Jameson Detweiler

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In Spring of 2009, we applied to the TechStars Summer program as well as several other startup incubators. We were non-selected, and for good reason. We didn’t have much to show at that point, and we lacked direction. It would take a few months for us to solidify exactly what it was we were doing and how we were going to make money.

Fast forward about 9 months, to last month where again, we found ourselves applying TechStars. This time, we were applying to the Boston program which they had moved to the Spring. At first, we applied with a crazy side project that I’d dreamt up over the holidays. Shawn Broderick encouraged us to apply again with GreenKonnect which we thought they would have no interest in. I was also feeling a little down on GreenKonnect. It’s been a long year, and we took a lot of wrong turns (each of which taught us something). Shawn was apparently interested in what we were doing, so reapplying was a no brainer for us.

It changed everything. All of a sudden, we had to focus again. We had to show progress, basically every day, if we wanted to make it into to TechStars. Stuff that had been pushed off for months got done. We had to seriously evaluate a few key parts of our business in order to prove its viability.

I was excited again. Excited in a way that I hadn’t been in a long time. Part of it was the potential of being a TechStars company, but really, we found ourselves moving forward which we hadn’t done in a long time. I was forced to forget about the unimportant stuff and only work on what mattered. We’ve had weeks and even months like this before (typically when we had deadlines), but it had been a while since we had. All of a sudden, we knew where we were going again. It was awesome.

And then, we were non-selected. Again. Man, were we disappointed. We really want to be in Boston. I had expected that if we didn’t get accepted, I’d start to have serious doubts about our business, but I didn’t. I was reinvigorated. I saw this clear path and realized that there is still a huge opportunity for what we’re doing.

Shawn and TechStars are unbelievably kind when they let you know you didn’t make it. They go out of their way to make sure that you know that non-selection does not mean that you don’t have a good idea. It just means that there are at least 10 ideas/teams that they think are better than yours.

I still interpret this as, “You suck!“ It’s not what they mean at all, but I know that the chances of success in this crazy world of startups are astronomically slim. We should be good enough to get into TechStars. Besides, if I know that if I look at it this way, it’s only going to make me want to prove that statement wrong.

TechStars had two primary concerns:

1. Slow progress since applying last year.
2. That we might be late to the market.

That hit me hard because I knew they we were right. Although, I’m confident that we’re still not too late to the market to make it work. We’ve got some competition, but none of us have established any foothold in the market, and we’re doing everything we can to provide a better experience than the others (and based on feedback, we’re doing that).

Now that we’re here, I decided to do two things, figure out how we got to where we are and figure out how to suck less.

So how did we get here?

1. We chased money too early: Six months ago, we started looking to raise money. We thought we had it nailed. We had a source that was very interested. Everything we did was focused on them. We weren’t worrying about the product or gaining traction. Long story short, that source disappeared and we’d wasted months.
2. We talked too much: This problem was especially true of me. I started talking about partnerships and thinking about what we could do with our API. I was constantly trying to make new connections, hoping that an amazing opportunity would open up. We got tons of leads for amazing opportunities, but it had me out of the office or on the phone all the time which significantly slowed the development of our site. It’s hard to convert these leads without a full-featured product. No one is actually going to agree to anything until they can play with the product. Even then, it will probably take several months to make something happen.
3. We tried to do too much: We had this grand vision when we started over a year ago. We were going to revolutionize B2B marketplaces across every vertical. We were going to be VerticalNet 2.0. Ya, that wasn’t going to happen. Too bad it took us 6 months to realize that.

What are we doing to suck less?

1. Do more, faster: This is the TechStars motto, and I heard it over a year ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I really took it to heart. Personally, I often get caught up in details which aren’t particularly important. I’ve gotten better in the past year at prioritizing the important things. Today, I look at what needs to get done, and I think, “What can I do that accomplishes the most in the least amount of time?” Right now, this means focusing on our product, getting it to 1.0 while continually receiving feedback from users and refining it. I’ve stopped pursuing those potential partnerships that I was so preoccupied with. (I haven’t cut it out completely, keeping lines of communication open, but I don’t dedicate a lot of time and energy here.) It’s been unbelievably refreshing to put my head down and focus on the product. I forgot how much I love doing it, and we’ve seen amazing progression recently.
2. Be the best in the world at something: We have competition. We didn’t when we started (that we know about). We’d be in a much better position today if we’d focused on building an awesome product and launching it quickly, but we thought we needed money to accomplish this. We really didn’t. The great thing about much of our lost time over the last year, is that we’ve never stopped thinking about the problem we’re addressing. A lot of the research that we did for the potential investor is helping us avoid a number of potential problems. We now understand all the little details and the pain points of green building product research and selection. When you combine this knowledge with the amazing hacking skills of my business partner, you get something that is seriously epic. (You’ll see it soon enough.) Right now, it’s all about the product, making it as amazing as we possibly can.
3. Feedback, Fix, Repeat: I mentioned this above briefly, but we’ve made it a priority to get the people who need our product to give us feedback, regularly. We’re not even waiting until we have the site up. We have a great, small group of people that love and need what we’re building and will give us feedback on mockups. We’re not wasting time developing the wrong thing. It’s awesome.
4. Ignore everything that doesn’t fit 1-3: I work best when I’m able to focus. Me entire life is in Things. I know I’m overextended when I’m consistently not finishing everything I set out to do at the beginning of the day. By cutting out those things which don’t help us achieve 1-3, my to-do list is empty at the end of the day (well, mostly). Not only does this keep us on track, it feels great to get things done regularly.

