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August 17, 2010, 7:00 am Bootstrapping a Start-Up in Silicon Valley
By ADRIANA GARDELLA
Laura Pedrick for The New York Times Elizabeth Charnock
Burned by a previous experience running a venture-capital-backed technology start-up, Elizabeth Charnock vowed to do things differently the next time. Despite challenges, Ms. Charnock, 43, is now making good on her promise as chief executive and founder of Cataphora, a bootstrapped, 60-employee firm that makes software used to track and analyze computer users’ online activity and communications.
So far, the company, founded in 2002 and based in Redwood Shores, Calif., has focused on gathering evidence for lawsuits and internal corporate investigations — such as unearthing incriminating patterns in an employee’s e-mailed communications. Now, Cataphora is entering the consumer market with Digital Mirror, software that allows its users to manage and optimize their online identities. Ms. Charnock, author of “E-Habits: What You Must do to Optimize Your Professional Digital Presence,” recently explained that diversifying on a shoestring is just the latest test for her company. A condensed version of the conversation follows.
Q. Why were you determined to forego venture capital?
Ms. Charnock: I had a very bad experience as C.E.O. of Troba, a venture-backed company founded in 1999, during the tech bubble. After the bubble burst, the V.C. who sat on our board left the V.C. firm. Subsequently, the firm indicated that it would not put more money into Troba, scaring off other potential investors. We had to sell the company in a fire sale, taking it bankrupt while solvent. This time around, I wanted to gain real operating experience and be employee-owned. So I said, “Let’s see if we can bootstrap.”
Q. Can you?
Ms. Charnock: Yes, though there have been more challenges than I thought there would be. We’re financed solely with revenue, which is in the low eight-figure range, and sweat equity. For the first year and a half, none of our 13 employees received a paycheck — including my husband, who is chief technology officer. Some lived off their savings, some did other work on the side or lived with their parents. Even now, I — and most of the employees — continually work 80-hour weeks.
Q. What’s been the hardest thing about bootstrapping?
Ms. Charnock: Here in Silicon Valley, everyone assumes that larger start-ups are venture-backed and swimming in money — and all of their expectations are set accordingly. Many people expect inflated salaries and to get rich quick — often without their start-up having earned any appreciable amount of revenue. Even very smart, senior people have been known to ask me, “When do you run out of money?” I then have to explain that real businesses don’t run out of money. They go make more.
Q. What can you offer employees?
Ms. Charnock: At least two things: equity and a great learning opportunity. The employees own virtually 100 percent of the company (there are a few advisers who are also shareholders and I myself own only a fairly modest fraction of it). So, everyone is a shareholder — or at least an option holder. And while I couldn’t promise success, especially in the early days, I did promise that everyone who joined would learn far more, far faster here than they could elsewhere. Still, we do have a hard time finding experienced managers here in Silicon Valley. Most of our managers are homegrown, and we’ve had to teach them to be managers.
Q. How do you do that?
Ms. Charnock: Large amounts of personal mentoring. Arguably, a lot of my time that would have gone toward dealing with investors went instead toward mentoring. We also allow people to take on tasks they’re not quite ready for with the knowledge that mistakes will be made and that we can live with, or correct, them.
Q. Why would you be willing to work so hard and take so much risk for only a modest fraction of ownership? Isn’t preserving equity one of the main reasons people choose to bootstrap?
Ms. Charnock: I still have more equity than I’d have had I gone the venture route — and much more satisfaction. The equity that otherwise would have gone to investors went to employees. I also believed that this route was likelier to succeed, increasing the probability that the stock has value in the end. So I think it is more medium term sacrifice but less risk. And I have learned vastly more from it.
Preserving equity is important to us collectively: we want to all get rich together.
Q. Has being in control lived up to your expectations?
Ms. Charnock: The employees and I control our destiny far, far more than would have been possible under the V.C. model. We have often made choices to build longer term value that would have been much harder to rationalize within the constraints of a model that is looking for a quicker, if lesser, return. I’ve often noticed that when venture-backed companies flounder or fail, no one feels responsible. The C.E.O. blames the investors; the investors blame the C.E.O. In our situation, we know that we need to make it work.
