Forbes

Startup CEO: How To Build A Double Sided Marketplace In the Fashion Industry

Textile Supplier with President George W. Bush

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Websites like eBay and Amazon have transformed the way people buy and sell products. With a current market cap of $68B and $151B respectively, it’s clear that efficient and highly engaged marketplaces between buyers and sellers can provide real value to both parties.

A new NYC based startup realized the same marketplace dynamic could be applied to a different part of the retail value chain, and in a very specific but necessary category: textiles. Until recently, textile suppliers from around the world had no way to conveniently sell their products in a global marketplace.

I caught up with Benita Singh, the CEO of Source4Style, to learn more about how she is building an online marketplace for a very interesting but critical part of the fashion business.

Dan Reich: There are hundreds of online marketplaces in existence today. Alibaba.com is one example. When did you realize there was a need for a textile marketplace?

Benita Singh: Throughout my career, I spent a lot of time at trade shows, on expensive sourcing trips and even on sites like Alibaba. And it wasn’t unusual for a two-week sourcing trip to India to result in finding only one new supplier. So I learned early on that it was a highly-fragmented market.

At the same time, many of my “best finds” were suppliers that didn’t showcase at the biggest trade shows. And their online presence was limited to a three-page static content site.

We then started to do some research on the market opportunity. In one of our surveys with independent designers, we heard that they spend up to 85% of their time sourcing and navigating the complex textile supply chain. And among the larger fashion brands, we saw that since 2008 travel budgets on the production side of the business were dropping. Couple all these industry trends with the rise of B2B marketplaces and we saw a clear opportunity.

Reich: Any entrepreneur that has built a double-sided marketplace will tell you how hard it is. How are you building both the supply and demand for Source4Style?

Singh: At the beginning, we focused exclusively on building up the supply side of the marketplace. In our case, that was getting a critical mass of textile mills onto the platform. Within three months, we were working with suppliers in over 30 countries. We learned that we must have a baseline of supply before we could go to the demand and start the engine.

We’ve also learned that the two sides of your marketplace may very well have two very different reasons for wanting to be part of your platform. For our buyers, it’s about discovery and access. They want to be able to replicate the inspirational experience of walking a trade show floor 365 days a year, and that’s how we present Source4Style to them.

Our suppliers on the other hand want a more practical tool to help them streamline their leads, follow up with potential buyers and track conversions from sample requests to purchase orders.

It’s critical to learn the value proposition for each side of your market. For our buyers, we have to effectively merchandise and market. For our suppliers, we have to really focus on building a great SaaS platform for them to help manage their global business.

Finally, your influential first adopters can help you grow both sides of the marketplace. Some of our buyers bring their suppliers onto the platform because they want to use Source4Style to manage all of their sourcing. These buyers are also offering case studies that are inspiring others in the industry to give us a try.

Reich: You had to build a global business pretty quickly. What challenges did that entail and how did you overcome them?

Singh: Sourcing is inherently global, so yes, we had to become an international business pretty immediately. Operationally, we built a dynamic platform that allows buyers and sellers to confirm final pricing before proceeding with a purchase order. This accounts for currency fluctuations in the 36 countries where our suppliers are now based. We also brought on local agents in key markets like India and Italy who help us to both onboard new suppliers and ensure that their collections and data are kept up to date.

We have a global market on the buy side as well. And with a small team, we have to provide top-notch service around the globe. This isn’t easy and it means our phones are ringing around the clock. But I consider it the best incentive to grow quickly and intelligently!

Our next steps are to translate Source4Style.com and optimize our platform in key markets as well.

Benita’s work is paying off. In less than two years Source4Style has created a presence in over 76 countries. More recently, they partnered with The Council of Fashion Designers of America to provide their members with “concierge-level access to their comprehensive online sourcing marketplace.”

5 Tricks To Get Press For Your Business Or Startup

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Celebrity Photographers at the Tribeca Film Fe...

So you spent a few months, perhaps even a few years, to develop the most cutting edge and revolutionary widget. This widget could be anything ranging from a new product or device to a new company or startup. The bottom line is that the development phase is completed and now it’s time to get the word out. You run through your marketing list. Social Media? Check. PR firm? Check. Paid Media? Check. Events? Check. As you run through the list you realize that it’s the same list every other company would put together. You think you have an extraordinary product or solution and yet, you’re plan is about as generic as they come. Having worked in the trenches as a founder and startup employee, I know firsthand what this marketing laundry list could look like.

