Life of FBi | Non-Tech Start-up Founder

the last two days have been significant to me because it’s the first time in the 15 month history of blank label that we made revenue on two consecutive days. i should also try and put the 15 months into context. this was a 15 months were i did almost everything wrong. i’m a  guy, who only 24 months ago, was certain that i wanted to spend the rest of his life in the corporate rat race, aspiring to become an investment banking superstar. i knew nothing about technology, knew nothing about supply chain/fulfillment, knew the wrong things about e-commerce. as a ‘business guy’, i was supposed to understand strategy. what strategy? the learning curve is steep, being analytical is useful. i have my parents to thank for a good work ethic, my mother to credit for being somewhat sociable, and my father to blame for the genetic flaw of being in love with risk taking.

now besides the fact that for the last 15 months until yesterday i had no real idea of what i was doing, and today i think i’m even more lost than i was yesterday, the 15 months have to be discounted for ‘school months’. it hasn’t really been ‘serious heart and mind’ until probably a few weeks into the summer where i wasn’t distracted by settling into a new country, meeting new people, being fascinated by a white powder falling from the sky, covering the grounds. since then, i’ve really discovered a new sense of commitment, more profound than anything else i have in my life previously. being closed into a high volume of aspiring student entrepreneurs at babson and olin college, it’s actually interesting to observe the relatively strong reverse correlation between gpa and business traction (especially revenue). both schools have a policy that they teach ‘entrepreneurial thought and action’ which is a nice way to say that it’s okay if they don’t produce entrepreneurs out of college, it’s more important that they teach students how to think ‘entrepreneurially’ for the rest of their lives, i.e. something that’s vague and impossible to track. but this is not the place for such a dialogue. in any case, treading the borderline of passing and failing as never been better for business, and i only wish i had realized this earlier.

so if you haven’t caught on yet that blank label had our lean launch on saturday, yes we were working all day halloween (in fact i was getting text messages around 11pm from our chief interweb builder as i had finally started to relax and thought i could enjoy a couple of hours of my first halloween). of course there are errors, and yes there are bugs, and we know about the glitches, but we’re real, and i can’t tell you how good a feeling that is. wow! i highly recommend it. but being in the real world also brings in real world implications, real world responsibilities. these next few weeks are going to be absolutely crucial for us. the last thing we want to be is the one night fad that didn’t capture any momentum. we have to be smart with our analytics, we have to spread out our publicity traffic, we need to keep building and fixing, we need to make sure fulfillment is executed without any delays. is it strange that all these challenges sound awesome to me?

having spent most of the past 15 startup months not being lean, when i was introduced to the #leanstartup philosophy by friend, mentor and blank label advisor, dan marques, my entire view of the world changed. dan first introduced me to 37 signal‘s getting real: the smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application, and i was later referred to eric ries‘s startup blog . i used to think that bootstrapping was the most undertaught startup lesson, but i now realize it’s the ability to be lean that will make or break a startup in it’s infancy.

my interpretation of a lean startup philosophy is the ability to identify and differentiate, both strategically and tactically, what is essentially important and what can be deferred to later. one of the most underrated milestones in a startup is the ability to launch. it’s obviously on the mind of all startups, but it should be driving every decision pre-launch. is this task going to help us launch, or is it merely a distraction, and can we do it later? eric ries has this minimum viable product stipulation that helps determine this: the mvp = version of new product which allows startup to collect maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. another way i look at it, within the various components of the startup, what are the 20% effort – 80% reward sweet spots. the very title of getting real is titled, build less: underdo your competition.

how has this helped blank label? the fact that after f***ing around for quite a few months until late last month when we outlined a roadmap for a stripped down, lean launch, and that we’re on target to launch october 31, is an exciting change in company mood. we’re not looking to make a big deal about october 31. it’ll be important to us, but we know the exciting stuff happens after october 31. we’ll be iterating and building every week. we’ve even held back on reaching out to too many relationships in the blogosphere as we’ll have a much better product two weeks into november, and then two weeks after that, and we want to be uniques growth to be stimulated along the way, rather than putting all our eggs in one basket. instead of trying to predict the market, we’re going to keep a close eye on analytics and let the market tell us. people ask about whether we’re going to have this feature, or that idea they think would be great for us. we take it down, and it goes onto the ‘ideas board’.

