There are busy people, and then there is Peter Thiel.  When he’s not running Founders Fund, his San Francisco based VC fund, he’s helping to lead Palantir, the data analytics company he founded that currently has million dollar contracts with the US DoD and global financial institutions.  If Thiel has a few minutes left in the day, you can probably find him running the Thiel Fellowship, the controversial program incentivizing under-20 whiz kids to leave traditional education routes so they can start and grow their own ventures.  With all of this on his schedule, Theil managed to find some time to write a book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. 

The origins of Zero to One started with a computer science class at Stanford taught by Thiel in 2012.  One of the students, Blake Masters, took detailed notes from Thiel’s class and put them online.  The notes quickly amassed a wide following and the two teamed up a year later to turn the notes and course material into Zero to One, which now sits near the top of the New York Times Business Bestellers list.  

The book, about a 3.5 hour read according to its website, offers simple yet valuable advice and suggestions on crucial entrepreneurial topics like board member selection and equity compensation.  Theil devotes a heavy chunk of the book to his unique take on the nature of “competitive monopolies” and how great companies don’t seek, but avoid competition.  “Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world,” Theil writes. “Creative monopolies aren’t just good for the rest of society; they’re powerful engines for making it better.”  If you want to hear more about Thiel’s interesting take on monopolies and competition, check out his recent lecture on the topic here

Some chapters of Zero to One stray off into Theil’s observations on sociology, mathematics, economics, philosophy and everything in between.  Fortunately, Thiel’s intellect and writing skills keep these sections of the book from coming off as rambling and instead display the author’s acumen and interest in topics beyond entrepreneurship and startups.  Likening the founding of our solar system and the United States of America to the beginnings of starting a company is just one of the many ways in which Theil finds ways to connect a wide swath of topics to the valuable lessons he learned as co-founder of PayPal in the early 2000s. 

 In one chapter, Thiel instructs founders on what to look for when growing their team. While he admits that doing so is challenging given the competitive nature of hiring talented employees, he implores founders to lure employees in with the company’s mission and team, not free laundry or pet day.  “Don’t fight the perk war,” Theil writes. “Just cover the basics like health insurance and then promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people.”  Again we see another example where Thiel’s word’s mean even more given his involvement in creating PayPal and its network of wildly successful founders, often dubbed the “PayPal Mafia”.

 Everyone from the seasoned investor to the first time entrepreneur can glean something interesting from Zero to One.  If you have some free time – hopefully a bit more than Peter Thiel – pick up a copy to get an interesting read that covers the beginnings of the tech boom in Silicon Valley and the beginnings of a company from an author who knows quite a bit about both.  

Alexis Ohanian knows a thing or two about startups.  The founder of Reddit and Hipmunk has taken the video journalism for his latest adventure by going out and meeting rapidly growing startups and the people behind them.  "Small Empires" is a weekly series brought to you by tech/design/review site the Verge (hosted by Ohanian), that profiles an intriguing startup each episode and lets their employees and founders tell the story of the ups and downs of creating and running a business.

 I was turned onto the show thanks my friend Nik Fuller and was hooked immediately.  Although I'm a bit late to the game as Small Empires is already early into its second season, its fairly easy to catchup on the first season with Youtube.  Besides high production quality and editing, an appealing element of Small Empires is its dedication to profiling early users or brand loyalists for each startup it profiles.  So whether its a a doctor on ZocDoc's platform or a small business building their e-commerce site with Squarespace, it's nice to get a true sense of the impact these companies are having when everyday people praise the business just as much as the founders and employees do.  

           
                        Below is a gallery listing some of the companies featured on Small Empires

Crowdfunding is everywhere you look.  It’s fairly easy to come across everything from the innovative to groundbreaking to the downright ridiculous emerging from a platform and concept that has exploded in the past five years.  But for every Pebble and Jibo, there are hundreds of campaigns that fail to gain support and achieve their financial goals. Increasing competition is making it harder and harder to gain significant traction and turn an idea into a successfully funded campaign.

Generating some buzz and awareness about a new product or concept can be difficult, but Prefundia, a showcasing index for crowdfunding projects, has now made it incredibly easy to do so. Based in Provo, Utah, Prefundia has quickly emerged as the number one platform for “coming soon” pages, enabling potential entrepreneurs to quickly and easily (and for free) build a community around their idea before launching it on a popular crowdsourcing site like Kickstarter or Indiegogo.  

All a user has to do is set up a project page, and they can immediately begin building a following and community during the critical prelaunch phase.   Project owners can customize their pages with pictures, text, video and audio files.  Additionally, Prefundia provides project owners with stats on page views, number of followers, and a comments section to collect constructive feedback or suggestions.  The early numbers coming from the startup would suggest a strong connection between community building and a successful crowdfunding campaign.   More than a thousand projects started on Prefundia have gone on the raise a total of $17M.  On average, its users have raised  412% more money than a regular Kickstarter campaign. 

