As an entrepreneur, Mike Apgar is well known on the Seattle scene. Together with his wife, Gretchen, and his brother, Tyler, he opened the Speakeasy Cafe in Belltown in 1995 – the first cyber cafe to enter the local market. That was the modest beginning for what grew into a national ISP before being purchased by Best Buy. Today, Speakeasy is one of the nation's leading broadband voice (VoIP), data and IT service providers.

Not surprisingly, Mike began another venture, Ookla Technologies, in 2006... but left some folks puzzled and scratching their heads when he moved his family to Kalispell, MT soon after that. So how does he manage to run a startup long-distance? And just what is he doing?

We asked these questions for the latest installment in our series of Q&As at PR Pro*pul*sion. Here's what he had to say:

1) You grew Speakeasy from a mom-and-pop Internet cafe in Seattle to a national service provider. Based on this experience, what's the one piece of advice you could share with other entrepreneurs who hope to take their companies from the local to the national level?

I would ask yourself the question "Why?," and make sure you're comfortable with the answer before you take that step. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of satisfying their egos and try to "go national" without considering the benefits of focusing on doing everything they can do locally before making that risky leap. For most businesses, they have local advantages that won't translate on a national scale: understanding the social and business culture, personal and professional relationships, synergies with other local businesses, being a "local story" to the press... the list goes on and on and most, if not all of those, won't be working for you when you try to reach beyond your region. Prove you can dominate locally, build that foundation fully and be prepared to fall back on it entirely before you take the expensive step of branching out. When the time comes, soften your target by test marketing in another city in an entirely different region and you'll quickly learn a lot of lessons that will help you plan a much more efficient and successful national effort. Among the obvious exceptions would be ASPs or those companies where a local physical presence is unnecessary and/or service/product fulfillment and distribution has the same cost and process at a national or international scale.

2) You've opted to run your latest venture, Ookla Technologies, from Kalispell, Montana. Have you faced any unusual challenges due to your choice of location?

Our company is about as virtual as you can get while being more than just an idea. Since we have scaled our software development and technical functions using a work -from-home model, location hasn't mattered. We each require a reliable Internet connection. but outside of that, location is irrelevant. What has been important with regard to location is making a point of getting together in person at least 3-4 times each year, with occasional one-on-one visits to complement. The quality of communication that occurs in our planning and strategy discussions when we're together in one room results in a level of productivity that, in our experience, is impossible to replicate strictly through online methods. We get 90% of our work done by working virtually, but 90% of our corporate and product development discussions and strategy decisions are accomplished in person. I have had my team visit me in Montana many times, and we always find time to either hit the slopes, get out on the lake or do some off-roading. In that respect, this has been an especially great place to run the business as my team members are always eager to visit.

3) The Ookla Speed Test is quickly coming up to the one billion user mark. Where do you go from here with it -- or is Speed Test just a simple tool that doesn't need any amplification to maintain its popularity?

We plan to go to 2 Billion, then 5, then 10.... The Ookla Speed Test has become the global standard with nearly 600,000 daily users enjoying free and accurate broadband throughput testing in less than 20 seconds to any of the over 350 servers worldwide. In this respect, we don't have a reason to change! The success of this property has led to many organizations licensing our technology in order to have a branded Speed Test on their own server(s).

Much like the Line Quality Test we offer at www.ookla.com, we plan to launch an additional testing application site that does more than basic throughput testing. Before the end of the year this site (also free) will allow anyone in the world to test their broadband connection for latency, jitter and other line attributes important to applications such as VoIP and telecommuting.

I believe the reason Speedtest.net is popular is due to the attractive but highly utilitarian and efficient nature of its interface, combined with the fact that it is free, fast and accurate. One of the business rules we have at Ookla is to exceed the expectations of our users and customers at every interaction. While I think we have done that with our licensed products and at Speedtest.net, we look forward to doing much more in the future. Thank you for your interest and please stay tuned!

-posted by Rachel

Tags: mikeapgar, speakeasy, ookla, speedtest