Steve Sonnenberg credits his entrepreneurial “superpowers” for growing his side hustle into a company with a market capitalization of $1 billion.
The secret to success, he says, is to remain unfazed by the risks of starting a new business and the inevitable setbacks that come with it. “When it comes to entrepreneurship, my superpower is just beginning. It’s so easy to get started because that’s who I am,” says Sonnenberg, 44, co-founder and CEO of Awardco, an employee compensation platform.
And when business hits a roadblock, “I just pivot really quickly because I know it’s going to work,” Sonnenberg says. “You just need to have that confidence.”
Founded in 2011, Awardco raised a $165 million funding round in May and was most recently valued at $1 billion. Clients like AT&T and Hertz use the company’s platform to reward employees with points that can be redeemed for millions of items in the Amazon Business marketplace.
Sonnenberg began working on Awardco after his previous company, WholesaleMatch, which he founded in college, was named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission. The lawsuit primarily concerns one of WholesaleMatch’s customers, and Sonnenberg’s assets were frozen during the legal proceedings. He filed for bankruptcy and closed his business, leaving him with “nothing left” to support his family of four young children, he says.
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Still, he says, he already knew his next step. Start building your next company, even if you don’t have a fully formed idea yet. He put $5,000 he didn’t have on a credit card and bought the Awardco.com domain from its previous owner, he says.
“What do crazy entrepreneurs do? They’re always thinking of another idea,” Sonnenberg says.
Sonnenberg turned to other jobs to make money, first as a freelance web designer and then at business software company Qualtrics, before building Awardco with his cousin Mike Sonnenberg and Qualtrics colleague Tanner Runier. He says his ideas moved from a brick-and-mortar store selling trophies to wholesale prizes for businesses before landing on Awardco’s current business model.
Sonneberg said Amazon was initially hesitant to partner with the then-unknown platform. This rejection may have forced him to give up or move on to other ideas. Instead, Sonnenberg cold-called business customers to sign up anyway, and when employees placed orders on Awardco’s platform, his wife manually ordered the corresponding products on Amazon for them, he said.
In 2015, Amazon invited Awardco to partner with its Amazon Business marketplace to automate the ordering process, Sonnenberg said.
“Start, (and) pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot. That’s the story of Awardco with his back against the wall,” Sonnenberg says.
Successful entrepreneurs “get out of their own way”
Building something successful after experiencing a major failure usually requires resilience and self-confidence. “I just keep going. I don’t know what it is, but everything I’ve ever done has been successful and failed (at first). It’s the consistency of staying on track,” Sonnenberg says.
Entrepreneurs frequently discuss the importance of simply jumping in to start a new venture, anticipating the need to overcome initial setbacks and learn from failures to increase the likelihood of future success.
“Entrepreneurship is really difficult. There’s no instant success…you have to be prepared to fail,” Dayu Dara Permata, co-founder and CEO of Pinhome, an Indonesian real estate trading platform, told CNBC Make It in May. “Fail fast and learn fast.”
Of course, you shouldn’t try to fail just for the sake of failing, says Amy C. Edmondson, a leadership professor at Harvard Business School. In December 2023, Edmondson recommended that new opportunities be thoroughly investigated to minimize risk and ensure that any failure is a “sensible failure.”
Sonnenberg had an edge in his research on AwardCo, he says. His father made awards and plaques for large organizations like McDonald’s. “I knew the field. I knew it was old-school and ripe for disruption. I was 100% confident it would be successful,” he says.
Part of his confidence, he added, comes from the fact that he’s “a bit of a naive entrepreneur.” “And I think that’s the hallmark of successful entrepreneurs: they don’t get out of their own way.”
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