Recently, Prefundia made the decision to open its prelaunch platform to mobile app developers wishing to use the site to test the viability of their idea.   I got a chance to chat with Daniel Falabella, one of Prefundia’s co-founders about that decision, his take on the Provo startup scene and the future of crowdfunding.  Check out the Q&A below

Q: How did all the co-founders meet and where do the responsibilities break down?
The four of us all met eachother through a combination of BYU and various events or extra-curricular activites.

Q: What are the benefits and drawbacks of being a startup based in Provo? 
I think it depends on what you compare Provo with. If you compare Provo with Silicon Valley, it has quite a bit of drawbacks (investment, vision, connections).  If you compare Provo with Cando, North Dakota then Provo is heaven for entrepreneurs in terms of talent, ecosystem, expenses, and opportunities.

Q: The comments section is a simple but probably critical aspect of Prefundia.  Do you see many projects revamping their original product or pitch based on comments from site visitors?
Not as much as you'd think.  While we built Prefundia to be a testing Platform, most people use it as a launching platform, so we adapted

Q: Is it a deliberate effort to have Prefunida look and feel like Kickstarter even though other major crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Crowdtilt exist? 
Yes, although we just changed the design.  The thought process was simple: Kickstarter is #1 by a lot, so why reinvent the wheel?

Q: How does Prefundia make a profit?
We decided to utilize a freemium model for Prefundia.   Users can create and host a project page on Prefundia for free and they have the option to pay for powerups.

Q: Any thoughts on Crowdsourcing and its future?
I'll keep it brief, rewards-based crowdfunding equals pre-orders, despite of all the Kickstarter PR efforts to prove otherwise

Drive 40 minutes south of Salt Lake City, and you’ll eventually land in Provo, Utah, the state’s third largest city with a population of just over 120,000.  With the Wasatch mountains covering the eastern side of the city and Utah Lake sitting just to the west, Provo’s natural setting and proximity to top notch skiing make it a dream destination for lovers of the outdoors.  However, having spent the past few months traveling weekly to Provo for work, I came to realize the town is home to much more than mountains, missionaries, and an odd condiment called fry sauce.  It’s also the setting of rapidly growing tech startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Numerous high tech businesses such as Adobe, Ebay, and Microsoft found the triple threat of low unemployment, an improving economy, and relatively cheap cost of living too good to pass up.  They have all set up offices in the Utah Valley over the past few years.  Large companies with global call centers or aspirations for international expansion have been quick to leverage the large number of multilingual missionaries belonging to the omnipresent LDS community in Utah.  The emergence of a strong business environment can be found on a single street in North Provo that houses three billion-dollar companies (Ancestry.com, Vivint, and Qualtrics) all within 1,000 yards of each other.  Moreover, just last year Google selected Provo as its third location to receive the highly sought after Google Fiber, a major benefit to companies both large and small seeking ultra-fast internet speeds.

The secret of Provo and its entrepreneurial hub has been difficult to keep as more and more media outlets have covered the rapid growth of Provo and the Utah Valley, officially naming the region “Silicon Slopes” for its growing population of high tech companies and proximity to skiing meccas like Park City and Sundance. In 2013, Forbes rated Provo the No. 2 city on its list of Best Places for Business and Careers.  Additionally, Fortune magazine recently ran a cover story on Utah’s rockstar business owner Josh James and his business intelligence company Domo that landed a cool $125 million in funding last year.  James, a Mormon who served his two year mission trip in Tokyo attended BYU before co-founding web analytics company Omniture which went public with James as its CEO at 33 and then was acquired by Adobe three years later to the tune of $1.8 billion. 

James is a part of a lengthy list of former BYU Cougars that are helping to shape the tech scene in Utah.  The prevalent Mormon community helps to create a heavily shared town and gown atmosphere in Provo that has delivered a noticeable impact on the blossoming startup community.  According to an annual state report, approximately 80% of students at BYU are multilingual, supporting a more nimble and proficient workforce required by many young tech focused companies. The highly regarded Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at BYU also helps to fuel the startup scene in Provo.  Ranked as the #4 Undergraduate programs for entrepreneurship by Business Insider, the center features a 100% rate of faculty who are entrepreneurs and doles out over $175,000 annually for business plan competitions.  “Throughout the school year the center is constantly holding competitions for ideas and startups at all stages of the lean lifecycle” says 2nd year entrepreneurship student Blake Hampson. "The events encourage participation from all over campus and are probably some of the best advertised and best attended of any BYU events."

