Marketplace Tuesday! (March 05, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! (March 05, 2019)
- 15 lessons from our first $15 million in recurring revenue
- From my living room to a 7 figure brand over 5 years, 1 day at a time. I am the founder of Findlay Hats - Ask Me Anything
- A simple guide if you're deciding on whether to start a business.
- Starting a clothing brand
- How do people structure contracts and commission rates with influencers?
- How to make your customers feel special
- Thoughts on a Computer Service Business?
- Resources for honing customer sales pitches?
- Looking for help desk software recommendations
- What are the most important skills to learn to make any type of business work?
- "The Secrets of The Millionaire Mind" Animated Summary. I hope that you can get some value from it.
- How to monetise my writing app?
- Anybody run a labour intensive business?
- What are some factors to consider when opening up a mechanic shop?
- I want to earn $50/month... and have no idea how to start at all, especially with starting a website
- Funding for a new business - Anyone have experience starting a Co-Op?
- Business model advice?!
- I'm stuck, trapped in University, don't know how to start my entrepreneural career.
- $25k/month selling party games.
- Negotiating Terms on Building for Startup
- Where do we go from here?
- Just launched my first product page I've never built a website before. Please give me some constructive criticism
- Thinking to take small education break.
| Marketplace Tuesday! (March 05, 2019) Posted: 05 Mar 2019 05:10 AM PST Please use this thread to post any Jobs that you're looking to fill (including interns), or services you're looking to render to other members. We do this to not overflow the subreddit with personal offerings (such logo design, SEO, etc) so please try to limit the offerings to this weekly thread. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| 15 lessons from our first $15 million in recurring revenue Posted: 05 Mar 2019 08:56 AM PST Hey Reddit, I wrote this post for my blog, but thought you might all find it interesting. Happy to answer any questions! -- Last week we crossed $15 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for ConvertKit, my email marketing company. My original dream was to get to $600,000 in ARR, so I'm pretty thrilled! Over the last six years I've learned and written about quite a few lessons, but it's always fun to reminisce on the highlights, that oddly enough mostly come from the hardest times. 1. Focus is everythingIt's fine to start something on the side, but if you want to turn it something real it needs to move to the center of your focus. Years ago I decided to go all in on ConvertKit, moving it from a side project to my only project. Without that decision ConvertKit wouldn't be here today. Anytime someone brags about how many businesses they run I cringe. I'd far rather take one thing and do it really well. I'll leave the serial entrepreneurship for the scattered, the wannabes, or those who are truly far more talented than I am. A friend told me the other day that he was surprised I still only did ConvertKit. At this point we have an incredible team, available capital, and the leverage of an audience. Why not start something else and run it in parallel? Because I know myself. Focus is where I thrive. Focus is where I get results. Focus is everything. 2. Choose a nicheChoosing a niche is the easiest advice to give and the hardest advice to take. When you don't have traction, it feels like choosing a niche will exclude the few people who are coming in the door. In reality when we chose "email marketing for professional bloggers" everything changed. Messaging became clear, the product roadmap was trimmed, and the prospect lists practically wrote itself. Without that change—without excluding everyone who didn't fit into the blogger bucket—it would have been incredibly hard to get off the ground. We eventually expanded to "email marketing for creators," which now includes podcasters, actors, YouTubers, authors, artists, musicians, and so many more. Even with growing into that larger audience we are still so much more focused than our competitors who target all small-businesses. 3. Use sales to kickstart word-of-mouthWord-of-mouth is the best way to grow a company, but you need traction for the referrals to start. That's where direct sales come in. By choosing a niche, listing out your prospects, and getting in touch directly you no longer have to wait for them to come to you. Each conversation—even though most end in rejection—will teach you so much. At first it's one customer. Then five. Then ten. Immediately you'll notice something crucial: the customers you recruit are higher quality than the ones who just walk in the door. Why would you leave the future of your product up to just anyone who stumbles across what you create? Instead go out and sell to the customers you want. Then ask them for referrals. Finally, when the word-of-mouth referrals kick in, they will be to the right people. 4. Do the hard work that doesn't scaleEach sales call would end the same way: "I love what you're doing and I'd love to switch...but it's too much work. Sorry." Ouch. No matter how much convincing I did I wasn't able to overcome that objection. That is until I offered to do the full switch for them for free. That meant getting their account access, moving every form, copying and pasting every sequence email, exporting and importing their subscribers, and so much more! It was terribly unprofitable to do that for a $79/month customer. But early on that was how we got momentum. Every customer matters. So many people told me that wasn't scalable. I needed to use paid ads, SEO, or some other scalable way to acquire customers. That's great if you can make them work, but many can't. So I did the work that no one else was willing to do. John and Patrick Collison famously did this with Stripe. Rather than waiting to follow-up after a promising conversation, they would migrate other startups to Stripe on the spot. Don't wait for the follow-up or have the