Forbes

How These 20-Year-Olds Raised $13M And Built A Massive Food Tech Company

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com

Being a young, first time entrepreneur is hard. Without a stunning success story or years of applicable experience, a new founder can face significant challenges starting and growing a company. A study by the University of California indicated that the average venture backed founder is 38 years old with 16 years of work experience. That’s quite a gap when it seems today that every new startup founder is in their early 20s.

What challenges differentiate a veteran entrepreneur and a newcomer’s experiences? What are strategies a first time business owner can employ to maximize the chances of success?

Eat Street's Office in Madison, WI
Eat Street’s Office in Madison, WI

Eric Martell started EatStreet, the largest independent food ordering company in the United States, when he was 20 years old with two classmates at the University of Wisconsin. EatStreet has raised $13 million and powers the online ordering of 15,000 restaurants nationwide. The startup, founded in 2010, exists in a cohort of foodtech and delivery companies that have some impressive deal flow: Instacart raised $220 million at a $1 billion valuation, Postmates has raised $138 million.

I recently chatted with Eric about starting a business in college and about the explosive growth of the food and delivery tech sectors.

Dan Reich: Speak to the challenges of starting a company at 20 years old.

Eric Martell: Early on, and to this day, we’ve had to convince others to take a risk on us, because we’re young and don’t have any pre-EatStreet experience running a tech company. In 2010, we had to convince the restaurants to take a chance on us. Matt was walking into every restaurant in Madison, WI with a simple pitch that our service would bring the restaurants more orders from new diners. Restaurants were wary of the entire idea, because if we took an order online and didn’t properly ensure that the restaurant received the order and could fulfill it, the diners would blame the restaurant for the poor experience. Additionally, we accepted payments online, which meant that we had to pay the restaurant every week, so they had to trust us with their money. Matt looked young for a 20 year old, and he heard more than once that the restaurant “just didn’t feel comfortable doing business with a kid.” Matt was able to sign up five restaurants when we launched February 1, 2010. With some results under our belt, we were able to expand that list to over 100 Madison restaurants within a year.

Additionally, in order to process online payments, we needed the trust of a credit card processor. We applied for six processors before getting approved… there was a lot of inherent risk to accepting online payments and transferring out the payments to restaurants on a weekly basis. It took over two months of searching before someone took the risk on us.

If it weren’t for those five restaurants and the credit card processor taking a risk on us, EatStreet would not exist.

Dan Reich: Do you still face challenges similar to these?

Eric Martell:  Although the nature of the challenges has changed over the years, we still face obstacles from being first time entrepreneurs. We’ve raised over $13 million from venture capitalists, and every single one of them has taken a risk in betting on our drive. We also form strategic partnerships with companies like Yelp, Google, Single Platform, and Hotel Communications Network. These businesses need justification to take risks on a company like ours. I’m glad to say that we’ve always been able to put up results, and the company is the strongest it’s ever been.

Dan Reich:  Do you think the current trajectory of food and delivery business funding and acquisitions will continue?

Eric Martell: We stand by what we’re seeing. GrubHub IPO’d a little over a year ago, and has consistently held its value as a multibillion dollar company. Over in Europe, DeliveryHero has raised over $1.5 billion, and Just-Eat also had a very strong IPO. With even Amazon and Uber eyeing the food delivery space, we’re happy to be where we are, with strong relationships with thousands of restaurants.

Dan Reich: Do you have any advice for first time entrepreneurs facing challenges regarding their experience levels?

Eric Martell: Persistence and results. Matt went to over 100 restaurants and only signed up five for our business’ launch. We could have called it quits after five credit card processor rejections. Our investment pitch historically has had less than a fifty percent success rate. Accept the failure as inevitable, and push forward. We’ve had restaurants that initially refused to sign up with us tell us today that when they finally did sign up with us, the additional orders we drove saved their business from going under.

Results might not always be present, but they speak louder than the best sales pitch. Focus on the aspects of your business you have control over, and grow like crazy. We didn’t raise a dollar until we had over $1 million in food sales, and that first million was the product of thousands of hours of promotion and hard work. It’s much easier to convince someone to believe in your vision if you have a track record of growth and hard work to back it up.

Do You Hate Your Job? 5 Tips To Change That

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

“I knew I had to quit when I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning to go to work.”