Growing startups like Money Desktop, Tute Genomics, and IActionable show the broad swath of industries being impacted by companies getting their start in the Utah Valley area.   In order to foster the growth of the various early stage ventures that call Provo home, startup accelerators such as Camp 4, a collaborative co-working space offering discounted office space to early stage ventures, have been popping up in recent years. Born out of a partnership between Innovative Network, Provo City Mayor’s office and BoomStartup, a competitive five year old startup, Camp 4 serves as an outstanding example of the benefits of blending government support, established academic involvement, and a talented community.  As corny as it may be, “Silicon Slopes” seems like an apt name for this beautiful town with big aspirations.  

If there is someone out there who enjoys doing laundry or dry cleaning, I have yet to meet that person.  The words tedious, dull, and time-consuming often come to most people’s minds when they walk by their overflowing dirty clothes bin or realize they have to rush to the dry cleaner before it closes.  A remedy for this problem now exists for Chicago residents thanks to two young entrepreneurs who have added laundry and dry cleaning to the humongous list of annoyances, problems, and subjects addressed by the ubiquitous phrase “there’s an app for that”.

Laundrymate is an on-demand laundry and dry cleaning pickup and delivery service. Launched in Chicago just last month, Laundrymate is the brainchild of co-founders Michael Facchinello and Tyler Mikev.  “Personally, the whole process was a huge pain in our butts, so we solved the problem in a way we would want it to be solved on a personal level” said Facchinello.  Tyler utilizes his background in mobile development to run the technical side of the business, leaving Michael to handle business and operations.  Together, the two have stressed delivering a great overall user experience from the very beginning, and have been rewarded by a steady increase in orders week after week.

Eager to give Laundrymate a try, I set aside a couple of work pants, a pair of jeans, and a few button downs to be picked up and dropped off without having to step outside my apartment.  I downloaded the easy to use mobile app, which prompted me to enter a pickup time and location, and even gave me the option to get an estimated breakdown of how much my order would cost.  Instead of bracing for the long, cold walk to the nearest dry cleaner, I sat back while my clothes were picked up when I knew I someone would be home.  About 48 hours later, I got a push notification from the app asking me to schedule a drop off time.  From beginning to end, the process was a breeze and had me seriously wondering if I was going to be making another trip to the dry cleaner anytime soon.

Learning quickly and efficiently has become a mantra for this two-man team as they work to balance perfecting logistic and technical elements of the business against marketing and promotion.  “Finding the sweet spot for speed has been really important for us in the early going,” Facchinello insists.  Despite having a growing to do list, Michael took a quick break from his duties at Laundrymate to chat with me about the company, his background, and the early lessons of running a business.

Q: You recently graduated from Chicago’s latest Startup Institute class. What was that experience like?
I cannot say enough good things about Startup Institute. Everyone involved in running the program both locally and nationally are top of the line. Before Startup Institute, I knew I loved designing and creating products, but did not have a formal education to do so. Startup Institute taught me best practices in product design and management.

They also do a phenomenal job of putting you in front of the best startup people in the area. Also, the education model is incredible. The approach is holistic and has instruction given by the best people currently practicing what they are preaching.

Q: There are quite a few companies, both large and small, that are in this growing delivery space that will pick up and deliver groceries, alcohol, clothing and everything else right to your door.  What is different or unique about creating a business around the dry cleaning/laundry experience? 
Companies like Uber, Grubhub, and Peapod do a great job of addressing very specific problems that need to be solved on a regular basis. They do not try to be something they are not, and this translates to satisfied customers who know exactly the value they will get by using that service. As a result, these companies have customers with a high life time value. That is what we are trying to do with Laundrymate.

I think companies that handle things like alcohol delivery have a place, but do not solve a problem that happens frequently enough, and are always more of an afterthought when that need arises. Similarly, companies that deal in hyper-local logistics do not hone in enough on a specific problem, so they do not come to mind when a customer could actually use them.

Q: What makes Chicago a good starting market for Laundrymate?
The demographics in Chicago are prime for it; just in Lincoln Park, there are roughly 60,000 people 21 or older making an average annual household income of $77k.  This single neighborhood represents a market with significant potential demand.  Another thing, the dry cleaning market is directly related to total population, which makes Chicago the third largest dry cleaning market in the country. On a more qualitative level, Chicago is home to thousands of consultants, bankers, and other time-pressed professionals who could realize significant value from Laundrymate. 

Q: Having just launched, what are some of the most important assumptions you are trying to prove about this business?
We believe the hatred people have for doing their laundry and trudging their dry cleaning to the cleaners will translate into a high desire to use Laundrymate. We also believe never having to visit an ATM or deal with payment when picking up clothes from the cleaners is valuable.  We are already starting to see that our peak hours of demand are outside of the traditional 8am to 8pm dry cleaning hours, which was an assumption going in. We operate from 5am to 10pm, 7 days a week.

