Brianne Garcia

When I started this post and saved it as a draft, I was in a pretty dark place (for me). I’m usually annoyingly optimistic and positive. I find joy in simple things like seeing birds fly and watching fat babies exist. It really doesn’t take much. However, I absolutely thrive when I’m extremely productive and confident my skills/input/presence is valued elsewhere. According to this article I read in a copy of HBR way back when, the values of the Enlightenment ushered in the notion that happiness was the attainment of a worthy life. When I am contributing to something meaningful (even better if I am creating or directing it!), I am a happy camper. I feel “worthy.”

So, about one month in to my job search after putting my own startup on the back burner, I started waking up and dreading the day ahead of me. This was NOT NORMAL. I wake up pretty early during the week: 6:30ish on a great morning, 7:30 if I’m feeling a little indulgent. I make tea, I read the news, I research if I need to, etc. But the first week into October, my alarm would ring at 6:30, and instead of jumping out of bed, opening my blinds, and dancing around a little to my Spotify WAKE UP! playlist, I’d press snooze. Again: NOT NORMAL. 

I try to fully understand and wrap my head around why I feel the way I do whenever I feel a little “blah” or discouraged about my life or career (which I’m finding are likely too intertwined). I quickly realized something: for the past year, up until now, my life moved at a fairly fast pace, and I liked that. I entered and graduated an incubator program, and during that time I learned so much my brain hurt at the end of everyday. I also met with a ton of founders and investors because the startup world was very new to me, and I needed to wrap my head around others’ stories of fundraising, failure, recruiting tips, etc. I attended workshops and Skillshare classes (for free, thanks to Tow Knight) weekly, I was courting a technical co-founder, etc etc etc. Basically, I was extremely challenged and was therefore forced to learn and adapt.

Fast forward to October: I was looking for a job, and I felt utterly stagnant. I woke up everyday just to apply for jobs and stalk possible connections to those jobs on LinkedIn. Sure, I worked out and took classes, sometimes back-to-back, at the gym. I’ve been networking a ton and also making introductions for others, but all of this wasn’t enough to make me feel like I had a place in this world that DIDN’T include my apartment, my neighborhood coffee shop, or the bar across the street from my apartment. I also abhor self pity more than anything, so I kept my frustration mostly to myself. 

However, after feeling super frustrated for weeks on end and venting everyday to my dad, who was out of a job during the recession for over a year and who ALSO ties his self worth and happiness directly to his job and value in the workplace, a few things happened. I realized I needed to do something before I turned into an annoying, funenmployed whiner. I hate feeling helpless and like I am not driving the car that is my own life. Even if I’m driving a shitty ‘97 Buick instead of a shiny new Mercedes, I at least want to feel like I’m at the wheel. 

So, I

1.) wrote this open cover letter, which now (knock on wood!) might actually have landed me a solid gig that I’m really excited about, and if not that one, a few REALLY solid leads. That whole “take initiative” thing? Works!

2.) started having breakfast / coffee with those who have been in my position, i.e. “advice breakfasts.” A great friend of mine was in my position a few years ago. He was at a crossroads, waiting for a contract to pan out and his new career to take shape, and he felt like shit. He told me to dive into something, ANYTHING, and assert my value and skills elsewhere. I’ve done a bit of this, and am still trying to do way more. Volunteering, blogging, etc. Something…ANYTHING > nothing. And finally,

3.) another friend of mine currently at Etsy mentioned these “rules” Dennis Crowley enforced for himself during the dark, murky, limbo time between Dodgeball and foursquare. So I googled it, found the post, and started this blog post. And these rules are GOLDEN, end-of-the-rainbow, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel, little nuggets of happiness seeds. They’re incredibly simple, but more difficult to actually abide by. They do, however, make a HUGE difference in the way I feel, even though I’ve only been following them for two weeks (ok, broke the taxi rule a few times, but Hurricane Sandy can absorb the blame there). They are as follows:

Note to fellow unemployed kids: (aka Rules to Live By)
1. Leave your apt before noon every day.
2. No drinking before 5pm.
3. No watching TV before 5pm (except during lunch).
4. No taking taxis.
5. No eating meals when drunk.

