Founder Guidance

David Bridges

David Bridges was practically born into the advertising postproduction industry, where he’d eventually start two companies.

Working for his father’s photo retouching business in Manhattan, Bridges was cleaning airbrushes and water bowls as early as 10. By 12, he was a messenger boy. At 16, he had won the trust of New York City art directors to run his father’s accounts.

“They were friendly and it was exciting,” he told Founder Brew. “And you know, and I’m just some naive kid who’s in the Mad Men-era of advertising.”

That familial immersion into the business world taught Bridges the difference between founding a company and running a successful business.

“The big deal is the execution,” he told Founder Brew. “There are a lot of people with a lot of great ideas that probably could turn into real businesses if they knew how to run a business.”

Those lessons in mind led Bridges to eventually start two companies on the precipice of massive changes in the industry.

A chance meeting after college with his dad’s friend brought him to a Flatiron apartment that hosted a Quadra 650, a 1990s Apple computer, with an early version of Photoshop. The acquaintance needed Bridges’s sales skills, and offered him an equal slice of a new company with three other co-founders—if Bridges could bring in clients.

Bridges agreed and that company, Icon, would become among the first Photoshop-based retouching businesses in New York City. Years later, feeling unfulfilled in the position, Bridges quit.

But, it would only be six months until a burning curiosity around the possibilities of web and mobile advertising drove him to start another venture, thelab, in 2002. In 2014, Australian creative production agency the wellcom group acquired his business. In 2021, he took over as Wellcom Worldwide’s global CEO.

Successful founders can face many transitions over the lifespans of their company. There’s the change from being a founder to running a company, from running a company to being acquired, and even stepping into a different corporate role. Bridges tackled all three and shared his experience in a conversation with Founder Brew.

What’s the biggest difference between being a founder versus running a company?

Running a business for me is very personal…It’s very much about the balance between being a good leader, being a good motivator, being honest and truthful with people, being totally transparent with people, and being in the work. I think that’s super important.

From a founder level, it’s great to have all of these big ideas and have the vision and set the strategy. But that’s very different than rallying everybody around the strategy and building the right team and getting the right leadership in place and making sure everybody understands their part and their role and how to work together, what’s okay and what’s not okay, and keeping people motivated, and keeping them focused and keeping them on track.

A lot of people are different. For me, I really feel like I need to know what I’m talking about. I need to know what they’re doing. I need to understand what their challenges are. I need to see a little above that and be able to help guide them and not get so stuck and caught in the weeds. But I have to really understand what their challenges are and what they’re dealing with. For me, the best way to do that is to be really involved in the business on a day-to-day basis.

Running a business to me is a lifestyle. It’s not a job. It’s how you live.

Read more from David Bridges about running a company.—DL

      

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Growing Your Business

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When it comes to picking AI tools, tech startups can look to leading models from frontier companies, or a cloud and enterprise stack from a tech giant.

Google’s pitch to them is that it offers both, according to Darren Mowry, VP of global startups and investor ecosystem at Google Cloud. The company bills itself as a complete package for startups: in-house Gemini models and TPU chips, cloud infrastructure tools, partnerships with the likes of Anthropic and Nvidia, and a marketplace where startups can sell to Google enterprise customers.

“[Microsoft and Amazon] have become almost AI resellers,” Mowry said. “The fact that we can play that middle ground allows us to say, ‘What is it that you’re trying to build, and how do we bring the right technology to bear?’”

Google is one of several AI providers competing to lure startups and small and medium-sized businesses to its services and platforms. Other services like Anthropic and OpenAI offer direct access to their own AI tools for small businesses.

Startup founders in the AI era tend to approach building a business differently than they might have in the past, Mowry said. With AI tools increasingly built into workflows, they’re more selective about making initial hires. They’re also more deliberate about raising funding, he said.

While much of Google’s cloud and AI offerings are centered on tech startups, especially those in the AI space, Mowry said Google is gearing up to announce more investments aimed at supporting small and medium-sized businesses in the next month or so.

“Watch this space,” he said. “We’re going to be making some very interesting additional investments in that space to help one-person, five-person, 20-person companies grow their businesses as well.”

Read on for what kind of companies gravitate towards Google.—PK

      

Report: 89% of small businesses using AI report positive impacts (Revenue Brew)

More leaders think AI will help their businesses grow than reduce head count.

What one company learned after piloting a four-day workweek (HR Brew)

Bjorn Reynolds, Safeguard Global’s CEO and founder, shares the lessons he learned from his company’s four-day workweek pilot.

To buy AI tools, or to build them in-house? That is the question. (CFO Brew)

Vena Solutions CFO Melissa Howatson explains why buying made more sense.

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Stat: 8. That’s how many $1 billion startups the Dorm Room Fund has in its portfolio. Started 14 years ago, the premise was to let college students invest in each other. (the New York Times)

Quote: “We take egg cartoons, fill them up with sawdust, shredded paper, dryer lint, and then top it off with old candlewax.”—13-year old Lydia Eckelkamp, on the firestarter company, Fantastic Fire, that she started with her 12-year-old brother through a St. Louis young entrepreneurs program (St. Louis Public Radio)

Read: Vintage technologies are back in vogue and Minnesota small business owners are capitalizing on the trend. Step into the Dead Zone Lounge, a cafe started last year where you can use a 2009 iMac to burn CDs. (Star Tribune)

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