Brianne Garcia

When we decide to start a company or build something new, we are fully aware that more things can go “wrong” than can go “right.” We know this, and yet we put a flag at our feet, our sights set on forging new ground, claiming new territory, forming a new community, and eventually putting “a ding in the universe”, as Steve Jobs said, depending on our mission. Startups are so “cool” right now, and have become very much a part of popular culture, so I think we sometimes forget how terribly naive, blindly optimistic and almost delusional startup founders really have to be to think their mission will succeed over others, especially over others with similar ideas in the same market. 

I’ve said this to potential investors who inquire about my background and to my peers alike: I kind of stumbled into founding a company, and perhaps this is why my mistakes seem like “DUH” ones to others, but why I was willing to take risks more seasoned entrepreneurs or business people were too scared to take. Unlike many who spend months building something during nights and weekends, who build up the courage to quit their day jobs, forgo salaries and benefits, and fully commit to something inherently uncertain and unpredictable, or those who attend Ivy league schools through which they’re encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship from the beginning, I blindly found entrepreneurship while in graduate school. For better or for worse, I always have and always will be the type of person to throw myself into something if life presents the opportunity. I did this with graduate school, which worked out pretty well, and then I did this with Parceld…which, so far, worked well in spurts, but has been the toughest 7 months of my life. 

At this time last year, I had never stepped foot in the tech community in New York. To say it was foreign territory would imply that I even knew it existed; I was fully engrossed in finishing my last semester of graduate school, and was anxious about where I’d work upon graduation. Journalists – talented ones at that – weren’t technically making boatloads of money, or even finding dependable employment, and I knew that a traditional reporter’s role wasn’t for me. I was always very interested in online communities, and hoped to merge that with my lifelong obsession with fashion and its life cycle. While I wasn’t a part of the tech community in the way I am now (which is still just scratching the surface), I was always an early adopter of shopping and social sharing sites. I hopped on Polyvore, Svpply, Pinterest and Tumblr very early in each of their respective lives, and that’s where the idea for Parceld crept into mind. As an avid user of these sites, I noticed gaps in the process of being inspired and being able to actually DO something with this inspiration (buy, locate).

I had a choice to make upon graduation: go get a job, or pursue Parceld. I chose the latter, and am so f-ing glad I did. But now I’m at a similar crossroads: I have run out of funding, my technical co-founder quit and pulled the code out from under me (major lesson learned there: USE GITHUB), am personally out of savings with student loan payments taunting me from around the corner, and have not even half of my original ask committed from friends and family. That whole “getting a job” thing, which seemed so reasonable and almost chronological a year ago, now seems like a major failure and let-down. 

While tapping into my gracious network of friends and investors (who decided not to invest but have been endlessly helpful), I have gotten advice that ranges the spectrum from “keep on keeping on” to “go find a job now.” Someone I respect a ton even suggested I bartend as a way to pay the bills while figuring it out. I considered it. Those who suggest I get a job aren’t wrong for doing so; I’m young (24) and, as far as “traditional” work experience goes, have a lot of room to grow, learn and contribute. These people suggested I can continue to brand myself under the prestige of a larger company, and they’re smart for suggesting this. The truth is: I’m still figuring it out.

Thanks to a former fellow and friend Adda, co-founder and CEO of Skillcrush, I was pointed in the direction of this farewell-of-sorts blog post from Buyosphere founder Tara Hunt, who recently decided to take a position elsewhere, and discontinue a 100% focus/dedication to her own company. Her biggest lesson:

and it’s one that is largely missed by the incredibly optimistic and often overly-privileged startup community – is that it DOES take money to build stuff. And time. And those who have a large supply of both have more runway to make several mistakes on the road to über success.

Most of us don’t have big wads of cash and time to burn, so we have one shot and then we have to figure out how to pay the rent and feed ourselves. And those who achieve success in one shot are just as lucky as they are admirable. And those who don’t believe that are either privileged (have time and money to figure stuff out) or amnesic.

A link to this couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m young, and in the grand scheme of life, I have time to “figure it all out”, but time is a-ticking to turn Parceld around. I just have to accept the fact that, given the circumstances, getting a job is not only on the radar but is a real possibility. I know that if my next move is at a new position somewhere, that I will dedicate the same fire, drive and relentless ambition to my new role as <insert something awesome>.

That cliché phrase about how the beginning is always some other beginning’s end? Applicable here. All I know is: hustle never dies, it just changes shape.

