The following is last nights dialogue during Betsy's visit to Cali

Brett=over energized startup fella

Bets=master uguay community builder 

 

Brett: "Bets, we're about to re-launch...how do I market the product to lots of people?"

Bets: "Hm, I think you have it flipped" 

Brett: "Flipped?" 

Bets: "Well, I think you should just focus on the Mavens. Spend your time finding the 20 or so people who "get it" and figure out how you can help them and make their lives easier"

Brett: "That makes sense" 

I wanted to share this dialogue because my brain has strayed a bit, too much marketing talk. Back to community building and problem solving!

 

*This isn't verbatim

Two weeks ago I made a claim I couldnt deliver on to a user and was wrong. I believe in transparency and doing the right thing, here's what I wrote...still waiting to hear back:

Some good news and some bad news. I know this isn't exactly what we planned so it's a good thing you guy's aren't starting school for a few months. 

After talking to many high school teachers, we realized that the old remind101 wasn't really providing direct value to the teachers. We've made the decision to overhaul the old remind101 to enhance it's functionality to cater to teachers.

 

I was scrolling through the press we've received for remind101 and came across the first piece of media that picked up on us from the State News. I was on a 2 week camping trip with Jon & Glenn, about to go on the most ridiculous Mountain Biking excursion in Moab Utah I've ever done (16 Miles, Kona full suspension...a thing of beauty). 

My eyes widened as I read the article...holy cow, is this real? #cool. 

As I sit here a year later and reminisce about what we've went through with remind101 I realized 3 very simple things that my lack of experience and quite honestly, pride stopped me from doing.

1.     Make your product simple

2.     Talk to users 

3.     Solve a problem 

From the look on our  home page design, you'd think it was simple. However, when you got in the system users were often confused. This is an easy fix if I would have talked to users.  But we didn’t. I didn't take enough time to actually sit down and watch users go through the site. I wrote about my first lessons in California last week on how I've been doing user testing. It's not rocket science and I've read all the blogs that say how to do it, but I didn’t. Of course the most important lessons is to solve a problem. We've really had to buckle down and ask ourselves who's problem are we really solving. Turns out, we were making MORE work that solving a problem and providing value to our users. 

The good news is, I learned and we're fixing the issues. We've done a hefty amount of user testing and are honing in on the real problem we're solving. If you are about to start a company, don't make the same mistake I did and follow 123! 

This post is a draft from mid Februray 

Sometimes life doesn't explain why things happen. This morning was pretty frustrating. We just fixed a bug and I thought everything was going just dandy. Then, I got a email from a user asking why their text message looks so odd. Ding ding ding!  

I had a nice lunch to talk biz with a fellower MSUer and startup fanatic John. Then, I went to Starbucks to grab coffee and try to do some work. My usual 3 seats were taken, I almost left. But the seat by the door was open so I figured, what the hell. I sat down and started working on an email. Then, a women walked in, and politely asked if she could share the outlet I was using. Of course, I said. 

Theres some people that, when you meet them you just click. You vibe really well. I don't know why, but I could tell there was something really cool about this women. So we started chatting about this & that, the local restaurant down the street, her sons schooling experieince, what I'm doing with remind101 etc...etc... 

One thing led to another and we started talking about her life experiences. She had just finished her final round of chemo from breast cancer. The funny thing is, she had so much exciting, warm energy you would have never guessed it. After some conversation (I felt like we've been friends for years at this point btw) I asked her if she was scared. "No, not so much actually" What scares me is that I have a 12 year old and the Dr.s say I have 3-5 years to live. So, they aren't joking when they say "live every moment like it's your last". 

At this point she started tearing up a bit and it was tough for me not to as well. See, it's easy to watch the movies, see the videos and hear stories and I cant even say it was someone I'm close to cause we just met 30 min ago! 

And to think I was frustrated with a bug fix earlier in the day. 

I found this burried in my phone and realized there was some good content here. Duh, its Seth! (No, unfortunetaly we arent on a first name basis). A few months back I saw him in person when he visited Chicago and felt these were the biggest marketing lessons:

• 37signals: wrote a computer language and gave it away for free. Hence, rails. That gave the 37signals folks legitamcy.
• Not how do I get people to fan us but ask what they want from us?
• Revolutions change things. We are living in a revolution but we are talking about stuff like Twitters re-design...(stupid!)
•  What's next? Not just 3-6 days or months. But what about 2 years from now...how many of the plans we are making are two years and not just short term. Don't only do short terms stuff!
• If it's easy, it's scarce and people are not going to talk about it because it's not remarkable. 
• Willingness to have people laugh at you and take risks, that's hard!
• People that are building things that matter, are ignoring the gatekeeper. They're just doing it.
• Ideas that spread, win. And how will we make it easy to spread? Don't yell, but make something worth talking about!

