I’ve been given lots of startup advice over the years, read my fair of startup books, and have attended more startup related events than I’d care to admit. But of absolutely everything I’ve learned, there is one piece of advice I’d give aspiring entrepreneurs over everything else.
Build your network before you need it.
We built and launched ShopLocket in 4 months on a shoestring budget. We may just be getting started but there is no way we could have even be where we are today without without the support of more people than I could possibly name in one blog post.
If your plan is to meet investors, mentors, developers, designers, press and customers after you have an idea — or worse yet, a product — you’re doing it wrong. DO IT NOW.
Here are three reasons why building my network before I needed it proved to be invaluable:
1) I was able to build a team quickly
I went to school for business. Most non-technical founders find it really hard to recruit solid developers, especially on a shoestring budget. Knowing I’d one day start a company, I’ve attended every Rails Pub Nite for the past 2 years. I taught myself basic Rails and have mentored Ruby classes for Ladies Learning Code. I even worked on contracts with a few local startups. When it came time to find a co-founder and build my team, I already had strong relationships with the people I needed most.
2) We got the advice we needed, when we needed it
Starting a company is an exercise in uncertainty. Having mentors that you can call on for advice and guidance is invaluable. Your network will never include everyone you need to start your company, and you’ll never have all the answers, the important thing is that you know who to call.
3) I had partners that were willing to work on tight timelines
It’s hard to ask someone you just met to work weekends, or stay up till 3am, especially when you have a very limited budget. But friends that care about you and want to see you succeed will be a lot more forgiving. Build up as many karma points as you can while you don’t need anything in return.
Relationships take time to build (and you’ll never be done) but you’ll wish you spent more time building connections before the day comes that you need them the most. If you’re doing it right, and building a kick-ass product, you simply won’t have enough hours in the day.
Don’t know where to start?
I definitely haven’t figured everything out, and what has worked for me won’t necessarily work for you. But here are some ideas on how you can start building a network that may one day help you build your startup:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking back” — Steve Jobs
Last November I flew down to Mountain View and interviewed for the Y Combinator Winter 2012 class. Spoiler: We didn’t get in.
When I interviewed we had been working on ShopLocket for just over a month.
A couple weeks prior to interviews I quit my job. I quit before knowing whether we got an interview in the first place. I wanted the decision to start working on ShopLocket full-time to be 100% my decision and not influenced by some application process I had no control over.
When we finally got the invite to interview, you can imagine the excitement.
Initial Feedback:
Feedback on our initial application was that we were thinking too small. Looking back, boy was that an understatement. While our ultimate goal has always been the same, make it easy for anyone to sell online, we were afraid that “starting a new e-commerce platform” might sound over ambitious. We couched our risk by saying we’d start out as just another plug-in for existing online stores.
What were we thinking? That doesn’t actually solve anything, for anyone.
But we were quick to act on the feedback, realizing that if we really wanted to solve the problem at hand we had to move away from existing platforms. A number of late nights went by and in time for our interview, we had the beginnings of what is ShopLocket today; a stand alone platform for selling individual products. No storefront. No upfront fees.
Like most teams interviewing at Y Combinator, we spent hours before the interview running through every possible question they might throw at us. While it helped a bit in the interview it was actually far better preparation for every conversation I’ve had about ShopLocket since. It was like pitch boot camp.
The Interview:
Our interview was in front of a panel of five. Including four YC partners.
The interview was only 10 minutes. Yes, we flew across the continent for 10 minutes. And it was totally worth it. Lets just say, the opportunity to pitch your new e-commerce platform in front of the founders of one of the first online store platforms is pretty priceless.
While it was pretty unanimous during the interview that there was room in the space for a single product e-commerce platform, there were two main objections to our product.
Objection one, we called our embedded products “deals”. Yup, deals. Again, what were we thinking? The connotations of deals, especially in Silicon Valley are not great. It implies getting rid of stuff on sale and that we are associated with all of the daily deal platform hype. While we still enable times sales on ShopLocket, this is no longer a core focus of the platform.