customer do all the work. Do the hard work that doesn't scale. Today we still offer a free concierge migration for anyone over 5,000 email subscribers. Many of our competitors have copied it and offer it as well. It feels good to make them react to us. 5. Find what works and repeat itWebinars were the first scalable growth channel we found that really worked. My first thought was to do those and keep searching for the next thing...but then I realized that we should focus on what's working. We test and iterate like crazy, but then once it pays off we go all in. Over the last three years we've done hundreds of webinars with an incredible number of affiliate partners. They are hard, time consuming, and exhausting. But they work. Run all the experiments. Test. Analyze the data. The when you find something that works be prepared to go all in. 6. Building infrastructure to support growth will take far longer than estimatedWe spent our first company retreat fighting fires and rebuilding our server infrastructure. What was supposed to be a time to just connect, plan, and get to know each other turned into an all hands on deck fight to keep our product online. I thought we'd spend nearly all our time building cool new features for customers. But instead the work was in doing what customers care about most: making sure the basics work well. Emails need to send on time and subscriptions need to work flawlessly. There's a lot of software that when it goes down, you just work on something else. Not email marketing. It's core to the entire business and reliability is everything. The infrastructure that was built to support 1,000 customers will break at 10,000. It's crucial to dedicate time to support the growth. 7. Funding is optionalRight about now we should be raising a $25 million series A. Or at least that's what our peers are doing. Instead we haven't raised a single dime of outside capital. I put in $5,000 to kick things off, then another $50,000 when I doubled down on ConvertKit. Getting rejected by venture capitalists is one of the best things that's ever happened to me. We built ConvertKit our way, at our pace, and with our values. Every line of code is funded by the creators we serve. I wouldn't have it any other way. 8. It's possible with a smaller team than most people thinkToday at ConvertKit we have 38 amazing team members. At $15 million ARR that is nearly $400,000 per team member! A much higher ratio than any of our peers. At this stage 75 employees would be normal. Instead of hiring as quickly as possible to solve every pain, we are deliberate about working on the right things. The constraint requires us to say no, not spread ourselves thin, and only do the highest leverage work. It also means that we can invest in each team member more and carefully craft the culture we want, rather than simply focus on reaching headcount goals. There are always tradeoffs, maybe we could move faster, build more, or support customers better. So we are still striving to find the right balance between team size, efficiency, and total output. 9. Culture is everything—and it's not what you thinkWe have so many weird habits as a team at ConvertKit: talking about someone in the third person as if they're not there, long walks in pairs where only one person is allowed to talk, starting meetings by asking, "red, yellow, or green?" and diving directly into the hard conversations. That's because to us culture isn't bean bag chairs and free lunch, but instead an environment where conflict is kind and direct, expectations are clear, and trust is most important. Our version of culture has turned ConvertKit into a place that we all want to come to work. 10. Share the profitsThere are two important factors for running ConvertKit as a financially efficient company:
The result is that everyone is incentivized to spend money efficiently. We once asked the team: "would you rather go to San Diego or Costa Rica for the next team retreat?" Everyone said Costa Rica. So we did the research and found that Costa Rica would cost about 50% more because of higher housing costs and additional travel logistics. With the complete picture we asked the team again. This time San Diego won by a landslide. That attitude carries over to everyone when they use their company credit card. It's not just the company's money, it's their money. And they spend it accordingly. In the last few years we've distributed over $1,000,000 to the team in profit sharing. All while spending aggressively on growth. That's a number I'm really proud of! 11. Always pay your debtsNo, I'm not talking about Game of Thrones, or even financial debt. There's another kind of debt more devastating to software companies: technical debt. The code that worked fine at $15,000 in revenue looks like a joke at $15 million. Not to say you should have spent the time to build it perfectly from the beginning—that's a fools game to try—but instead that every shortcut you take is building more debt. The longer you wait the more interest accrues. We've had to spend a significant of time and money refactoring all of that old code. It's part of scaling. Every software company has to do it, but it would be so frustrating if we didn't expect it and have a plan to pay it back systematically. 12. As you grow, your company's name builds equity. Don't take that for granted.For years I've wanted to build ConvertKit into a global brand and I thought that meant changing the name to something more brandable. While being focused on this new change I completely missed the trust, care, and love our customers had for the name ConvertKit. You just quietly enjoy the status quo. People only talk about what they want to change. It would be weird to send an email to Patagonia saying, "I really love your name, please don't change it." So when we would receive emails every month from creators who thought ConvertKit was too salesy and they didn't want to be associated with the brand, that wasn't balanced by all the people who had quietly grown to love our name and the brand it represented. Ultimately we decided to stay as ConvertKit, which is a long story that I promise I'll write in full at some point. 