But for the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to sit on the other side of the table as a contributor for various publications like Forbes, HBR, and other industry specific outlets. As a result, I’ve personally been pitched dozens of stories that are “game changing” or “disruptive.” What I learned is that most of these pitches are in fact, not “game changing” and moreover, some of the methods used to acquire the sought after press is shockingly abysmal.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. Here are some tips to avoid the generic PR trap and ways you can achieve meaningful exposure for your new widget or business.

Build a targeted list of writers and journalists. I was once pitched a story about a non-profit in Africa. While I love nonprofits and love Africa (although I’ve never been there), this type of story is one I’d most likely never write about. Spend some time to identify who the best writers are that are most likely to benefit from your story. Journalists are always looking for good, relevant content. Make sure your story aligns with their experience and area of focus.

Let the writers know you’ve read their work. Most people respond best when they are shown personal attention. Journalists are no different. When pitching your story, start with a personal reference to grab their attention. You can reference a previous article they wrote or mention a past achievement:

“Hi Dan, I thought your last article on startups was …”

This will demonstrate that you were thoughtful and respectful of the person’s time. Check out their profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Do some homework first.

Pitch a story, not your company or product. If you are looking for press coverage it’s because you want a broader audience to know about your product or service. To do this, try to tie your company or product to a hot trend in current events so that it becomes relevant to a broader base. For example, one recent company I covered was building a new home security system. Instead of pitching me on their product, they pitched me on the fact that they raised over $180,000 on their own crowd funding site during a time when crowd-funding was getting a lot of attention. The story was how they raised money. The result was more coverage for their company.

Don’t hire a PR firm to do it. I respect the hustle of people trying to make their business grow. So when I get an email from a hired PR shop, I think to myself, why didn’t the founder of the company send me the note instead? If press is so important to them, why push it off to someone else? Steve Jobs for example would personally spend time, lots of time, chatting up the press. Be like Steve. Spend some time curating relationships with those that can help amplify your message.

Make it exclusive to that journalist. Journalists love exclusive stories because in the world of content exclusivity is a competitive advantage. When trying to get press coverage, let the journalist know that you will make your story available to them and them only. This will create more motivation for that person to write a story about you.

When it comes to press coverage just remember that journalists are people and not robots that crank out words in publications. If you can craft a story that is unique, adds value to a specific journalist, and can convey the message in a personal and respectful way, then it’s a win-win for everyone involved. The journalist will get a great story to write and you will get some nice exposure for your new shiny object.

From Law To Liquor: How One Corporate Attorney Left Law To Start A Luxury Tequila Company

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Over the past few months I’ve heard the same brutally refreshing remarks from a handful of friends: They all want to quit their job as a lawyer so that they can pursue a business of their own. As one corporate lawyer friend put it, “it’s rewarding to help my clients with their business but I think it would be entirely more satisfying if it were a business of my own.”

This is one of the reasons a new tequila company called Qui Tequila was launched. Pete Girgis, a once corporate attorney, felt the same way and decided to leave his corporate gig so that he could launch a tequila company. Pete put it this way.

“I was at a big firm where I felt like a cog in the wheel.  There wasn’t a sense of creation.  Growing up, my father was a small business owner who owned liquor stores that I managed while in school. I had a passion for the spirits business and was lucky to have met my cofounders while practicing law. We are like brothers.  We saw a great opportunity in the luxury tequila market. Now every time I walk into a bar or restaurant and see someone enjoying Qui, it is incredibly satisfying.”

Pete’s leap of faith to start his own business is now paying off. His tequila is now carried by dozens of liquor stores like Sherry-Lehmann, Bottlerocket Wine & Spirits, Park Ave Liquor Shop, Chelsea Wine Vault and prestigious hospitality venues like the Bowery Hotel, the Standard, Lure Fishbar, Casa La Femme, Darby, 1OAK, the General, and La Cenita.

Although hard work and hustle are two key ingredients to Pete’s success, he was able to share some more tips for future x-lawyers and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Education Matters. Although he doesn’t practice law anymore, Pete’s academic background as a JD/MBA provided him with critical building blocks to build his business.

“If I had to do it over, I would have still studied law and business. Starting a successful business is incredibly challenging and big businesses can have lots of complexities. I’m a firm believer that a strong foundation in the business and the legal worlds only helps your likelihood of success.”