Those words stuck with me. I heard them from a successful entrepreneur and I think about them almost every day. It’s a quick gut check against the happiness and balance in your professional and personal life.

Over the past few weeks I’ve heard similar words from countless friends and colleagues.

The lawyer that started a legal career because it was a safe and steady job.

The financier that went to wall street because of the big bonuses.

The doctor that attended medical school because the parents said they should.

The consultant that joined a big named firm because of the prestige associated with it.

To the outside world these jobs are normal. In fact, they are celebrated. But to the individual they can sometimes feel like a cage with no escape. However the good news is that I’ve seen people successfully make the switch from a career they hate to a career they love. In all of these situations, there were at least five common themes that enabled these people to make the leap of faith and recalibrate their life for a happier, more successful career.

Hone in on your transferable skills. A friend recently described his job to me. He does “platform sales to financial institutions and hedge funds.” When I asked him what that meant he said, “I’m basically a waiter. My tables are my clients. My dishes are my financial products. My tips are my commission. And my job, is to basically keep my tables happy and answer any questions that the customers may have.” A waiter on wall street. Pretty simple. But a good waiter must have good people skills and good people skills are transferable to any industry. However, it’s not just people skills that are valuable. Organization, communication, and leadership are also very important. We sometimes take these intangibles for granted, but if you can hone in on your strongest transferable skills then you can figure out where else they might be applied in a setting that you enjoy.

Leverage your transferable knowledge.  Another friend of mine has been working in commercial real estate for the past few years. When he took a sales leadership position at a new technology startup, someone asked me, “what does a commercial real estate broker know about startups?” I said, “not much. But he knows more about real estate sales than anyone I know and for a technology startup that is focused on the real estate market, that’s a pretty big asset to have.” Sometimes a career change isn’t as big of a change as you think it is. If you have deep industry knowledge it’s likely that there are multiple opportunities and jobs that could benefit your experiences.

Try something new. I recently saw a Facebook status that said “Learning how to code. I’m a nerd and I love it.” In a million years I would have never guessed this person to learn to code or to even know what “ruby on rails” means. In school, you’re required to take classes in different disciplines. But just because school is over it doesn’t mean you should stop exploring new horizons. Take chances. Open new doors. Learn something new because you might actually enjoy it and it may very well lead to a new, professional path.

Ask for help. There is absolutely no shame in asking for help when help is needed. Sometimes it’s easy to let pride get in the way but as someone once told me, “ducks that quack get fed.” If you want to make some changes but don’t know how then simply pick up the phone, write an email and share your thoughts with someone. It’s human nature for people to help one another but no one can help you unless they know you are looking for it. So don’t be shy. Ask for help.

Recognize the difference between quitting and recalibrating. I wonder what Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerburg’s parents thought when they decided to drop out of school. Is that considered quitting? If it is then I plan to quit something as often as possible. There is a big difference between giving up and realigning your goals and objectives. Sometimes people are afraid to “quit their job” because it’s viewed as just that, quitting. But the thing is, it’s not. If you have a game plan and a strategy in place then you owe it to yourself to “quit” so that you can recalibrate your path to success and happiness.

Follow me on Twitter at @DanReich.

How Retail Is Evolving In An On-Demand Economy

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

It’s been widely discussed that Amazon plans to enter the brick-and-mortar retail game. This is ironic because it is Amazon that put many brick-and-mortar retailers out of business in the first place. Circuit City, Borders and Blockbuster all succumbed to the dynamics of e-commerce and companies like Barnes & Noble, Sears and K-Mart aren’t too far behind. Big box retailers carry fewer product lines and holding inventory presents significant risks. Consider that in the last four years, cumulative sales of brick-and-mortar retailers shrank by $30 billion and as Jeff Jordan rightly points out, “these trends are only accelerating.”

In the past, brands would have to fight for shelf space and customer access and that gave power to the larger retailers.  Today, anyone with a product and a website can build their own sales channel and that is creating enormous shareholder value for the digital players. This creates a new set of challenges for brands and retailers.

On one hand, building an online-only business has cost and distribution advantages. There is no need to invest in large amounts of inventory and you aren’t subjected to retailer buying terms or expensive overhead for rent. This is a large reason why companies like Bonobos and Warby Parker experienced success early on and why many brands looked to copy the online-only model.

