Most of the stories in this series are about wheat, cattle, roads and schools. This one is about work done over the internet. In January 2019 the East Idaho Business Journal, the business pages of the Pocatello-based Idaho State Journal, profiled two southeast Idaho men who had built a business software company: Jacob Andersen of Arbon and Mark Stanger of American Falls. The paper printed the profile again in its March 2019 issue.
Their friendship, the paper said, dated from high school in American Falls, where each was the other's best friend. Both enrolled afterward at Brigham Young University, though they chose different fields: computer science for Andersen, information systems for Stanger. Later the two were employed by ServiceNow, which sold software services to big corporate customers. Andersen told the paper that ServiceNow's plan to sell its stock to the public was their opening. They would build on top of ServiceNow as a partner firm, writing programs that companies could use to run their everyday processes more smoothly.
They launched Crossfuze in 2012. By the paper's account, the name was coined to suggest businesses and their computer systems pulling together. Customers came at first from close by, in southeast Idaho and Utah, but within a short time the firm was serving clients nationwide. More people were hired to keep up, and none of them reported to an office: the whole staff worked from home and met by video.
RLJ Equity Partners, an investment firm, bought controlling ownership of Crossfuze from the founders in the fall of 2018, for a sum that was kept private. Besides its offices in Buffalo, New York, the company then had locations in seven other American cities and six abroad, among them Dublin, Manila and Sydney; by early 2019 it employed more than 500 people in North America, the Philippines, Britain and Europe.
The paper said Andersen had grown up on an alfalfa farm. He remembered feeling "blessed, lucky and fortunate" when the partners sat down with an investment banker for the first time. Stanger had moved on by early 2019 and was putting money into other businesses. Andersen stayed, serving as Crossfuze's chief technology officer. He worked from home in Arbon and expected to travel for the company only a few times a year.
The article does not name his parents. The site's account of Lynn and JoAnn Andersen ends with their son Jacob, the fifth generation of the family in the valley, who carries on farming there; Lynn and JoAnn's children were John, Jenny, Jake, Joe and Janae. The same name, the same town and a farm upbringing make it very probable that the Jacob Andersen of the article is that son, though no source we have read says so in as many words.
The January printing continued on an inside page that was not available to us; the rest of the story here comes from the March reprint, which repeats the January text and carries it to the end. No other newspaper report of the company has been found.
On this site: the Andersen family, the page on Lynn and JoAnn Andersen, and the history of the Arbon area.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, January 22, 2019, page A7, and its reprint in the East Idaho Business Journal of March 2019, page 14. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
RLJ Equity Partners now held a majority of Crossfuze, the business software firm founded in 2012 by Jacob Andersen of Arbon and Mark Stanger of American Falls, both from southeast Idaho, the East Idaho Business Journal reported. The two let go of their controlling share in the fall of 2018 and kept the price to themselves.
By early 2019 the two had taken different paths. Andersen remained with the firm as chief technology officer, and he had not left Arbon: he did his job from his house there and figured company business would take him on the road about four times a year. "Arbon is my home," he told the paper. Stanger, for his part, had stepped away from Crossfuze and turned to investing in other enterprises.
The founders' friendship went back to their school days in American Falls. They overlapped again as students at Brigham Young University, where Andersen majored in computer science and Stanger in information systems, and both then joined ServiceNow, a seller of software services to big corporate clients. Andersen said ServiceNow's move to become a publicly traded company gave the two of them their chance. Their own business would work alongside ServiceNow as a partner, supplying programs that let companies handle everyday processes better. Crossfuze, as the paper explained the name, stood for businesses and their technology operating as one.
Southeast Idaho and Utah supplied the first customers. Clients elsewhere in the country signed on soon after, and as the firm hired, it kept no central workplace; each employee worked from home, and meetings took place by video. In early 2019 its workforce topped 500, spread over the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Britain and other parts of Europe. Its offices were in Buffalo, New York; beyond that it had seven more American locations (Boston, Dallas, New York, Orlando, Salt Lake City, San Diego and Tampa) and six in other countries (Dublin, London, Manila, Ottawa, Sydney and Toronto).
Stanger said the company took off because it paired a solid product with attentive service to customers. For Andersen, who was raised on an alfalfa farm, the partners' first sit-down with an investment banker was the point at which he became convinced the venture had succeeded. The paper reported that, with RLJ behind it, Crossfuze was positioned to become twice as large within five to ten years, and Andersen said the investors meant to commit substantial money to expanding the business.
For anyone hoping to found a company, the two recommended developing real expertise first and then, once the timing was right, accepting the risk and committing.