These tips are from a recent NWEN breakfast talk by Ben Elowitz. Ben’s currently the founder & CEO of Wetpaint, a wiki company based here in Seattle, and was responsible for much of the success of Blue Nile and Fatbrain (I used to love that site). If you can’t learn something from what he’s got to share, you’re probably in the wrong business.

Here’s the list, adapted from memory:

• What gets you hot and bothered? Consumer or enterprise? Products or services? Profit-driven or world-changing? Everyone’s got their own preferences – just know what gets you going before jumping into a new idea, or you may run out of passion before you get to the finish line.
• Find a good sherpa. You wouldn’t climb Everest without finding the best sherpa possible, why start a business without doing the same? Pick someone who’s got a ton of experience, loves mentoring new entrepreneurs, and has the connections to help you move your business forward. This person doesn’t have to actually be an entrepreneur.
• Think leverage. Selling and shipping heavy books (Fatbrain) for tens of dollars per order was tough, and took lots of people. Selling and shipping tiny diamonds (Blue Nile) for thousands per order, with a smaller team? Brilliant. Think about how to build your business to apply maximum leverage with your limited resources (money, people, time). This is something Justin and I think about all the time with Menuism.
• Relationships and references matter. There are countless options for service providers for your business. When picking someone you may have to lean on, remember your relationships, and get lots of references. You don’t want your support network to fail you at the worst possible time.
• Bigger isn’t better. Big teams are great for powering through the initial “build it fast” phase, but then what are they gonna do (besides burn through your cash)? Stay lean and mean, and hire only when it’s painful not to.
• Be deliberate. Like it or not, your company will take on your personality, so think carefully about what image you want to project. Cost-conscious? Workaholic? Alcoholic? Your pick – just be ready for the consequences.
• Nothing’s bold when everything’s bold. You’re not trying to be everything to everyone, so figure out your differentiator. It doesn’t have to be some crazy new technology – just pick the one thing that you’re gonna do better than anyone else in your market.

Thoughts? Got your own list of tips/advice? Let us know in the comments.

-john

“Menuism rocked the house at TC4!” exclaimed one attendee who asked to remain unnamed. “It seemed like they were everywhere – I couldn’t resist being lulled by the sweet siren song of Menuism gospel. It was like those Highrise guys weren’t even around at all.”

Well, that’s how I imagine a PR firm would have spun it. We did attend and demo at Tech Cocktail 4 last night at John Barleycorn, and here’s the real breakdown of how it went:

• Tech Cocktail is renowned, and was fantastic last night. The venue in Wrigleyville was perfect, with plenty of space (and drinks) to accommodate the huge crowd.
• Menuism did win the crowd voting last night via Interactive Mediums‘ neat SMS-based voting system, but it wasn’t a blowout victory – the race was pretty tight with the other demoing startups, including the cool guys at ParkWhiz.
• Highrise was scheduled to be demoed last night, but those guys couldn’t make it in the end. There’s little doubt they would’ve been the most popular demo there – the 37 Signals guys are icons of the web world, and Menuism’s built on the framework they created. Highrise itself is a neat product tackling a real tangible market opportunity, so kudos to them.
• Justin and I did snag a great demo location, taking over a small bar on the side of the room but the only thing we had on tap was Menuism propaganda.
• Our booth was eye-catching, but probably because it looked like something from a high school carnival – paper tablecloths, orange helium balloons holding up printed signs, and laptops looping a video slideset about Menuism. And the “valuable giveaways”? Lifesaver mints – avoided by all.
• We did talk about Menuism to lots of people, which I felt was the best part of Tech Cocktail for us. Practice really does help when it comes to networking and talking, and we were better this time around, but still far from totally comfortable or relaxed. Any smoothness was probably due to the free booze.

That pretty much covers how TC went for us last night. We were looking forward to it all week, and as we were looking for supplies and setting up it totally felt like something out of the Apprentice. Here’s a representative picture of our setup, with me posing for the camera while Justin’s in the background, demoing his heart out.

Like many other companies there, we held a raffle to try to get more attendees to talk to us, with our prize being a $50 restaurant gift certificate. Congratulations to Clint from Stone Ward for winning our raffle – we’ll be in touch with you soon. =) We were able to meet a bunch of great new contacts, visible in card form here.