Create a unique product. Pete and his team spent a lot of time meticulously developing a product that they would be proud of and the once lawyer is now a full blown tequila connoisseur.

“On the product side, Qui is the first Platinum Extra-Añejo Tequila in the world. So after the tequila is made, it rests in French Bordeaux and American Whiskey barrels for three and a half years.  This aging process gives it a rich flavor, character and beautiful aroma. Then we filter it 9 times and distill it a third time for an incredibly smooth finish. No one has done that before and as a result, we just won Gold in the Spirits of the Americas Competition.”

Have a good distribution strategy. In the world of liquors and spirits, it is incredibly difficult to stand out. Pete and his partners figured they could create a unique product and distribute it in a competitive landscape by targeting specific market segments.

“We knew that New York was one of the most challenging spirits markets in the world, but if we could win here, we could go anywhere.  We set out to create a brand that was more elegant, sophisticated and cosmopolitan then the rest with a juice that was equally as refined.  So far, Qui has had great traction in the fashion, film, music and art worlds because of our focus on strong product-market fit and distribution.”

So if you are thinking about leaving your corporate job to start your own business, just remember that hard work, hustle and good planning can pay off. And then maybe you too will see your product in a nice window display like the one above.

YouTube Is Growing Up, Celebrates At VidCon In Anaheim

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Español: Logo Vectorial de YouTube

 

YouTube has been around for a while but it’s finally becoming the transformational platform everyone thought it could and would become. Until recently, brands and businesses have written off the medium as a place for teenagers to film short, quirky, and often nonsensical short form videos. But something funny happened along the way. Many of these teenagers became overnight sensations which has people rethinking the power of online video.

Take for example Jenna Marbles. With about 10 million YouTube subscribers and over 1 billion video views, she has amassed a following most brands would be envious of. And there are plenty of others trying to follow in her foot steps by using YouTube as a platform to create a meaningful brand and personality. This week, many of these YouTube stars and celebrity hopefuls will converge in Anaheim, California for the VidCon conference. In attendance will also be other forms of professionals and they are ones you’d only expect to find in Hollywood: talent managers and entertainment agents. The talent and respective managers are both starting to realize that YouTube has completely changed the game.  And this trend is only increasing. According to Rolling Stone magazine, just last week Russell Simmons announced a brand new music label with YouTube and Universal Music  that would be focused on promoting and developing new artists using YouTube.

But music isn’t the only category that is taking advantage of the medium.

Major retailers, consumer packaged goods companies, and beauty companies, are beginning to partner up with influential YouTube bloggers in order to facilitate product placement within online videos. Companies like Stylehaul and HaulerDeals have been created to facilitate these types of transactions between product companies and video bloggers.

Media companies are starting to invest heavily in in-house video production and content creation, whereas just a few years ago they would argue that it was too expensive. However, after recently speaking to a number of executives at various media companies like Conde Nast and Hearst, it’s clear that they realize the time to invest in video is now. And with the costs of video production coming down due cheaper and better tools it’s starting to become a no-brainer for businesses to get into the video production game. Cameo.tv is one such example where videographers can film, edit, and publish a professional video without needing anything more than just an iPhone.

Even medium to small sized businesses realize that in order to do effective marketing and sales, you need to be able to tell your story in a meaningful and engaging way. And how much more engaging can you get than using site, sound and motion? This is the reason more and more businesses feature videos right on their home pages, and even about-us pages, instead of static text.

So if you’re thinking about building your own personal brand or adding fuel to your business, you should take another look at YouTube. It’s not just about teenagers and cute kitten videos anymore.

Innovation And Investment Dollars Turn To A New Region: The Midwest

Memorial Union Terrace, Madison, WI
Memorial Union Terrace, Madison, WI (Photo credit: Mike Procario)

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

It may seem as if entrepreneurship and venture capital are exclusively tied to the east and west coasts. In many cases this is true. A recent report derived by SSTI from PricewaterhouseCoopers Moneytree Survey Data shows that California attracted 53% of all venture capital dollars in 2012 in the United States followed by Massachusetts and New York City with a combined 19% of  VC investment dollars.

For recent graduates pursuing a career associated with the world of startup life, it may seem as if the coasts are the only places to go to start or join a new business.

There are, however, accelerator programs that are trying to change that. One program that I’m intimately familiar with, given my ties to UW-Madison, is called gener8tor and it is launching its third class of startup companies. The program is based in Madison, Wisconsin and is drawing companies from Austin, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, and the Twin cities.