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time. In late November, we were invited to Techstars for a Day in NYC. For those of you who aren't familiar, Techstars is a seed stage incubator with roots in Boulder Colorado. They have since expanded to Seattle, Boston & New York. The basic idea: they give a small amount of money to a startup in exchange for equity in the company. You live in the designated location you applied to and work intensively for 3 months while getting advice from some of the best mentors in the world. These mentors have started, ran, and sold multi-million dollar companies. If you want to read more about them, check it out

The Story 

We applied to Techstars NYC with the hopes of advancing remind101 faster. I received an email from Dave Tisch at 1:00 am on Friday inviting us to the day-long event.  I booked my flight on a whim later that a.m., and was on the plane Friday night.  What a rush. I literally cried out of excitement when I first found out. 

The People

I met some amazing people and received invaluable advice. I got to chat with @garyvee who recommended we make remind101 fun:
"students need to laugh!" and "scale with people."  I found the second point to be very interesting. In a time when we have all this fancy technology to manage relationships, the best way to grow a company is really care about people. Care about your users. He really tells it like it is too, I felt as much energy meeting him in person as you see on TV & the web. During his talk, he made a few points I think are worth sharing:

• Business does not give a fuck about you (excuse the French). A lesson he explained with a story he told about a small company complaining to the daily deal king Groupon that they sold too many deals & couldn't handle the capacity. 
• Make yourself useful
• How do you scale? Scale with human beings who give a shit

David Cohen (Techstars founder) was nice enough to give me a free copy of Do More Faster (after I confessed my frugal-ness & lack of funds). Many lessons learned from "Do More Faster," it's a quick, must-read for all startupers. I lent the book to a friend but if anyone in Chicago wants to borrow it let me know! There were 49 other startups that day and some awesome young entrepreneurs. It's really energizing and makes me feel more competitive to be surrounded by such incredible talent.

Did We Get In?

The big question...did we get in? Unfortunately, no. It was very hard for me come to terms with that in the beginning. I guess that's where the whole "resiliency" part of a startup founder comes in. I've become accustom to no's and am doing my best to learn how to deal with it. This time, I gave myself one night to sulk. I could be as angry or down as I wanted.  But, in the morning, I had to wake up earlier and work harder (and smarter) than ever. And I did just that, 5:30am I was up pumping out work. After a few day's passed I really assessed the Techstars For a Day experience. A lot of good things happened: I got to meet some of the coolest people in the world that I really admire, Techstars obviously thought we had some potential because we were "pre-invited" and I got to mingle with all the past co-founders. I also realized that it was well worth the money I don't have to go because at least we tried! 

Major Lessons 

• Scale with humans 
• Try. We would have never known if we didn't try!
• Focus on the positives: we made great connections, learned a ton and have some really great traction with remind101 as it is (: 
• Resiliency: for any young person who is starting a company or even thinking about it, realize that this is a part of the experience. You too will have rejections & failures. I've found that the best way to deal with them is being 100% honest with yourself, getting back up and working harder. 

Worst case? I got a great book & free T-shirt (;

 

This may not make much sense without me explaining it...questions? Just ask! 

Last week my good friends @cagarland & @hillarykw inspired me.  I haven't blogged in a long time and I couldn't, for the life of me figure out what to write about.  I'm doing some cool stuff, but thought so much about making it perfect, that I never ended up writing. So, here it is people...an update on me.

I graduated from Michigan State a few months back, I'm 23 and am starting a few companies for the first time. I hope readers, students especially, learn from this blog and the many mistakes and modest successes I've had.  

Social Bonfire & remind101 are the companies I've started.  remind101 will Beta launch at Michigan State this Monday!  Biggest lesson so far? Work with great people who excel at your what you aren't good at.  No one is good at everything.

More posts to come, if there's anything you'd like me to write about or have ideas please feel free to leave a comment, email @ kopfbret@gmail.com or Tweet me.