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September 13, 2010 by Angela Shupe | 0 Comments

Some say you just need to win once to be successful but, unfortunately, that win doesn’t always happen on the first try. For some entrepreneurs, like Elie D. Ashery, it can happen on the second or even third attempt reports Tomas Heath for The Washington Post.

He is president and chief executive of Gold Lasso, a Gaithersburg-based technology firm that develops personalized e-mail to help companies sell more and associations recruit new members.

Gold Lasso [...] began with a $5 purchase.

Ashery and a buddy, Michael Weisel, were doing technology consulting for a company that owned self-storage units when they heard that some unclaimed computer equipment left in one of the units would be auctioned off. They went to the auction, bid $5 for the equipment and hauled it home.

Ashery and Weisel spent the next five months selling the hardware on eBay for $8,000. They used the money to hire a computer programmer to build a prototype that would computerize many of the manual marketing systems Ashery had used to find customers on Newsletters.com.

“Before, associations might recruit members by offering them gifts and writing them letters. The association would send a prospective member a form, ask them to fill it out and send it back. We decided to do it by e-mail.”

The company’s first year of operations was 2006, and Ashery started trolling association meetings, pitching companies on his new software. His first big “get” came at an industry forum where associations exchanged ideas on marketing techniques and member recruitment and retention. Ashery gave a 10-minute presentation in a meeting room and caught the attention of the chief marketer for the D.C.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the largest associations in the United States.

“Once I saw him interested, I didn’t take no for an answer,” Ashery said. “I followed up, asked if I can come by and told him he didn’t have anything to lose.” After a couple of meetings, several phone calls and a live test of Gold Lasso software, the science association signed a contract that has grown significantly.

The company is growing at a steady pace with several big contracts in the pipeline, including one that could more than double revenue by next year.