Arianna O'Dell

Dear Tech Start-Ups,

Just kidding. I love you. I really do. You’re creating some of the most innovative products, changing lives, and making the world a better place. I admire you.

A few weeks ago, my friend Ludo Antonov and I attended the TechCrunch disrupt hackathon with an idea in mind. During the hackathon we build a product that enables businesses to quickly and easily establish a web presence – And so JustAbout.co was born.

During the 24 hour period we were able to build a functional prototype. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been hard at work polishing up the product and killing bugs. Yesterday, we finally launched! For our launch we got a few really nice stories from tech blogs around the web. Here are two of our favorites:

Thanks Jolie!

Thanks Drew!

Since then, a few people have messaged me saying “How did you do that? How can you get written up?”

My answer : You have to fail. You have to fail A LOT.

In the past, Ludo and I have worked on a number of start-ups and products together :
FlyByMusic – An online music streaming site that let you sync songs to your iPod from a web browser. (That got us in big trouble with the RIAA and cost us a ton of money in lawyer fees$$)
Lolzr- A platform we were going to build funny convertors on. Example : “Change your college tuition into beer.”
One Million Tweeps - An idea to get 1 Million Twitter accounts in a book.

Guess what? All of these went tank down and failed. Why?

Because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing!

….and that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship. You jump off a diving board while being unable to see the bottom of the pool. You have to change directions. You don’t know which way the current is going. Or as Pocahontas would put it, whatever is just around the riverbed. You have no idea. You have to go with the flow.

What did we learn from all these mistakes that helped us this time around?

Don’t keep your idea a secret – “My idea is super stealthy!” “Everyone will steal my idea.” 99.99% of the time, no one will steal your idea – stop flattering yourself. In the past, we’ve held off on PR efforts and refrained from talking about what we were doing. This time around, we talked a lot. We asked industry leaders for feedback and we talked about the product with all of our friends. This opened a lot of doors for us because we were able to get great feedback and feature suggestions.

PR, PR, PR – The first time I did any kind of PR I just made it up. I had no idea what I was doing. Now, people pay me to do it for them. This took a solid 4 years of mistakes to learn how to do it correctly. When you launch a product – tell people! PR is a numbers game – not everyone will write about you. Not everyone will care about what you’re doing. The more people and blogs you contact, the more of a chance you have to be written about. Everything in life is a number game.

Be flexible – Your business model isn’t written in stone and blood. You can pivot and change at anytime. Just because one model doesn’t work, doesn’t mean others won’t. Don’t give up – keep trying new things each and every day.

Though we still have a long way to go to reach success for JustAbout.co, we’re confident that this time around, we know how to run a business better than before. And on that note, I’d like to thank everyone who has given us feedback, connected us with industry leaders, and shared the website.

YOU are seriously the best. Remind me I owe you a hug when I see you!

(I’m a loser, baby!)

Chapter 1 : Make Stupid Decisions.

On September 20th, I am leaving Seattle to go live in Europe for a year. This past few weeks have been CRAZY busy. For some reason, I made the (insane) decision to take a quick trip to San Francisco before heading out. I had completely no time to go on this trip but I’m glad I did.

Wait, what? Why San Francisco?

So it started like this : Random conversion at lunch one day with @NateWhitehill of Highlighter.

Nate : Something about how the place we went for lunch didn’t have a menu online.

Me : A few minutes later *light bulb moment* : “Wait, I don’t know why no one has made About.Me for business.”

Nate : “I don’t know, but that’s a good idea.”

A few days later….

Sitting in bed thinking (This is me talking to myself — Yeah, I know I’m crazy)

This is a super good idea.

Wait, why don’t I make this?

But I’m not a developer.

Maybe I can figure out how to build this.

Oh wait, I hate coding.

Oh I can hire one.

No… Wait, Ludo. He’s the best dev ever.

Let’s see what he thinks about this. *Goes on Facebook and messages Ludo*

Ludo the next morning :

Turns out, with my airline miles I had enough points to get a $5 flight to SF. *Tickets booked* #winning!

……until we then remembered we’d need to stay somewhere in SF. So I did what I always do when I’m in a crunch…. Twitter!

I then tweeted out “Yay. Flight booked! Going to Disrupt Hackaton with @Ludo_Antonov. Any generous SF people wanna let us crash on your couch/floor?” I shortly received

I’ve been tweeting at James for a long time on Twitter but it was so nice of him to let two strangers he didn’t know to come crash at his place. James is a founder of a company called Envolve that enables websites to be able to put real time chats on their own site. Envolve is a really spiffy idea and James is a great person to get to know. Great sense of humor and super awesome! Check him out.