13. You don't have to be an asshole to build a successful companyBeing an asshole is one way some entrepreneurs have been able to build big companies. Assholes are often loud about their own success, so we hear about them more than we should. But there are a bunch of good people building exciting companies too. Good people who care for their team, their family, and their customers. Ignore the entrepreneur media. Don't be an asshole and don't settle for working for one. 14. Surprise launches aren't worth itA surprise launch or release is fun for you… until it isn't. I love having my Steve Jobs moment by unveiling a new feature to the applause of a crowd. I've done it the last two years at our conference, Craft + Commerce. But behind each of those moments is weeks or months of pushing hard to make a deadline. Trimming the project scope, reprioritizing backlogs, and hoping that everything goes well in the live demo. But that's only part of it. What follows is releasing to customers, which is really painful if you missed the mark on any of your designs, planning, or timelines. That means a ton of tickets in the support queue, frustrated users, and losing confidence in the product. Now we've moved away from launching these big surprises. Instead we work with smaller groups of customers to understand how a new product or change will affect them. Then we use that information to build a smarter launch and rollout plan. A plan that usually involves methodically rolling out to a few features at once. We're still be able to make a splash, but we are able to do it with more confidence and a lot less stress. 15. I felt most successful after the hardest decisionsWhile skiing a few weeks ago my friend Anthony asked the group, "do you feel successful?" It was a great question to reflect on while riding the chairlift. I'm always striving to learn more and grow the company, so it's foreign to pause and feel success. That feels like settling when I know I'm capable of more. Overall, I do feel successful, but I was surprised to realize the moments I felt most successful weren't after hitting a major revenue milestone or landing a famous customer. In hindsight, the times I felt most successful were when I leaned on my principles to make the right decision, even though it was incredibly hard. Letting a senior leader go. Rolling back a name change I'd worked on for two years. Restructuring the company. I wrestled with each one. Struggling to have the courage to make the decision I knew was right. But with principles to guide me I could make the decision with confidence. To me success knows that I've built the courage to make the right decision, especially when it is painful and expensive. -- Drop any questions in the comments! Particularly if they relate to software, bootstrapping, and more! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Mar 2019 06:21 PM PST Howdy friends at /r/Entrepreneur I have had a handful of requests to do an AMA over the years, and figured today was a good day to finally check this off my to do list. The basics: We create hats built for good times and that are unlike anything else on the planet. Here is a basic graphic that shows why our hats stand out. Basic Findlay Info Founded in late 2013, we have grown from a 2 person team working out of a living room to a 12 person team in a warehouse. With no outside funding, investors or famous influencers, we have grown to a community of over 100,000 strong, with our hats being worn around the globe. We stand behind our product, put our customers first, and are working hard every to build the greatest brand we can. About me: My name is Jimmy Findlay Hickey, and I am 27 years old. I come from a professional photo background and have no formal business school training. Everything I learned was online and through trial and error. I ran a photo business from when I was 16 years old, and wanted to work on a new project that was lest seasonal and saturated than photography...so I got into e-commerce haha Since starting this company, it has been my focus for coming up on 6 years. I still work 80 hour weeks and though I am slowly passing off more responsibilities to my team, it is a constant battle as I'm sure a lot of you guys know. That said, I wake up every day excited to get to work and keep building this thing. Some of my biggest influences from reddit are Eric Bandholz from BeardBrand & Cory Stour of Woodies. Both of these guys have shared so much great info over the years and I hope I am able to help contribute to this community in some way. Relevant business info:
Most of our business is done through out website, about 90% with the remaining 10% being collaboration hats where we make hats for other companies, and wholesale. A huge piece of our brands identity is our community called the Findlay Force. From the very beginning we wanted to be very community oriented and that tribe around our brand has helped us grow loyal and active customers. The community here makes the brand and we are grateful to have such a great group of people behind us. Within this community we have a solid amount of hat collectors, content creators, testers & more. Social media engagement is a big piece of who we are and what we are all about. We focus heavily on engaging on a 1 to 1 basis with the Findlay Force on Facebook and Instagram. Social media advertising is a huge piece of what has helped us grow, and we invest heavily in advertising. I used to do it all in house, but have slowly started to work with 2 agencies to help manage the workload. Margins :D we have beautiful gross margins, and due to heavy advertising costs and a handful of other high operational costs with the focus of scaling, we are hovering around 7-10% net margins. I pay myself the minimum I can to survive, and put everything I can back into the company. We have medical & dental benefits for our full time employees, and try to pay the fairest wages we can afford at this size. Current struggles we are experiencing are adapting to a ever changing Social media marketing game. We are focusing on heavier content creation, as well as planning more grassroots marketing with events built around good times this Spring & Summer. Questions? Post below! I will answer as many as I can, and will try to answer with as much detail as possible. Only a couple trade secrets and details I'm not 100% cool with sharing. Edit: Alrighty been a looooong day and I need to get some sleep, but will back to answer every single comment I can later in the morning. Make yourself a good day in the meantime! [link] [comments]  |