Q. Why have you decided to go into the consumer market?
Ms. Charnock: If you delight consumers, you can quickly grow your business. We have great government and corporate clients. But helping companies respond to subpoenas isn’t really a technology play. Our technology is broader than that. My V.C. friends ask why we’re still doing the legal stuff, and I have to explain that we need to pay the bills. We have to plan for the future while dealing with the world we’re in.
Q. What are your ultimate plans for Cataphora?
Ms. Charnock: Our long-term goal is to go public. So, if and when later stage capital is appropriate to the needs of the business, we would certainly take it.
Q. What do your V.C.-funded friends think of what you’re doing?
Ms. Charnock: They alternate between envy, awe, disbelief, and thinking that I am totally crazy.
What Exactly Is a Social Entrepreneur?
By JAY GOLTZ
I understand social. I understand entrepreneur. But when you put the two words together, I have to pause.
I pause because I wonder whether social entrepreneur is really entrepreneurship the way I understand it — where a business owner takes risk in the hope of making money. I guess my question is this: If it’s mostly about the social good, what makes it entrepreneurship? And if it’s mostly about the entrepreneurship, what makes it social? Isn’t the phrase an oxymoron?
I understand that there’s nothing new about social entrepreneurship. I guess I’ve had these slightly vague questions about the term for some time, but I have never given it much thought, because I’ve been consumed with the other kind of entrepreneurship — the kind where you spend most of your energy trying to solve your own problems, not those of society.
But I’ve met someone recently who has given me reason to reconsider. His name is Seth Weinberger, and for 25 years he was a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown and a member of its global information technology practice. Today, he is also the founder of Innovations for Learning and the developer of its first software programs and the TeacherMate handheld computer.
The story starts 18 years ago in Evanston, Ill. Mr. Weinberger and his wife were having a problem finding a suitable preschool for their son. They and six other families decided to start their own. At this point, Mr. Weinberger was not yet an entrepreneur, but he clearly was a problem solver. Along with painting and cleaning, he took on the self-appointed task of getting some computers and software for the school.
He went to Best Buy and searched through the “edutainment” programs. What he found was far more entertainment than education. No problem. He was sure that he was just looking in the wrong place and reached out to people in the academic world to figure out where to go. But he was surprised to discover that almost everyone he talked to knew of some attempt to bring computer-aided instruction to the schools that had ended in frustration and failure. No one he spoke to knew of an attempt that had succeeded.
But Mr. Weinberger had an idea — again, not an entrepreneurial idea but a solution. One of his legal clients was in the business of producing “shoot-em-up” computer games; perhaps the client would be able to write the software he needed. In fact, the client was able to help, and the company wrote a prototype program that allowed kids to practice basic phonic skills. Mr. Weinberger took the program and showed it to some faculty at an inner city school near Cabrini Green, a public housing project in Chicago that was well known for its violence and deplorable living conditions.
The teachers loved it. They were in desperate need of help, and they were very appreciative. Mr. Weinberger knew he was on to something and eagerly reported the success back to his client. The response from the client was clear: “This is not the beginning, this is the end. There is no money in educational software. You are on your own.” This is when, for Mr. Weinberger, the social began to meet the entrepreneur.
The passion for this project came from the social side; the entrepreneurial part came out of necessity. He was still a lawyer at a major firm, but he worked on coding the software programs from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. He raised money. Slowly, he made progress. This went on for 12 years.
One of the turning points came when he realized that he had gotten the software to work but that the hardware in the schools was too unreliable to use. He needed a total solution, and by this time the technology was moving toward handheld devices. First he tried to find a manufacturer that already made handheld units to partner with him, but nothing panned out.
Eventually, he fully embraced entrepreneurship and contracted with a company in China to make a handheld device that would be inexpensive and run the software. It worked. He got it in 12 schools in Chicago, serving 300 kids. Before long, it was in 200 schools in Chicago. It is now serving 40,000 children in 35 states. (Which is still less than 1 percent of the market).
At this point, things finally began to come together. He had something tangible that worked, and everyone could see both the value and the opportunity. He has gotten major grants from foundations and companies, including JPMorgan Chase Foundation, which has given him $500,000 thus far and has connected him with the Urban Education Exchange, a New York nonprofit that is focused on reading comprehension; and Teach For America, which will use TeacherMate in kindergarten, first-grade and second-grade classes in Phoenix and Chicago this year.