On the other hand, having a physical presence has proven to drive sales with meaningful volume and be an effective channel to reach new customers. Take Quirky as an example. The company claims that brick-and-mortar retail partners are key to Quirky’s success, driving 85% of the company’s revenue, with the rest coming from online sales through Quirky.com, Amazon, ThinkGeek, Fab.com and other e-sellers.”

So the challenge becomes this: how do businesses leverage the benefits of a physical store while removing the challenges that are destroying brick-and-mortar retail?

One startup company thinks they’ve solved this problem by taking inspiration from successful businesses with marketplace dynamics like Airbnb. In just nine months, a startup called Storefront has created one of the largest online marketplace for brands, artists and designers that are in need of temporary retail space. This model allows brands to create engaging, physical experiences without taking on the overhead of long term leases that are putting so many retailers out of business. Imagine a future in which Fitbit is sold in gym lobbies across the U.S., IKEA is on college campuses during move-in week, and the hottest Kickstarter campaigns are available for pre-order or purchase at Best Buy.

UNIQLO Pop-Up store at Union Square station
UNIQLO Pop-Up store at Union Square station (Photo credit: MTAPhotos)

Nick Roberston, CEO of the fast growing ASOS is thinking along these lines as well. “Being a digital fashion brand, it is important we never lose a digital element to what we’re doing, however based on consumer reaction and participation, I think we will be looking at more new and innovative ways we can get our brand in front of the customer for a physical experience in the future.”

Will a company like ASOS use Storefront? It’s very likely. Hundreds of brands have opened their own store and generated millions in sales revenue. And when you consider that 80% of all economic output takes place in urban areas, it further validates the idea that having a cost-effective physical presence makes a lot of sense.

From the New York Times, “whenever a city doubles in size, every measure of economic activity, from construction spending to the amount of bank deposits, increases by approximately 15 percent per capita. It doesn’t matter how big the city is; the law remains the same.” NYT

That law is quite compelling and Jeff Bezos knows it is. It’s perhaps part of the reason Amazon is opening a distribution warehouse in the densely populated tri-state area and why Jeff is quoted as saying that  “We [Amazon] would love to [do physical retail], but only if we can have a truly differentiated idea.” Being closer to the customer creates better experiences and improves economic efficiencies. In the case of retail, maybe the “differentiated idea” is simply about getting to your customers, quicker, cheaper and more intimately than anyone else and having an on-demand storefront seems like a pretty powerful way to do just that.

Follow me on Twitter at @DanReich.

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.

Surfing Big Waves and Big Markets

English: Mavericks Surf Contest 2010. Français...

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

“You don’t need to paddle as hard for the bigger waves”

That’s what Kaoki, my surfing instructor, told me during my first surf lesson on the shores of Maui two weeks ago. It was as if he was some executive coach because everything he said to me made complete sense from a business perspective. In the back of my mind I was still trying to digest the Facebook IPO and how a small company realized over $100B in value in just a few short years. So when he started talking about the “waves,” some things he said became immediately clear.

“You don’t need to paddle as hard for the bigger waves.” The pre start-up days of a start-up company are among the most exciting and also, the most terrifying. This is the moment when entrepreneurs decide what they are going to build and what market they are going to be in. Often times this can be very paralyzing to an entrepreneur because their choices are unlimited, so the fear sets in when they start asking, “but what if I choose the wrong idea?” So as an entrepreneur, the real question you should be asking is “what if I choose the wrong wave?” Start by looking at very large markets or quickly emerging markets. You will have more room for error while also having more upside potential. Another friend of mine said, “it takes the same amount of work to build a successful company in a big market as it does in a small market.” He’s spot on. Start with a bigger market. Start with a bigger wave.

“Surfing is 90% paddling and 10% surfing.” In order to actually stand up on a wave, you need to paddle and you need to do so in a way that gives you a chance to surf. In any startup, this is what matters most. Putting in the time, work, dedication and focus beforehand so you can enjoy that sweet fundraising event or successful exit later on. Without the right type of paddling and focus, you’ll never be able to enjoy a wave.