Jon Eckhardt, co-founder of the program sees a big opportunity to create a more meaningful environment for aspiring entrepreneurs in the Midwest.

“gener8tor’s is tightly integrated into the entrepreneurship communities in the mid-west and the coasts, especially as a result of our work with nearby academic institutions” Eckhardt said. “This, combined with our innovative training platform, lets us link the capabilities of the mid-west with resources nationally.”

And it’s starting to work. According to Troy Vosseller, a co-founder of the program, its 13 companies have raised more than $5 million in capital and created 70 jobs. “The growth is only accelerating and this summer the program saw over 250 applications from around the country and from around the world,” said Vosseller. Other VC firms are starting to notice. One of which is Great Oaks Capital, a VC firm who’s founding team spent time studying at UW-Madison.

John Philosophos, Partner at Great Oaks Venture Capital put it this way. “We see big opportunities brewing in the Wisconsin ecosystem.  The entrepreneurial community is growing and producing high quality start-ups. Critical resources, including top flight developers from the UW Computer Science program and College of Engineering, mentorship from the State’s broad based economy and forward thinking corporations are all being mobilized to support innovation in the State.  Accordingly, we have made Wisconsin one of our national areas of focus.”

Local corporations are also joining the movement. American Family Insurance, based in Madison, has begun investing in and becoming customers of the region’s emerging companies. Dan Reed, Director of Business Development at American Family, says the company “sees an opportunity to engage the community in creating wealth and value in a way that also fosters a culture of innovation across the region.”

And it’s no wonder that more focus is being spent on this Midwest ecosystem.

Consider that just a few years ago, the University of Wisconsin was said to have “stood out among its state school peers” in terms of producing chief executive officers of major corporations, according to a study from U.S. News & World Report. If a program like gener8tor could help guide some of that raw Midwestern talent, maybe we’ll see an uptick of investment dollars and economic growth in the Midwest which would be a huge win for the region and national economy.

Founder of Vault.com Discusses Startup Life and His New Healthcare Company Zeel

Samer Hamadeh, Founder & CEO of Zeel.com

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Samer Hamadeh started hustling the good ole’ fashion way by finding a problem and fixing it. A few years later he would apply those same principles to his other ventures, most notable of which is Vault.com. Now Samer is on to an entirely new business but this time it’s in a new industry: healthcare.

I caught up with Samer so he could share some of his insights into his life as an entrepreneur, a candy salesman, and his new startup called Zeel.

Many people aspire to start their own companies. How did you get started as an entrepreneur?

My first big entrepreneurial success was selling candy at recess during 7th grade. I was eventually caught, but I convinced the school that I was just meeting unfilled demand, so they let me continue. (Twix bars were my best sellers – I’d buy them for 25 cents each at Costco and resell them for 50 cents.)

After I graduated from Stanford, my friend Mark Oldman and I saw another opportunity. We realized that internships were becoming an essential part of the career path –and that there was no good information available about where to find a great internship. This was pre-Internet industry, of course, so we published a book, America’s Top 100 Internships, which was a huge success, and started a consulting practice to help companies with their internship programs

I’ve always focused on getting people the services they want to make their lives better, delivering via the latest technology. I’ve gone from passing notes at school, to books, to CD-ROMs, to the web, to mobile apps. I sometimes joke that telepathy is next.

You’ve spent your career building businesses in the career and education space. What made you decide to switch industries?

The thing is that I’ve always been focused on delivery and customer service. At Vault, we were pioneers in on-demand content – our customers purchased and downloaded interview guides and company dossiers in PDF format right before interviews. After selling Vault and before founding Zeel, I was an investor and advisor at Campusfood.com, which we recently sold to GrubHub, the food delivery service, also based on satisfying last-minute needs.

In addition, I’d say that I’ve spent my career figuring out the best way to solve the problems I was facing at the time, from a lack of candy, to getting a job, to, today, easing aches and pains.

When my co-founders and I started Vault, we were right out of school, and we naturally created a company to assist recent college grads. Zeel, on the other hand, was inspired by the aches and pains of our 30s and 40s. I’m married with kids now, along with most of the rest of our founding team. We need the relaxation and pain relief that massage therapy provides. We don’t have time in our busy schedules to book massages a week in advance and spend hours going to and from a spa – plus, getting massage in-home means that we don’t need to hire a babysitter. We like flat fees so we don’t need to worry about tax and tip. We want to use our phones like a remote control for our lives, so we launched an iPhone app for booking. We’ve basically created the most convenient way possible to reliably get a great massage, from a vetted and licensed massage therapist, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs looking to get into the healthcare space?

