Finally, a Dream Bigger Than: "Google, Please, Buy Me!"

Finally, a Dream Bigger Than: “Google, Please, Buy Me!”

By Andrew Freiburghouse, Edgelings NYC Bureau Chief

It took me three months, but I finally found one: an entrepreneur who’s dreaming bigger than being bought out by a bigger company. Imagine that: an entrepreneur who wants to lead his team to an IPO, and truly believes he can. His name is Ron Bouganim, and he’s the founder of branchnext Inc.

Yesterday in the lime-green lounge at the Shoreham Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Ron and I sat down and talked for an hour about why he’s still working 120 hour weeks, away from his family (including his two-year old son) traveling from city to city, pitching a new search service with the goofy name of “Yotify,” and taking on the seemingly impossible task of challenging Google in the search market. . .and doing so in spite of the fact that Bouganim is rich enough not to work at all.

I remembered guys like this, from my time out in Silicon Valley. I’d been missing them.

That energy. There’s nothing like it, really. It’s almost superhuman.

Founded in early 2007, branchnext has so far developed two products: a “portfolio of widgets” (first time in human history those two words have ever gone together?) and Yotify, a “web scout” service that searches the Internet for you while you sleep (or eat, or drive, or whatever) and then sends you an email with the results. Yotify also has an interesting social, Facebook-style aspect.

Interesting projects, no doubt, but can you make any money off them? Ron thinks he can, but wouldn’t say exactly how, only that possession of an accurate and detailed profile of what users want and when they want it inherently has value — so, think Max Levchin and Slide.

For instance, supposed I search for Jason Mraz concert tickets on Yotify. They’re basically impossible to find, but maybe in six months, when Mraz comes to town again, Yotify will notify me (or, in this case, “yotify” me). And then Yotify will take a commission for its troubles — and patience.

Right now, branchnext has a team of six: Five engineers stationed in Omaha (!) and Ron, the business guy, out in San Francisco. Six dudes and a dream. Ron is convinced that branchext can become a billion dollar company–quickly. When I asked him if he could envision taking the company public, he said, “It certainly seems like it’s going that way.”

I’d found an entrepreneur dreaming bigger than, “Google, please, buy me!”

Finally. And after more than two years of looking.

And all of this from a guy whose service, should it gain traction, is a prime target for purchasing by Google, or Yahoo, or Microsoft. As an experienced businessman, Ron’s not ruling that out — he’s sold companies to bigger companies before and so have his two main partners, Doug Durham and Steve West. They wouldn’t reject Google out of hand, if Google came knocking.

But they’re neither planning on nor waiting for that knock. That attitude makes them very different from most of the entrepreneurs I’ve talked to lately, who seem to see being being acquired as the only end goal these days for an Internet startup –while remaining independent and listing on NASDAQ and being a real part of business history is a chimera, a unicorn with a rainbow mane; that is, so 1990s.

Not Ron Bougamin. His strategy is a breath of fresh air, a reminder of the days when Internet entrepreneurs thought a team of six dudes and a dream was enough to go all the way to selling stock right up next to Home Depot and Cisco, and just as worthy.

With zero venture capital-backed tech IPOs in Q2, and only one in Q3 (Rackspace, which tanked), it’s not hard to see why an entrepreneur with dreams as big as Ron’s is like tracking the last of an endangered species. I’ve seriously been looking for three months. And I don’t know if I’ll see another one in the next three months. Or even in the next three years. Especially not one like Ron, who actually has a chance to make good on his outrageous hype.

And it’s going to be a lot sadder than a species going extinct, if the entrepreneur dreaming of taking a tiny company public disappears forever. Because when the Rons of the world disappear, they will take with them our dreams.