“Don’t just paddle, push the water.” Writing emails for the sake of writing emails is rather meaningless. This concept applies to just about everything you do at your job. When you are trying to get something done, do it with reason. If you don’t have one, ask yourself why you are doing it in the first place. If you aren’t “pushing water” you may never get up on a wave and you’ll just be some person sitting in the middle of the ocean, or industry, bobbing up and down on a fancy looking boogie board.

“Be patient. The good waves will come.” If you are patient, committed, and hardworking, you will eventually find yourself starring at a great opportunity. The question is, will you be prepared? Will you “push the water” and put in the work so that you can stand up on the board and ride it out?

I hope so.

Connect with Dan Reich on Twitter – @danreich.

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Acquisition Breathes Life Into Emerging Digital Death Industry

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Nathan Lustig and Jesse Davis are the cofounders of Entrustet, a company that helps you access, transfer and delete your digital assets when you die. The company was acquired by SecureSafe, a the market leader in secure online storage and digital inheritance. Entrustet is Lustig and Davis’ second company that has been acquired.

I caught up with them today to ask them a few questions about the deal and about their experiences starting a company.

Q. Where did the idea of Entrustet come from?

A. Jesse was reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman which explains the story of Justin Ellsworth, a US Marine who was killed in Iraq. His parents wanted more to remember him by, so they asked Yahoo for the contents of his email. Yahoo said no way, it’s against our terms of service.

A few months later, a Michigan judge ruled that Yahoo must turn over the contents of Justin’s account to his parents. We thought three things: 1) digital assets are real things that have economic and sentimental value, 2) you shouldn’t have to go to court to gain access to them, and 3) what if you have digital assets you don’t want anyone see?

We looked around and there weren’t any services to help solve the problem and decided to start. Our vision was to build a product that easily and painlessly let people decide what would become of their valuable online accounts and computer files after they pass away.

Q. You built the business in a place other than silicon valley and NYC? Please explain.

A. Entrustet has taken a long and winding path. We started the company in Madison, WI, which in our humble opinion is an up and coming startup hub in the Midwest. Our initial plan was to stay in Madison to save money during the bootstrap phase and build a great team, then move to NYC or Silicon Valley after we started to build some traction. Madison’s ridiculously cheap cost of living is one of its greatest attributes. Add that to a creative and helpful community of smart people and you’ve got a nice place to try to start something.

After a year, we had a product built, users and press, but not the massive scale traction we wanted. We saw an article in Forbes about a program called Startup Chile that was inviting startups to Chile and giving them $40,000 of free money. We wanted to extend our runway and we thought exchanging the brutal Wisconsin winter for Santiago summer.

After our 6 months in Chile, we came back tom Madison and continued to work until the acquisition.

Q. Did you raise money? How did you do that?

A. We raised a round of angel money from angels in the Midwest and East coast, plus a grant from Startup Chile. We built our prototype, launched it and then took it to potential future investors. Our biggest step towards fundraising was showing angels that we were serious. We had a prototype built, a full business plan, and showed tremendous support from the local business community.

Q. What is Startup Chile and how did it help?

A. Startup Chile is a program from the Chilean government to foster entrepreneurship in Chile. They give startups $40,000 of free money if you move to Chile for 6 months. It gave us a longer runway to help us perfect our business model and continue pivoting without having to give up equity. We met entrepreneurs from all over the world, including startups we ended up working with.

Q. How did you get clients?

A. Our main sources were via our blog and the press we generated, via attorneys recommending Entrustet to their clients. We also worked with websites to refer their users to Entrustet so that they could have a standardized policy for user deaths.

Q. How did the acquisition come about?

A. We’d been working in the market for three years and got to know the SecureSafe team very well. We strongly believe that the future successes in of digital estate planning are companies that help users equally while they are living and when they pass away.

SecureSafe passes both of these tests and we were very interested in figuring out how to work together. We also have most of our users in North and South America, while SecureSafe is concentrated in Europe. As our relationship developed, we realized that our visions were very well aligned and we decided it would be a classic win-win if we joined forces.

Q. What are your future plans?

A. Nathan is returning to Chile to work on a Chilean startup company called Welcu that was funded by 500 Startups and Tomorrow Ventures. Founded by Sebastian Gamboa and Nicolas Orellana, Nathan is helping them expand in Argentina, Colombia and Brazil. Jesse accepted a job with Buddy Media, a fast-growing late stage startup in its own right, based in NYC.