| A simple guide if you're deciding on whether to start a business. Posted: 04 Mar 2019 06:16 PM PST Back in WWII, the military printed up dozens of pamphlets to answer a lot of questions that GIs had about the world in general. These were written extremely plainly so that anyone could understand them, because the GIs had vastly different education levels. Here is one) about the pros and cons of starting a small business, and how to decide what to do. Sure it's old, but there's no clickbait bullshit about working 5 hours a week or how many yachts you can buy with your millions, it's just straightforward, well-written advice. edit: I think the link might not work right if you are using "old reddit" since there's a parenthesis in it. The link is: https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-39-shall-i-go-into-business-for-myself-(1946) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Mar 2019 12:00 PM PST Hey guys! I'm about to start my own online athleisure clothing brand. I've got it sorted legally, picked a name, made the logo, created the first few designs (tech packs), secured a manufacturer and a basic business plan. I wanted your guys opinions, advice, anything I should know or focus on? Also tips with marketing or anything website related would be great! (I'll be using shopify but haven't gotten started on it yet) Side note: having a lot of self doubt and scared these days. I was super keen when I started but recently fall into thinking about the negatives like what if I fail and everyone views me as a loser. (lame I know) [link] [comments]  |
| How do people structure contracts and commission rates with influencers? Posted: 05 Mar 2019 09:51 AM PST I know it will most likely differ from influencer to influencer, but do you have any sliding scale or references to give me an idea? For example, if somebody has a highly targeted niche and 200k followers, am I going to look at something like a flat rate plus commission? Many thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| How to make your customers feel special Posted: 05 Mar 2019 06:50 AM PST Short film looking at how different companies make customer satisfaction a key point of their business offering. A lot of young businesses are so focused on raising finance that it can be forgotten that satisfied customers are one of the best repeat revenue streams and free marketing channels! [link] [comments]  |
| Thoughts on a Computer Service Business? Posted: 05 Mar 2019 08:37 AM PST My friend and I started talking about opening a computer service business on the side. Not a sexy business at all, but very do-able given our skill set. My only concern is that it doesn't seem scalable at all. Our room for revenue will only grow with whatever free time we have available. Any ideas on how to make this scale beyond our available time? [link] [comments]  |
| Resources for honing customer sales pitches? Posted: 05 Mar 2019 01:48 PM PST I plan on launching a flea market sales booth, selling an infomercial- esq product. I plan on getting some nice signs made to help me explain the product, but I'll also need to have solid face to face interactions to both attract customers and then really drive the idea home. I plan on opening my stand in the summer- what can I do now to help prepare? [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for help desk software recommendations Posted: 05 Mar 2019 01:38 PM PST We currently use Help Scout to manage our customer support (which is great), but we need something a little more robust. The biggest thing we need is customizable fields that we can require our employees to fill out for each ticket. For example, we sell several different apps. So one field that would be required is the app name. The employee would enter the app name and any other notes, then assign it to the appropriate person for resolution. Does that make sense? Is there anything out there that can do that? All the ones I've seen so far either don't let you customize the fields or don't let you set them as required. [link] [comments]  |
| What are the most important skills to learn to make any type of business work? Posted: 05 Mar 2019 12:46 PM PST Sorry for this vague question but I used to search a lot online on, "ways to make money/what to do to make money/etc; found a lot of options, tried some, but didn't succeed. I since many people start a business without having to be in the specific niche (for example I could start an accounting company and be a manager maybe?), what are the most important skills as a startup/entreprenuer/manager/etc. that are important for making a business work? Thank you everyone [link] [comments]  |
| "The Secrets of The Millionaire Mind" Animated Summary. I hope that you can get some value from it. Posted: 05 Mar 2019 11:26 AM PST Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1WjeoCw30g Hope it is useful Here are other summaries i've done:
If you're interested and want to subscribe here's a link:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfbLDMh6uGOZePAfqqjVZ-g?sub_confirmation=1 [link] [comments]  |
| How to monetise my writing app? Posted: 05 Mar 2019 11:25 AM PST I run an online story planner/writing app. Originally I charged monthly/yearly to use it. However, I found that not many people were willing to pay to use it. So I made it free with the intention to turn it into a writing community and run ads on it, and possibly allow them to sell books they write on my website. However, none of these seem like they would rake in much revenue. The site is seeing ok usage now that it's free and I constantly get emails saying the users love the app. Some even said they would pay for it. But I'm not sure how I should proceed to monetise it. Can I try going back to paid? Would the user-base revolt? The app has seen a lot of improvements since I've made it free. Maybe it's improved to the point where people are willing to pay for it. Maybe I should wait until my app is better known in the marketplace to the point where word-of-mouth traffic becomes significant. [link] [comments]  |