If you were there last night but didn’t win our $50, never fear – you can still win $50 in our monthly Food Fight Contest for April. We’re looking for the best salads around, so just review some salads and you’re automatically entered!

You can read more about TC4 with writeups by hosts Eric, Frank, and on the Tech Cocktail blog. All in all, we had a fantastic time at Tech Cocktail 4, thanks to the grand efforts of Eric and Frank. Thanks guys!

-John

We timed this trip to coincide with one of our favorite networking events – Tech Cocktail 3, which was held at Amira at the base of the NBC tower. Hosts Eric and Frank have perfected the simple formula for bringing together the Midwest tech community – take a swanky lounge, add an open bar, and make the whole thing free. The local community’s definitely taken to the idea, with attendence nearly doubling at each successive event.

Justin and I had lots of fun at the last one, and last night didn’t disappoint. Amira’s a large venue, but even with all that space things got crowded quickly and lots of people were turned away at the door. Previous sponsor Singlehop outdid itself this time, providing complimentary (strong!) martinis poured through glowing frog ice sculptures. Thankfully, this time there weren’t any video interviewers to stumble in front of after one-too-many free drinks. =)

More than the venue and the free drinks, the best part of TC was meeting interesting people and hearing about their projects. It was nice to reconnect with old friends and make new connections, though with so many in attendance it got hard to find everyone we wanted to. For more detailed coverage, check out WindyBits‘ coverage here.

As for actual work, we’ve got a couple things lined up for Menuism in the coming weeks that we’re really excited about and working hard on – stay tuned for more!

-John

In preparation for these and future promotional activities, we designed a sleek, black business card that could be used to promote Menuism and also be useful for the recipient, with a nifty tip chart on the back. We chose Vistaprint to print our cards, and in typical Two-Bit Operation fashion we procrastinated until the last minute and had to opt for the rush shipping. To our surprise, Christmas came early this year, and our big card order arrived today! We rabidly tore apart the packaging and found the following:

It wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t as sleek nor as black as we had hoped. What’s even odder was the backside color was a different shade than the front, though our original images were both jet black. (Vistaprint will be hearing from us…) Who knew that gray was the new black? Regardless, we’re satisfied that the cards are at lease usable – we hope people like and use the tip chart. Got any suggestions for the next batch of cards? What other interesting things have you seen on business cards?

-John

p.s. If you want to help spread the word about Menuism, or just need a useful tip chart in your wallet, let us know – we’ll send you some cards!

But as the founders of any website, even these guys, will tell you, money doesn’t come rolling in once a site’s launched. So we’re live, and the balance on the bank account isn’t moving much, so what’s next? We’re now starting the real “business” phase of our operation, where the focus is on branding, marketing, advertising and sales, all for driving more users and restaurant relationships. We’ve been going through lots of marketing books and talking to like-minded entrepreneurs recently and we’ll share some details in a future post.

Kicking off a new project phase requires a lot of discussion, so I flew into Chicago late Wednesday night for our seventh(!) working session. The main goal for this session is to create a coherent and consistent marketing, advertising and sales strategy that we can run with for the foreseeable future. And as if the weather gods were also heralding our change in focus, my arrival was greeted with a massive cold front, freezing wind and snow showers. What’s life without the little challenges?

-John

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• Track news clippings and blog posts about all the competitors in a project
• Get a username/password protected RSS feed of the news (this gave me an error when I tried it but I’m sure it’ll get fixed soon)
• Create features and feature groups and view how all the competitors stack up on a big competitive matrix
• View basic traffic data and stats from alexa for each and compare them graphically (via alexaholic)
• Collaborate through commenting and "clipping" news stories into comments

If you’re curious, like Menuism, it’s built on Ruby on Rails.  Check it out.

- Justin

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• Alpha: Very very small group of people.  Focus: Basic concept and initial usability feedback.
• Closed Beta:  Friends and family.  Focus: Usability and design.
• Beta with Invitations: Extended friends and family.  Focus:  Design, fit and finish, performance.

Taking it slow helped us both manage the feedback changes and mentally prepare for increased feedback criticality (when you pour your heart and life into something for 8 months you become a little protective of it…)  After quite a bit of great and useful feedback from our early users, we felt pretty good about talking to someone with absolutely no stake or relationship with us.