And I watched his full two-hour interview on PandoDaily, in which he talked about those very days:

“I had a really shitty year a little over a year. And my buddies were like ‘oh Dennis you’re gonna find another job. You’re gonna find something else you’re really psyched about. You’re gonna pull yourself outta this.’ I had a really hard time. I didn’t just want to go do the same thing over again, even though it was what I was most passionate about.”

…Describes my EXACT situation for the past two months so. It sucks, and everyone else knows / reassures you that you’re amazing, that something great is on its way, etc. But it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like you’re regressing, learning nothing new, and going through the motions of existence. 

For other people in this situation: I UNDERSTAND.

Now that I have some job leads that I actually care about and are nearing the offer-on-the-table (or not) phase, I feel a little more confident posting this. Hopefully I’m not jinxing myself or speaking too soon, but dammit: I am READY TO RUMBLE. I was ready yesterday. I just can’t wait to hit the ground running. 

Say what? No, I’m not watching the Discovery channel or Animal Planet. I’m actually referring to an approach to pitching, and this was a direct quote from Mike Nichols, creator and co-founder of RollSale, a recent TechStars Boulder graduating company and platform that connects people selling their cars with dealers looking to purchase used cars. 

Mike is from and lives in St. Louis, Missouri (my hometown), and we were introduced through a mutual friend/acquaintance. We Skype chatted this morning because I wanted to ask him about his experience with TechStars and fundraising. While we ended up discussing a range of topics, from women entrepreneurs in tech to team building to the value of mentors, one of the most important pieces of advice he gave me was the title of this post: when pitching, 

Bite off a chunk, and see who leans in. What are the pieces of the pitch that point to how you’re really going to capture the market? You need to see who’s leaning forward/connecting with which parts of your pitch…have the little chunks ready and make em stick .

I really like this. I probably use the term “nerd out” too often, but I do think that we as founders can nerd out too much in our pitches by including information that we think is cool, valuable or unique; details that a potential investor or general audience of non-experts likely don’t find at all interesting or valuable because it doesn’t have to do with the problem and/or solution. And this is where we lose our audience, whoever that audience might be. “All the things you think are important? Only pieces of it are,” he said.

He goes into this a little bit on his blog: 

Our understanding of the space makes us want to focus on all the little things we know that others don’t, and that we think are the things that make us the right people to accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish.  

That can be helpful as you fine-tune your product and tailor your solution.  It can be confusing and off-putting when you’re talking about your company, pitching, and even marketing your product(s) to the masses.  

This is so very true, and something that is confirmed both in design, marketing, pitching, and pretty much every aspect of launching a business: your users/customers should immediately understand the problem you’re solving for them, how you’re solving it. The value in your site/product/experience should be instantly obvious, or you lose them. Getting bogged down in features, cool details, and industry-specific insights can do this. 

Mike is admittedly a “non-fashion-y” guy, but when he began to see the value in what Parceld is doing, the problem we’re trying to solve and the value we’re offering both women shoppers and vendors, it clicked for him. The problem is, it took me too long to take him down the road to the “ah-ha!” moment. He was patient because he was curious; not everyone will take that time. 

Another chunk (I’m beginning to like this word) from his blog that I’ll leave you/my thoughts with:

The truth is, when we’re good at what we do and passionate in the convictions that drive us, we can always communicate that we’re the ones that will change our little piece of the world for the good.  And we can be confident in letting the elevator pitch do what it is meant to do; pique the interest of those that matter.  Then they ask questions.  And you learn then about what matters.  Later on, they may go down the rabbit hole with you one-on-one; those are important conversations and matter a lot (I LIVE for those).  

Trying to introduce yourself with those conversations is just terrible.  It sucks.  Don’t do it.    

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. 