in such a hot space as ‘mass-customization’ where the barriers to entry are fairly low, we didn’t have the billion dollar idea. like many other ideas, it was spawned from context, and a context that was not unique to me. the money is really to be made in the execution, and execution is really valuable when you’re actually in the marketplace. so this isn’t even about first mover advantage, but rather about making life easier and better for you and your startup. there are too many founders trying to predict exactly what the market will want. it’s all in research reports and opinions and being mostly computed in heads. i have a terrible habit of doing this. now i just say, it’s close enough, let the market tell us. being in the marketplace and making real sales, getting real feedback is the best research you can do. also, the momentum and excitement level your team works at when it can see getting to market, or when it’s in market, is completely different to something that you’re hacking away at with no identifiable time of people ever using it.

this is fundamentally important to most first-time student entrepreneurs. if you’re stagnant and not making much progress, the risk tolerance starts wearing. being young, we may not have patience or experience to do the long-haul kind of deal. i see so many student founded startups fail because they aren’t excited about the progress they’re making, and that’s in large part because they are day one trying to attack something that is so broad. this gets compounded by other school distractions which creep in and the killer of all startups, internship season. the ability to be lean, determine what is important, make traction towards it, get to market, is probably the most critical thing to overcome the first-time risk hurdles.  i keep telling the team, the most important lesson for us to keep in mind is fix time, fix budget, flex scope.

*you’ve probably noticed that i wrote this article exclusively in lower case. i’ve started doing that of late b/c i couldn’t figure out why we still use capitalization.

**listening to pandora radio station ‘i’ve got a feeling’ by black eyed peas

As I was arranging my schedule between driving Blank Label projects, starting up Open Gate Initiative, being a team leader at E-Tower, and classes, trying to squeeze startup networking events around my already compact schedule has been challenging. What that does mean is for a busy student entrepreneur, the following list has been whittled down as the essentials (and they’re all FREE!!!):

Mass Innovation Night – Wednesday, September 9

Mass Innovation Nights connect Massachusetts-based innovators with the marketplace using social media.  Held at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, the monthly Launch Parties are FREE for everyone — companies and guests alike.  All we ask is that guests help spread the word about cool new products they see at our events.

TiE ENTER Launch – Tuesday, September 15 (Free for Students)

Fireside/ interactive chat with Jeff Taylor, Founder of Monster.com, Paul English, Founder of Kayak.com, Chris Hughes, co-Founder of Facebook.com and MyBarackObama.com. This event is primarily for aspiring and first-time entrepreneurs. If you are a student working on a BIG idea – or searching for one – come join a lively discussion on how these successful entrepreneurs stumbled upon theirs, and how they built businesses around them. The speakers will share what has changed in their respective industries since they began their entrepreneurial journeys as well as what they recognize to be the prevailing trends now shaping these industries. This will be an interactive chat where you can also share your BIG ideas and get constructive feedback from the speakers.

Tech Tuesday – Tuesday, September 15

Join your fellow geeks, tech savvy professionals, DIY-ers, press, and other industry luminaries for this informal gathering. Bring your laptops, robots, OLPC XO’s, Amazon Kindles, new cell phones, gadgets, and other new-fangled devices. Got a great demo or YouTube clip? Bring it! LCD projector and wi-fi will be available for ad hoc show and tell.

Ignite Boston 6 – Thursday, September 17

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.

Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis. Since then 100s of 5 minute talks have been given across the world. There are thriving Ignite communities in Seattle, Portland, Paris, and NYC.

WebInno23 – Tuesday, September 29

At 7pm in the Grand Ballroom we’ll hold our usual format of self-/angel-funded startups demo’ing to the audience in Main Dish showcases, and select an “Audience Choice” winner of the crowd’s favorite. After a brief intermission, at 8pm we’ll hold a strictly-optional special entrepreneur’s PR breakout session. During the entire evening’s event, Side Dish startup companies will provide informal demonstrations to the networking crowd from the Skyline Suites room.

MassTLC 2009 Innovation unConference – Thursday, October 01 (Stay in MA Scholarships Available)

Four generations of entrepreneurs will gather on October 1, 2009 with the focus on early stage entrepreneurship and driving innovation.  Unlike the planned sessions and passive audiences of typical conferences, MassTLC’s Innovation 2009 is an unConference where the agenda is formed organically by all attendees the day of the event. No podiums. No stages. Just small interactive sessions taking a deep dive into issues that drive innovation and the success of your company. A professional facilitator helps make it happen.

Eric Ries The Lean Start-up Talk – Thursday, November 19

2 hour talk by Eric Ries, the well known author of the blog Lessons Learned. He was the co-founder and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU, his third startup. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Artv of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups including pbWiki, Smule, 750i and KaChing. Eric will discuss the approach of the Lean Startup.