Objection two, PayPal. PayPal was, and currently still is, our only supported merchant service. This is a tougher problem to solve. We only want to support merchant services that make it ridiculously simple for the average person to start collecting money online. Luckily, we have some exciting updates coming to ShopLocket that should help Paul Graham sleep at night.
The Aftermath:
So this is no surprise; we didn’t get into YC’s class of Winter 2012. But that hasn’t slowed us down. In fact, I think its moved us ahead 100x faster than had we not interviewed at all.
We met some amazing people in the process who we still work closely with today. Not to mention, I’m a bit persistent (okay, a little more than a bit) and rejecting us was sort of like feeding me fire.
When we got back to Toronto I showed our demo to pretty much everyone I know and we got angel funding from one of my close friends Heather Payne. Heather is the founder of Toronto-based Ladies Learning Code. Heather may not work for a VC fund or be part of an angel network, but she believed in me and what we were building.
Fast forward to today, ShopLocket is still going strong and I’m more determined than ever. We just launched our public beta and like we promised back in November, ShopLocket now makes selling a single product online as easy as embedding a Youtube video. We’re eliminating the shopping cart and upfront fees so that anyone can start selling quickly and with no risk.
So, what happens after you interview at Y Combinator — and get rejected? Well, whatever you make happen. Life as an entrepreneur is a roller coaster ride. You need to take what comes at you and make the most of it. For us getting rejected from Y Combinator has just been more fuel for the fire.
Today, we are very excited to start rolling out beta invites for ShopLocket. (Woohoo!)
ShopLocket lets anyone start selling online in just minutes, risk-free. We help you leverage your social networks, display your product in a beautiful way, and – of course – make more money.
ShopLocket was founded by myself, Katherine Hague, and Andrew Louis. We’re backed by Heather Payne, the company’s first investor and founder of Toronto-based Ladies Learning Code.
The idea for ShopLocket came to me last summer, when I was looking for a way to sell some cute t-shirts I’d had custom-made. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find an easy solution for selling a single product from a website, blog post or Facebook Page. Since I only had one product, an online storefront didn’t make sense, and with all the setup time and fees involved, it seemed too risky. All the other alternatives involved redirecting buyers to another site or designing a product listing from scratch. Why was selling a single product online so difficult? This seemed like a problem worth solving.
ShopLocket now makes selling a single product online as simple as it should be. Create. Embed. Sell.
ShopLocket eliminates the shopping cart, the overhead of an online store, and fundamentally changes the way people currently buy and sell products online.
Today, e-commerce in the United States alone is a $196 billion industry, growing at over 11% a year. But, believe it or not, the entire e-commerce industry in the United States is made up of only 51,073 online stores. We believe that all of e-commerce today is just a fraction of the potential market, now that ShopLocket is available to lower the barrier to entry and make it easy for anyone to sell online.
So those t-shirts you have lying around from your last event? Those records your friend had made? That product you’re blogging about? Well, it’s about time you sell them. With ShopLocket, you can get started today – no risk, all reward.
We can’t wait for you to start using ShopLocket. And we’re excited to hear your feedback. You can signup to receive a beta invite now at ShopLocket.com. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please email me at Katherine [at] shoplocket.com.
Can’t wait to see ShopLocket in action? Check out our demo:
[video]
I’m excited to announce the launch of the Canadian Maker Passport! This is a project I’ve been working on with ThingTankLab for the past couple months. The first passports were distributed at SoOnCon on September 30th, and were gone in a flash! If we do say so ourselves, they are pretty awesome and we can’t wait to get them out to more people.
The Canadian Maker Passport encourages greater collaboration between individuals at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship and design. This Passport also acts as an entry point for individuals interested in following their passion and discovering what the Canadian maker community has to offer.
With the Passport, Canadian makers (whether members of a hacker/maker space or not) are invited to collect stamps from the various hackerspaces and hacker/maker events throughout the country or even abroad! We’re also inviting space & event organizers to create their own personalized stamps.
Current participants stamping Maker Passports include are ThinkHaus, Site3, Interaccess, Hacklab.to, SoOnCon, ThingTank Lab, kwartzlab, Diyode and unLondon. We’re always looking for more spaces and events to add to the passport.