Is Mr. Weinberger doing social good? Obviously. Is he an entrepreneur? Well, he’s not taking financial risk, and he’s not making any money off of this venture. But he clearly has passion, vision, tenacity, and the ability to solve problems. And he’s capable of manic behavior. Sounds like an entrepreneur to me.
But whatever you call him, I take my hat off to him. It has been a long and difficult journey, and the road ahead looks no easier and no shorter.
FreshDirect’s Lesson: The Price of Bad Service
By YOU'RE THE BOSS EDITORS
The case study we published last week recounted growing pains at FreshDirect, an online grocer that was already in a heap of trouble — hemorrhaging money and churning through customers — when an immigration audit decimated its work force in late 2007. Written by Jessica Bruder, the article looked at FreshDirect’s struggle to reinvent itself and buck the conventional wisdom that Internet grocers cannot win profits.
For two years, FreshDirect stopped soliciting new customers to work on better serving its existing patrons. That strategy seems to have paid off: A loyal core of repeat customers — about 45,000 to 50,000 in all — now generates two-thirds of the company’s revenue. Richard S. Braddock, chief executive, reports that the company had its first profitable year in 2009 on revenue of $250 million and he expects the company’s 2010 revenues will rise to $300 million.
The lesson? “It really costs a lot of money to give bad service,” Mr. Braddock said.
Now that FreshDirect has a firm foothold in the tri-state area, Mr. Braddock said he planned to renew the company’s focus on growth. He is seeking $75 million from investors to finance expansion into a new East Coast market next year. The cities under consideration are Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. From there, he’d like to see the company go national. (That scares Ron Lieber, The Times’s Your Money columnist and a FreshDirect customer.)
In a brief interview, Mr. Braddock addressed some of the concerns raised by readers who commented on the case study:
Q. How big can FreshDirect get?
Mr. Braddock: Our objective is to cover the 25 largest food markets in the country in as short a time as possible. Assuming that Internet sales win 10 percent of total grocery purchases over time, we think there’s a potential market out there with $25 to $35 billion in revenue.
Q. How can FreshDirect make money serving suburbs and other markets that aren’t as densely populated as New York?
Mr. Braddock: Delivery costs are only modestly higher in the suburbs. There are some negatives — longer drives and tolls — but there are also some positives. For example, delivery is easier. We only need one driver in a truck serving the suburb versus two in the city. In the city we park and do multiple deliveries outside the truck. That takes two people. In the suburbs, you basically drive up someone’s driveway. A single delivery person can do it.
The suburbs also have a higher average order size. That’s possibly because people are a little more well-to-do but also because there’s a higher ratio of families to singles. That’s why the suburbs will always be an attractive part of our business.
We just finished our fourth year in the Hamptons. Our volume grew by 40 percent and our average order size was $260.
Q. Labor leaders accused FreshDirect of calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2007 to prompt an employee audit and disrupt an upcoming union vote. Did that happen?
Mr. Braddock: Of course not. I.C.E. issued a public statement saying we had not called them. It was the union cooking that up, as they cooked up many other things.
It’s always sort of painful to hear customers cross us off because of what they have heard about the unions. We’ve created almost 2,000 jobs since we’ve been here in New York. In 2007, the union did in fact force an election in our plant and lost four to one.
If you go around our plant, the employees are happy. We have people with three or four family members working for us. We’re growing, we’re hiring and that’s the reason the unions want to unionize us. They see growth, they see job creation and they just want the dues.
The audit was my saddest moment at FreshDirect. We lost 200 employees, some of our best. People were crying in the plant. It almost ended our business. I wrote to [Mayor] Bloomberg. I wrote to [Senator] Schumer. I wrote to The New York Times. I was irate. I wrote to say this immigration thing is completely out of control. I said, “I’m ashamed of my country for what we’re putting these people through.”
Q. What’s your take on U.S. immigration policy?
Mr. Braddock: I think we have an obligation to fix it. Somehow on our watch 12 million people came into this country. It’s not fair that they’re in here illegally. It’s not right that we let them in. A comprehensive fix has to start with very stringent border control and some path to citizenship that is not automatic.
I don’t think it’s fair to put the burden on companies. We’re not supposed to be the policemen. Then you’re finding them, and then you’re turning them over to someone who’s going to throw them out of the country, and there’s no chance for them to become citizens. It’s not right and it’s not fair.
Several of the employees we lost in the raid have come back to us. They’ve established their bonafides. We don’t know the process, but they came back and they had real papers. So we naturally took them back because they were great employees.