Connect with Dan Reich on Twitter – @danreich. (Disclosure: Dan is also a current employee at Buddy Media)

5 Corporate Hacks to Make Your Company More Social

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

If Facebook has taught us anything over the past few years it has taught us this:

Cover of "Hackers"
Cover of Hackers

1. A hacker culture works to drive accelerated growth in a business. Mark Zuckerberg writes in a letter to his investors, “Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.”  It’s hard to argue that this approach doesn’t work. Facebook today has over 850 million people and to give you some perspective, that would make it the third largest continent in the world behind Asia and Africa. So clearly, a hacking culture does help move a business and it’s product forward. But why should a hacking culture be limited to a silicon valley technology company?

2. The world is social. Legacy, societal hierarchies no longer exist. Almost every day I encounter new stories with a similar theme: a group of like-minded individuals come together to affect change – and they do so from the bottom up. A great example is something called Cash Mobs, where a group of people visit a local business, as a large group, and share in a collective spending spree. In many cases they can even alter the prices of products. It happens organically and it happens from the bottom up.

Yet another example is one I learned about recently, called “Invisible Children.” This movement is working to disarm Joseph Kony, one of the world’s worst war criminals, from his position of power in Uganda. When the movement first started, the members unsuccessfully challenged government officials to intervene. Shortly thereafter, the organization decided to use social media to raise awareness and demand change. As a result, they were able to to generate participation from hundreds of thousands of people, the original naysayers, acclaimed celebrities and even President Obama. In today’s world, all organizations should expect this paradigm shift to affect their business in one way or another – without their control and without their permission.

So how can businesses embrace a Facebook-like hacking culture that could lead to accelerated growth?

Here are a few corporate hacks you can use to make your company faster and more social:

The “Team Collaboration” Hack: Assembling and curating ideas can be very time-consuming. It can also destroy your email inbox and waste hours of your day. Instead of accruing very long email threads, create a private Facebook group to facilitate the conversation. It is a free, private forum and you can invite only those you want to invite.

The “Customer Service” Hack: Social media is less about “media” and more about real communications between real people. People will either praise your brand or complain about your product so make sure you have people on your team listening to your brand. You can create google alerts or twitter alerts using their search functionality and RSS feeds. This will alert you when certain keywords are mentioned and from there, you can reach out to engage with them.

The “I Need Legal’s Approval” Hack: In many corporations, marketing teams require legal approval.  In today’s market there are many recent law graduates looking for work. Think differently about hiring and consider opportunities for lawyers to be an integral part of your social media marketing efforts. You’ll have someone on board that can quickly approve content.

The “Product Development” Hack: Why spend a ton of energy and time trying to figure out what your customers want? Simply ask your customers what products they want and use that feedback in your product development cycle. If you don’t ask, they’ll tell you anyway so you might as well ask.

The “Customer Acquisition” Hack: People are opting in to become fans and followers of certain brands. It is now easier than ever to identify and recruit customers of your competitors. Just look at their social media properties, reach out, and engage in good, meaningful dialogue.

Those are just a few social hacks to drive additional progress in your organization. What else have you seen?

Connect with Dan Reich on Twitter – @danreich.

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It’s All About Execution and Stick Figure Cat Drawings

English: Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban is an investor of iwanttodrawacatforyou.com

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

What would you say if I told you I was going to make stick figure cat drawings?

Your first response may be to highlight the fact that I’m above the age of 4. Now what if I told you that this was not a child’s arts and crafts project, but my business idea. Not only is this my business idea, but my sales pitch includes a song and dance called, “I want to draw a cat for you.” What would you say then?

I think many of you would ask me if I’ve lost my mind and that would be a fair question. However, the truth is that absurd business concepts, even dramatically idiotic ones like stick figure cat drawings, can be brilliant, revenue generating businesses so long as they are properly executed.

On ABC’s Shark Tank, a show where investors get pitched and invest their own money, a guy named Steve Gadlin walked into a room, stood before five prominent investors and proved that execution is all that matters. He danced, he sang, he pitched a business predicated on cat drawings, and secured an investment from Mark Cuban, a billionaire investor and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. This is something worth seeing for yourself.

