Startup Dorm Room

Graham Gintz, founder at Knightley and a former Las Vegas poker player, sits down with Braxton Madison to talk about when to go all in on your startup idea, when to call on an investment offer, and when to fold and walk away. Going all in is largely determined by your motivation and ability to solve the problem at hand. When it hurts you so badly that a solution to a problem doesn’t exist that you are regularly being kept up at night, then you may have the right founder fit for that problem, and it may be time to go all in. From the very concept stage of your idea, the team at Knightley and their SaaS can guide you through the steps you need to take to reach the point of raising capital, from the development of your startup's story to the legal documents you need along the way. Gintz has built Knightley on the idea that it is better for your startup to be found by investors, rather than finding them. This is why it is so important to be out there building a great company, not just being a great networker. Being found gives you the upper hand in negotiations, and if you have a great team, a great product, and great indicators, investors with find you. Be sure that an investor is someone you can stay with for the long run, and if they can add more to the company beyond just capital such as knowledge or connections, then it is time to call on the investment offer. Remember that your first check is the most expensive, that you should only take enough money to get your company to the next checkpoint where you can raise money again at a higher evaluation, and try to project $5 in returns for every $1 invested. Along your startup journey, you may realize that the numbers are just not stacking up, your passion for the problem is dwindling, and it is time to fold your hand. Moving on from an idea is okay, and it is important not to get overly attached to a problem to the point that you stick around for too long. As Gintz puts it, "failure is a part of growth." As a serial entrepreneur, he has endured ups and downs, some of his ventures have failed, but those failures have led to the success of the next, and currently the success of Knightley. 

Startup land and poker are wildly parallel, and the words of Kenny Rogers in his hit song The Gambler describe it well: "You've got to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, And know when to run."

Brandon Winfield and Sayeed Mehrjerdian are welcomed to the show to tell the powerful story behind their new app, iAccess Life, the Yelp for accessibility. After being injured in a Motocross accident at the age of 14, Winfield was left paralyzed from the chest down. Through a great support system of friends and family, Winfield continued to travel, adventure, and experience life. However, he was sometimes surprised by the lack of accessibility at places he would go out with friends, and he came up with the idea for an app that would inform users of accessibility ratings before going out. Knowing if there is handicapped parking, a ramp, an accessible bathroom, and other features before driving to eat at a restaurant, work at a coffee shop, or work out at a gym will prevent surprises and empower individuals with physical disabilities. Thus began the long journey to build the iAccess app to help the community, a journey marked by humility and resilience. Despite not having a college degree, Winfield has lead this Atlanta based tech startup as CEO, successfully raising support, breaking stereotypes, and inspiring others along the way. Mehrjerdian, an Industrial and Systems Engineer graduate from Georgia Tech, joined the venture as CIPO, Chief Innovation and Product Officer, to use his background in product management and starting technology companies to push iAccess forward. Recent success has shown through the launch of the app and in winning at the South by Southwest Pitch Competition. The two Co-founders together make an unstoppable team, and there is no doubt they will reach their vision of revolutionizing accessibility through information in the palm of your hand.

Winfield and Mehrjerdian bring great insights into starting a company such as:

Build a team with a common vision. This is make or break.

Setbacks and failures often lead to success if you do not give up.

Startups take a long time. Overnight success is an illusion.

The only way to fail is to quit. Keep pushing through.

Let your pride go of wanting to do this on your own. Ask for help.

Never underestimate the power of your network.

Stop making excuses.

Pitch. Pitch. Pitch. Apply to as many opportunities to pitch as you can. Perfect practice makes perfect.

When someone says no, ask why? You will learn from them.

Raising money is hard, but not impossible.

“What you are doing in your personal life reflects in the success of your business as well.” Make sure you are growing personally, not just in your career!

“Be confident, believe in what you are doing, why are you doing it, and in yourself.”

The number one thing to be successful in business is to believe in yourself and be confident in yourself, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it is working when it is not.

Quality over quantity.