| Anybody run a labour intensive business? Posted: 05 Mar 2019 10:21 AM PST Hey guys I have a car detailing business, which is very labour intensive. Each employee (working 8 hours a day) generates approx. $480 in revenue. Margins are 37%. Fixed costs not too bad. I have 3 employees right now. My question is: What challenges have you experienced as you expanded your production staff? I need 8 employees to hit revenue target this year. Just brain storming what to expect. I suspect that the initial selection/training will be critical since baby sitting or turning over employees would be a PITA. Thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| What are some factors to consider when opening up a mechanic shop? Posted: 04 Mar 2019 11:20 PM PST My cousin wants to start one and he thinks it would be an easy feat. What are some of the more difficult tasks/problems to sort out when starting a car mechanic shop? [link] [comments]  |
| I want to earn $50/month... and have no idea how to start at all, especially with starting a website Posted: 05 Mar 2019 09:49 AM PST Hello! Kinda nervous as I write this, but I'll give it a shot. I'm 18 this year, and on my long break (another 4 months) before my university starts. I have always dreamed of selling my own illustrated notebooks, stationary, stickers and prints since I was 14, but am unsure where to start. What I want to do: ❎set up my own website I am terrible at computers. ❓Firstly, I don't even know how safe my computer is (I'm very scared of malware existing). ❓Secondly, I have no idea how local or international shipping works. How do I answer to customers with lost mail? How do I ensure safe transactions to my bank account? How do I use tracking for delivery? ❓Thirdly, I have no idea which website to choose, how to even host a domain, coding and CCS etc. etc. very lost here! I only know how to use basic tools like click&drag elements for Weebly, basic themes for Wordpress etc. ❓Fourth, I have zero idea about how SEOs work, and searching up on it now. I wish I was better at computers. ❎gain a social following I have not started at all! But I believe I can do this slowly through hashtags, features and constant interaction with other accounts, the above goal is far more worrying. What I have done: ❗️spent several hours searching around, and found a reliable and cheap local supplier for printing ❗️illustrated several designs ❗️decided on pricing, product lines and sketched a website design I'm actually saving up to buy a laptop for my university (am working 2 part-time jobs), and my small goal is to make $50 in profits in my first month. Is this too unrealistic for me? Any help would be appreciated, thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Funding for a new business - Anyone have experience starting a Co-Op? Posted: 05 Mar 2019 09:29 AM PST Hey all, So a friend and I have been doing research into starting a business and things are looking good. After doing some research and market testing we believe we've got a strong market for our business and have a business plan in place for how to move forward. Our first major problem is funding. Neither of us have the collateral to take out a business loan so we are looking at alternative methods. We have found similar businesses that have succeeded using the Co-Op model but my concern with that is that I don't fully understand how a Co-Op would work as far as us making money ourselves is concerned. If you have some experience with starting Co-Ops or just general advice I'd love to hear it. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Mar 2019 05:32 AM PST Hi guys, I run a personalised nootropics company (don't want to post the url as this is a genuine question not marketing!) and am making a transition from one off e-commerce purchasing into a subscription based business model. Personally I want to offer a 10 day 100% FREE trial period as I know that the product delivers & should convert trials into paying subscribers. I have, however - been given a fair bit of advice against a fully free trial due to the high chance of cancelling / false card details / no intent to purchase etc... and instead charge a nominal 'trial fee', for example £5 for a 10 day trial ( FYI a monthly supply of our product is £39.99 to put the trial price into perspective!) Has anyone had any success with this form of trial offering / any suggestions how else I could run this! Thanks Jake [link] [comments]  |
| I'm stuck, trapped in University, don't know how to start my entrepreneural career. Posted: 05 Mar 2019 09:18 AM PST Currently typing this out in my algebra class at University and I feel so stuck. I hate University, I always have and always will. It is so pointless from my perspective. Why would I force myself to go through at least 4 more years of education where 85% of the stuff I learn is pointless. Why would I come here, wasting my prime years in my career and spend tens of thousands of dollars to get in debt, just so I can get a degree and be on the exact same level as everyone else that went to college. And once I finally get my precious peice of paper I might be able get an average payibg job that I hate so I can live check to check for the next large portion of my life. What I just described is absolute torture to me, I've been wanting to be an entrepreneur since freshman year in highschool and I'm getting more and more motivated to finally making it happen. If I DO get something going, I would drop college like a fly...if it was not off my parents. My dad has an associates, bachelors, and masters degree and went to uni for some odd 10 years and my mom is currently going back to uni to get a better job. Least to say, if I had not gone to college I would be a dead man from my parents, same if I ever dropped out. It's not even that I find uni hard, it's quite easy honestly but I honestly am not trying very hard in my classes as a sort of way to force myself to keep going with my aspirations. I don't want to settle for this easy and boring life that college often leads it's own too. I guess I'm just looking for advice from some of you that were in the same spot I currently am. [link] [comments]  |