Lo and behold our friend CW was able to hook us up with a great opportunity to participate in a Sequoia Coaching Session through Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.  We had the opportunity to meet with a Sequoia partner for 30 minutes to discuss the business and get advice.  30 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but we were pretty nervous seeing as this was our first meeting with someone with any standing in the industry.  On the positive side, since we aren’t shopping for funding we kept telling ourselves to just keep that mentality: "nothing to lose, right?".  The coaching session happened on a Friday in Palo Alto, CA so we arrived Thursday afternoon to prep. 

Here are the things we prepped:

• 1-page Company Info Sheet (location: Sunnyvale Kinkos at midnight)

• Answers to Potential Questions (location: Cupertino library in afternoon)

• Basic Summary (location: In-n-out parking lot in Sunnyvale at Friday 1am)

  • What’s our company’s goal in the marketplace?
  • Who are our customers?
  • What are their problems and how do we solve them?

Surprisingly, during the meeting both us didn’t seem as nervous as we though we would be.  Good sign, I think.  Maybe it’s because we had prepped almost every question possible…

Overall, the session went very well (in our opinion).  He seemed positive on the idea and the 30 minutes flew by.  We were able to give our spiel, answer and ask quite a few questions, and hear some good advice from the partner. 

A sampling of the high level points:

• Get as close to the customer’s revenue as possible
• Focus on ease of use.  He used YouTube as example.  Their ease of upload and browsing helped accelerate adoption.
• Focus initial growth on a niche.  Niches are easier to nurture and control.

Sure, it was a lot of work for 30 minutes, but it was totally worth it.  Not only did it force us to make sure we had all these answers solid enough to give to someone else, but we also got some valuable outside feedback and more confidence to keep moving forward.

On that note, our goal is to open up the site within the next few days.   Stay tuned! 

- Justin

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It took time, but I came to see that networking wasn’t dirty or fake.  At a basic level it’s simply a force multiplier, amplifying the effects and opportunities that come from one’s work.  Still, it was tough to change my habits from what the had become.  Perhaps it was because I was still working with in the same group, or perhaps it was a function of the culture I was raised in, or maybe it was one of a myriad of other factors.  Isn’t it always easier to blame anything and everything but yourself?

Complacency sneaks up easily in a stable corporate job, which is one of the reasons Justin and I decided to take the sink-or-swim approach of doing our own thing.  Having been at it for a couple months now, I’m well on the road to being a convert – networking is important in a corporation but almost life-and-death for a startup.  Even with our limited networks we’ve been able to find fantastic contacts and resources to help our business.  One thing that’s helped my conversion has been discovering two networks of local entrepreneurs in similar positions as myself:

• Biznik is a small business networking group that was started here in Seattle, partly as a reaction to existing business networking associations that were stuffy and what I’d call "fake".  Members host all kinds of interesting and informative events.  I found the site through a post on Scott Berkun’s blog (highly recommended), and my first Biznik event was a website design and UI crash course hosted by him and Ario Jafarzadeh, a local user experience designer.  I’ve been to a few events and found the members to be open, friendly and definitely not "fake".
• Seattletechstartups is a small and informal group of techies in the Seattle area who are either doing or thinking about doing their own startups.  I went to my first meeting last week and met a number of interesting people (and ideas).  It’s amazing how many of them are ex (or current) Microsofties.

To my surprise, I had a great time meeting new and interesting people at these groups, and it didn’t feel "forced" in any way.  Networking also helped satisfy the need for social interaction that can be an unexpected issue when doing your own thing.  All in all, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made so far, but there’s definitely room to grow.  Here’s one small step in that direction: I’ll be attending the Seattle Mind Camp 3.0 on November 11-12.  What could be more fun than 300 people together for 24 hours, discussing whatever comes to mind?  Let me know if you’re going, hope to see you there.