If Toucan can, you can too! Arjun Devarajan and Vishnu Menon, Co-founders at Toucan AI, sit down with Braxton Madison to talk about how to actualize your dream of becoming an entrepreneur. While in undergrad Devarajan and Menon worked on a side project with some friends, creating a chat bot powered by Artificial Intelligence to answer students’ questions when a teacher is unavailable. After graduating from Duke University with degrees in Computer Science in 2018, they took this project to MIT’s summer accelerator, Play Labs, to expand their network and to begin fundraising to turn their project into a successful startup. Now working out of Atlanta’s ATDC Incubator, Toucan AI has found their niche as the sales bot revolutionizing e-commerce. With its instant setup and ease of use, Toucan AI makes the power of artificial intelligence accessible to even the smallest e-commerce businesses.

Devarajan and Menon are young, but they bring incredible insights into starting a company, revealing the secrets of the Startup Dorm Room. Here is just the tip of the iceburgh of the fantastic questions they answer for success: Research project turned startup, how to conduct customer discovery? How to pivot based on customer demand? What is AI anyway? How to communicate technical solutions to nontechnical investors? What do investors care about? (the market, the problem, and the impact + KPIs) How to build a high tech solution with two people? What resources does Duke have for Startups? How to prepare yourself to start a company? Does college have more value in a high tech startup? Why network? How to raise funding? Is raising possible as a college student? Why join an accelerator/incubator? Should you keep back up plans or burn the ships and go all in on your startup? How to find the perfect co-founder?

Book Recommendation: Startup Myths and Models, the very practical nuts and bolts of starting a company, a how to guide for getting started.

Shannon Evanchec, CEO and Co-founder at TruePani, reflects on her days in university turning her research project into a startup. Evanchec won the People's Choice Award in the Georgia Tech InVenture Prize during her undergraduate in Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech with her product detecting microbial contaminants in drinking water. Now, after learning the not-so-graceful art of the pivot, Evanchec's consulting company has led to safe drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. Imagine what it would be like to go a day without clean drinking water. Well, Evanchec believes that no one should have to experience this reality. As a social entrepreneur, she is one small force in the combined global effort to ensure every person has safe water to drink.

TruePani's story gives great insights into the secrets of the Startup Dorm Room, including: 

Book Recommendations:

To learn more about Startup Dorm Room's mission to empower the next generation of world changers, startup founders, and problem solvers you can go to StartupDormRoom.com.

"Find it and GO!" Andrew Brumbeloe, a 5th year Computer Science student at Jacksonville State University and the founder at Fygo, an app optimizing the everyday trip to the grocery store, speaks on the value of faith, patience, and knowledge in starting a successful company. His journey began his first year of college, repeatedly stumbling on the idea of an indoor GPS system for grocery shopping with a host of potential additional features such as coupon optimization and more. At first, he was afraid to pursue the idea, dealing with a problem that keeps many students from pursuing an alternative path - the fear of the unknown. But, Brumbeloe claims his faith in God helped him to overcome that fear, knowing that if God was calling him to do something that he should listen. Now five years later, he has learned patience in taking classes part time while working on his startup, in having team developers come and go, and in cataloging 5,000 items in a grocery story by hand for his MVP. Along the way, Brumbeloe took a semester off of classes to learn app development and build the first iOS app, and he is now using his knowledge to lead a team of eight students. Experience is important, as Brumbeloe puts it, "you have to know what’s required before you can tell someone else what you need done," and his years of development experience from the age of 14 have prepared him to be a successful founder. With such a huge market of millions of grocery shoppers and thousands of grocery stores, Braxton Madison reminds listeners to "not sleep on Fygo!" 

Other insights revealed in this surprising episode of Startup Dorm Room include:

To learn more about Startup Dorm Room and our mission to empower the next generation of world changers, student entrepreneurs, and problem solvers, you can visit startupdormroom.com!

