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Hey guys, I made this thread to chart some progress (probably not day by day). Also as an announcement and hopefully to find a few new friends in San Francisco before I hit the deck.
I came up with my variation of my idea a little while back but I finally solidified a great way to make it work after talking to a lot of potential users and editing my plan based on the responses.
I'll break this up into a few sections so it's not a wall of text, hopefully some of what I say will help spark something inside one of you or at least help validate where you are right now.
A little history
Over the last few years I've worked on a business (financial marketing) with my mentor that I was hoping I could scale to fund my next business, some things worked and most didn't. After looking back over the last 5 years I've determined that if I knew then where we would be with the business I would have left two years ago. It's hard being that honest with yourself.
But I needed that experience to move forward, I've learned how to become amazing at sales, how to recruit and manage people, and how to live on a shoestring while working on the next idea. So even though I have some regret about time spent I wouldn't trade that experience and knowledge for anything.
I was waiting for the 'perfect' opportunity, to have enough money in the bank, to have investors on board, you name it, I was waiting on it. (gave me a great excuse not to take a risk) If you identify with that, figure out why you don't want to take the risk and then either take it or admit you're not going to.
But as Jim Rohn says: "If you wait for all the lights to be green, you'll never leave the house."
The lights aren't all green, but it's time to go.
Why San Francisco?
Honestly, my idea was originally going to take me to D.C. because I identified it as a great market to start in, but SF is where the tech is at. The co-founders I'm talking to (still looking for a CTO if anyone wants to chat!) and the investors I'm getting in touch with are all in SF, so rather than fly back and forth I need to be there.
Plus as we all know a location change is usually a catalyst for life/business revolutions. And according to my decision matrix (thanks MJ!) it's time to move.
Why now? (don't take no for an answer)
I applied to YC's Winter batch, right now I'm a solo-founder so I knew there was little chance I would get in, but it would be a great reason to go. I didn't get in but I also didn't take no for an answer.
The same day I didn't get in, I was able to get a hold of one of the YC members email addresses. I emailed him, explained that I would like to be reconsidered and because I was moving to SF once they scheduled my interview I would be there at zero cost to them. I was told all the slots were full.
I emailed him back and told him to keep me in mind in the unlikely event that a slot opened up. But I didn't stop there, I offered to have gourmet cupcakes delivered during the interview process to give the interviewers a little reprieve from their day. (I was also going to have a handwritten letter included with the cupcakes, I just left that detail out). I was told they couldn't accept gifts or food for security reasons, which is understandable.
Just a note, the guy I was talking to was nothing but nice and personable, so for anyone looking to apply to YC, trust me, they're great people.
So they said no, that's awesome (see the next section why), so now I'm going to continue with my plan to move and get this business going.
Why NO is a good thing (hope this is useful for someone here)
This is true in many things but I discovered this in sales.
X number of NO(s) = 1 YES.
Discovering that I needed a certain number of NO(s) to get a YES changed my life in sales. I became eager to talk to people and hear NO because it meant I was getting that much closer to my YES. Knowing the numbers also made me more ambitious, because it removed any excuses I could give myself.
Here's an example of how I perfected the approach I taught other sales people:
- Use approach A with a set sample, say 20 people. So after your sample you can safely say it takes 7=NO to result in 1=YES. So with approach A your ratio will always level to 7N=1Y over a given period of time (average of 4 days to get accurate reproduction of ratio)
(assume A is the sales industry standard, so you're doing pretty good)
- Then use approach B for the same sample. You'll see that your ratio is 5=NO to 1=YES, that's a better ratio, which beats the standard. So your next step is to adopt approach B and split test again with approach C, D,E and so on until you've confirmed which approach yields the best results.
The bottom line is to trust that the numbers always work, it's the only thing that will keep your spirits up on a bad day in sales. That and always test something new!
Honestly it still amazes me that unique individuals all acting independently in their own self interest would uphold the No/Yes ratio so consistently.