The healthcare space is complicated. You need to take time to understand the industry – just being a healthcare consumer won’t give you anything close to a complete picture. For one, it’s much more regulated than other spaces. Health insurers have intricate rules. And there are laws about advertising, payments and provider referrals that you just don’t have in other industries.

That’s why it took me and my team nearly two years of immersion in the healthcare space to devise Zeel Massage On Demand℠. Massage, for example, might seem straightforward, but there are different licensing requirements in every state, local regulations about when and where massage can take place, and restrictions on how you pay therapists.

So I’d advise entrepreneurs to educate themselves as thoroughly as possible. Go to conferences and healthcare meetups. When you’re ready, apply to some of the superior accelerators and fellowships that have sprung up in this space, like Blueprint Health and StartUp Health.

Littlebits Is The New Legos

For me, legos was a game changing toy. In fact, writing the word “toy” makes me cringe because legos is so much more than that. These little bricks put me on a course that would later lead to robotics in high school, electrical engineering in college, and entrepreneurship somewhere in between. And anyone that’s ever played with legos can understand where I’m coming from. Like me, you probably bought some lego truck or train, built the thing based off of the instructions, and then completely destroyed your newfound creation so you could build your own piece of art.

Invention. Creation. Destruction. Innovation.

This cycle happens over time in every business and in every industry.  Take AOL as an example. They created the first web portal and then it got destroyed by new companies building off of their building blocks. AOL away messages became Twitter. AOL profile pages became Facebook. AOL search became Google. The same thing is happening to Craigslist and to many other companies and sectors.

And this is where innovation comes from. It’s all about understanding how to use building blocks and for me that happened with legos. That’s why I got pretty excited when I saw littlebits for the first time a year or so ago over on Fred Wilson’s blog. I recently met Ayah, the founder of littlebits, and I’m more excited about what this company can and hopefully will become. As Ayah believes, and as I do to, the new building blocks of the 21st century are based on electrical circuits. Some may argue that we are beyond hardware and that the real building blocks are knowing how to code and how to program, but I believe that the next wave of true innovation will come from the intersection of new hardware and new software. Not software alone.

And that’s why littlebits is so exciting. Kids all over the world will be able to play with and learn from the new building blocks of the 21st century. Had I been sitting on that basement floor with these building blocks instead of legos, who knows what I would have built. A TV perhaps.

Startup CEO: How To Quit The Trading Floor and Do A Startup Placing Interns All Around The World

The Intern Group offers amazing opportunities to gain vital work experience, develop extensive, global networks and see the best of what some of the greatest cities in the world have to offer

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

It’s easy to get stuck in an unfulfilling corporate career path. Before you know it, you turn around wonder where all that time went. In some industries, like banking or consulting, it’s very hard to jump ship from the lucrative safety net of the corporate world to the treacherous waters of entrepreneurship.

David Lloyd decided to forgo a potentially lucrative career in banking to start his own company in South America and in less than two years, his company is doing a few million in revenue. The business? He places talented individuals with international internship programs in London, Madrid & Latin America where they go to work for leading companies, NGOs & National Governments and live a cultural immersion in a new, fascinating country.

I recently caught up with David to talk about what it’s like to rip off the golden handcuffs of the corporate world and to discuss his business called The Intern Group.

You had a great career path as a banker. What made you decide to quit in order to pursue The Intern Group?

I realized early on in banking that the rigid, hierarchical corporate path in a mature, saturated industry was not where I wanted to spend the next decades of my life.

Before banking I had done something more unusual. I moved to Latin America after university with the goal of becoming fluent in a second language. I moved to Buenos Aires, where I knew no-one, and enrolled in intensive Spanish classes. Outside language classes I searched for an internship as I wished to use and improve my fledgling Spanish in a work-place environment. However, with no particular contacts in a highly contact based environment, I was in trouble. Finally, after months of trying, I was offered a marketing internship at Rolex. The value to my resume of an international blue-chip name, in the context of a different culture and language was enormous.

I developed a great deal through my internship experience abroad. I set up The Intern Group so that individuals have the opportunity to do the same as I did – but in a structured, systematic and educational way – and develop themselves professionally and personally.

How did you go about funding the business? After all, you just quit your job.