The lesson to be learned here is that there is so much more to a successful business than just the idea. The trick to taking a business idea and turning it into a successful reality is all in the execution of that idea. It’s about taking your concept, regardless of how “out there” it may be, and making it work even if those around you liken your idea to the works of a 4 year old. It takes inventiveness, creativity, and lots of hard work.

Many of todays greatest inventions, if turned into a sales pitch, would be as television worthy as stick figure cat drawings. Just imagine what a Wright brother’s sales pitch may have sounded like. “So you see what those birds are doing? Yeah, its basically like that but with lots of wood and metal. Wanna invest?”

We encounter people every day who come up with crazy ideas, but the people that succeed are the ones that can execute. They are the people whose convictions and beliefs outweigh the objections and negativity of the naysayers.

So as I look out of the window and watch the planes fly overhead, I’m constantly reminded that no idea is too small or too stupid. Ideas don’t mean anything without good execution. And if the planes aren’t enough of a reminder, I suggest you order a picture of a stick figured cat and hang it above your desk.

Connect with Dan Reich on Twitter – @danreich.

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3 Short Stories from 3 NYC Startups

New York City
New York City

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Our society celebrates the buzzy and bubbly – acquisitions, funding events, mergers, new hires. As entrepreneurs, most of the buzzy stories we read are rather useless. They serve no practical application to help grow our respective businesses. This is why great entrepreneurs get out in the field and engage in as many conversations as they can with those they respect. They want to hear firsthand how people have succeeded and how people have failed. They search for tried and true lessons so that they can apply the takeaways to their own ventures. And in this process entrepreneurs uncover key insights that may lead to a critical pivot in a business model or perhaps may lead to a simple validation of an already held mindset. From my vantage point, all of these little stories serve as an important backdrop for anyone looking to build a great business.

So here are three short stories from three up and coming New York City startups. Maybe you’ll uncover a gem of insight that will help transform your business or project.

“No Silver Bullets” by Aaron, CEO & Co-Founder of Tutorspree

The hardest lesson I’ve learned since co-founding Tutorspree is that there are no silver bullets – even when charting something as amazing as the future of one-on-one learning. It may seem a bit strange that I need that as a lesson when everything else I’ve ever done has required huge amounts of hard work. Intellectually, I had no expectation that a startup would be any different. But emotionally, entrepreneurs are continually confronted with stories in the popular press full of the one huge a-ha innovation/decision/partnership that “made” a company. While I know that those may be possible in extreme edge cases, that they’re nowhere near the norm, and they create an irrational expectation that one is just around the corner.

The truth is that start ups are hard, they’re a slog, they’re a huge amount of all consuming work – but that’s also why they’re amazing. You don’t find a single silver bullet – that’s the just the story people tell afterwards, you find a whole bunch of little steps and you figure out how to string them together until you have your success. And looking back, that’s a bigger achievement than a single fell swoop, which might be as much luck as anything else. That’s a lesson I take into work with me every day, and it is a critical piece of what makes this the life I want.

“Motivation by Inspiration” by Mike Dirolf, CEO of Fiesta

For me, motivation has been the principle benefit of working from a co-working space in New York City; collaboration is a distant second. It’s great to have smart people around to ask for help and feedback, but it’s far more important to see how hard those people are working and to be inspired to keep up. At almost all hours of the day the space is filled with people working as hard as they can to turn their fledgling companies into successful businesses. It’s impossible to walk into the place and not feel energized.

A little over a year ago I set out on my own and was ostensibly working from my apartment. The reality was that I had a lot of trouble staying focused. About a month later I moved into a co-working space; since then staying motivated hasn’t been a problem. Now that Fiesta is growing and I’ve brought on a co-founder that external motivation might be less essential, but I’m convinced we never would’ve gotten this far without it.

“Colloboration” by David Reich, CEO & Founder of Assured Labor (Disclosure: David Reich has no relation to Dan Reich

Our company, Assured Labor, is an unusual start-up. Started at the MIT MediaLab, Assured Labor connects employers in emerging markets with local sales, operations and administration candidates using cell phones and web technology.