Above my work desk, where I’m sitting right now, I have a picture of a knockout in progress. Or maybe it’s a roundhouse kick, I’m not sure; I’m not an expert when it comes to fighting. But earlier this week, I had a great phone chat with Eric Friedman, (Director of Business Development at foursquare), about raising money, finding advisors and seeking advice. As he said something that made a ton of sense, I happened to look up at this picture. I then had a huge head-slapping moment, when the only words I could think to say was: “Oh, duh.” 

Sometimes it takes an expert, outsider or skeptic to make us step back and recognize something that was right in front of our face the entire time. This time, this “duh” moment was about what Friedman calls a “punch list.” Some people might refer to their to-do lists as punch lists, but he had an interesting take on it.

He asked me a very simple question I couldn’t answer right away: “What are your top five pain points/stresses?” After thinking about this, I could easily answer the question: fundraising, user/community member acquisition and defining which very specific key metrics to focus on in the MVP (that will hint at future growth or need to pivot), to name the top three. But the fact is, I didn’t have those things at the tip of my tongue, nor written down to reference. No bueno.

Here’s the advice he gave me, which made me say “duh”, but will ultimately save me time (and money on coffees, transportation, etc), and save me from wasting others’ time:

• Know your top 5 pain points/stressors, and zero in on one, so when you ask anyone for advice, you know how that person can help from the initial communication. “Here are the set number of things I’m trying to accomplish, here’s how you could help…thank you.” 
• This list is golden, because it is really about you and the real problems you’re facing as a company or founder. If you don’t come equipped with these, then people will give you general, boiler plate advice that may or may not be applicable to your situation.
• OPTIMIZE YOUR TIME (this was in caps in my notes). If someone can’t help you with your 1 - 5, be nice, but move on. 
• One of my favorite pieces of advice: Use these chats with advisors, contacts and potential users as a distributive model to get the story of your business told. Instead of starting from scratch on every single call or email, have a blog post or elevator pitch to reference, and a little bit about yourself. After he mentioned this, I changed the signature in my email from my name, Parceld.com and my twitter handle to include “What is Parceld?”, with a link to learn a little more about what we’re building.

Brianne Garcia

Parceld.com

What is Parceld?

t - @brianne_garcia

From this point forward, unless my meeting with someone is really for the benefit of any of the items on my punch list, I have to say no, or maybe later. This might sound selfish, but coffee is expensive, and right now, so is time. 

When trying to decide what to blog about today, I had a hard time focusing on one issue or area. I’m still trying to raise a round of friends and family financing, and I’m back in St. Louis hopefully trying to close some deals. This might make me sound like a pessimist, but probably 5 out of 7 days a week, I feel pretty hopeless about raising money. While Parceld doesn’t have a ton of operating costs at this point, paying the designer and my own rent make the two biggest dents, and I have extremely minimum funds to begin with. Or to be quite frank: I have nothing. All I truly care about is getting a great beta version of Parceld out there and in front of some eyes, but if I am also anxious about how I’ll pay my rent and bills, I can’t truly focus on doing my job. In good news: I have at least 3 pitches set up between now (Thursday) and when I fly back to New York on Tuesday. 

And so, because I don’t want to sit here and just vent about how I’m feeling, my blog post today will be all the things I’ve read lately that I feel have either informed me, encouraged me, made me think twice, or made me research more. 

TechCrunch interviews Dave McClure (500 startups) on the most recent class, investing in women founders, ecommerce, international businesses, etc. However, the interviewer poses the question in a way that makes investments in women founders seem like a trend: “Obviously we see a lot of the same trends, lot of international, female founders…” And Dave McClure seems to set it straight pretty quickly by saying ”We definitely look for diversity by gender and geography. 7 out of 27 teams are women CEOs…we think there’s lots of talented women out there that are sometimes overlooked by other investors.”

