The Inspiring Story of a Business You've Never Heard of
Business Memoir
Date Published: September 10, 2024
This is a story for the rest of us. Those who want to grow their companies but can't find relatable inspiration, or guidance, in current business literature. It's a story about a company that you've never heard of, but one that used computer algorithms to save the American taxpayer over $60 Billion in government pandemic relief fraud. And it's about an unlikely founder who takes the risks and inspires his team to go from an idea to a nine-figure exit in less than 9 years.
In A Ten-Year Overnight Success, Pondera Solutions founder, Jon Coss, takes you with him on his journey through what he describes as the four stages of a typical startup. You'll share his raw emotions through the "rise and fall of enthusiasm", his months of desperation in the "desert of despair", his tempered confidence through "wiggles of hope", and his immense relief and sense of accomplishment marching toward the "Promised Land".
Jon's story-telling narrative combines soul-searching truths with self-deprecating humor to provide you with an inside look at what it takes to achieve the success that less than 1% of businesses ever will. Along the way, he offers practical, nuanced lessons that you won't find in the typical business book. Lessons learned in the trenches. Lessons that may not make you the next Tesla but are sure to grow your business. Lessons that apply to the rest of us.
INTERVIEW
Introduce yourself and tell me about what you do.
From a young age, I have always appreciated “ordinary heroes” versus being drawn to celebrities or athletes. There were several entrepreneurs in my extended family who inspired me to become an entrepreneur and to write my book. These included my father, my mother, and two of my uncles who started a restaurant after immigrating to the US from war torn Europe. Their story is the topic of my next book, and I touch on each of these in A Ten-Year Overnight Success.
In addition, I consider myself an unlikely entrepreneur, which I hope inspires others like me. I write about this in my book as well: the fact that I was a fair actor as a child and did TV commercial voiceovers but they never put me on camera, that I won the state championships in tennis but only in what my kids called the “arrow state” of Maryland (because it’s so small that on US maps the name Maryland is in the Atlantic Ocean with an arrow pointing to its location), that my early career included stints at companies like Procter & Gamble where I basically sold toothpaste to Amish people in central Pennsylvania.
Finally, I spend a lot of time mentoring entrepreneurs and young people. I hope that they can learn from what I have achieved and from what I have not achieved. And I can honestly say that I LOVE it when people surpass what I’ve been able to accomplish – both financially and for the common good. In fact, it’s important to me that I always try to “do good, while doing well”. My latest startup, www.plumidentity.com, is designed to do just that. Fight government fraud while also protecting citizens’ rights to privacy.
Jon Coss was born in Bethesda, MD and currently resides in Northern California. A Ten-Year Overnight Success is his first book.
Following a spectacularly unsuccessful professional tennis career, Jon landed a job at Oracle Corporation where he cut his teeth in technology. After leaving the corporate world, he would start four technology companies, three of which were acquired and the fourth which he prefers not to talk about. Jon’s most successful startup, Pondera Solutions, was one of the first companies to combine cloud computing with Artificial Intelligence. Its story offers valuable lessons for would-be entrepreneurs in the hyper-competitive technology world.
Jon has provided strategic consulting to many of the world’s largest technology companies including IBM, Intel, Deloitte, Accenture, SAP, Capgemini, KPMG, and Xerox. He is also a nationally recognized expert in government benefits fraud, having prevented more than $60 billion worth of pandemic relief fraud with Pondera.
Jon has consulted with and been interviewed by dozens of television stations and newspapers including the NBC Today show, CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX newscasts, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg News, Fortune Magazine, and Politico.
Jon writes about topics that matter deeply to him and those that he feels do not receive adequate attention in current literature. He mixes heartfelt honesty with self-deprecating humor to take the reader alongside him on his journey.
Tell me more about your journey as an author, including the writing processes.
This is my first book, and while it was challenging to dedicate time to writing it while still managing a career and family, it was still a labor of love. I was most productive when trapped on an airplane with nowhere else to go, and ironically, while with my wife and our dog at our vacation home on the Northern California, where there is a lot to do.
I’ve done a lot of “professional writing” in the past which I’d define as technical documentation and government proposal responses, in addition to writing a few editorials and magazine articles. So I approached my book in a similar manner. I started with a chapter outline, jotted down ideas that I wanted to include, and then just wrote. Only later coming back to edits, additions, and structural changes.