We have a staff of 15 (including our outsourced engineering team) distributed between Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan, Nicaragua and of course, our headquarters in New York City at Dogpatch Labs. We’ve often been asked why we keep our headquarters in  New York while all of our operations are based in the emerging markets. The answer is collaboration. Our New York base allows us to collaborate with the world’s best engineers and business innovators, ensuring we can outcompete our local competitors. I’ll give an example of each.

Engineering. While we have been happily working with an outsourced technology team based in Lahore, Pakistan, we keep our senior technologist and product manager in the US. This is for two reasons: first, this is where the worlds top talent is, and second, to provide our talent with the opportunity to collaborate with likeminded entrepreneurs. In our incubator there is no shame in asking questions or fear that collaborators (from other companies) will steal our idea. This ecosystem allows our engineers to learn from peers other and build better services faster.

Business Innovators. Over the past year dozens of startups have come through Dogpatch Labs, each with it unique ideas on how they’ll monetize their business. I’ve seen Groupon models, Ad based models, Subscription models, Freemium models, Co-marketing models, and a dozen more. Each month notable experts come through Dogpatch to meet us, ranging from the Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com to Eric Reis the author of “The Lean Startup”. But best of all I’ve had the opportunity to learn from my fellow founders while sharing my opinions on what I’ve seen working both internationally and in the US. As technology is only part of building a successful startup these opportunities to collaborate with business innovators is a tremendous advantage.

Beyond the opportunity to collaborate in engineering and business innovation the collaborative environment of our co-working space has provided us with introductions to investors, employees, interns and partners. We also lean on each other for energy and motivation, sharing in each other success. While few things can match the business learning that comes from sitting with your customers, few things can match the business building to be gained from collaboration with other entrepreneurs, in the trenches, working to change the world.

Do you have a great startup story to tell?

Connect with Dan Reich on Twitter – @danreich.

3 Ways to Disconnect

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Technology has democratized information and in turn has fueled hyper consumption. On a daily basis, we are assaulted with new content that we must consciously choose to engage with or disregard. Whether it is a text message from a friend, a real time twitter feed, the latest youtube sensation, or even this very blog post, we are constantly plugged in to a hyper connected media network – one that actually causes a paralyzing and counterproductive affect for us as individuals.  One engineering professor explains: “I feel that the iPad is yet another electronic toy to distract people from the hard work, focus, and dedication that a productive life requires.”

But here in lies a paradox.  If you managed to navigate to this article to read this post, chances are good that you, like me, have a desire to consume information in order to improve various aspects of your life or business. It’s natural to think that more content consumption will increase our chances of success, because after all it is a learning experience, but as a fellow entrepreneur puts it “there are days where I’m always working but by day’s end, I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing.”

So how do we disconnect from all of this hyper consumption in order to really pursue a productive life or career?

1. Focus on one thing and one thing only. When you eat, eat. When you read, read. When you work, work. How many times have you been in a meeting or out to a meal and a member of the party breaks out their phone and starts checking email? In order to thoroughly disconnect from this always-on network of information, we must be willing to compartmentalize certain activities so that we are really only doing one thing at a time. This is an extremely difficult task especially when you have web browsers and technology that can simultaneously let you read email, read articles, listen to music, chat with friends, and watch videos all at the same time – tab by tab, app by app.

2. Connect with nature. Leave your phone at home and take a walk outside. Better yet, take a weekend trip to a beach, a park, a resort, or any place where you enjoy the peacefulness of nature. Looking back on my experiences, I’ve found that mostly all major decisions I’ve made were made while taking a walk or sitting alone outside. In fact, in Walter Isaacson’s new book on [entity display=”Steve Jobs” type=”person” active=”true” deactivated=”false” key=”steve-jobs”]Steve Jobs[/entity], there are many instances where Steve goes for a walk in order to address some critical aspect of his life or business.

3. Pick up a hobby. Part of the reason I write articles like this one is because for the hour or so it takes me to compose this piece, I am not doing anything else. A colleague of mine described his favorite hobby, surfing and said “when I’m sitting on my board in the ocean, I’m only thinking about one thing – when the next wave is going to come.” In this resolve and dedication to a hobby or sport, we can find solace and peace from our pressures of every day life.

Once you are able to truly disconnect, you can begin to focus, with a clear state of mind, on things that matter. You can begin to work on things like overcoming career anxiety or maybe even getting started with your very own business venture.

Do you have special tips or tricks for disconnecting?

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