The first ever Entrepreneurs Unpluggd event in Chicago, organized by Stella Fayman and Tim Jahn, was a relatively intimate gathering of like-minded individuals, brought together to hear the stories of some of the most successful online business owners around. Since I’m on a journey to starting a media social enterprise of my own, I figured it’d be a really good learning opportunity. The lineup for the night? The founders of Sittercity.com, ContactKarma.com, FoiledCupcakes.com, crowdSPRING.com and GrubHub.com. Pretty impressive stuff!
Missed out on the event? No worries. Here’s a quick re-cap of what went down:
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”
- Started what’s essentially a match.com for parents and caregivers when she saw a pregnant woman walking around campus flyering for a nanny.
- Startup cost was $12K and it was just her and her laptop for the first 4 years.
- Marketing your online company has 3 stages: Grassroots level -> Direct Marketing -> Brand Marketing
- Pitched herself as the “babysitting expert”, which later landed her 6 segments on The Today Show.
YSL: She’s essentially taken what people were already doing, and put the process online. Brilliant.
“Customer = someone who pays you for stuff.”
- Started a service for finding vendors your friends use. Site’s still in beta.
- Selling to small businesses is just as hard as selling to big ones
- Get the customer to tell you what they need
- Talk about your product. A lot.
- Sometimes intuition is not the same as reality
YSL: Interesting concept that’s kinda like yelp.com and facebook rolled into one. Injects some fun into searching for services.
“People love opportunities to interact with other people with common interests.”
- Found there was no bakery around that would deliver cupcakes to her without charging exorbitant delivery fees.
- Started this online cupcake store 1.5 years ago with social media as her only form of marketing
- Targeted office admins because they wanted to sell by the dozens. Who organizes parties? Who has $$?
- Hire people who are smarter than you
YSL: Those cupcakes look delicious. Keeping them in mind for my company’s next event! I loved the way they handled a mistake they’d recently made. It’s a great example of what to do.
“Look bigger than you are.”
- Wanted to help small and mid-sized businesses find graphic design services more easily
- Found first buyers by paying friends to post projects on their site
- Held a public project where designers were invited to compete to design the crowdSPRING site.
- Had to very carefully manage the backlash from the design community because they were changing the way the world of design worked.
YSL: I love this. Crowdsourced design services. Just what I’ll need for when I revamp my website! Discovered them when they featured JJ’s List on their blog as one of the top influencers in the world of crowdsourcing.
“Find a good partner who brings different perspectives and skill sets to the company.”
- Started online food delivery directory in 2004 when he got sick of pizza delivery from this one place
- Started with 2 people in his house
- Customer Service must be at the core of his business.
- In case of a screw up, make the resolution A LOT better than the problem.
YSL: This is the only service that I’d actually used before the event. Definitely made my being sick and unable to go out to buy food a lot easier to manage. Their ads are peppered all over the trains… which I would imagine has paid off well for them, since that’s how I discovered them in the first place.
What a great event. Thanks Stella and Tim for organizing this. I can’t wait for the next one!
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I’m honored to have been accepted into the 6-month “Diverse Voices in Docs” program organized by Kartemquin Films and the Community Film Workshop of Chicago. (see HuffPo article) Think of it as an incubator for emerging documentary filmmakers of color.
Shuling Yong 