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com
By ADRIANA GARDELLA
Laura Pedrick for The New York Times Elizabeth Charnock
Burned by a previous experience running a venture-capital-backed technology start-up, Elizabeth Charnock vowed to do things differently the next time. Despite challenges, Ms. Charnock, 43, is now making good on her promise as chief executive and founder of Cataphora, a bootstrapped, 60-employee firm that makes software used to track and analyze computer users’ online activity and communications.
So far, the company, founded in 2002 and based in Redwood Shores, Calif., has focused on gathering evidence for lawsuits and internal corporate investigations — such as unearthing incriminating patterns in an employee’s e-mailed communications. Now, Cataphora is entering the consumer market with Digital Mirror, software that allows its users to manage and optimize their online identities. Ms. Charnock, author of “E-Habits: What You Must do to Optimize Your Professional Digital Presence,” recently explained that diversifying on a shoestring is just the latest test for her company. A condensed version of the conversation follows.
Q. Why were you determined to forego venture capital?
Ms. Charnock: I had a very bad experience as C.E.O. of Troba, a venture-backed company founded in 1999, during the tech bubble. After the bubble burst, the V.C. who sat on our board left the V.C. firm. Subsequently, the firm indicated that it would not put more money into Troba, scaring off other potential investors. We had to sell the company in a fire sale, taking it bankrupt while solvent. This time around, I wanted to gain real operating experience and be employee-owned. So I said, “Let’s see if we can bootstrap.”
Q. Can you?
Ms. Charnock: Yes, though there have been more challenges than I thought there would be. We’re financed solely with revenue, which is in the low eight-figure range, and sweat equity. For the first year and a half, none of our 13 employees received a paycheck — including my husband, who is chief technology officer. Some lived off their savings, some did other work on the side or lived with their parents. Even now, I — and most of the employees — continually work 80-hour weeks.
Q. What’s been the hardest thing about bootstrapping?
Ms. Charnock: Here in Silicon Valley, everyone assumes that larger start-ups are venture-backed and swimming in money — and all of their expectations are set accordingly. Many people expect inflated salaries and to get rich quick — often without their start-up having earned any appreciable amount of revenue. Even very smart, senior people have been known to ask me, “When do you run out of money?” I then have to explain that real businesses don’t run out of money. They go make more.
Q. What can you offer employees?
Ms. Charnock: At least two things: equity and a great learning opportunity. The employees own virtually 100 percent of the company (there are a few advisers who are also shareholders and I myself own only a fairly modest fraction of it). So, everyone is a shareholder — or at least an option holder. And while I couldn’t promise success, especially in the early days, I did promise that everyone who joined would learn far more, far faster here than they could elsewhere. Still, we do have a hard time finding experienced managers here in Silicon Valley. Most of our managers are homegrown, and we’ve had to teach them to be managers.
Q. How do you do that?
Ms. Charnock: Large amounts of personal mentoring. Arguably, a lot of my time that would have gone toward dealing with investors went instead toward mentoring. We also allow people to take on tasks they’re not quite ready for with the knowledge that mistakes will be made and that we can live with, or correct, them.
Q. Why would you be willing to work so hard and take so much risk for only a modest fraction of ownership? Isn’t preserving equity one of the main reasons people choose to bootstrap?
Ms. Charnock: I still have more equity than I’d have had I gone the venture route — and much more satisfaction. The equity that otherwise would have gone to investors went to employees. I also believed that this route was likelier to succeed, increasing the probability that the stock has value in the end. So I think it is more medium term sacrifice but less risk. And I have learned vastly more from it.
Preserving equity is important to us collectively: we want to all get rich together.
Q. Has being in control lived up to your expectations?
Ms. Charnock: The employees and I control our destiny far, far more than would have been possible under the V.C. model. We have often made choices to build longer term value that would have been much harder to rationalize within the constraints of a model that is looking for a quicker, if lesser, return. I’ve often noticed that when venture-backed companies flounder or fail, no one feels responsible. The C.E.O. blames the investors; the investors blame the C.E.O. In our situation, we know that we need to make it work.
Q. Why have you decided to go into the consumer market?
Ms. Charnock: If you delight consumers, you can quickly grow your business. We have great government and corporate clients. But helping companies respond to subpoenas isn’t really a technology play. Our technology is broader than that. My V.C. friends ask why we’re still doing the legal stuff, and I have to explain that we need to pay the bills. We have to plan for the future while dealing with the world we’re in.
