Chocolate.

In 1982, I co-founded a software company called Persoft, Inc. I had been a software developer for many years at that point (since 1964) and had my own consulting business when we started the company. Persoft was a rapidly growing, very successful company during the 80s. We were continuously ranked as one of the top software companies in the US based on revenues and in 1988 we were ranked number 97 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies in the US. Our entire startup capital was $2000 cash each plus the donation of an IBM PC XT to the business, although in 1986 we raised venture capital from Frontenac Company in Chicago to launch a new software product.

Like many entrepreneurs starting a software company back then, I had no idea how to run and grow a business. (Ironically, I had never planned on running Persoft over the long term, but that’s another story.) I had never heard of a business plan but had to figure out how to write one when we decided to raise venture capital.

Persoft was a very successful business but also a very fun place to work. I am still in regular touch with some of my former employees and without exception they indicate that Persoft was the best place they worked at during their entire careers.

I attribute the success of Persoft to two key factors:

• A hiring philosophy I call “Always Hire an 11”
• Chocolate

Here is a link to the article on always hiring an 11: Synnovation.com/11.

Since I was a small child, I always liked chocolate. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a single day since I was a teenager (I am now 79) where I have not had at least a couple of pieces of chocolate. The quality of the chocolate has certainly improved over the years. I am long past Hershey’s bars – my mainstream day to day chocolate is now a Belgian brand called Leonidas. I buy directly from the importer in New York and have a custom selected order shipped to me as needed, on ice during the hot days of summer. (I even have my own discount coupon there – contact me if interested.) My license plate even says “Choclit”.

OK – I think we have established that I personally like chocolate. But what this led to was an “open door, unlimited free chocolate” policy at Persoft. Here is how that worked: I had a small conference table in my office. On that table was an unlimited supply of free chocolate, supplied by me personally. The official company policy was simple – if my door was open, you could come in and grab chocolate, even if I was on the phone or in a meeting.

Occasionally, one of my employees would help by buying chocolate for the ever-filled chocolate jar, which I did appreciate. However, one time my administrative assistant (who clearly didn’t understand chocolate) filled the jar with Tootsie Rolls! We never let her live down that embarrassing incident!

The ultimate culmination of this was the creation of our annual chocolate festival. Rather than go into the details here, our local paper did a wonderful feature story on this that you can read here: Synnovation.com/soft-on-chocolate. The week after this story was published, we had several unsolicited calls from people asking if we had any job openings!