Wellcom CEO on the difference between founding a company and running a business

David Bridges was practically born into the advertising postproduction industry, where he’d eventually start two companies.

Working for his father’s photo retouching business in Manhattan, Bridges was cleaning airbrushes and water bowls as early as 10. By 12, he was a messenger boy. At 16, he had won the trust of New York City art directors to run his father’s accounts.

“They were friendly and it was exciting,” he told Founder Brew. “And you know, and I’m just some naive kid who’s in the Mad Men-era of advertising.”

That familial immersion into the business world taught Bridges the difference between founding a company and running a successful business.

“The big deal is the execution,” he told Founder Brew. “There are a lot of people with a lot of great ideas that probably could turn into real businesses if they knew how to run a business.”

Those lessons in mind led Bridges to eventually start two companies on the precipice of massive changes in the industry.

A chance meeting after college with his dad’s friend brought him to a Flatiron apartment that hosted a Quadra 650, a 1990s Apple computer, with an early version of Photoshop. The acquaintance needed Bridges’s sales skills, and offered him an equal slice of a new company with three other co-founders—if Bridges could bring in clients.

Bridges agreed and that company, Icon, would become among the first Photoshop-based retouching businesses in New York City. Years later, feeling unfulfilled in the position, Bridges quit.

But, it would only be six months until a burning curiosity around the possibilities of web and mobile advertising drove him to start another venture, thelab, in 2002. In 2014, Australian creative production agency the wellcom group acquired his business. In 2021, he took over as Wellcom Worldwide’s global CEO.

Successful founders can face many transitions over the lifespans of their company. There’s the change from being a founder to running a company, from running a company to being acquired, and even stepping into a different corporate role. Bridges tackled all three and shared his experience in a conversation with Founder Brew.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

What’s the biggest difference between being a founder versus running a company?

Running a business for me is very personal…It’s very much about the balance between being a good leader, being a good motivator, being honest and truthful with people, being totally transparent with people, and being in the work. I think that’s super important.

From a founder level, it’s great to have all of these big ideas and have the vision and set the strategy. But that’s very different than rallying everybody around the strategy and building the right team and getting the right leadership in place and making sure everybody understands their part and their role and how to work together, what’s okay and what’s not okay, and keeping people motivated, and keeping them focused and keeping them on track.

A lot of people are different. For me, I really feel like I need to know what I’m talking about. I need to know what they’re doing. I need to understand what their challenges are. I need to see a little above that and be able to help guide them and not get so stuck and caught in the weeds. But I have to really understand what their challenges are and what they’re dealing with. For me, the best way to do that is to be really involved in the business on a day-to-day basis.

Running a business to me is a lifestyle. It’s not a job. It’s how you live.

Did watching your dad affect how you run a business?

He was a super talented guy, incredibly creative, but he was just a disaster with money.

I operate from a sense of fear a lot. I’m worried all the time that I wind up like my dad or let all of these people down who depend on me for their jobs, their livelihood, or our clients, and my reputation. I’m constantly thinking about that.

In 2021, you stepped into the CEO role for Wellcom, a company that acquired the second business you founded. What happened there? What made you decide to stay?

They paid a premium for us, and then four months later, Covid hit and our business dropped in half. They kind of freaked out, understandably so. They were all over my old boss Wayne [Sidwell] for recovery plans: What are we going to do and how we can do this? Wayne is an older guy at that point, probably early 70s, and Wayne was like, “See you later. I’m not dealing with this anymore.”

I went through an interview process with them, and I accepted the job—honestly, because I knew if I didn’t, that somebody else was going to come take that job, and they weren’t going to know what they were doing. They weren’t going to understand all the subtleties and nuances in our business and where the industry is going because this is something like it’s so unique.

It strikes me that you seem very in tune with where the winds are blowing in your industry. How do you keep that instinct sharp?

My curiosity around what’s happening in the industry, where the industry is going, what our position is in that industry. Like I said, out of fear, how do I make sure all these people still have a job?...I lay awake at night thinking of this stuff.

Do you think a founder needs to be obsessed with their industry like that to stay on with a company ?

I really do, and I think that’s one of our big advantages because we have a lot of people who think that way.