Get Involved!
1) Email me to get your hands on a passport!
2) Become a partner organization or event and create a stamp. All partners get listed on the Maker Passport website.
Learn more at makerpassport.com!
Reblogged from a recent article on Women 2.0.
Katherine is a 20-year-old aspiring entrepreneur currently living in Toronto and working as Marketing Manager for local startup ecobee. After spending the past 5 years learning the ins and outs of Toronto’s tech scene, Katherine is more excited then ever to be part of such a vibrant community.
I found what I love early on. It’s hard for me to believe it’s almost been 5 years since I attended my first entrepreneurship event through Impact. I had always been the kid setting up lemonade stands or trying to sell hand made greeting cards to unsuspecting teachers [looking back they were really terrible cards, my poor teachers!]. I knew that one day I wanted to start a company but I had no idea there were other people, even kids my age, out there trying to do the same thing. Attending my first Impact event changed the way I look at the world and introduced me to a network of like-minded people that I could never have imagined existed. I was hooked, and I haven’t looked back since.
I did anything I could to be involved. As a 16 year old trying to get involved in the world of startups, I took the approach that it didn’t matter what I was working on, so long as I could be involved. I volunteered on the planning committee for the event I attended and began actively promoting entrepreneurship to students. One thing led to another, and by 2008 I was co-chairing the event.
Less talk, more action. After a couple of years of standing on the sidelines of startups, planning events, I decided I needed to get some hands on experience. I started working with a number of startups that my friends had founded and ultimately found myself as an independent consultant on digital media and marketing projects.
I stumbled into tech. You can only spend so long in the startup world without realizing that it’s dominated by tech companies. I loved the fast pace of innovation, the people, and the idea of building something that could change the way people live their lives. I would stay up at night reading Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work or any startup story I could get my hands on. One of my favorite founder stories is Tony Hsieh of Zappos. I even got to tour their office a couple years ago when I was in town for CES. Next time you’re in Las Vegas, skip the casinos and take the Zappos tour instead, you won’t be disappointed.
This year, at the end of February, I released a theme to the Shopify Theme Store. Today, I’m releasing all of my sales numbers to date.
When I decided to create a theme for Shopify, I knew Shopify was growing quickly. At the time they had over 11,323 stores using the platform (I think its over 15,000 now!) and only around 72 themes available in the Theme Store. Of the 72 themes, many were actually just style variations on a single template.
There were no open reports on how much anyone had made releasing a theme, or any numbers on what percentage of Shopify users actually purchase themes (Shopify also has free themes in the marketplace). I decided releasing a theme for Shopify would be an interesting experiment.
I’m not a designer, so paying a friend to work with me and build a theme was not without financial risk. Would I make my investment back? Would it be worth the effort?
Turns out…it paid off! I made back my money in about 2 months, and everything since has been icing on the cake.
Our theme, New York, sells for $120 (you pick the price) and come in 4 styles.
Twenty percent of every sale goes to Shopify. As of July 14th we had sold 85 copies of the theme, resulting in a total theme profit of $8160 (theme profits do not account for any personal expenses you might have had building the theme). Not to shabby for a side project! Imagine if your had multiple themes in the store? You would have yourself a little side business. Tim Ferriss would be proud.
Note: Profit is shown as it would be in your Shopify Partner account and does not include my expenses. (Those you’ll just need to estimate :P)
Now keep in mind that its not an exact science, every theme does not sell at the same rate. In fact, my theme is by no means one of Shopify’s top earners! Its not the most downloaded paid theme, its not the least downloaded, its about average. You can see for yourself by filtering the Shopify Theme Store to only show paid themes, and then sorting by most downloaded. Check it out.
Figuring out what niches aren’t currently being serviced in the theme store, deciding what look and feel to have, and selecting the right features to include in order to maximize sales is not easy! Not to mention, once your theme is up you need to be prepared to answer questions, reply to support emails, and submit patches if you want your theme to succeed. But if you’re willing to put in the time up front, having a passive income and the opportunity to help a bunch of small businesses get up and running is truly rewarding.