I had enough saved up to bootstrap with a very basic WordPress website et al. I started to apply to Start-Up Incubators and 8 months after starting the business we were accepted into Start-Up Chile, a Chilean government program for international entrepreneurs, and awarded 40,000 USD in equity-free seed capital. Shortly afterwards, during Start-Up Chile, we turned cash-flow positive and have not looked back.

What advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs especially those stuck in the corporate world?

Don´t talk yourself out of it. It is easy to say “You need to be rich to start a business”. You don´t. Technology has made the amount of money needed to launch a start-up astonishingly low. “But what if it doesn´t work. The risk!?”. Do you want to live your life thinking “what-if?”. Yes, your planned project might not work out. But failure, in this context, is seen as a good thing by the people that count – if you learn from it. Many of the most successful businessmen and women started with out-right failures. You learn more from failing than succeeding. The far bigger risk is talking yourself out of it and staying in a job you are unhappy with.

Where do you go from here?

The Intern Group is now on the way to becoming a mainstream option within global higher education.

Just like study-abroad programs became established in recent decades, I see the same now happening with structured intern-abroad programs. Crucially, interning abroad brings even more benefits than traditional study abroad. Not only do you learn all about a country´s history and culture by being immersed there, and develop language skills essential in a globalized world, but you also develop the critical professional skills necessary to advance your career.

I see The Intern Group leading this movement, with more, exciting destinations in our portfolio and further governmental/university partnerships as the next step.

As a young company, operating various international offices presents an extra layer of challenge. How have you overcome these challenges and are there any other pieces of advice you’d give to aspiring business operators?

Firstly, great co-founders/partners in the business. In every program destination we operate, a local partner is leading the business locally, and they are always from the destination. They grew up there. They have the local professional network, and the local know-how vital for success. If your international team is talented, and invested emotionally and financially, you are on the right track.

Secondly, and as a function of the first point, this brings up the importance of spending a lot of time on hiring. I read the other day of a company who spends 98% of their time on hiring, and 2% on resolving hiring mistakes whereas most companies do the opposite. I am a big advocate of this philosophy. In large companies a bad hire is costly. In smaller, younger companies, especially those with different teams spread out around the world, it can break you.

Thirdly, lots of communication. When you are far away from each other, it is easy for individuals and even entire local offices to feel somewhat dislocated and isolated. We prevent this with technology and lots of good-old fashioned talking.

Home Security Startup Raises $180,000 With Its Own Crowd Funding Platform

Scout raised almost $180,000 with their own crowdfunding campaign in order to improve home security systems.

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

No one thinks home security is cool or interesting, but when you’ve raised almost $180,000 with a custom made kickstarter-esque website, home security becomes pretty interesting. Lindsay Cohen and the team at Scout realized that home security is a commodity and most of the 17% of the country that has security is dissatisfied with their provider. They thought they could bring security up to date, and to do so they went about building their own organic fundraising campaign to get them off the ground. Lindsay was able to share some insights on how they pulled this off.

Dan Reich: Scout seems like a great product. Why did you decide to raise money without a platform like kickstarter or indiegogo?

Lindsay Cohen: Kickstarter rolled out new rules this year that have disqualified a lot of companies from using their site, including Scout. Too many companies were raising millions of dollars without a solid plan to deliver on their promises. At about the same time those rules hit, Lockitron launched their project and showed that you could be successful with an independent crowdfunding site. We felt well prepared for the campaign and were able to save 5% (about $9000) in fees by not going through a third-party website. That money goes a long way for a startup.

DR: You mentioned that you raised money without a first generation product. What assets did you have when you decided to start this fundraising campaign?

LC: Scout came out of the Sandbox Industries startup foundry in Chicago, IL. We had some initial seed money from Sandbox to do the research and development on the project. We used that money to complete the market research, create our initial prototypes, create our website and pay a small team to execute our rollout plan.

DR: As of this writing, you raised close to $162,000. How did you pull this off?

LC: A huge part of our success has been attributable to our ability to get press coverage. In order to do that, we spent the month prior to our campaign planning who we would contact in the press and how we would pitch the story. Since then, we’ve had a small team here at Scout that has been hustling and executing the Scout plan for the majority of their waking hours over the past three weeks. We do have a small budget for pay-per-click ads and an ad retargeting campaign, but press coverage is far and away the biggest reason we have been able to raise $160,000 to date.

DR: What advice would you give to people that are thinking about doing their own crowd funding project?

