT service provider.
Early Inspiration
Drumwright’s entrepreneurial drive surfaced after a personal struggle.
He was sitting in a doctor’s office at Boston University when he was told he needed to immediately see an urologist. Ten minutes later, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He was 20, the captain of the swim team, and in his last year of school.
He cried throughout the night in a shared hospital room with a patient undergoing the rigors of chemotherapy.
“A doctor, with one sentence, takes your whole life away,” he said. “I thought I was basically losing everything.”
He had surgery a few days later to remove the tumor, which had grown so fast it had cut off its own blood supply and was 90% dead. The cancer hadn’t spread, and within a few weeks Drumwright was back in the pool.
Five years of checkups culminated in a cancer-free declaration and provided Drumwright a new outlook on life and business.
“I’m never in my life going to worry about failing or trying something that seems scary. Because the only thing you should really fear in life is losing your health. That’s the only thing that you can’t come back from.”