With all this said, here are a few lessons I’ve learned thus far in these short 7, going on 8 months of trying to start a company:

1. LEARN HOW TO CODE, and USE GITHUB: Obviously, this is stressed and discussed every which way we turn on the internet, and for good reason. But this is probably the #1 “complaint” I had while building this: I felt helpless in some ways. You don’t have to become your own CTO, but knowing what’s going on under the hood can save you tears, money and time.  My team and I started using Dropbox before switching to Github, and it was too late for some of the code (which I still hope to salvage and get back). If you’re a founder, you probably HATE feeling helpless, and when I went to visit the alpha product and it wasn’t there, I broke down. Feeling helpless sucks. The second I get some dough in the bank, I’m taking some courses beyond my Codeacademy online sessions, which are fun, but not really very actionable.

2. BE AGGRESSIVE: No one likes someone who is too aggressive, but looking back, my idea of “too aggressive” could probably fit very nicely into the “persistent” bucket, which, quite frankly, is not enough when raising money. My father told me that, especially as a woman, to never be afraid to ask for what I want or to remind others of their commitments. People these days are busy, forgetful and over-scheduled; it’s quite possible my three emails each got buried, so a forth or fifth email (not daily, though; maybe weekly) would have served me well. I’ll never know.

3. ASK FOR HELP. Sure, I asked for money from my family and help from a few friends, but there are plenty of strangers I could have tapped into that could have added immense value to either the product, my time management, or other major aspects of my biz. I say “could have” because I’ll never know. Ask for help when you need it, accomplish more. Easier said that done, I know.

I’m just seeing the tip of the iceberg in the “lessons” category, but hey: now I know.

Onward and upward. More updates as they develop.

When we run, we’re told to run like someone is chasing us. Run as though, if caught, we’ll  be kidnapped, killed and end up on a milk box, our faces staring out at the world from breakfast tables everywhere.

I feel like that. I’m running against the clock here. The end of summer, my burn rate (which I have kept as slow as possible), an increasingly crowded space, and the fact that my technical co-founder has to make a decision whether to quit his job or not…all of these factors are chasing me like a shady kidnapper in a cargo van. Only when he’s right at my back do I realize I’ve been jogging lightly for the past few miles. It’s time to book it like my life depends on it. And (cue the melodrama): it kind of does. 

Yesterday, after a call with a well known investor who had some pretty blunt feedback, I sat down and really reconsidered everything I’m doing right now: starting a shopping startup, entering a space with a fairly low barrier to entry, trying to acquire users at a time when they’re asked to join dozens of new services/sites, running a business with a team of part time people, raising money while technically pre-product. I also re-approached our MVP; we’d already stripped it down to what we thought was the most basic version of our product and experience. I’d “killed my babies” a handful of times, and went through my wireframe prototype screen by screen with my team to decide every little thing we could manage to cut or keep. What is the least amount of features and pages we could give to our beta users while still meeting our core goal: to help women gain access to shopping options based on an inspirational image they add (and tag)? Everything comes back down to this. While many features of our full product allow for discovery and cross-community dialogue, our core goal is to give great options to women who are ready to purchase. We want meet a need, and make the solution easy and enjoyable. 

We set out to launch the beta version in a few weeks, knowing this would likely bleed over into September. But the kidnapper in the cargo van would not leave my mind, so yesterday, at our team meeting, I asked my team “What can we finish and ship by next week? What will make this just enough?” 

And, because I work with some kickass people, they each had an idea of what this would and could look like. We scrapped several components that were scheduled for the  next few weeks. Every decision came back down to what we can finish in a week that will still meet our core goal. We looked at what we had already, thought about what I could show a few people, get this thing in front of a handful of eyes, and do the rest later. People love to drop Lean Startup jargon like they’re namedropping the latest Proenza Schouler handbag, but we do need to test our “leap of faith assumptions” so we can identify early and quickly what’s important, what sticks, what matters, what to focus on. I’ve always known this, but when the pressure is on, it’s fight or flight, and I’m not abandoning Parceld until it’s blatantly obvious there’s a reason to.

I want to show potential F+F investors that not only can my team work quick and dirty, but I can also build a product with a team of part time people and little-to-no funding. There are a host of cliche phrases I could <insert here/>: “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, etc. But I prefer: when a kidnapper in a van is at your back, run for your life…and get your true MVP out there. Or something like that. 