Q: Someone comes up to you saying they want to start their own business, what is the first thing you would tell them to make sure they know before they make that leap?
I think it is important for people to get to the root of the real, tangible problem their business is solving. I would tell them to make sure they know why they want to start a business, and tell them to make sure their "why" is strong. Answers like, "wealth" and "prestige" are possible by-products of starting a company, but not a sufficient "why." 

Only a few moments after clicking submit I began to panic.  After finding  out weeks ago I needed to be in Denver for work, I had just ordered lift tickets and ski rentals for my first ski trip out west to Copper Mountain in Colorado. But as the confirmation e-mail landed in my inbox, I suddenly wondered how the hell I was going to bring all of my ski clothes out with me.  I was scheduled to be in Denver for a work trip from Monday to Thursday, but I would be skiing the weekend before which meant I’d be traveling for nearly a week.  Equipped with just a backpack and a standard carry on bag, I barely had enough room for work and casual clothes, let alone full ski gear.  I turned to almighty Google to address my problem and within a few searches of “ski gear rental” and “ski apparel rent”, I found my answer in the form of a Colorado based tech startup GetOutfitted.

Founded by Stanford grad Julian Flores, GetOutfitted is a ski and snowboard e-commerce site that delivers heavily discounted apparel and accessories rentals right to your door.  Having moved out to Colorado from California 9 years ago, Julian was eager to take advantage of all the great outdoor activities his new home state had to offer.  But time and time again, Julian’s plans to develop a passion for skiing and snowboarding were thwarted by expensive price tags for both apparel and equipment.  He was frustrated by the high  costs associated with outdoor sports, but Julian noticed his wife had rented a designer dress at a discounted price through the mail for an upcoming event.  “She accessed luxury at a fraction of the cost, with no intimidation and a lot of joy,” Flores recalls. “I realized right then, I could do the same for the outdoor sports industry, allowing people like me to get outside and try something, save money, and feel like a big spender.”   Julian quickly built out an online prototype to acquire customer validation and hasn’t looked back since.  

When I first landed on the website, I was impressed with its slick, professional layout and easy to use interface.  After creating an account in a few clicks, I set out to fill my cart by searching through an impressive selection of high-quality gear.  I went with a Dakine Atmos jacket and a pair of Obermeyer Recon pants.  I then scheduled my rental period (the site gives you the option to select between 3/5/10 day rentals) and entered my buddy’s Denver apartment as the delivery location.   GetOutfitted also gives its customers the option to pay extra to get your gear sooner. 

As my ski trip grew closer, I started to wonder if there was a way to track my order to ensure my gear would get to Denver on time for my ski trip.  Fortunately, a few days before I was all set to leave, I got shipping confirmation e-mail from GetOutfitted including tracking details and links to the FedEx shipping status on my items. 

Having started GetOutfitted  just a year ago, Flores, a former founder of a nonprofit consultancy and a Charter School in Colorado Springs, has been managing the steady growth of the e-commerce company thanks to effective SEO and search ad campaigns.  He has also invested considerable time trying to address the challenges faced by those searching for alternatives to current rental options.  Flores has obviously set out to build an experience that aims to please its renters from the moment they make an order until the time they ship the products back (free of charge).   “We track our customer facing-metrics, which are incredibly important to a consumer service like ours.  These include customer satisfaction, delivery reliability, sizing and fit accuracy of the apparel, and referrals from customers.   

When I landed in Denver Friday afternoon, I learned my order had arrived safely and on time, so I headed out with a couple of college friends to enjoy my first ski trip out west.  Both the pants and jacket did a stellar job of keeping me warm and comfortable (I quickly realized that although I might have looked the part, having spent most of my time on the bunny slopes in the Poconos, I was a little in over my head in terms of the quality and difficulty of skiing out west.  Returning the apparel to GetOutfitted was as simple as tossing the gear in the prepaid return envelope included in the box and finding the closest mailbox to drop it off.  Despite being sore from head to toe from a full weekend of skiing, I was thankful that I didn’t have to lug around my jacket and pants the rest of the week and back to the airport.  I vowed to return to ski out west at the next available opportunity in order to enjoy the fresh powder as much as this bro.

