We entrepreneurial Mac users of a certain vintage can give ourselves the shivers just thinking back to the long dark era when finding business software on the platform was a slog. One bright point in this dismal landscape was always Endicia, the Mac shipping and postage software. Endicia was both practical godsend and morale booster, something we die-hards could brag to ourselves about and cheer on the success of as the platform and the company grew year over year, never neglecting its Macintosh fan base along the way.
As the years passed and Apple became more mainstream, Endicia also went mainstream, briefly becoming a division of Newell Rubbermaid (2007 to 2015) before ultimately being acquired by Stamps.com in November 2015. But even today Endicia has stayed true to its its Mac users, remaining the only major shipping and postage platform with a true native Macintosh application, offering a robust suite of mailing, shipping, and order management eCommerce software solutions.
All of which made me happy to check in with Amine Khechfe, the Endicia co-founder who now serves as the chief strategy officer of the combined $4+ billion entity [NASDAQ: STMP]. I was interested to ask Khechfe (pronounced: a-MEEN kech-FEE) to share any and all “aha” moments that have allowed his company to grow, as well as any principles he’s developed along the way that have allowed his enterprise to grow and evolve.
Talking with Khechfe was a bit of an entrepreneurial leadership lesson in itself. He appears always interested and never in a rush; the time I spent with him felt like an antidote to the default position too many of us assume in our business lives, where we relegate our native curiosity to the background.
The aha’s that built a brand
Literally speaking, the first aha that built the brand that would become Endicia was a sentence in a general-press article that caught Khechfe’s eye: the perpetually cash-strapped Post Office believed it could save a whopping $60 million in handling expense for each 1% of the mail that it received already barcoded. The founders of Endicia jumped on the opportunity, proposing to USPS a software solution to validating addresses and printing barcoded mailpieces (and eventually parcels).
Jumping on opportunities like this as soon they were recognized, in fact, provide time and again to be enough in itself to build a profitable, growing, self-funded business. “We didn’t have outside funding; we didn’t have a research arm; we had zero marketing, but what we did have was this curiosity, this problem-solving attitude that went well beyond the academic. When we got interested in something, we pursued it–often with the kind of results that meant another leap forward and upward for our company.” Such as:
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Read More: The Aha’s That Built Endicia Into A (Combined) $4.2 Billion Company