LYST: The 4 Keys to Success for a Fashion Startup. The writer acknowledges that, though there are some great fashion-focused sites out there with large communities, they are still lacking in the shopping approach (the utility). This person really likes LYST, a site I’ve kept a close eye on for the past year and have noticed when they add new features, or go through a redesign. The 4 keys to success, according to this writer, that LYST has and that are crucial for fashion startups are: A Focus (just fashion), A focus on UX, an new emphasis on local, and the team.

Big takeaway that is similar to what we’re trying to do:

…instead of building a community of fashion-lovers trying to share their style and inspire other consumers, they went to fashion retailers and asked them to provide data feeds of available products. That was technically a more complicated approach knowing that Fashion is characterized by highly unstructured product catalogues and lacking a central product reference database; in addition product-trees completely change at least twice a year when the collection changes from Spring/Summer to Fall/Winter. However, Lyst has now a unique system in place, which provides an advantage compared to many others sites. They know almost in real time the stock level and thus what is available for purchase in hundreds of partner stores

Purpose Driven User Experience.  I went back and forth with my product manager on this one, who added that, before we look at purpose, we must first look at relevance. In our email exchange, he said:

“Why do you need to exist in this world?” is definitely something I ask myself and still haven’t been able to come up with answer.

I’m not so sure if I agree with [this post] 100%. Almost everything has a purpose. Things without purpose don’t get started. However, not everything has relevance. I think the premise of lean UX and agile UX is that we already know the purpose, but we’re testing relevance. We’re not sure if the purpose has relevance. If instagram existed in a world where people didn’t care about taking beautiful pictures or sharing them, it would’ve still achieved its purpose really well, but no one would’ve cared. Awesome UX with purpose means nothing without relevance. 

And this, ladies and gents, is why I like working with smart f-ing people. 

And in other, less-personal news I’ve been reading:

B2B Fashion Sites on the Rise

The Amazing Power of Deflationary Economics for Startups

The Value of Time

On Quora, some REALLY great answers to: What distinguishes the top 1% of Product Managers from the top 10%

Why Millennials Don’t Want to Buy Stuff

Also: listening to Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange non stop. So good, all the way through

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. 

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, so I figured I’d finally write a post about and put it out into the world. 

Every startup in the e-commerce or shopping space thus far has been dubbed as existing in the “fashion tech” space. I’m not sure where this term was born, but journalists, VCs, commentators and even the founders themselves, including me, have called it this for awhile. For the broader purpose of describing the “genre” or category of startup, I think the term does just fine. But now that the space is getting a bit more crowded, I think there is a big difference between “fashion” startups and “style” startups, and I don’t think it’s out of line to begin to categorize separately. I’ll explain.

The more I research my potential users and their lifestyles, habits, likes, wishlists, and so forth, the more I realize that their concern is less about fashion and more about style. For those standing on the outside or periphery of this new ecosystem, I simply mean that many women seem to care more about making purchase decisions based on their own tastes, budgets, lifestyles and personal aesthetics now, more than they do about buying the latest Proenza Schouler bag, or other “it” items.

In fact, I’ve noticed an encouraging movement away from “it” items altogether. Perhaps this reflects my immediate environment – I follow some awesome people on Tumblr, Pinterest and Twitter and other sites, who have incredible taste and eye for design – but it is refreshing, nonetheless, to see a move towards self expression and, dare I say, even novelty, to an extent. The hunt for a special or unique item is personal and important in a world of easy access, hence why sites like Of A Kind and Etsy are great for those of us who like to feel like an individual and not like a human reblog on a Tumblr street style site.

The Rise of Design + Style, Over “Fashion”

Sites like Svpply are style’s response to sites like Polyvore, one of the first in the “fashion tech” space. (In fact, many Svpply users also visit Polyvore, and Polyvore has a heavy presence on the site). Both sites have slick, beautifully designed interfaces, white backgrounds, simple black logos, checkboxes for filtering, great search engines, and lots of pretty product images. But Svpply’s emphasis is on design, not on trends and collections. Svpply’s newsletters are focused on popular items on the site; Polyvore’s newsletters focus on designer collections and trends. (This also has something to do with how Polyvore monetizes, but let’s hatch that convo open another time). 