Flores will be the first to admit that competition does exist in the seasonal yet lucrative business of snow and ski apparel sales; however, the fantastic customer experience provided by Get Outfitted puts them in a position to win out against current alternatives for those heading to the mountains on a budget.  “Few resorts offer apparel out of their rental shops, and none offer the ability to put together a custom, current look that will allow skiers to look and feel great on the mountain,” explains Flores. “We offer a luxury experience for a fraction of the cost, with a fantastic unboxing experience, great customer service and a dead-simple return process.”  With a passionate founder leading the way and a group bent on creating a seamless rental experience from start to finish, GetOutfitted is a great option for anyone looking for great value during their next trek to the mountains.

Rajesh Karmani really hates food waste.   While studying at the University of Illinois, it was something he noticed on a daily basis, but after researching the topic of food waste a bit more, he quickly discovered the problem was much bigger than he thought.  He soon learned that the average American throws away 20 pounds of food every month. According to the Washington Post, the United States wastes enough food every day to fill up the Rose Bowl.  While 40 percent of the food produced in this country goes uneaten, 1 in 6 Americans deal with hunger on a daily basis.   An entrepreneur at heart, Raj saw opportunity where most saw inefficiency.

 Knowing there had to be a better way to connect the vast quantities of food surplus with the organizations that needed it most, Raj founded Zero Percent with that very goal in mind.  Utilizing his computer science background, Raj set out to build a convenient, safe, and efficient online food donation marketplace helping restaurants move surplus food to nearby soup kitchens and shelters.  “For me, Zero Percent was at the nexus of what comes natural to me, what felt right to me, and what interests me,” Raj explained. 

While Raj was trying to get his company off the ground in Champaign, just a few hours away, a program was being built to help startups just like Zero Percent. Operating out of co-working center 1871 in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, Impact Engine was created as a 16-week startup accelerator offering mentorship, support, and resources to companies addressing societal and environmental challenges.   When Zero Percent was accepted into Impact Engine’s second round of startups, Raj knew the opportunity would serve as the perfect chance to help him learn about his business at a rapid pace.  With the help of Impact Engine, Zero Percent is now working with over fifty nonprofits (Pacific Garden Mission, Franciscan Outreach, and Salvation Army to name a few) and is receiving regular food donations from well-known businesses and restaurants all over Chicago including Goddess and Grocer, Hannah’s Bretzel, and Dimo’s Pizza.  I got a chance to sit down with Raj to hear more about Zero Percent and how he began his crusade against food waste.

Q: Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

I finished college in 2005, and I initially started doing some freelance consulting for companies in the UK, Pakistan, and the U.S., so that was my first jump into entrepreneurship.  I got admitted into a PhD program and for a while in that academic setting I got the chance to teach and do research.  I seriously considered pursuing an academic path, but I think during that time, entrepreneurship was aways in the back of my mind, but it just wasn’t getting the right outlet. 

Q: Both you and Caleb Phillips (CTO of Zero Percent) have very impressive backgrounds in computer science, so you have the technology side of the company pretty well covered. What has the learning process been like when it comes to running the business side of things?

We’re certainly learning a lot as we grow. Caleb came from a non-profit background, so he brought a lot in terms of knowing about food waste, food hunger, and non-profit management.  I was about to graduate and I came across this idea that combined my interests in technology, entrepreneurship, and volunteerism, but I knew I still had a lot to learn about business.

U of I has a great incubator program called EnterpriseWorks so we got space and membership there for six months.  It was a way to surround myself with smart entrepreneurs in the area.  As soon as that was ending and my graduation was approaching, we got the offer from Impact Engine and it could not have been a better fit considering it was based in Chicago and had a focus on social entrepreneurship.  They have been great at connecting us with mentors and advisors.  It’s a lot of learning every day, and there’s still plenty more to learn.

Q: When you are trying to get businesses and restaurants to use Zero Percent, how do you convince them to sign up?

Our early adopters are companies where green and sustainability is part of their culture.  These are businesses that have tried sustainability projects before but it did not work for them.  Then, we build upon those experiences and explain our additional benefits, like how these businesses can promote their food donations to their employees and customers.  We also explain the benefits of the data they receive from Zero Percent and the chance to create operating efficiencies and reduce costs such as trash hauling.

Q: With a business like this that depends so much on logistics, what are certain metrics you guys are constantly tracking and trying to improve upon?

At the crudest level we track how many pounds of food are rescued in a day.  We want to grow this from where we are now at 1,500 pounds per day to 15,000.  Doing so will give us operational and business metrics that we can show to potential customers and investors and convey what we do best, which is rescue pounds at the lowest cost, in the shortest amount of time, and in the safest way possible.  This is a hard problem because there are so many variables involved such as time, location, and size of delivery.  The real challenge is meeting those at the supplier side and the need side.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge of expanding this to cities across the country that need it just as badly as Chicago?

