I’m Ben Saren, Co-Founder and CEO of CitySquares, a local search company headquartered in Boston’s South End. CitySquares is a neighborhood guide, specializing in providing small businesses with online exposure in a hyper-local (neighborhood) context. I co-founded the company with my friend Bob Leland. This is my professional blog, Your Suspect, where I talk about various entrepreneurial topics, as well as local search, startup life, the life of CitySquares and of a CEO and entrepreneur. (Why I called it Your Suspect)
CitySquares was formed out of my very own need for something like this. As a resident of Davis Square, in Somerville, MA, I frequently found myself frustrated by the lack of available online information for places, mainly businesses, in my community. This frustration actually goes back to the late 90’s, right around the time Sidewalk.com was acquired by Citysearch.
Prior to CitySquares I ran another company called Atomic Enterprises, which was an organically grown and profitable company that started in a spare bedroom. Atomic was a service business with a handful of employees and dozens of contractors nationwide. We helped SMEs (small and medium size enterprises, mostly B2B) get with technology. That ranged from tel/data infrastructure and cabling projects in high rises for global companies like Tisham Speyer Properties in Boston and NYC, to LAN, WAN, VPN, implementation and management for small neighborhood businesses. We also offered new media services that helped these same businesses, as well as others, get on the web, and do so correctly. After five year run and some success, but very little personal satisfaction, Atomic was sold in 2005.
Atomic taught me an extraordinary amount about running a small business, being in the trenches, getting my hands dirty, making mistakes, and learning lessons. It also showed me just how much help other small businesses really need when it comes to technology and the Internet. Looking back now, I think that too played a big role in the founding principles of CitySquares.
Before Atomic, I worked at a variety of companies ranging from small and medium sized enterprises, as well as startups, like Delphi Forums, Prospero Technologies, Cambridge Energy Resource Associates, as well as huge multi-nationals like Parametric Technologies Corporation, Bell Atlantic, GE Capital, Digital Equipment Corporation. Ultimately, I hated all of it – hated working for someone else.
That’s been a theme all throughout my life actually. It affected my greatly on the playground, in the classroom, on the ball field, on the street, and on the job. In my younger days I was often called, by various people in positions of power over me, “non-conformist” and “oppositional” and “defiant” among many others. At times this was a huge problem for me – got me into lots of trouble. But I also won’t argue that it’s taught me huge lessons, and I’m here and alive to talk about it. Now I’m running a successful Internet company, and having a blast doing it. Needless to say, I’m still me, but I’ve learned to – conform and obey better, I suppose. (I hate admitting that!)
This blog is largely about entrepreneurship and my perspectives as an entrepreneur and founder on my second business. I strive to be transparent here, offering candid and deep insights to my readers as well as opinions and perspectives. Part of my goal as an entrepreneur is to cultivate more entrepreneurship in my professional network and communities. One way of doing that is through The Founder’s Quandary, a slowly growing website that is by founders and for founders.
As I mentioned earlier, I live in the Davis Square neighborhood of Somerville, MA, with my angel of a wife, Ali. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I probably would be somewhere very different if it wasn’t for her. We share our home with our dog Elmer and two cats.
Outside of all this professional and entrepreneurial stuff, I fancy a great many things including baseball (I’m abig Red Sox fan and season ticket owner), golf, camping and hiking, photography, astronomy, music, and I have a strange obsession with studying the world’s religions, belief systems, and their histories, as well as various metaphysical subject matters.
I also have another blog at bensaren.com. It’s a more personal kind of website, for creative expression, and for talking about politics, pop-culture, art, music, and other things that strike my fancy. It’s not for everyone, then again neither am I.
Thanks for stopping in and reading. Feel free to contact me here.