This is not just to compare these two sites, but also to touch on the undeniable, growing popularity of Etsy and Pinterest, both sites with audiences and influencers who encourage DIY and independent designers, along with home decor, furniture, architecture and more design-focused products. There are never tweets or email blast’s about “the latest <insert x> designer pump!” because this is not what is considered novel to these audiences. 

Most of Pinterest’s most popular users (“influencers”) are into style and what it means to them. Not “personal style” in the 2009 sense, which was: “I get paid to wear cool shit. Don’t you wish you could afford these Miu Miu pumps I got for free?” No. The ladies from blogs like I’m Revolting, Clever Nettle, Miss Moss and Honey Kennedy (to name some of my personal favs) are truly interested in shedding light on products that inspire them; these items are often from cool brands and stores from around the country, but sometimes they’re from equally great brands like J. Crew or stores like Madewell.

Another reason I think personal style, in the truest sense of the term, is gaining ground over label-focused fashion, has something to do with fast fashion’s ability to produce almost identical garments to the ones seen on the runway. At first, I think we were all excited we had access to trends: McQueen’s psychedelic patterns, Chanel’s tweed cropped jackets, etc. But then, we walked out onto the street, and every third woman looked exactly like us. What a turnoff! We as Americans want to stand out; individualism is in our blood.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t inspired by trends: we are! We all are. This is how I shop, and many women I know shop. We use images to guide us. But we aren’t trying to duplicate a look, or invest in an empty trend. We see something we like, and we say “show me something like this” (full disclosure: this phrase is part of my elevator pitch). OR, we venture on a hunt in hopes of being inspired by something special and unique. 

The “fashion tech” startup community reflects this as well.

Style vs Fashion in the Tech Space

There are two different classes of startups making their way to the surface.

There are “fashion” startups, such as GILT, Moda Operandi, Feyt and Lyst that focus primarily on high end, luxury items that we all drool over and add to our master, cloud-based wishlist on <insert x> wishlist site. There are a host of others, of course, but these are what I consider “heavy hitters.” I consider these fashion startups because the main content is aspirational, or attainable for the lucky few who can purchase a Derek Lam skirt right off the runway and wait a few weeks for it to show up on her doorstep. (One day, my time will come!) Design is important on these sites, too, but so are labels and the names attached to them. And hey, this isn’t a bad thing. I have purchased an item or two simply because I wanted to own a small piece of luxury. (Chanel flats, guilty as charged).

Style startups, on the other hand, are focused on the stories of both the creators and consumers. ModCloth – though some may argue it is not a technology startup – is a great example of a site with a community, not an “audience.” The same goes for Etsy. Then, cool sites like Of A Kind, Heritage 1960, Lookbook.nu, Svpply, Uncovet, and Fab all emphasize either design or personal expression, or the blissful marriage of both. 

In conclusion, I think there’s a way to take fashion, digest it, and turn it into personal style; into something that makes sense to US. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t want beautifully designed things; on the contrary. Sometimes the novelty is in the label (i.e. Chanel flats), and sometimes the novel is in the specialness of the item, the store it’s from, the designer behind it, or the materials it’s made of. That’s for us to decide. The great thing about personal style, though, is that it’s personal. 

For the first time in awhile, I think personal trumps popular. This is exciting.

in image: left: marc by marc jacobs bag. right: tote on Uncovet

These Thursday blog posts are flying by. Summer is on a speedboat. Anyway:

The other day, I happened to visit The Hairpin, a favorite site of mine on which I like to waste lots and lots of time wandering endlessly in Linkback Land. However, I saw an article titled Why Buying From Emerging Fashion Designers Cost More Money, and Why That’s Okay by Of A Kind co-founder Erica Cerulo. The next day, I came across an article titled The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion in the New York Post, by Elizabeth L. Cline, author of “Overdressed.” And then, while getting lost in Tumblr, I came across a reaction to the Hairpin article from independent designer Anja of Clever Nettle.  