We didn’t get into TechStars, but we’re acting like we did. These next three months are all about getting to the point where we have something to show that people really want to use. Will we succeed? Absolutely. (I have to believe that we will, otherwise, why am I doing this?)

And you know what? We’ll apply for the TechStars Summer program.

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Last night, I received an email from an architectural photographer who travels around the country taking photos of buildings, building products, etc. Last year, he traveled to 72 cities. He gets paid to do this because manufacturers and architecture firms hire him to take pictures of their products and buildings. It’s cheaper for them than hiring someone and then paying to fly them somewhere.

This got me thinking. Why don’t I do this for my startup?

Not only do I need to meet people all around the country, it would be great if I could visit LEED Certified buildings around the country. For GreenKonnect, we need pictures of these buildings, and we need to learn about them and write them up. Better yet, we need to convince the people who designed and built the buildings to write them up on our site. We also need manufacturers to add their building products to our database. What better way to do it than in person?

Today, there isn’t anything that should be stopping us from doing this. Wireless internet is cheap, and we run our business from our laptops. Why not hit the road, go to manufacturers, architecture firms, developers, engineering firms, contractors, LEED certified buildings, and Angels/VCs around the country. We could work, sell our product in person and meet with potential investors, all things which we need to do ASAP!

I started looking around at people who decided to run businesses from an RV. Bill Myers wrote an interesting article on people who chose to quit 9-5 jobs and live in an RV. Their cost of living actually went down.

Now, I’m not crazy enough to live in an RV full time. That takes a special sort of person, and beyond that, I’m a city boy. I think we could make our way around the country, visiting most major cities (most places we need to visit are concentrated in cities) in about 6 weeks.

Here’s what we’d need:

• An RV - maybe convert it to use vegetable oil
• 2 EVDO cards (probably go with one from Verizon & one from Sprint in case coverage goes down)
• EVDO router (got one already)
• Gas – I’m leaning toward the vegetable oil solution though
• Food
• Money for campgrounds
• Toll money
• Money to cover fun stuff/activities to keep us from going insane
• Backup money for problems

That’s pretty doable. We can get a used RV for $5k and make improvements pretty easily. (We should be able to sell it at the end of the trip for about the same price.) We could probably even pick up some sponsors to cover a lot of costs, especially green upgrades to the RV such as the vegetable oil conversion. That leaves gas (not if we do vegetable oil), food, campground money, toll money, activity money and backup money. If we’re frugal, smart, and good at hustling this, we could do this for under $20k, maybe less. The press alone could be worth that money.

Upside/Benefits

• Face to face meetings – much more effective than email, phone calls and even video conferencing
• A lot of content for our site
• Mobility – we can change our plans on the fly
• Press (and probably lots of it) – not only could we easily document everything along the way, I’m sure we could get a bunch of press from this pretty easily
• Focus, focus, focus – we’d work on the business 24/7 for 6 weeks

Downsides/Risks

• People think I’m crazy (don’t care about most, but I do care about our users/customers/potential investors)
• Time lost to driving & problems with the RV
• No privacy for 6 weeks
• Disconnected physically from Philly and our advisors
• A decent amount of time “lost” to organize the trip

The only major downside I see is the crazy thing. Everything else is minor or easy to work around. Would this actually have a negative impact on our business? Would investors take us seriously? I think not considering the times and the increasing transparency we’re seeing in the business world. If we could figure out how to make this work financially, and if I could my business partner it’s a good idea, I think this could be an amazing adventure with great results for our business. I think I’d actually get more work done than I do now. The amount of content we’d create for our site alone would be huge!

Please convince me that I’m crazy.

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