The challenge would be how to efficiently reach new donors. Restaurants are busy, time constrained, and cash strapped, so it is about finding more early adopters to help us grow.   We learned a lot in Champaign and Chicago, and we want to take what we’ve learned to help us scale here and grow to other communities.

Tired of bland e-mails from companies looking to sell you something?  It seems like time and time again marketing departments create generic e-mails, click “reply all”, and hope for the best.  While some see this is a recurring inconvenience, people like Erik Severinghaus see it as an opportunity. 

Erik wanted to create a way for companies to personalize their communication with customers and add some useful technology to help businesses optimize their e-mail marketing efforts.  In early 2011, he founded SimpleRelevance with the mission of helping companies get the right message to the right customers.

Erik’s timing could not have been better.  Not only was this B2B service riding the wave of data driven marketing, but it was benefiting from the startup boom taking over Windy City in the past few years.  SimpleRelevance was one of the first companies to work out of Chicago’s famous 1871 co-working space, and it also utilized the Chicago branch of the highly selective startup accelerator Techstars to help refine the business and better serve its rapidly growing client base.  In May of 2013, SimpleRelevance received $750,000 in Series A funding from Chicago based VC firm Hyde Park Angels.

The company is in the hands of an experienced and driven CEO.  After spending nearly seven years climbing the ranks of IBM, Severinghaus founded three separate startups.  Check out my interview with Erik to find out more about SimpleRelevance and his entrepreneurial journey.

Q: It seems like a core part of the mission behind SimpleRelevance is bridging the divide between IT and Marketing.  Why do you think such a gap exists between these two critical business functions in so many companies?  
Well - gaps naturally exist between areas of a company that has different goals. In the past, "technology" and "marketing" were very different animals, with different goals, tools, etc. It's only been in the past few years that at most companies IT has become a critical enabler of the business - and that means revenue (marketing). At the same time, marketing is becoming more data driven, requiring more and more technology to be effective.

When you think about it, technology has already gobbled up lots of other corporate departments. Operations is the most obvious, but finance, strategy, and other key areas are increasingly enabled by and dependent on technology. It's just that it's finally becoming "table stakes" for marketing.

Q: In working with all sorts of companies in various industries, what is the most common misconception or misunderstanding that clients have when it comes to e-mail marketing?
The most common misconception in the public is that e-mail marketing is dead or dying. Lazy journalists are constantly writing articles that essentially say, "my kids don't use email, they use [Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat/etc] and therefore email is dying." It's a facile argument that the data disproves time and again.

The most common misconception in the industry is that the status quo is "good enough." Because email continues to be such a profitable channel, many clients aren't spending the time or energy to keep improving it as a communication channel with their customers. 

Q: What were some of the tough lessons you learned while running previous startups that has allowed you to avoid similar pitfalls or mistakes with SimpleRelevance?
I've learned more lessons than I can count. Probably the three most important:

1) Awesome technology doesn't mean anything if you can't get people to pay you to use it. Sales is often times much harder than building the product. 

2) Nothing will kill a startup faster than strife within the core team. You have to have the best people, share a vision, and make sure to protect the team cohesion at all costs.

3) You're never as good as you think you are on the good days, and never as bad as you fear on the bad ones. Keep a cool head, and just keep moving forward.

Q: So you guys just “graduated” from 1871.  How do you replicate that kind of culture and environment you had there with your new space/office?
Well, although we have technically graduated from 1871, we're still hanging out in the Techstars space under the same roof. As we do think about moving to a new space (and for all the real-estate folks out there - no I don't need help) I'm not really all that worried about it. Before the cool digs of 1871, we were on the 19th floor of the mart in a dilapidated space that was falling apart like you wouldn't believe. I've also had the privilege of leading teams in the corporate confines of IBM that were unbelievably innovative and we did some awesome things.

Culture is all about people and values. We stress core values all the time at SimpleRelevance, and I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to work with some of the best people imaginable. I think you could put us inside any set of four walls, and SimpleRelevance would remain a very special place to work.

Q: As CEO at one of the first companies to move into 1871, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the shakeup at the top and the new CEO Howard Tullman taking a harder line on being more selective when it comes to admitting start ups into 1871.
I really can't say enough good things about Howard. The man has more energy and brains than just about anyone I have met. He's completely unscripted, and says exactly what he thinks.

I actually think a bit more of an "up or out" mentality is a good thing in the ecosystem. For the last few years, a lot of time and energy by fantastic people was put into creating an ecosystem that could catalyze and nurture early-stage innovation. There's more work to do there, but we're finally getting closer to critical mass. The next stage of our maturity as an ecosystem is to get these companies over the hump, and grow the startups into mature organizations.

Howard is going to give some folks "tough love" but in the end I think it will benefit everyone. 