Of A Kind is a fashion/e-commerce startup I’ve followed since its launch in 2010 where members can shop pieces from on-the-cusp and new designers. Each piece is part of a limited number of that item (hence the name, “of a kind”), and the designer and his/her/their stories are a part of every purchase. (Full disclosure: I also have partiality to women from the Midwest – I’m from St. Louis –  and Cerulo hails from Peoria, Illinois, a city not too far from my own). 

For all the coverage of women in tech and the future of fashion, some of which can get a little frothy, this article definitely stirred the online pot of porridge. Reactions leaned towards positive and supportive, but interestingly enough, the negative feedback wasn’t a pushback against the idea of helping fuel local economies, but was about the lack of access to local/emerging designers and/or the lack of funds to splurge to help support these designers. Fast fashion, many commenters argued, wasn’t a choice for them. The H&Ms of the world are more practical not only because of cost, but because of their close proximity at the local mall.

However, in the NYPost article, Alan Ng, who runs a Brooklyn-based garment factory, describes this choice as “wasteful”, and blames fast fashion chains like Forever21 for shortening a trend’s life cycle so much so that any one trend really can’t gain enough traction to last in our closets or memories. But is fast fashion a choice for all? For New Yorkers with access to everything from thrift to luxury, the answer is yes. For those in small towns across America, the answer may be a very realistic no.

Cerulo breaks down for Hairpin readers why emerging designers’ products are more expensive than, say, that neon Zara top you swiped last weekend, while the article in the Post also points out that “polyester is now the world’s most dominant fiber.” Cerulo mentions, of course, that nicer materials cost more, especially if you’re printing patterns and screen printing here in the U.S., and also writes about the benefits of buying in bulk, which emerging designers cannot do, and that U.S. manufacturing costs more, but that these factories “treat people like people.” (On the flip side: Hundreds of workers collapse at Cambodian H&M factory, Zara accused in Brazil sweatshop inquiry, etc.)

As Cerulo points out, independent, local and emerging designers face a disadvantage when it comes to the economies of scale. For those who don’t give a lot of shits about business jargon, this refers to “the reductions in unit cost as the size of a facility and the usage levels of other inputs increase.” In other words, if you can buy boatloads of a fabric from a manufacturer, you’ll get it for a lot cheaper. So cheap, in fact, that you can then turn around and sell your garments and at a ridiculously low price. This carries over into buying 87 rolls of toilet paper from Costco for a fraction of the price that those 87 rolls would cost over the course of several purchases. As an example, Cerulo cites Uniqlo, which can purchase gobs of denim from manufacturers at a cheaper price than an independent designer, who likely only has the clientele for yards in the double digits.

Here’s the thing: I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve purchased a “Saturday night dress” made from cheap materials, and I treated it like the garment version of a one night stand. I know when buying it that, if lucky, I’ll get a few wears before it falls apart and turns into a dust rag. Of course, now that I’m trying to adhere to a strict budget, I have two choices: I can either treat this cheap dress with extra care in hopes of extending its life, OR, as Cerulo encourages, I can purchase less frivolously and treat my closet as an investment, not just investing in the garments themselves, but in the designers who make a living creating quality, (she argues) socially responsible pretty things for me to wear. 

This is where the commenters begin to disagree. 

“I’d love to think that we should all be able to live in cities like New York if we want and produce and consume our goods locally and with care. But I find this article a bit condescending to suggest that the reason we’re still buying cheap is that we don’t understand that it costs a lot to produce things ethically,” writes commenter Mary McKenna. 

“Buying clothes from independent designers more like buying art, in my opinion—a great thing to do if you have the money and interest but not something you should try to put on others as a moral obligation,” writes another commenter, KatieWK. 

And a great point, on the kinds of items created by emerging designers, is made by commenter datalass: “I need black trousers, white shirts, gray suits, nude pumps, brown handbags, tan skirts, gray sweaters. It’s all so workaday and commonplace that I can entirely understand why emerging designers don’t or can’t spend their careers designing and creating these things.”