Chapter 2 What’s up SFO?!

Ater reaching our destination, we met up with one of our good friends whom we had previously worked together on a start-up with. After a day of hanging out, sightseeing, and eating, we headed to Jame’s place. We got there, chatted a bit, and immediately crashed.

Chapter 3 And It Begins!

The next day after flying in, we made our way to the TC Disrupt hackathon. We quickly got to work building our project, JustAbout.co During the hackathon, I did things like put up a landing page, made social channels, and craft text for the website. Ludo is a freaking boss and coded away on the project (without sleeping once)! During the event, I wandered around and made some new friends! I met a ton of wonderful people who were hard at work on their own great ideas.

Shoutout to the CloudFlare guys! For a portion of the night I hung out with their team and played around with stickers at their booth.

Chapter 4 Zombies

After the 24 hours of the hackathon, it was time for the presentions. We had one minute to pitch and made our way to the stage. After no sleep my brain was fried.  (Prior to getting on stage I chugged a Red Bull.)

Though not my finest presentation, I was thrilled that we had something working (and beautiful) to present. And so http://justabout.co was seen by the public for the first time.

JustAbout.Co is a dead simple way for businesses to create a fast easy website and social media hub. Though we didn’t win one of the prizes, we won the prize of now having a foundation for our new business. Another bonus is that we got written up in Tech Crunch under staff favorites!

#winning!

Chapter 5 Disrupt

Turns out, if you attend the Hackathon, you get a free ticket to the $3000 Disrupt Confrence. w00t w00t. So here I am, sitting in the hall listening to Paul Graham give start-up advice. How cool is that? Great things happen when you get up, take spontaneous trips, and just do it!  See ya tomorrow, Seattle!

To sign up for our project go to JustAbout.co. We still have some bugs, but would love your initial feedback.

Be my friend on Twitter? @Arianna

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend Startup Weekend : Special Edition, at Madrona Venture group. The event was not marketed, and was promoted solely via word of mouth. Luckily, I heard about it through a friend and was able to get a ticket back in February.

I have attended two start-up weekends in the past. One in Seattle and one in London. The weekends attract cool people, fun projects are built, and lifelong friendships are formed. Each one I have attended, I’ve walked away with new friends, new knowledge, and incredible experiences. If you haven’t been to one you should check it out!

This weekend, I had the chance to work with a phenomenal team on a new product called City Match. City Match is a service that matches its users up with their ideal city. Our team had some awesome developers and designers who were able to build a fantastic product!

“But, Arianna you’re a marketer…. what did you even do all weekend?”

Start-up weekends are a mix of technical and business oriented entrepreneurs and wannaprenuers. Whether you are a business person or a developer, start-up weekend has something for you.

This weekend I did things such as:
-Set up social media channels
-Write press releases
-Set up a landing page
-Engagement on social channels
-Made a cool video

This is an excellent post from Jennifer Cabala on what business people can do during the weekend.

Something I learned this weekend:

Your team is everything – Fortunately, I found myself on great team with an awesome group leader – Grant Goodale. If you haven’t had a chance to work with Grant on a project, I recommend finding a way. His leadership style was extremely motivating and helped keep our team on track. Grant is definitely one of the best leaders that I know!

My team also included :

Elliot Cohen - Elliot is a master developer. He was constantly hard at work all weekend cranking out our product. I had known Elliot for a while on Twitter, but this was the first chance I had to meet him in person. So glad I finally got to!

Cameron Newland - Cameron is awesome and if you don’t already know him, you should. Cameron is one of those smart, witty, hard to find, business/developer types. Working with him is always a blast. Additionally, Cameron has a British accent that can’t be beat.

Justin Ricaurte - I knew of Justin vaguely before this weekend but glad I got to work with him on this project. Is there anything this guy doesn’t know? Don’t think so! The whole weekend I learned so many bits of knowledge from Justin about an array of subjects. Justin is an extremely smart biz/dev person who I highly recommend working with.

Kevin Korpi- Did you see our website design? This is the awesome work of Kevin Korpi who I just met this weekend. Kevin made so many fantastic designs for our team in literally minutes. If you’re looking for a designer, Kevin is a highly skilled, overall cool guy you should be working with!

The entire team was fantastic and I am grateful to have gotten to know these guys all a little better.

Thanks for a great weekend!

I’m a sucker for reality TV. Okay, not reality shows like Jersey Shore or Real Housewives of Miami, but business reality shows! When produced correctly, television can be very educational as it highlights real world scenarios and circumstances. Over the past few years, I have found three business reality shows that teach useful business and marketing principles.

