Early adopter: staying ahead of the curve in an ever-changing industry.

• Author: Sutherland, Spencer
• Position: Lessons Learned - XMission - Company overview

While the rest of the world was falling in love with Pretty Woman, meeting The Simpsons and buying piles of MC Hammer pants, Pete Ashdown was spending 1990 tinkering with a little-known contraption called the Internet. Three years later, Ashdown had turned his part-time hobby into XMission, Utah's first Internet service provider (ISP).

Throughout the early '90s, XMission not only provided a connection to the World Wide Web, but for Utah customers, was also synonymous with the Internet itself. And though it hasn't always been easy, XMission continues to evolve to meet the needs of an ever-changing industry.

Bringing Home the Internet

Like most innovations, Ashdown's desire to start an ISP was driven by necessity. Though he was able to connect to the Internet as a computer science student at the University of Utah and at his job with Evans and Sutherland, Ashdown wanted to have that same access at home.

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"I figured that if I wanted to access it from home, there were other people who wanted to do the same thing," Ashdown says. "I started looking around the country at other Internet provider companies--there were probably less than a dozen in 1993. I e-mailed a bunch of them and only one, in San lose, replied to me and gave me just a few tips about how to do it. But it was enough to help me to draft a business plan."

That business plan, however, wasn't enough to land Ashdown a business loan--at least through traditional methods. Banks couldn't wrap their heads around the idea and the Small Business Administration couldn't get Ashdown money fast enough to meet his sense of urgency.

That's when Ashdown ran across of a bit of luck. During a visit to his parents' house, he accidentally left the business plan on the kitchen table. His dad picked it up after he left.

"I wasn't intending for him to see it," Ashdown recalls. "He called me the next day and said he'd loan me the money to start. He didn't know anything about [the Internet], but he had enough faith in me that I knew what I was doing."

Finding the Right Customers

With start-up money in hand, Ashdown began growing the business by targeting those he knew best--his co-workers at Evans and Sutherland, fellow computer science students at the University of Utah and friends he had made in online discussion boards.

"There was a vibrant computer user group scene in Salt Lake City who would get together and discuss software. I pitched the service to these technically minded...