Richard Moross is the 30-year-old founder and Chief Executive of MOO.com, a venture-capital backed on-demand printing company. Mr Moross had the initial idea for MOO – personal business cards – in 2003, when he was 25. A few months later he came up with a unique process that uses a proprietary digital printing technology to mass-produce short-run, variable print jobs.
Today, MOO has 35 employees and has shipped its products to more than 181 countries.
Before setting up MOO, Mr Moross never thought of himself as an entrepreneur. “I was driven by the power of an idea,” he says. “As soon as I had fully thought through the idea, I was compelled to set up the business. I had no choice but to take my life in this direction. It became an act of self-fulfillment.”
“Starting a business is like running a marathon. Actually, it’s more like running a marathon in the dark, with no indication of where you’re going.”
In common with the survey respondents, Mr Moross believes that self-belief is critical to entrepreneurial success. “Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely business,” he explains. “To be genuinely innovative, you have to take a new idea along wild tangents and can wait months or years to demonstrate the real value of it to people. The bigger the idea, the more likely people are to say it’s crazy. Believing in yourself is the only way you’ll get through the criticisms, knock-backs and distractions that sharing an idea for a business can generate.”
He also agrees with the respondents in their view of the importance of determination and perseverance. “Starting a business is like running a marathon,” he says. “Actually, it’s more like running a marathon in the dark, with no indication of where you’re going, where your competitors are or how long the race will take. It takes incredible determination, bloodymindedness some might say, to bring something like this to life.”
“The bigger the idea, the more likely people are to say it’s crazy.”
Like many entrepreneurs, he considers the independence of the role to be one of the key benefits. “You get to be your own boss and impose your vision of the world,” he says, “and that can be very liberating. Of course, there are also the financial rewards if your company is a success, but you also have to love what you do. The end-game [an exit] could be years away, and it’s no fun playing for money if you don’t enjoy the game itself.”
With increasing sales and new products reaching new markets, the company is at an exciting stage of its development. “The proof of the pudding will be in the exit,” says Mr Moross. “Ultimately we will see how successful we have been and how much value we have created when we sell the business.”