1.) Shark Tank This is my newest obsession and favorite show. The show brings entrepreneurs into a room to pitch a group of venture capitalists – the sharks. Okay, you’re probably thinking…. “ahh Arianna, that’s so boring!”

But it’s not!

Watching this show, you’ll hear cool business ideas, innovative marketing strategies, and learn what investors are looking for in a business. Not only will you hear great ideas, but you’ll hear some of the absolute worst. Both great and mediocre business ideas all have something valuable to teach!  This show is a must watch.

2.) Mary Queen of Shops – This show, airing on BBC, takes failing businesses and turns them profitable (or atleast tries). I was hooked on this show while in England, though with BBC, you can watch it stateside. This show takes real world examples of entrepreneurial struggle and solves the problem through Mary’s innovation. Mary, a saavy firecracker gives entrepreneurs straightforward advice to take their businesses to the next level. Through watching this show, you’ll learn the struggles brick-and-motar shops are facing as well as possible resolutions. Not to mention there is always a good deal of crazy business owners.

3.) The Apprentice - I don’t care what anyone says – I love Donald Trump. I think he is a smart, respectable, business man, who has built a remarkable empire. On The Apprentice, teams battle for the opportunity to become Donald’s newest apprentice through a series of group tasks.  On this show, you’ll watch different personalities handle ambiguous situations and race against the clock to complete their tasks. I’ve watched this show for a number of years; some seasons being better than others. Right now, the show is running “Celebrity Apprentice”. This season, you’ll see how the same business principles apply to both celebrities and the average Joe.

So c’mon entrepreneurs - turn off the American Idol and turn on these!

Over the past two quarters, I’ve been enrolled in a class at the University of Washington called Creating a Company. The premise of the class is running a start-up. During this experience, I’ve learned a lot – both professionally and personally with my group’s start-up Continuing Minds.

Typically, I sit through my college classes bored and disengaged. Reiterating useless facts and being talked to from a pedestal during lecture has failed to offer me the learning experience I had been craving since enrolling in post-secondary education. I can wholeheartedly say that I’ve learned more about myself in the Creating a Company class than in any other university class I have experienced. As the Creating a Company class is based upon real world application and interaction, I was able to learn business skills that aren’t taught within the typical class room setting.

From learning how to cold call, to learning about how create financial reports, I now feel more confident in any entrepreneurial endeavor I may choose to undertake in the future.
Professionally and personally, I feel this class has aided in my development to a much larger extent than I had anticipated. My three big take always from the class are as follows:

• Having a big ego is unflattering
• Other people can’t read your mind
• Planning is key

Having a Big Ego is Unflattering:
I’ll come right out and say it. I’m bull headed. Completely bull headed and at times can be pretty arrogant. I always think I’m right, I know best, and that I know what I’m doing. This class basically helped me fall flat on my ass, which is something I was in desperate need of. Through a few failed marketing campaigns and team arguments, I learned that I don’t know everything, I don’t always know best, and often times I have no idea what I’m doing. Even though the class concludes, I’ll carry this lesson with me for the rest of my life.

Other People Can’t Read Your Mind:
I generally keep my emotions pretty closed off. I refrain from telling people I’m upset and often times let raw emotions bottle up for months. In terms of talking about how I’m feeling, I just don’t do it. Feelings are a sign of weakness! – Or so I thought.

Something I learned from my group was that talking about feelings CAN be acceptable in business. After a few tense arguments at group meetings, one of my teammates suggested a great idea: a check in and check out. Before and after each meeting, we go around and say how we are feeling. To stop for a second and actually think about how I was feeling has helped me more than I could have imagined. Other people can’t read your mind to know when you’re upset about what is happening within the business. You have to speak up and tell them. I’m glad to finally learn this.

Planning is Key:
Going into the business, I would tell my team things like “Pfff, I don’t need a plan!” “Let’s just stop talking and do it!” Usually, I do things on a whim, make snap decisions, and I do most things without planning. The CAC class called for planning and strategic thinking. I thought I didn’t need any of this. Guess who was wrong? What did I learn about plans?

I learned that marketing takes time, research, and patience. As a person who wants instant gratification, this concept was hard for me to grasp. Fully understanding your customers will allow you to serve them better ultimately leading to a better business overall. I now understand this.

The Future:
In the future, I plan to continue down a path of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is in my blood and I can’t wait to see what endeavors the future may hold. This class presented me with a tool kit and many lessons that I can draw upon with anything I may choose to partake in over future years. Thanks CAC and John Castle! Best class at the University of Washington.

Continuing Minds will be continuing! — Stay Tuned