Q: Going through the TechStars Chicago program and utilizing local VCs and investors for funding, its clear that SimpleRelevance is a Chicago startup in every sense of the word. What is the biggest reason Chicago makes a great home for companies like SimpleRelevance to grow and thrive? 
Yes, I think we really are the quintessential Chicago tech startup. Not only our affiliations and customers, but the fact that we're a revenue producing, b2b technology company. We're very proud of that, we love how easy it is to quantify the value that we create and bring to our clients. 

 

Running a company providing all-natural loose leaf tea blends with real fruits and herbs wasn’t always the plan, but if you ask either Dan Klein or Patrick Tannous, they will probably tell you it was only a matter of time before they started a business together. Both hailing from the suburbs of Chicago, Patrick and Dan remained friendly throughout high school and college and always stayed connected thanks to a shared passion for entrepreneurship.

While spending a semester abroad during college, Dan and Patrick were blown away by the quality of the loose-leaf tea they found in tea houses scattered around Prague.  Tea of such quality that used full leaves, rich herbs, and unique blends was something both of them had never experienced.  Knowing they had stumbled on something that couldn’t be easily found back home, Dan and Patrick packed up as many tea leaves as they could and returned to school the next semester to turn their dorm rooms into a makeshift tea laboratory.  The two began experimenting with their own loose-leaf concoctions and blends, and like any good college entrepreneurs started enlisting their friends to help pack the first rounds of big orders in exchange for pizza and beer. 

When friends and family kept coming back and saying how much they loved the tea, Dan and Patrick knew they were onto something.  The two were quick to reach out to business professors and utilize their advice as well as take various entrepreneurship classes that would help formulate the early aspects of their business plan.  After officially launching the business in March of 2010, Patrick and Dan decided to enroll in the Illinois Launch program, a summer-long incubator program in Champaign for similar early-stage startups.  The two recall the months spent in the program as invaluable for numerous reasons.   “One of the most important things we learned was how to be business people; how to network, gain connections, establish resources,” recalls Dan.  “Also, it taught us how to pitch to investors since we had access to dozens of opportunities where we were able to get up in front of investors in order to present our business.” Getting the most out of the college experience in order to help grow the business was something the two spoke fondly about.  “We eventually realized that college isn’t a way to just help you find a job, but maybe it could be a way to help create jobs as well,” says Patrick.

Recreating both the quality products and enjoyable environment of Italian cafes and coffeehouses was the mission Howard Schultz set out to achieve as he created the behemoth that we know today as Starbucks.  In a similar fashion, Dan and Patrick knew that recreating the style and quality of loose leaf tea they enjoyed in Europe and making it accessible in the States was a challenging but potentially profitable undertaking. “He [Schultz] has been a huge influence of ours and his book was one of the first we read before we decided to start the business,” Dan said.

As CEO, Dan handles the strategic planning, product development, and finances.  With the title of President, Patrick utilizes his communications background to run the sales department while managing relationships and social strategies.  Both Dan and Patrick appreciate that the value of their partnership goes beyond being able to run a successful company with one of your best friends.   “When a person you know so well also happens to be your co-founder,” Dan explained, “its just great to have someone to turn to for support if either one of us are having problems, whether they’re business or personal.” 

Additionally, Patrick realized the power of a partnership when it came to motivating one another during difficult times in the early stages of the business.  “In the dead of winter, with very little money, we were traveling to New York, Philadelphia, and Seattle and just knocking on doors with the goal of signing up 50 new stores just to keep us going.  That was a tough time, but having someone by your side to keep you motivated made it possible.”

The two pressed on and soon enough more and more stores signed up to put Tiesta Tea on their shelves.   Popular blends and industry validation from winning Best New Product at the World Tea Expo in 2011brought steady growth and helped them eventually reach distribution in all 50 states.  In 2013, Tiesta Tea could be found in over 3,000 stores, and the two have plans to at least double the store count by the end of 2014.

Recently, Tiesta Tea just closed their first round of funding that will help to scale the business a bit quicker and solidify main areas of the business such as inventory and marketing.  “The whole idea of the recent round of funding was to position ourselves to go to the next level,” Patrick says.  “We really think the opportunity is now, so we wanted to use the investment to ensure we remain good vendors and we can execute any order quantities that come along.”  The investment will go a long way for a growing company run by co-founders who seem to have a knack for making the most of any opportunity.

With bowl season kicking off next week, millions of sports fans across the country are dreading the looming end of another exciting season of college football.  Even though you team not have made it to the historic Beef O’ Brady’s Bowl or the illustrious San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, you can always look forward to packing up the tailgating gear and heading back to campus next season. 