"Stop lying to yourself." Mohammed Aamir, a co-founder at a startup helping people to quit their nicotine addiction, tells us that honesty is a key to success in the startup dorm room. As an entrepreneur, you can fake confidence, but if you lie to yourself about how well your company is doing, then you are on your way to failure. Being honest with yourself and your teammates will allow you to correct poor business, leadership, and product decisions and mistakes before they cause your demise. And if you are on the wrong path, possibly even pursuing a startup idea that has no product-market fit, having self-awareness and the humility to let go and move on will save you from waisted time and money. Aamir gives great insight into validating your problem and solution before you start building to prevent such a loss.

Other insights revealed in this phenomenal episode of Startup Dorm Room include:

To learn more about Startup Dorm Room and our mission to empower the next generation of world changers, student entrepreneurs, and problem solvers, you can visit startupdormroom.com!

Braxton Madison, the host, and Kolby Hanley, a 5th-year Materials Science Student at Georgia Tech, sit down to discuss how Hanley won the 2018 Georgia Tech InVenturePrize with his archery scope startup UltraView. It was a hard journey to get to  reach the success that UltraView is having today, but years of industry knowledge in the archery space from being competing on an international level in archery gave Hanley the competitive edge he needed. Hanley's story is truly insightful, covering topics like:

Startup Dorm Room is a podcast interviewing student founders and successful entrepreneurs to empower the next generation of world-changers through the secrets of the startup dorm room. To learn more about the mission, go to startupdormroom.com. Subscribe!

The education system is partly broken, and Garrett Smiley knows that first hand. Growing up in a military family, Smiley moved around a lot and experienced public, private and online schools across the globe. He developed a passion for education, particularly self-education and began reading dozens of books on psychology and the philosophy of learning. It was no surprise then that when Smiley caught the "startup bug" it eventually led him to co-founding Sora, a different kind of high school that employs self-motivation theory and project based learning to empower students like never before. Listen in to hear Sora's story, to discover revolutionary perspectives and surprising truths about our out-dated education system, and to meet the brilliant founder from Georgia Tech behind the change. (soraschools.com)

Braxton Madison is the host of Startup Dorm Room, a podcast empowering entrepreneurs through educational content and narrative interviews. The biggest take aways from this episode are: reading is extremely powerful in educating a founder about their problem space, searching for a problem that is a mass need will make your impact more meaningful, and don't be afraid to start small and steadily scale. You can learn more about SDR and the mission at startupdormroom.com. Don't miss an episode, subscribe.

The education system is partly broken, and Garrett Smiley knows that first hand. Growing up in a military family, Smiley moved around a lot and experienced public, private and online schools across the globe. He developed a passion for education, particularly self-education and began reading dozens of books on psychology and the philosophy of learning. It was no surprise then that when Smiley caught the "startup bug" it eventually led him to co-founding Sora, a different kind of high school that employs self-motivation theory and project based learning to empower students like never before. Listen in to hear Sora's story, to discover revolutionary perspectives and surprising truths about our out-dated education system, and to meet the brilliant founder from Georgia Tech behind the change. (soraschools.com)

Braxton Madison is the host of Startup Dorm Room, a podcast empowering entrepreneurs through educational content and narrative interviews. The biggest take aways from this episode are: reading is extremely powerful in educating a founder about their problem space, searching for a problem that is a mass need will make your impact more meaningful, and don't be afraid to start small and steadily scale. You can learn more about SDR and the mission at startupdormroom.com. Don't miss an episode, subscribe.

Braxton Madison interviews Daniel Kuntz, a technologist who at the age of only 21 has established himself as a serial entrepreneur. After exiting on his mobile app Crescendo, this young entrepreneur dropped out of Georgia Tech to further develop his music based mobile app mini-empire. Listen in to learn Daniel's valuable insights on: How to start a mobile app company? When to seek investment and when to pull up your bootstraps and fight for that first sale? When to drop out and when to stay in school? If being a billionaire is actually all that great? The importance of bringing art and beauty into everything you create... and more! Visit Coda Labs here: http://codalabs.io