| $25k/month selling party games. Posted: 05 Mar 2019 09:15 AM PST Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Barry McLaughlin of Game Night In A Can, a brand that sells party games and experiences. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?I am Barry McLaughlin, the sexier half of Barry and Jason Games & Entertainment. We make party games, host live game events, and are developing game shows. We love games! Our first game is Game Night in a Can, a party game made up of 30 different creative challenges and games of skill, and it's now in Barnes & Noble and independent stores across the country. Our second game is Dr. Biscuits' Radical Road Trip, a super fun travel game that includes 60 games to play in your car. This game is a finalist for the Toy Association's Game of the Year award, and will also be for sale at Barnes & Noble Spring 2019. We have a lot more games on the way, and we've begun collaborating with other companies, including a game we're still developing with Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty called The Ultimate Putty Challenge. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?Jason and I met on our very first day of college at UCLA 23 years ago, and we've been collaborating ever since. We started with a comedy band called The Bicycling Mariachis (with Andy Coyne) and then went on to do variety sketch shows all over LA. We're both huge fans of game shows and have been contestants on over 10 game shows between us, including Jeopardy for Jason and winning the Showcase Showdown on The Price is Right for me. (Crazy, right?) So clearly we had a love of games and comedy right from the start. I began hosting live game nights, and eventually was able to convince Jason to start co-hosting them with me (he plays a lot of instruments, which really added to the magic). These game nights were much different than anything else going on in LA, where we would have people create new animal species, make commercials for made-up products, competitively fly paper airplanes, and do all kinds of other ridiculous and creative stuff. So one night, after a particularly fun event, Jason said "We need to create a play-at-home version of what we're doing here. How about Game Night in a Can?" For me it was a no-brainer. We decided in that moment we were going to run a Kickstarter campaign and make it happen. To make sure that we actually stuck to it, we decided to create a weekly podcastwhere we would check in with our status and goals, all the way up until the campaign launched. Even though our podcast didn't have many listeners, it was an amazing way to keep ourselves accountable. We ended up raising over $20,000 on Kickstarter and Game Night in a Can was born. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Jason scoured the web for companies making games, created a spreadsheet, and called about 20 different factories until we found one that would actually work with us and our very limited first run of games. They're called Longpack, and we're still working with them today. To make Game Night in a Can, we would just describe how we thought the packaging should feel and they sent us samples, at which point we could say what we wanted to change and they would send new samples. They've been wonderful to work with in that regard. As for the actual games themselves, we had a lot to choose from already from all of our live events. But since we needed 30 games, we still had to create more, so we brainstormed game names every time we met (which we call "Game Blasting") and the best names would practically create the games for us. We also rented an AirBNB in Topanga CA for a weekend where the only thing we did for 3 straight days was come up with fun new game ideas. At the same time, we had our friends Jane Moro and Andre Schnyder getting to work on art for the packaging and the components. We loved the idea of using Russian space race propaganda as our inspiration, which you can see in the final design. It was a fairly smooth process, with the only issue being that once the cans arrived, many of the spinners didn't spin very well, so we had to fix them all by hand. We inquired about patents, but discovered that there wasn't much that we could actually protect about our game. (Our first ever shipment) Describe the process of launching the business.The Kickstarter We knew that to have a fun kickstarter campaign we needed a bunch of content, so we had some friends help out and shoot some stuff for free. (Thanks Grant Haynes!) Jason and I each put in $1000 just to get things going, and we kept our campaign on a very tight budget. I have a lot of experience editing indie comedy videos, so that saved us a ton of money. Our friend Jeff Conrad has a huge library of amazing music he created and he let us use whatever we wanted for our content, which was super helpful and really added to the quality. As for our website, I just made a simple site on wix.com. The kickstarter itself was much harder than anticipated. We had a lot of activity in the first few days of the campaign, lots of friends and family getting involved, but the middle of the campaign was a real slog. We hired a company to help spread the word (for a small up-front fee and a percentage of the campaign), but I would not suggest going that route. They didn't end up helping us and we actually had to struggle for a week of our campaign just trying to get our money back and our momentum going again. But near the end of the campaign we got a big infusion from friends (thanks Sistos!) and family (thanks Lautenschlegers!), and