Dingman Bootstrapped

On this episode of Bootstrapped, we talk football with Grip Boost founders Matt Furstenburg and Chanda Arya. As a former NFL player, Matt was familiar with the shortcomings of football gloves. After receiving half a million dollars in seed funding through organizations such as TEDCO and VOLT, the founders iterated for almost 2 years. With NFL's enormous budget, they appeared the segment to target. Instead, Matt focused on the less famous segment of sports teams—high school athletics, which makes up 95% of the market. Five years later, Grip Boost is sold in 70 stores across the US, selling apparel for football, baseball and golf. 

In this episode of Bootstrapped, we interviewed Ursula Mead, founder of InHerSight.com. The website easily appealed to users eager to rate their experience as a female employee. Unlike other job sites, InHerSight.com gathers data on the female perspective and became a prime location for companies looking to recruit women. Ursula monetized her company by selling data insights back to the companies rated on her site. Now three years old, InHerSight.com has over 170,000 users and 30,000 companies on the website.

In this episode of Bootstrapped, we interview Elise Whang, CEO and Co-Founder of SNOBSWAP. As an avid consignment shopper, Elise got the idea for SNOBSWAP while working late hours as an attorney unable to access second-hand finds online. With brick & mortar only consignment stores losing approximately 30% of their potential revenue, Elise found an 'in' to this traditionally winner-take-all market. Supply-side customer acquisition was as straightforward as googling "best consignment stores in LA" then pitching their idea to a select target list. Now 5 years after their launch, SNOBSWAP is turning down about 50% of the stores that apply to be on their site. 

In this episode of Bootstrapped, the Dingman Center's Entrepreneur-in-Residence and 1776 Startup Mentor Bob London discusses marketing. During a time when there is a constant 'war for customer’s attention,' London advocates for listening. If your start-up is not getting customers, try asking someone, "what would make you a customer for life?" Starting with a customer’s 'elevator rants' or complaints about a product or service makes for a solid foundation for a new enterprise. 

Imagine you are in front of a venture capitalist, what are you going to say that will convince them to invest in your start-up? In this episode of Bootstrapped, we interviewed Terp alum and executive coach Glen Hellman. Serving as founder, mentor and venture partner for multiple organizations, Glen knows a lot about getting funding. Glen explains that using story-telling to engage the reptilian brain in your audience helps move people toward action and increases your chances of wooing investors. 

On this week's episode of Bootstrapped, we talked with Aviva Goldfarb, founder of the Six O'Clock Scramble. This online meal planner offers busy parents health-conscious solutions for the daily scramble of cooking a family dinner. Aviva admits "my biggest competitor is free." Aviva monetized her idea through a membership model, offering dietitian-approved recipes that can be made quickly, along with a mobile grocery list. By requiring customers to submit a credit card to activate their free trial, Aviva has managed to gain a sizable following with a 60-70% customer retention rate. 

In this episode of Bootstrapped, we spoke with Brad Sayler, co-founder & CFO/COO of Spotluck. The app is an asset for both restaurateurs and foodies alike offering up discounts to customers while driving foot traffic to restaurants. One might ask-- how did a lawyer get into app development? Brad says, "you don't need to have a computer science degree" to get your product going. He stresses the importance of separating form from function when developing prototypes. He turned to knowledgeable friends and family for the initial bootstrapping of Spotluck. Brad admits satisfying both sides of a 2-sided market is challenging but knowing that there is an ever-changing formula keeps the customer base growing. 

Ann Yang and Phil Wong, the co-founders of MISFIT Juicery, started their cold-pressed juice company in their dorm room at Georgetown University with a hundred pounds of peaches and a borrowed blender. A social venture, MISFIT transforms "ugly" fruits and vegetables into visually appealing, delicious juice that disguises its "misfit" origins while combating food waste. Through bootstrapping and a scrappy willingness to ask for help when they needed it, they managed to grow MISFIT into one of the hottest local food startups. After graduating from Halcyon Incubator, they secured funding from angel investors including the Dingman Center Angels, and are currently one of six food startups around the country accepted into the Chobani Food Incubator. In this episode, MISFIT founders Ann Yang and Phil Wong discuss the passion and tenacity required to run a social venture, the secrets of their strong branding strategy and the power of asking for help. 

Micha Weinblatt founded his first company, Crooked Monkey, in college at a bar. While sitting at legendary bar Cornerstone, just off campus from the University of Maryland, Micha considered how the traditional college t-shirt could be re-fashioned. Like any true entrepreneur, he started a company that produced cool, graphic t-shirts and called it Crooked Monkey. The shirts are now sold at Bloomingdale's, Urban Outfitters and other chic retailers. Seven years into the venture, Micha got what he calls the "7-year itch" to start something new. That something is Betterific, a platform where ideas and innovation can be crowdsourced. In this episode, Micha talks about how he funded his startups and the one thing every investor or entrepreneur should know before investing in or launching a startup. 

Whether you are the sole founder or co-founder of a start-up, equity can play a major role in the growth and direction of your company. Andrew Sherman, Partner at the Seyfarth Shaw law firm, began his career with a successful start-up in aerobic tennis. Today, he advises entrepreneurs on the brass tacks of drafting stock options, exit strategies and aligning managerial responsibilities with equity. Accustom to asking hardball questions like, how to value sweat equity, what are the income needs of the various stakeholders and how to link expertise to equity, Andrew encourages entrepreneurs to do an (often free) preliminary attorney meeting in the early stages of a start-up.