Q. What are your ultimate plans for Cataphora?
Ms. Charnock: Our long-term goal is to go public. So, if and when later stage capital is appropriate to the needs of the business, we would certainly take it.
Q. What do your V.C.-funded friends think of what you’re doing?
Ms. Charnock: They alternate between envy, awe, disbelief, and thinking that I am totally crazy.
What Exactly Is a Social Entrepreneur?
By JAY GOLTZ
I understand social. I understand entrepreneur. But when you put the two words together, I have to pause.
I pause because I wonder whether social entrepreneur is really entrepreneurship the way I understand it — where a business owner takes risk in the hope of making money. I guess my question is this: If it’s mostly about the social good, what makes it entrepreneurship? And if it’s mostly about the entrepreneurship, what makes it social? Isn’t the phrase an oxymoron?
I understand that there’s nothing new about social entrepreneurship. I guess I’ve had these slightly vague questions about the term for some time, but I have never given it much thought, because I’ve been consumed with the other kind of entrepreneurship — the kind where you spend most of your energy trying to solve your own problems, not those of society.
But I’ve met someone recently who has given me reason to reconsider. His name is Seth Weinberger, and for 25 years he was a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown and a member of its global information technology practice. Today, he is also the founder of Innovations for Learning and the developer of its first software programs and the TeacherMate handheld computer.
The story starts 18 years ago in Evanston, Ill. Mr. Weinberger and his wife were having a problem finding a suitable preschool for their son. They and six other families decided to start their own. At this point, Mr. Weinberger was not yet an entrepreneur, but he clearly was a problem solver. Along with painting and cleaning, he took on the self-appointed task of getting some computers and software for the school.
He went to Best Buy and searched through the “edutainment” programs. What he found was far more entertainment than education. No problem. He was sure that he was just looking in the wrong place and reached out to people in the academic world to figure out where to go. But he was surprised to discover that almost everyone he talked to knew of some attempt to bring computer-aided instruction to the schools that had ended in frustration and failure. No one he spoke to knew of an attempt that had succeeded.
But Mr. Weinberger had an idea — again, not an entrepreneurial idea but a solution. One of his legal clients was in the business of producing “shoot-em-up” computer games; perhaps the client would be able to write the software he needed. In fact, the client was able to help, and the company wrote a prototype program that allowed kids to practice basic phonic skills. Mr. Weinberger took the program and showed it to some faculty at an inner city school near Cabrini Green, a public housing project in Chicago that was well known for its violence and deplorable living conditions.
The teachers loved it. They were in desperate need of help, and they were very appreciative. Mr. Weinberger knew he was on to something and eagerly reported the success back to his client. The response from the client was clear: “This is not the beginning, this is the end. There is no money in educational software. You are on your own.” This is when, for Mr. Weinberger, the social began to meet the entrepreneur.
The passion for this project came from the social side; the entrepreneurial part came out of necessity. He was still a lawyer at a major firm, but he worked on coding the software programs from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. He raised money. Slowly, he made progress. This went on for 12 years.
One of the turning points came when he realized that he had gotten the software to work but that the hardware in the schools was too unreliable to use. He needed a total solution, and by this time the technology was moving toward handheld devices. First he tried to find a manufacturer that already made handheld units to partner with him, but nothing panned out.
Eventually, he fully embraced entrepreneurship and contracted with a company in China to make a handheld device that would be inexpensive and run the software. It worked. He got it in 12 schools in Chicago, serving 300 kids. Before long, it was in 200 schools in Chicago. It is now serving 40,000 children in 35 states. (Which is still less than 1 percent of the market).
At this point, things finally began to come together. He had something tangible that worked, and everyone could see both the value and the opportunity. He has gotten major grants from foundations and companies, including JPMorgan Chase Foundation, which has given him $500,000 thus far and has connected him with the Urban Education Exchange, a New York nonprofit that is focused on reading comprehension; and Teach For America, which will use TeacherMate in kindergarten, first-grade and second-grade classes in Phoenix and Chicago this year.
Is Mr. Weinberger doing social good? Obviously. Is he an entrepreneur? Well, he’s not taking financial risk, and he’s not making any money off of this venture. But he clearly has passion, vision, tenacity, and the ability to solve problems. And he’s capable of manic behavior. Sounds like an entrepreneur to me.