So, why am I openly publishing my sales rather than hording the numbers and building more themes myself? That’s a good question. While I do plan to release more themes, the truth is that this is the post I wish I had seen when I was deciding whether or not to take on the initial risk of building a theme. If that means I need to be the one to write it, so be it.
What you do with this information is totally your call. I’m best off if you do nothing at all ;)
View the full data for this post on BuzzData.
I want more women in technology and entrepreneurship as much as anyone. But at the same time I think that we tend to undervalue the power of being in the minority. Its important to acknowledge the opportunities that come with being a woman in this industry, rather than focusing on those aspects that might make it less than ideal.
Here are 7 Reasons Why its Better to Be a Woman in Tech.
1) You stand out.
When you’re one of only a handful of women at an event, or sometimes even the only woman, like it or not you get noticed. As an entrepreneur this can be a huge advantage. I think most entrepreneurs or ambitious people in general would rather get noticed then blend into the crowd. I say, use the attention to your advantage. Oh, and be ready for it, because if you find yourself in the spotlight its sometimes nice if you have something to say…
2) People remember your name.
In line with the last point, if you stand out and get noticed people are more likely to remember your name. If you meet 40 men and 3 women at an event, aren’t you more likely to remember the details of your conversation with the 3 women? And it isn’t even a gender thing; if the numbers were reversed wouldn’t you be more likely to remember the men? Anything that gets your name remembered certainly makes that follow-up email a whole lot easier!
3) You make a better story.
I hope that one day a woman starting a tech company will not be front-page news. However the sad, but honest, truth is that it still is. Michael Arrington has stated outright that TechCruch actively seeks out women focused events and startups to cover. Until the day that female founded startups are par for the course, women in tech have a huge advantage when it comes to media. Let’s face it, you make a better story.
4) People want to hire you, investors want you in their portfolio.
Our industry is hyper aware of the gender gap. There are lots of tech companies out there that, even a few years in, have no women on the team. Even fewer companies have women in technical roles. Are these companies sexist? From my experience, the answer is overwhelmingly, NO. If a qualified female candidate showed up tomorrow they would welcome her with open arms. Not to mention they’d breathe a quiet sigh of relief that no one could accuse them of having sexist hiring practices.
The same often applies for investors. Someone may not invest in a company just for the sake of balancing out the gender ratio of their portfolio (or at least I hope they wouldn’t!). But if you’re a qualified investment that also offers some gender balance, it certainly doesn’t hurt.
5) You bring a unique perspective.
As a woman you can bring a different perspective to your work and to the companies you start. There are countless examples of men building products for women, without any input from women! Women may not be an alien species, but its sometimes good to have representation from your target market on the team. As a female founder you may even be more likely to think of an idea that men in the same industry hadn’t thought of yet. Differences shouldn’t be overemphasized, but at the same time we shouldn’t undervalue the fact that as a woman you have a unique set of experiences to bring to the table.
6) There are events, grants, programs, and awards just for you!
In an effort to combat the gender ratio problem in tech, tonnes of initiatives have popped up to support and recognize women in the field. A few examples that just scrape the surface are, Women 2.0, Girl Geek Dinners, Dell Women’s in Entrepreneur Network, RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards, and Women Who Tech. These are just some of the amazing resources offered exclusively to women. Could you imagine the uproar if similar organizations or awards existed just for men! My god, there would be hell to pay. So long as there aren’t ‘enough’ women in our industry these opportunities will exist. They are amazing ways accelerate your development, build a network, or get exposure.
7) The community wants you to succeed.
We all want to see more women in the industry. We want to see women kick ass and build successful companies. The more successful women there are in this industry, the more attractive technology and entrepreneurship will look to young girls. As a community we tend to offer a little added support and encouragement to women. As a woman you can leverage the added support of the community to more easily find the mentors and networks of people that everyone needs to succeed.
In my humble opinion, I think there are a lot of guys that would kill to have access to the opportunities outlined above. Rather than focus on some of the negatives that may come from being a woman in a male dominated industry I think we need to shift our focus to those times when it is in fact an advantage. I mean, isn’t entrepreneurship in general about turning challenges into opportunities?
See the post reblogged on Women 2.0.
[video]