Raising money is hard, and waking up every day knowing the odds are stacked against me as a startup founder can be a little overwhelming, but it’s also what keeps me going everyday. I’m strapped for cash, have no source of income, am out of savings and wake up some days wondering what it is (and why) I started doing this to begin with. But then I’ll meet with a woman to talk about her life, what she thinks of shopping and social media, and how she feels as a consumer in 2012, and I remember why I’m doing this. I get re-charged and energized, and can’t wait to talk to my team and share my energy with them.

As a founder with practically zero funding, in the very early stages of launching anything, our jobs are all over the place. But one of the most important responsibilities we can take on is excitement and motivation to keep the momentum going. I’m lucky enough to work with some kick ass people who are really passionate about pushing Parceld forward, but it always has to come down to momentum and motivation in this stage. And how do we make sure this energy is authentic and enough to keep the wheels turning? By having an authentic goal and core mission.

Mission statements, eternal truths, mantras…whatever we call them, they should drive every decision we make, every feature we push or cut, every marketing channel we pursue and every partnership we form. A lot of companies have them, but many of these statements are just marketing jargon that make us as consumers feel like we’re the main focus. Sometimes we are, but often we’re not.

I’d given this a lot of thought, and as my product manager and I sat at Berkli Parc for three hours this Friday and discussed who we’re trying to reach, what we’re trying to do for them, how social and sharing looks based on this, and what our “story” is, I realized something: we have a core mission. We have an overarching goal. We know exactly what we’re trying to do and the problem we’re trying to solve. The “how”s and the “what”s are where most of the uncertainty lies, but we genuinely want Parceld to mean something very specific to people. I decided we needed to make this something concrete that we can refer back to again and again, and only tweak when it makes absolutely sense. So when we’re pulling our hair out and trying to decide what the next step is, we do this based on something solid, true and real.

While you can find a “mission statement” on various sites’ “About” page or “Customer Service” tab, the really successful companies who are absolutely clomping on their competition right now are the ones whose mission statements are embedded in their products and user experience. 

Fab.com, after a notorious pivot, is making huge waves in the design space right now. I’m a pretty regular reader of founder/CEO Jason Goldberg’s blog Betashop, and their mission is really clear:

Fab exists for one simple reason: to make you smile…Our mission is to bring design to as many people as possible, and democratise it, but also to take the people who make things – designers, artists, craftspeople – and allow their businesses to flourish, and to be exposed to other retailers.

I recently signed up for Fab a few months ago, and after clicking around and being there for the launch of Fab 3.0, I don’t think “hmm: their mission statement is being embedded in this experience.” No. I actually smile at some of the selections for sales, at how cute some of the products are. I may not be able to afford anything, but it is clear that their eye for all iterations of design is not only present, but oozes out of every sale.

Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to investors, which begins with: “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission to make the world more open and connected.” We can critize their revenue model and complain about the slow mobile app all we want (I’ve been one to do both), but we have no doubt in our minds that Zuckerberg wakes up pretty much every day with this goal at the forefront of every action.

Zappos’s mission is also baked into the ingredients: 

We’ve aligned the entire organization around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible. Internally, we call this our WOW philosophy.

Call this corny or cheesy, but when I sit down with women and ask them some of their favorite sites to order from, Zappos almost always comes up as a site they love, mostly because these women feel that if they aren’t satisfied, they can make a return or exchange, or voice their frustration, and be heard and compensated for this. 

Before I go ahead and put Parceld’s Eternal Truths out there, I want to end with a TED video from 2009. I know, I know. I kind of hate myself for even writing those words. But after watching, I immediately sent to my team. Simon Sinek discusses how any leader, whether companies or humans, are so because they are always true to their “why”. We as humans relate to an authentic “why”, even if we can’t explain how we know or why we do. We are also loyal to an authentic “why”. 

With that said, after discussing with my team, here are Parceld’s eternal truths, mission statement, goals, beliefs, whatever you want to call them:

parceld:

1. The power of discovery belongs to the people, not brands, retailers or corporations.

2. People should have easy access to choices when they’re read to make a purchase. The labor of finding options should not be theirs to bear.

3. People should feel good about their choices, and empowered by using their money to purchase something they love.

Everything comes back to this. Always. Until Parceld becomes wildly successful or fizzles into nothing. I have memorized them. I have them written down by my desk. I have sent them in an email to my team. These should and will be our DNA going forward.