Moving forward:
I'm moving to SF the first week of December, my wife is staying here and supporting herself until I can bring her out. A supportive spouse is invaluable, if you're married or dating and working on your fastlane, don't underestimate the power of the person you're partnered with.
The idea + where you my FL brothers and sisters come in: (didn't think I'd get to it did you?)
My idea is one for a ride-sharing company, might as well say like Uber, because I've heard it a lot and I know I'll continue to hear it.
(short version)
The difference in my company: Cruze, is that we're going to pay drivers 95-100% commission on each ride with no strings attached. We're going to partner with advertisers to deliver incentivized ads to our users that will give them discounts on their rides and hopefully make their day more convenient.
In the current field no one has:
-provided advertisers with a better avenue to a target audience.
-provided drivers the ability to keep up to 100% of each fare
-offered riders discounts (+ability to schedule rides)
These three things are huge advantages for each side of the market and gives drivers/riders incentive to switch. (80% of drivers surveyed said they would switch hands down)
My vision is to do for the ride-sharing industry what Google did for search engines, it'll be a lot of hard work, but in my opinion it's the next evolution of the ridesharing/taxi industry.
Honestly, the current ride-sharing leaders didn't disrupt the taxi revenue model, they just reclassified the work force. Allowing for only marginally better experiences for the riders and a lower barrier to entry for the drivers.
So guys and gals, please get in touch with me if:
- you live in or near SF, I'd love to meet you!
- you love my idea and want to talk about it further
- you're a potential CTO or would like to talk about it!
(Thanks @Supa for the rule reminder)
Final thought:
Zig Ziglar said "we all must suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret"
TL;DR: I'm moving to SF to start a ride-sharing startup that will rival Uber/lyft and I'd love to make some new friends along the way!
That's all for now, thanks to everyone for sticking with me through this long post and for everything I've learned from most of you over the years.
If you have any questions, comments, etc feel free to post them and I'll get back to you as I can!
I came up with my variation of my idea a little while back but I finally solidified a great way to make it work after talking to a lot of potential users and editing my plan based on the responses.
I'll break this up into a few sections so it's not a wall of text, hopefully some of what I say will help spark something inside one of you or at least help validate where you are right now.
A little history
Over the last few years I've worked on a business (financial marketing) with my mentor that I was hoping I could scale to fund my next business, some things worked and most didn't. After looking back over the last 5 years I've determined that if I knew then where we would be with the business I would have left two years ago. It's hard being that honest with yourself.
But I needed that experience to move forward, I've learned how to become amazing at sales, how to recruit and manage people, and how to live on a shoestring while working on the next idea. So even though I have some regret about time spent I wouldn't trade that experience and knowledge for anything.
I was waiting for the 'perfect' opportunity, to have enough money in the bank, to have investors on board, you name it, I was waiting on it. (gave me a great excuse not to take a risk) If you identify with that, figure out why you don't want to take the risk and then either take it or admit you're not going to.
But as Jim Rohn says: "If you wait for all the lights to be green, you'll never leave the house."
The lights aren't all green, but it's time to go.
Why San Francisco?
Honestly, my idea was originally going to take me to D.C. because I identified it as a great market to start in, but SF is where the tech is at. The co-founders I'm talking to (still looking for a CTO if anyone wants to chat!) and the investors I'm getting in touch with are all in SF, so rather than fly back and forth I need to be there.
Plus as we all know a location change is usually a catalyst for life/business revolutions. And according to my decision matrix (thanks MJ!) it's time to move.
Why now? (don't take no for an answer)
I applied to YC's Winter batch, right now I'm a solo-founder so I knew there was little chance I would get in, but it would be a great reason to go. I didn't get in but I also didn't take no for an answer.
The same day I didn't get in, I was able to get a hold of one of the YC members email addresses. I emailed him, explained that I would like to be reconsidered and because I was moving to SF once they scheduled my interview I would be there at zero cost to them. I was told all the slots were full.