-JL

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We felt that having a private beta test was absolutely critical to our business, as it’d be our last chance to make any major changes (both for the site and the business direction) before opening it to the general public. We had a couple of goals for the beta:

1. Solicit feedback and suggestions.
2. Build a base of data – user contributions help our site, and we wanted to get the process started.
3. Publicize – a beta test is one of the first steps in a long road of publicing and marketing our site.
4. Test our systems – this is possibly the most overlooked aspect of having a beta. Since there’s just two of us, we need to be sure we’re ready to handle all the issues that might occur when running the site.

So far the beta’s been going well, and we’ve been receiving a ton of good feedback, which just makes us busier than ever.  I guess it’s a good problem to have.   Stay tuned, we’ll have more updates about the beta process as it continues…

-JL

Anita Roddick, b. 1941, founder, entrepreneur, activist, working mother, The Body Shop

Background

• Born into an Italian immigrant family and raised in Littlehampton, Sussex
• Grew up working in the family diner on the weekends and after school
• Studied English, history, and aesthetics at the Newton Park College of Education and Bath
• After a few years of working, she took some time to travel by herself through Tahiti, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Reunion, Madagascar, Mauritius, Australia, and Johannesburg. On these travels she was exposed to and enlightened by all kinds of cultures.
• After getting married to Gordon Roddick, the couple owned and ran a small restaurant and hotel in Littlehampton, but it caused them to neglect the children so they sold the business to pursue other opportunities.

Accomplishments

• While her husband was away on a two-year trip in 1976, Anita used a $6,500 loan to open a natural, environmentally conscious cosmetic store as a way to support herself while her husband was gone. She saw the business as a way to be sure that she would have time for her children every day.
• As an accomplished traveler, Anita wondered why no one sold bath products in small sample sizes. To start, she sold 15 natural cosmetic products that she created and packaged in small plastic recyclable bottles.
• To expand stores, her husband came up with idea for aspiring owners to ’self-finance’ their own new stores, thus leading to growth through a franchise network, which to this day has mostly women owners. After much success, she took the company public in 1984.
• Anita was able to successfully create a company that reflected her concerns by putting those same goals into the company’s mission statement (from thebodyshop.com):
  • To dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change.
  • To creatively balance the financial and human needs of our stakeholders: employees, customers, franchisees, suppliers and shareholders.
  • To courageously ensure that our business is ecologically sustainable, meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future.
  • To meaningfully contribute to local, national and international communities in which we trade, by adopting a code of conduct which ensures care, honesty, fairness and respect
• The Body Shop achieved success without any paid advertising – Anita didn’t believe in it. Instead, she believed high quality items sold themselves and has since only relied on the recommendations of satisfied customers.
• Here are some notable examples illustrating the The Body Shop’s commitment to its mission:
  • The company uses their window space and packaging to promote their causes. The first window display of this kind was to help Greenpeace’s lobbying efforts against dumping hazardous waste into the North Sea. Some others: the save-the-whales campaign, Amnesty International, the rain-forest activists Survival International, the Friends of the Earth, AIDs awareness, ending animal testing, and recycling.
  • Some of her international campaigns include “Stop the Burn” to save the Brazilian rainforests and “Trade not Aid.”
  • The company’s actions probably speak louder than any campaign. In an effort to show that companies don’t need to exploit Third World workers to be successful, The Body Shop pays them comparable wages to those that are earned by British workers.

Notable Quotes

• “Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking. Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading: buying and selling.”
• “I have always found that my view of success has been iconoclastic: success to me is not about money or status or fame, its about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world.”
• “I hate the beauty business. It is a monster industry selling unattainable dreams. It lies. It cheats. It exploits women”
• “How can you ennoble the spirit, when you are selling something as inconsequential as a face cream?” (when talking about Third World workers)

Fun Facts

• The first small bottles she used were actually urine bottles!
• In the beginning, the recyclable packaging and green walls were more out of necessity than making an environmental statement, but it all came together in the end

More Reading

• Wikipedia: Anita Roddick
• My Hero Project: Anita Roddick
• AnitaRoddick.com
• TheBodyShop.com: About Us

I hope Anita’s story inspires you to do what you love and to let your small business’ goals and actions reflect the kind of person you are. Small business survival and success is often made possible by the contributions and sacrifices of many friends, family, and other kind-hearted souls, so, when you do succeed, give back to others and keep the cycle going. After all, life and business aren’t zero-sum games – the more people you can bring up with your success, the better the world will be.

- JC

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