Such weekend football trips have become an annual tradition for many college sports fans; however, hotels rooms can be hard to find in college towns during gameday weekends and the good old laws of supply and demand cause the prices of those few available rooms to skyrocket during those six or seven weekends each fall.  By connecting passionate college football fans with homeowners looking to make some extra income, University Football Rentals has steadily become a company focused on ensuring college football fans can have both an enjoyable and affordable trip to see their team play.

Started a few years ago to serve Notre Dame fans descending onto tiny South Bend, Indiana, University Football Rentals has worked with hundreds of willing homeowners living near stadiums to list their properties and rent them out to fans coming in for the weekend. UFR makes the listing process extremely easy for homeowners to post a few pictures of their property, set their rental price, and immediately start making money.  Meanwhile, families and friends looking for a place to stay can search the listings by price, size, or proximity to the stadium.  Staying at a house with amenities like big screen TVs, pool tables, and hot tubs makes for a much more enjoyable gameday experience than splitting the group up between two or three hotel rooms.

Recognizing that this same shortage of housing is plaguing dozens of college towns across the country, University Football Rentals has steadily expanded over the past few years.  Fans flocking to Lincoln, Athens, and other great college towns are heading to the company’s website to ensure they can have a more cost-effective and enjoyable gameday experience.  Just this past year, the company added both Oxford and Ann Arbor to a continually growing list of towns with available housing.  I sat down with Mike Doyle, the company’s VP of Business Development to talk expansion, entrepreneurship, and the business behind connecting homeowners and football junkies.  Check out the interview and University Football Rental's video below

Q: What is the biggest challenge of running a very involved business with a lot of moving parts all over the country with such a small team?
There are a lot of different challenges. One thing that I've had to get a lot better at is prioritizing and creating processes. At bigger firms, there are all sorts of processes in place for every imaginable scenario. That's not the case with us - as things come up, we deal with them. That's not scalable, however, and the more you grow, the more of a problem that becomes. I've tried to spend a good deal of time formalizing the things that I do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Creating a master schedule, guidelines on how to deal with different issues, etc. I think this will become increasingly important when we start expanding the team.

Q: What drew you to work at a company like University Football Rentals?
During senior year, while in the process of looking for jobs, I remember speaking with someone about working for smaller firms/startups. I may be butchering this, but the guy had a quote that was something along the lines of "At most big companies, you can't even reach the gas pedals. At startups, they throw you the keys and make you drive the car."

I think what was the most attractive to me was that I would have the freedom to try lots of different things, and would be able to directly see the impact of my work. If I tried a new strategy that worked out well, I could point to the financials and say that I caused that growth. On the other side of the coin, however, if things started going south, there's no way to pass the buck. On top of that, I really like the challenge of growing something new - granted, when I joined the company we were already well established at Notre Dame, but expanding to new towns is a challenge that I really enjoy.

Q: How has the dynamic between University football rentals and Ann Arbor/State College/etc football rentals evolved over time?
We decided early on to have local pages for each college that we would expand to. The thought process was that for our business, national brand awareness was not a major priority, as 99.9% of our customers are only going to rent homes in one town (PSU fans rent in State College, UGA alums in Athens, etc). That has also been hugely helpful on the SEO front, as our naming strategy has helped generate lots of organic traffic for our network of sites. For our homeowners, it seems to be meaningful that we are a national company with multiple locations - it shows that we are an established and legitimate business, even if we don't have many homes in that particular town.

Q: What are the benefits of renters and homeowners from using RLAC instead of something like Airbnb?
In the majority of the markets that we're entering, Airbnb does not have a huge presence. They're a great company, but it seems that their focus is on large vacation destinations and cities - not smaller college towns. Aside from that, however, we are extremely specific in who we are marketing towards. All of our marketing dollars that go towards renters are targeted at football fan sites, alumni clubs, etc. We know who our customer is and focus in on them with all of our outreach.

Additionally, we only rent out entire homes, while a lot of Airbnb is renting out bedrooms in a home. For these types of events, people are often coming back with large groups (meeting college friends, families coming back, etc) and thus renting an entire home seems to work really well.

Q: What makes for a great new market besides a big football town.  Why an Ann Arbor or State College over a West Lafayette or Madison?  
The things that we look for are a large alumni base, a passionate football following, and a small(er) urban area, one that does not have enough hotel rooms to support the influx of people that show up for major events (namely football games and graduation weekends). Ann Arbor and State College have been ideal for us, in that both Michigan and Penn State have storied programs with really devoted fans, and are in smaller towns. Somewhere like Columbus is tough in that it's more of an urban area, and thus lack of hotel rooms is less of an issue. The same is true of a place like Madison, Wisconsin - the demand for this service simply isn't as high in a place like that, as there more of the traditional options available.