then an old friend with a very popular podcast (Chris Hardwick) pimped our campaign on his show which took us over the finish line. Getting the manufacturing over the line After this we got to work getting the cans manufactured in China with Longpack, as well as planning our live celebration show at The Hollywood Improv. Jason and his amazingly supportive wife Katie put in a few extra thousand dollars around this point to fill in the company-building gaps, and a couple months later we had the games just in time to give to all our backers for Christmas. And the Improv show was a blast! (Thanks Jamie Flam!) To spread the word on Amazon, we hired a company called Bobsled, which was very effective at setting up our page effectively and using the best keywords and ads. This helped set us up for some good starter sales, as well as a nice first holiday season the following year. The biggest lessons learned for us:
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Amazon We just used Amazon for our first year, along with the company Bobsled, mentioned above, and it was a great way for us to get our bearings with this first business. That being said, it was just a side gig for us at the time and didn't bring in a lot of revenue, so it's not the best way to enjoy fast growth, unless of course you get a huge press surge, in which case it could be the best way to do it. We were selling a couple thousand dollars' worth a month, and then November and December were bigger. Our total was just over $25,000 for the year, and it was definitely slow but somewhat steady growth. Pitching to retailers After one year we decided to join a sales rep group (called brokers in other industries), and this put us in front of tons of brick and mortar stores. We started with just small indie toy and gift stores, and eventually got into some larger chains like Tillys and Box Lunch. We also had Barnes & Noble as one of our top 3 goals, and after pitching it 3 or 4 times to their buyers, we finally got on their shelves.(Thanks Tom and the Revenew Sales team!) To stand out amidst the competition, we started making creative videos for each big account we pitched, and we were told that what finally put us over the edge with Barnes & Noble was the ridiculous but creative video we made for them. We switched sales rep groups and we continue to do trade shows, which can be expensive but also lucrative, especially when we can get in front of larger accounts. Amazon Ads We do ads on Amazon, but we don't have any special sauce for that (yet). We also make video ads for Facebook that can be pretty helpful, because you can get so specific in who you're targeting and what they already like. Also, having a video on our Amazon page is super helpful, as we've found that over 80% of the people who click on our video watch it all the way through. Creating more products We've found that the best way to bring customers back is by creating more products. But not just anything. We don't believe in making things that may bring in money but just create more waste. So we followed up Game Night in a Can with an awesomely creative travel game Dr. Biscuits' Radical Road Trip. We went a step further on this game with the art, packaging, game play, and even the amount of included games (60 for Dr. B, 30 for GNIAC). This really paid off for us because Dr. Biscuits got nominated for Game of the Year from the Toy Association, and we're still getting the word out about it. As far as our competition, we always look to see what other game companies are creating and how they're advertising it, and what we can learn from that. We have no interest in copying any other companies, but we're also aware that we only know a fraction of what we have to learn, so we're always looking to see what else is out there. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Today we're building up the entertainment side of our company, developing some game shows with a major studio (that I don't think we can advertise yet), and producing and hosting fun live game nights, team building events, and experiences. We are slowly and steadily becoming more profitable, and our overhead is very low. Jason and Katie's converted garage is our headquarters. I work full time for the company, while Jason still has a full time job as VP of Creative development at Adam Levine's production company, 222. We talk multiple times a day about whatever we're working on, and we have regular weekly meetings, or "band practice." We doubled our growth each year in our first three years, and we're still going over last year's numbers, so we'll see how year 4 stacked up. Our goal is alwasy to try and make $5 profit per game whenever we can, so if a game costs us $2.75 to manufacture and ship to our warehouse, we also have to take into consideration 5-15% sales commissions, freight costs (when the buyer doesn't pay for it), and any additional overhead specific to that game. So when we sell a game to a wholesale buyer for $10, it immediately starts getting chipped at. For our social media following, we have put a lot more focus into our Instagram specifically, and that has been growing pretty well, so now we're up to over 4,000 subscribers. For 2019 we're getting into some licensed games, and expanding the Game Night in a Can world to a second game, The Familympics. Our goals include getting into Target and selling one of our tv show ideas. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?We learned how important it is to marry someone who is your best friend and biggest supporter. My wife Jade Wolf is an amazing partner with lots of artistic talent, tons of creative ideas, and always hypes us up. And her book The Creature Connection is really inspiring! Jason's wife Katie Delahanty is a supermom who has helped in so many ways, including lending us her social media genius. And she's written four books! https://www.katiedelahanty.com/ What platform/tools do you use for your business?We use Freshbooks, Amazon, Instagram, Facebook, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, iPhones, High Performance Planners (brand new situation), and lots of paper, pens, and markers. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Be persistent, kind, and funny. People before money, as often as possible. (But get that money, baby!) Work with someone you really trust, admire, and enjoy spending time with. Jason and I are very lucky to have our friendship and business relationship flow so easily, and we're always having fun. And it's a huge blessing for us each to trust the other so strongly. It makes it all feel easy. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We will be looking for an Operations Manager in the future, but not quite yet. This would be someone who can handle relationships with stores, onboard new accounts, manage most of the regular operations, and think up ways on how to grow the business. Essentially, right now the business is just me and Jason, and having someone handle the "business" while we handle the "games and entertainment" is the goal. Where can we go to learn more?If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM [link] [comments]  |
| Negotiating Terms on Building for Startup Posted: 05 Mar 2019 09:05 AM PST I am opening a medical marijuana dispensary. There is one other founding investor with 20% equity. Finding a location has been tough but we have located a perfect spot with an owner (friend of investor) who will work with us, but won't directly lease the building. He essentially wants to sell the building to us and carry the note himself, while also possibly taking a piece of the business. What terms would be workable here without crippling the business? The rent for his previous tenant was 4200/month, so we need to guarantee at least that much. The sell price of the building is 460k. He has agreed to accept a portion of sales or profit as rent (in case sales start slow), so one idea is to do something like 20% of sales up to 4200? What is the best way to work out an interest % on a deal like this? I had considered a flat rate of like 1k/month going to interest, rest principle but I'm sure that's not great If it matters our projected sales for month 1 are 20k with 10k gross profit. This is also our breakeven point, assuming 4200 goes to the lease. End of year projections are 50k sales/month with 15k profit. I'm open to any ideas of how to structure this deal [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Mar 2019 08:36 AM PST We launched presskite.com a few months ago. Since then, MRR has decreased and the trial to conversion rate isn't very high. The vast majority of users register, poke around, then never come back. We have a bit over 1200 users on the mailing list for the product (registered) and an additional 5500 on a related list for a product I launched as a growth hack https://calendar.presskite.com Here is where I think the problem is: We made a product that solved a problem I personally had, but not many other people share. Whoops. I needed press kits for side projects so I could display the content (images, videos, links to blog posts) for our brand in a slightly more professional manner than a google drive folder could. The problem is, I think we're catching the downtrend of a turn. Google Drive is becoming more of a reliable source for hosting and sharing with anyone. Users that still want to integrate a better press kit into their mix do so by adding it to their website using their existing workflow and match their brand's style. That leaves a small shrinking sliver of users in between who either isn't aware that they can just use Dropbox or google drive or think we're able to integrate more fully into their site. So, what are the next steps? I decided to split test two ideas I had for growing the product through other products and leaving the tool to be a lead gen aggregator. I sent out an email to our list with two different, unbuilt products: https://writer.presskite.com (Content marketing as a service) https://tailwind.presskite.com (Better launches as a service) Writer generated about 15 sales meetings and I closed 1 for ongoing revenue at $500/month. I turned down 2 additional clients and ended relationships with the $500/month user. More on this later. Tailwind generated 17 sales meetings and I closed 2 at $799 (one-time) and one at $2000 (recurring). I also turned down 7 other possible offers and ended relationships with the $2k recurring user. More on this now. Whoa? Revenue! Great. The problem is they're both services with razor thin margins and I have a full-time job. My two co-founders are both very talented developers, but that meant I was wrangling several service businesses for way below my hourly rate and then profits were being split three ways. Service-based businesses are very tricky with a full-time job as most of it is handled during the daytime when you're expected to be on hand for the full-time gig :) Software-based businesses can be hacked on at night without too much disruption to the working schedule. So, now we're a bit unsure of where to go from here. I pointed us in the direction of a problem I had that isn't shared by many and we've built a platform to cater to it. MRR is low $XXX and shrinking. We have a few ideas of other tools we could build to cater to the crowd, but none have really grabbed us yet. Ideas
That's it, open to any suggestions you might have. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Mar 2019 08:30 AM PST |
| Thinking to take small education break. Posted: 05 Mar 2019 08:28 AM PST Hi, i have a small tech based service startup in Bangladesh and we are at it for last 3 years without any social or personal life to speak of. This year i have even more work lined up and i feel it will be same even the next. I am feeling tired and burnt out.so thinking of taking a break for few months and pursue a small Entrepreneur related(or may be not related) course outside my country at the end of this year. It might help me feel better and also bring fresh perspective in my life. Have you guys ever took any educational break like this? What sort of course did you choose? Was it helpful? [link] [comments]  |
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