Friends and partners continued

	© Nathan Mandell Larry Spear '99 and John Nix '99 of Go2Call.com, a business they began in the MMM program at Kellogg.

Larry Spear ’99 and John Nix ’99
For many students, Kellogg coursework remains an academic exercise — a chance to develop and polish skills in product development, marketing and business-plan writing.

But for Larry Spear ’99 and John Nix ’99, each project was a critical step toward getting their business off the ground.

The two Master of Management and Manufacturing students tapped the expertise of their professors and collaborated with fellow students at every opportunity. The result today: Go2Call.com Inc., a company that enables callers to place local and international telephone calls over the Internet.

The business is among the relatively few Internet ventures to emerge intact from the dot-com shakeout.

“We got lucky,” Spear says. “We took a conservative approach, compared to a lot of Internet companies, in terms of how we spent our money and how quickly we spent it. We had a small team and a small monthly operating budget. We were also fortunate enough to find new investors just as we needed them.”

They also benefited from a working friendship shaped by their shared Kellogg School training.

The two had connected as friends early on during their Kellogg career. “There were only about 60 of us in the MMM program, so you get to know each other really well,” says Nix. But it wasn’t until the spring quarter of their first year, when they teamed on a project for their venture capital class, that they began to consider starting a venture together.

That summer, Nix, who had won the MMM Entrepreneurship Award for a PC-to-phone hardware product he developed that same quarter, invited Spear to join him in developing a business plan around the Internet calling market.

“As I read the industry market-research reports, I thought, ‘This is going to be big,’” Spear recalls. “‘We’re relatively early, there aren’t many competitors and it’s a $100 billion market.’” Intrigued, Spear teamed with Nix on other projects to formulate the business strategy and build a prototype of Go2Call’s Web-based PC-to-phone service.

The two worked together steadily during the remainder of their time at Kellogg. Funding came through the fall after their June 1999 graduation. Go2Call opened for business in December that year.

“Having similar personalities when it comes to risk management helps,” says Spear. “There have been times when we’ve been almost unable to make payroll, but we haven’t gotten stressed out about it. Instead, we just focused on generating sales and closing investments.”

The two balance each other in other ways. Nix, a physicist, focuses on enhancing the company’s technology. Spear, whose background is in engineering and consulting, spends much of his time building the company’s long-term partnerships.

Their complementary styles seem to be paying off. The company is earning $7 million on an annualized basis, and the partners say Go2Call is now breaking even on cash flow.

“Kellogg presents a great opportunity for people who are friends to come up with business ideas and pursue them,” Nix concludes. “You have the training, tools and resources at hand.”