LC: Know what you’re getting yourself into, put the time into creating an aggressive rollout plan and then execute your plan every minute that you aren’t sleeping. There is a massive amount of preparation that goes into making something like this happen. We’ve written two blog posts on the topic to help others learn from our experiences. There are pros and cons to our approach. Don’t dismiss Kickstarter, if you qualify, just for the sake of doing it yourself. You can gain a lot of leverage from an existing crowdfunding site with a built-in base of users.

DR: What do you wish you would have done differently?

LC: We wish we would have talked to our early backers of Scout more often and given them more chances to share news about the project. We planned to contact them mid-campaign and during the last week, but we should have started in the first week and touched base every week thereafter. Backers are your best evangelists, their sharing efforts on Facebook and Twitter allows you to reach a whole new group of people that you otherwise would not have reached. Also, we would have incentivized sharing more often. Running referral competitions and motivating people to share can be highly effective.

Raising Money From Friends and Family

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

“I’m terrified. I have no clue what I’m doing.” When you’re trying to build an exciting business you would think the description would be a little different but my friend continued. “I have a great idea for a business and I know it will work. I just need $300,000 to make it happen. I want to ask my family and friends for money but I don’t know how. How does it work? Is it a good idea? What if I let them down?”

Starting a business is extremely difficult and like any business, it requires capital. We often read stories about people raising millions of dollars from venture capitalists but most people don’t have access or the means to raise money from a VC. For the vast majority of people, money is raised from banks, from personal savings, and from family and friends. So it’s no wonder my friend was terrified. There’s an emotional tax associated with a capital raise from close relatives. It’s the feeling of losing dollars and trust from your strongest supporters.

Nonetheless, the thought of losing family money shouldn’t prevent you from doing so. So what do you need to know if you want to raise money from family and friends? What are the important things to think about? Here are a few points to consider:

They know all about risk and reward, right? My friend heard about my new business and asked me if he could invest. I said no to him three different times and on three separate occasions. On the fourth time he said something that stuck with me and I ultimately changed my mind. He said, “I’ve invested before and I’m not afraid to lose this money.” Good point, friend. If you’re talking to friends and family that can afford to invest, it’s likely they understand the concept of risk and reward. After all, that’s probably why they can afford to invest some of their money in the first place.

Give fair and favorable terms. Taking money from close friends and family may typically happen in the very early stages of a company. The earlier a venture the riskier it is. If you have a friend or family member that wants to help you get off the ground you should consider giving them favorable terms on their investment. You can make them a larger equity holder. Or perhaps you give them favorable interest rates on a loan they give you. As long as you’re having an honest conversation with them, you can figure out a fair deal structure. Which brings me to my next point.

Be honest. If you’re involved in financial transactions with close friends, it’s extremely important that you are brutally honest and transparent. Sure, you’ll discuss things like terms of the investment and how the business will grow and make money. It’s also important however to talk about expectations. The last thing you want to do is build your business at the expense of a trusted relationship.

Diversify your investment base. When you’re making fundraising rounds with friends and family you may have the opportunity to take money from more then one person. If you do this, you’ll diversify your investment base. You’ll be able to provide some risk protection for your investors even though you’ll be limiting their upside potential. Less money in means less money out. On the other hand, having more investors means managing expectations and communications among more stakeholders. This can get very time-consuming especially when you are trying to run a business. But hey, there is a reason you often hear the word “diversification” when it comes to money management.

Social Proof. Would you invest in a company or entrepreneur that couldn’t raise a single dollar? Probably not. Raising money from your friends and family is a decent indicator that you can successfully convince someone to believe and invest in you. Even if it’s from your parents or your best friend. It sets a baseline precedent that you are capable and trustworthy of managing capital and this is very important for more meaningful capital raises and conversations later on.

Today, there are new technologies that make it easier than ever to raise money. These are crowd-funding platforms that facilitate investments among large networks of individuals. However, it’s often easiest and perhaps most problematic to mix funding with family. If you go down that path, make sure you are thinking about some of the implications. You might all become rich but you also might shake up a relationship or two and that might make for an awkward family dinner.

Have you ever taken an investment from a close friend or family member? Have you ever invested in one? What advice would you give?

Dan Reich is a tech entrepreneur and engineer. He has founded and sold multiple companies, the most recent of which was acquired by Buddy Media, which in turn was acquired by Salesforce. Follow him on Twitter at @DanReich.

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