The most important thing for me was to be open and honest. I want the reader to actually feel what I felt, at my worst and at my best. My wife even suggested that I “lighten up” one particularly discouraging chapter in my book, but I insisted that aspiring entrepreneurs should know what the road ahead really looks like.
Tell me about your Book
I wrote the book as a memoir but wanted to include some of the more nuanced lessons that I feel could benefit fledgling entrepreneurs.
This is a story for the rest of us. Those who want to grow their companies but can't find relatable inspiration, or guidance, in current business literature. It's a story about a company that you've never heard of, but one that used computer algorithms to save the American taxpayer over $60 Billion in government pandemic relief fraud. And it's about an unlikely founder who takes the risks and inspires his team to go from an idea to a nine-figure exit in less than 9 years.
In A Ten-Year Overnight Success, Pondera Solutions founder, Jon Coss, takes you with him on his journey through what he describes as the four stages of a typical startup. You'll share his raw emotions through the "rise and fall of enthusiasm", his months of desperation in the "desert of despair", his tempered confidence through "wiggles of hope", and his immense relief and sense of accomplishment marching toward the "Promised Land".
Jon's story-telling narrative combines soul-searching truths with self-deprecating humor to provide you with an inside look at what it takes to achieve the success that less than 1% of businesses ever will. Along the way, he offers practical, nuanced lessons that you won't find in the typical business book. Lessons learned in the trenches. Lessons that may not make you the next Tesla but are sure to grow your business. Lessons that apply to the rest of us.
Any message for our readers
I wrote this book for a number of reasons; but one of the primary reasons is that I couldn’t relate to business books about huge businesses like Shoe Dog about Nike (which I loved) and That Will Never Work about Netflix (which I also loved). The whole time I was reading them I also knew that my company would never grow as large as those did. So the books, while very entertaining, also felt “distant” in a way.
I wanted to write a book to inspire and provide some guidance to “the rest of us”. Business owners and entrepreneurs that work so hard every day, put everything they have into their companies, but also know that they’ll never be the next Elon Musk or Bill Gates. Still, en masse, they are the backbone of American industry.
And I wanted to be brutally honest about just how difficult the entrepreneurial journey is. There is simply so much that can’t be learned in school or in books. I try to expose people to some of that by “dragging them” into my doubts, fears, and insecurities rather than just pretending that my journey was a straight line to success.
Story
This really is a book of stories so it’s hard for me to propose just one. So here are couple:
● When things were most dire, I would eat Chick-fil-A in my car and worry about my dwindling savings, fantasize about moving back to the East Coast to run away from my embarrassment, and even think about some people I knew who were convicted of Ponzi schemes and almost relating to them in my darkest places
● The incredible stress of my company being acquired while COVID was raging, the stock market was cratering, and everyone was being sent home from work
● The horrible disappointment I felt when a large private equity company pulled out of proposed financing deal – and the shame in knowing that I was not only disappointed for the business but also because of the blow to my ego. (not sure if you wanted excerpts but this one is below)
It struck me at the time that making a deal with a private equity company is a lot like closing a contract with government. It takes dozens of people to say “yes” and approve the deal. But it only takes one to say “no” and destroy the deal completely. And in this case, I didn’t even get to meet the person destroying the deal. But the investor was spooked, and we were done.
Despite my concerns about the about the offer and the concerning details that came up in the negotiations, it felt like a gut punch when the discussions ended. And I was devastated. In addition to the immense distraction of it all, the ego rollercoaster was brutal. It felt like people really liked me when they met me, but they would pull away the more they got to know me. I took this really hard. As much as I wanted the investment, I think I wanted the personal and professional validation just as much. I wasn’t getting any at home (I was separated from my wife by this time), and this just felt like another round of rejection and personal rebukes.
Hurt, I decided I needed a break. So I instructed David, our banker, to keep responding to incoming calls but to tell any interested PEs that we were not seeking any funding at the time. This way I could keep them on the hook but not waste any more time. More importantly, I could give myself a little time to recover.
About the Author
Jon has provided strategic consulting to many of the world’s largest technology companies, a nationally recognized expert in government fraud, and an active mentor for aspiring entrepreneurs
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