What does this all mean for me and PARCELD? Well, that’s what I’m trying to sort through. I’m working with two women on brand/retailer outreach who have a really healthy number of relationships with emerging brands and designers, and the more I begin to survey my closet and see that the items I truly cherish and wear often are either vintage or are unique pieces from boutiques, the more I realize that there is a market need and real hunger for access to these unique brands and retailers. Not just for New Yorkers, but for women around the country who hunger for these special pieces, but either don’t have access to them or cannot afford them. 

I’ve always said that one of PARCELD’s biggest missions is to make discovery more authentic and personal, that if I know I want a pair of floral denim, *this* is the point at which I should discover new designers and retailers I didn’t know existed. Now, I need to help work with women like the commenters in the Hairpin article to ensure they have a direct path to these designers and retailers when their budget allows for it, when they’re ready to invest, or, that I can simply help them feel comfortable knowing there are other options without pressuring them into buying at that moment.

I constantly think about the ethical footprint of entering the ecommerce space, and this only makes this adventure that much more challenging and exciting.

I don’t know if “worrying” is the right word, but since leaving the incubator program and beginning the building phase of PARCELD, I can’t shake this feeling. This feeling is the result of crossing things off my checklist, but feeling like I haven’t accomplished anything. it is also the result of feeling like baby steps aren’t enough, like I should be accomplishing great things every day. Of course, we know this is not how companies are built. 

I even have a post-it note next to my work space with a quote from James Dyson (founder and CEO of the Dyson company), that reads: “There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence, and in the end, you make it look like a quantum leap.” 

I keep referring back to this quote as I sit down in front of an Excel doc and map out my heat map for brands and retailers, or create a timeline in Asana. These things don’t feel like founder activities, and this is perhaps the result of the somewhat frothy coverage of startups circulating the internet. But I keep referring to this quote because it’s true. Instagram was mediocre as Burbn, Pinterest was stuck at 10k users after almost a year, and Foursquare was Dodgeball. I’m not trying to build any of these companies, but their founders likely all had 12-hour days at cafes only to realize nothing epic happened that day, and that the next day would be similar in its lack of epicness. This is where the dogged persistence comes into play, in knowing this execution and problem solving will hopefully pay off at some hypothetical dot on a timeline in the future…and maybe not even the near future. 

I’m also trying to take less “for-fun” meetings, in which I chat away with someone “interested” in what I’m doing or with someone I’m simply “interested” in, and only take meaningful meetings where the discussion is serious and either helps me and my business, or someone else and their business/life. I realized that one fun coffee meeting was taking up at least an hour of my day, an hour that is precious to me at this time. Which takes me to my next concern…

Time management. Last week I blogged about time management and my goals, and to follow up with that post, let me tell you: this is way more difficult than I imagined. This also proves I have and am wasting way more time than I had ever realized. Once I said I’d work in 90 minute chunks, and instead of turning this on like a switch, I’m working towards that. I realized I am an internet junkie, a social media glutton. If you’re someone who likes to feel plugged in to the world, try NOT opening a new tab and checking facebook, or clicking on Hootsuite when you’re bored in that excel doc. This is and has been so extremely difficult and telling. I also recently referred to a post from Buzzfeed editor John Herrman, called “How Tech is Making Us All Neurotics.” It is. It is if we don’t feel in control of our usage of it. And sometimes I don’t. 

This also has to do with constantly feeling like I should be working, and by working, this usually means sitting down in front of my laptop and doing something. But I also realized that a lot of what I was “doing” was actually not doing at all, but passively consuming, which doesn’t necessarily help me as a founder or as a person. Sure, consuming the news everyday is important and a habit I feel no need to get rid of, but watching my Twitter timeline update or scrolling through my Prismatic feed only makes switching over to that Excel doc or my pitch deck feel less exciting and feel more like another task associated with my laptop. 