I emailed him back and told him to keep me in mind in the unlikely event that a slot opened up. But I didn't stop there, I offered to have gourmet cupcakes delivered during the interview process to give the interviewers a little reprieve from their day. (I was also going to have a handwritten letter included with the cupcakes, I just left that detail out). I was told they couldn't accept gifts or food for security reasons, which is understandable.
Just a note, the guy I was talking to was nothing but nice and personable, so for anyone looking to apply to YC, trust me, they're great people.
So they said no, that's awesome (see the next section why), so now I'm going to continue with my plan to move and get this business going.
Why NO is a good thing (hope this is useful for someone here)
This is true in many things but I discovered this in sales.
X number of NO(s) = 1 YES.
Discovering that I needed a certain number of NO(s) to get a YES changed my life in sales. I became eager to talk to people and hear NO because it meant I was getting that much closer to my YES. Knowing the numbers also made me more ambitious, because it removed any excuses I could give myself.
Here's an example of how I perfected the approach I taught other sales people:
- Use approach A with a set sample, say 20 people. So after your sample you can safely say it takes 7=NO to result in 1=YES. So with approach A your ratio will always level to 7N=1Y over a given period of time (average of 4 days to get accurate reproduction of ratio)
(assume A is the sales industry standard, so you're doing pretty good)
- Then use approach B for the same sample. You'll see that your ratio is 5=NO to 1=YES, that's a better ratio, which beats the standard. So your next step is to adopt approach B and split test again with approach C, D,E and so on until you've confirmed which approach yields the best results.
The bottom line is to trust that the numbers always work, it's the only thing that will keep your spirits up on a bad day in sales. That and always test something new!
Honestly it still amazes me that unique individuals all acting independently in their own self interest would uphold the No/Yes ratio so consistently.
Moving forward:
I'm moving to SF the first week of December, my wife is staying here and supporting herself until I can bring her out. A supportive spouse is invaluable, if you're married or dating and working on your fastlane, don't underestimate the power of the person you're partnered with.
The idea + where you my FL brothers and sisters come in: (didn't think I'd get to it did you?)
My idea is one for a ride-sharing company, might as well say like Uber, because I've heard it a lot and I know I'll continue to hear it.
(short version)
The difference in my company: Cruze, is that we're going to pay drivers 95-100% commission on each ride with no strings attached. We're going to partner with advertisers to deliver incentivized ads to our users that will give them discounts on their rides and hopefully make their day more convenient.
In the current field no one has:
-provided advertisers with a better avenue to a target audience.
-provided drivers the ability to keep up to 100% of each fare
-offered riders discounts (+ability to schedule rides)
These three things are huge advantages for each side of the market and gives drivers/riders incentive to switch. (80% of drivers surveyed said they would switch hands down)
My vision is to do for the ride-sharing industry what Google did for search engines, it'll be a lot of hard work, but in my opinion it's the next evolution of the ridesharing/taxi industry.
Honestly, the current ride-sharing leaders didn't disrupt the taxi revenue model, they just reclassified the work force. Allowing for only marginally better experiences for the riders and a lower barrier to entry for the drivers.
So guys and gals, please get in touch with me if:
- you live in or near SF, I'd love to meet you!
- you love my idea and want to talk about it further
- you're a potential CTO or would like to talk about it!
(Thanks @Supa for the rule reminder)
Final thought:
Zig Ziglar said "we all must suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret"
TL;DR: I'm moving to SF to start a ride-sharing startup that will rival Uber/lyft and I'd love to make some new friends along the way!
That's all for now, thanks to everyone for sticking with me through this long post and for everything I've learned from most of you over the years.
If you have any questions, comments, etc feel free to post them and I'll get back to you as I can!
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fup'v lpux og zua ciip vjisi ziv, cav ov't siemmz exituni!