But whatever you call him, I take my hat off to him. It has been a long and difficult journey, and the road ahead looks no easier and no shorter.
FreshDirect’s Lesson: The Price of Bad Service
By YOU'RE THE BOSS EDITORS
The case study we published last week recounted growing pains at FreshDirect, an online grocer that was already in a heap of trouble — hemorrhaging money and churning through customers — when an immigration audit decimated its work force in late 2007. Written by Jessica Bruder, the article looked at FreshDirect’s struggle to reinvent itself and buck the conventional wisdom that Internet grocers cannot win profits.
For two years, FreshDirect stopped soliciting new customers to work on better serving its existing patrons. That strategy seems to have paid off: A loyal core of repeat customers — about 45,000 to 50,000 in all — now generates two-thirds of the company’s revenue. Richard S. Braddock, chief executive, reports that the company had its first profitable year in 2009 on revenue of $250 million and he expects the company’s 2010 revenues will rise to $300 million.
The lesson? “It really costs a lot of money to give bad service,” Mr. Braddock said.
Now that FreshDirect has a firm foothold in the tri-state area, Mr. Braddock said he planned to renew the company’s focus on growth. He is seeking $75 million from investors to finance expansion into a new East Coast market next year. The cities under consideration are Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. From there, he’d like to see the company go national. (That scares Ron Lieber, The Times’s Your Money columnist and a FreshDirect customer.)
In a brief interview, Mr. Braddock addressed some of the concerns raised by readers who commented on the case study:
Q. How big can FreshDirect get?
Mr. Braddock: Our objective is to cover the 25 largest food markets in the country in as short a time as possible. Assuming that Internet sales win 10 percent of total grocery purchases over time, we think there’s a potential market out there with $25 to $35 billion in revenue.
Q. How can FreshDirect make money serving suburbs and other markets that aren’t as densely populated as New York?
Mr. Braddock: Delivery costs are only modestly higher in the suburbs. There are some negatives — longer drives and tolls — but there are also some positives. For example, delivery is easier. We only need one driver in a truck serving the suburb versus two in the city. In the city we park and do multiple deliveries outside the truck. That takes two people. In the suburbs, you basically drive up someone’s driveway. A single delivery person can do it.
The suburbs also have a higher average order size. That’s possibly because people are a little more well-to-do but also because there’s a higher ratio of families to singles. That’s why the suburbs will always be an attractive part of our business.
We just finished our fourth year in the Hamptons. Our volume grew by 40 percent and our average order size was $260.
Q. Labor leaders accused FreshDirect of calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2007 to prompt an employee audit and disrupt an upcoming union vote. Did that happen?
Mr. Braddock: Of course not. I.C.E. issued a public statement saying we had not called them. It was the union cooking that up, as they cooked up many other things.
It’s always sort of painful to hear customers cross us off because of what they have heard about the unions. We’ve created almost 2,000 jobs since we’ve been here in New York. In 2007, the union did in fact force an election in our plant and lost four to one.
If you go around our plant, the employees are happy. We have people with three or four family members working for us. We’re growing, we’re hiring and that’s the reason the unions want to unionize us. They see growth, they see job creation and they just want the dues.
The audit was my saddest moment at FreshDirect. We lost 200 employees, some of our best. People were crying in the plant. It almost ended our business. I wrote to [Mayor] Bloomberg. I wrote to [Senator] Schumer. I wrote to The New York Times. I was irate. I wrote to say this immigration thing is completely out of control. I said, “I’m ashamed of my country for what we’re putting these people through.”
Q. What’s your take on U.S. immigration policy?
Mr. Braddock: I think we have an obligation to fix it. Somehow on our watch 12 million people came into this country. It’s not fair that they’re in here illegally. It’s not right that we let them in. A comprehensive fix has to start with very stringent border control and some path to citizenship that is not automatic.
I don’t think it’s fair to put the burden on companies. We’re not supposed to be the policemen. Then you’re finding them, and then you’re turning them over to someone who’s going to throw them out of the country, and there’s no chance for them to become citizens. It’s not right and it’s not fair.
Several of the employees we lost in the raid have come back to us. They’ve established their bonafides. We don’t know the process, but they came back and they had real papers. So we naturally took them back because they were great employees.
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com