Last night (while endlessly browsing), I did stumble upon an article in The New Yorker called The Virtues of Daydreaming. A new study claims that

Creative solutions may be facilitated specifically by simple external tasks that maximize mind-wandering. The benefit of these simple tasks is that they consume just enough attention to keep us occupied, while leaving plenty of mental resources left over for errant daydreams.

…”We always assume that you get more done when you’re consciously paying attention to a problem,” Schooler told me. “That’s what it means, after all, to be ‘working on something.’ But this is often a mistake. If you’re trying to solve a complex problem, then you need to give yourself a real break, to let the mind incubate the problem all by itself. We shouldn’t be so afraid to actually take some time off.

…We think we’re wasting time, but, actually, an intellectual fountain really is spurting

 Music to my ears and the only confirmation I needed to STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER.

When I went to Cape Cod for Memorial Day? I felt guilty the entire weekend. When I spent last Sunday sloth-like, lounging with friends and watching movies? I felt more anxious than ever. I was wondering the whole time how I was going to get new users to test my MVP, and how these as-of-yet unattained users will be incentivized to give me feedback. And what about the two separate build phases I now need to think through when raising money?

And you know what? Worrying about these things does no good. Neither does worrying that what I’m doing at any given time, even if it’s as simple or menial as updating my executive summary or researching customer lifetime value, is not big, grand or exciting. Baby steps are the only steps at this point. What I’m working on now is taking these baby steps in focused, concentrated 90-minute chunks, and using my free time to, well, enjoy being free. No one wants to be a slave to their company, or we’d all end up hating what we do. I’m still excited everyday when I wake up, and I want to keep it that way.

Let me first say, I promised you yesterday I’d blog every Thursday, and here I am! POW! Anyway…

As I polish my executive summary, I’ve gotten some mixed advice; some tell me to make mine a whopper (15+ pages), and others suggest I narrow it down to two pages. I don’t think there’s a magic number, and mine is looking to be around 5 or 6 pages, pre-edits. Luckily for me, a person who will pitch to anyone who will listen (two ears not required), executive summaries are really like well written, extended pitches. 

After lurking in Google and following various links to even more articles (oh, internets!), I’ve realized there is no secret sauce to the executive summary. Each one should include:

1. The Grab

2. The Problem

3. The Opportunity

4. Your Competitive Advantage

5. The Model

6. The team

7. The Promise

8. The Ask

While researching about what VCs think are most appropriate (though they all say exec summaries are generally scanned or not read at all), I came across this great post from VC Simeon Simeonove (great name!). He stresses the importance of the team, as many VCs do, and goes on to say: 

Be explicit about your team building goals. This advice is especially important for teams with fewer “done it before” execs…I’ve been disappointed to see founding teams with too many chiefs (CEO, CFO, CTO, CSO, CMO, CPO, etc.) none of whom would be hired in those positions if the funded company were to do an executive search. VCs want to know that the founding team knows its limitations.

And my favorite commenter on this blog post: 

…most exec summaries too often are bloated, beyond belief and burdened with a “management” team that’s barely two steps away from being a barista.

My advice to many of these plan writers: Burn it. And then begin again, this time telling the truth instead of overselling.

For someone like myself, the hustler and founder, the team is where I want to focus most of my energy once we have a proof of concept. My technical co-founder Sudheer and I are both really excited about the problem we’re trying to solve in the ecommerce space. His credentials make him an excellent asset and add a ton of value to PARCELD, but I know we’re still missing some key players that are currently out there, working at other jobs, building other products or, for all I know, just finished finals and have headed home for the summer. The key here is to stay humble and 100% honest when it comes to building a team. As a founder, part of what I think will make my business successful is gathering together people whose strengths are my weaknesses, and ensuring the “fit” fosters the kind of passion, excitement and execution I think is crucial to the success of any startup with the odds stacked against it.

I may be a ways off from hiring, but this part of the executive summary seemed especially important to me. Perhaps this is the secret sauce: prove you know how to build a team of winners (not necessarily “A players”), and that you’re already thinking ahead to this point.