Category: Interviews

CMO Insights: How to Connect with 19 million Fans

Posted on by Drew Neisser

During The CMO Club Summit in NYC last week, Eva Press, Director, OREO joined several panelists to discuss “Engagement in the Digital Age.”  After the panel, I caught up with Eva.  Here’s the resulting Q&A:

DN: You and Frank Eliason of Citi seemed to be coming from opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to using partners to help manage social media engagement. Can you speak to the advantages of working with outside partners like your digital/social media agency?

For Oreo, our agencies are truly our partners and extensions of the brand team. We work very carefully to make sure all people who work on this beloved business, whether within Kraft or an external business partner, really understand how the brand provides people with moments of childlike delight – and that spirit should be infused in everything we do. Our digital/social media agency, 360i, is expert in the social media space. So they not only must understand how to translate the essence of Oreo into language that fits on Facebook, Twitter, but they also have a broad understanding of the digital landscape. So they can keep us up to date on trends and help us discover ways to improve our ability to connect and engage with Oreo fans based on best practices and constant monitoring of the conversation around Oreo.

DN: Do you see any risks in having outside partners manage social media engagements in channels like Facebook & Twitter? And/or what have you done to mitigate those risks for Oreo?

As 360i came onboard in June, 2010, we spent a lot of time grounding the team in what Oreo stands for. And they were instrumental in helping us bring our Oreo voice to life with our global community of fans in social media. 360i leads our digital and social efforts, but they are also a key partner as we develop overall marketing plans. We work together on all tweets, Facebook posts, and other social messaging. Social media engagement is 24/7 – and being constantly engaged is even more critical with a global brand like Oreo that spans time zones across the world. You truly need a team, and we have jointly built a great social media team that is able to engage with fans in real-time. It is a team effort, and we have a tremendous amount of trust in our agency partners. That’s so important because the Oreo brand is so deeply loved and trusted.

DN: A lot of social media programs seem to be done in isolation. Can you speak to how you’ve been able to integrate social into your overall marketing initiatives and the advantages of doing so?

Today, we live in a digital world where people have access to everything a brand does. Marketers can no longer think of engaging with consumers in terms of channel or by media – whatever we say and do is seen by everyone. That actually creates a huge opportunity. Social media can help amplify the programs we are doing in other places – to make sure that an Oreo fan who may not be watching the TV show where we ran our ad has a chance to see the ad, comment on it, and share it with his or her friends. We can ensure the most loyal Oreo fans know about new products, have a chance to enter promotions, and that we’re providing fun games and social currency like our Fan of the Week program. But it only works if all of the people on the brand team and all of the agency partners recognize the value of truly integrated marketing, working together to translate ideas from traditional advertising to digital advertising to PR, to create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

DN: How are you measuring the success of your social media activities for Oreos?

Measurement is essential. Certainly we’re always working to understand how social media can drive business growth – and we are starting to see an impact on our business results. But it’s also critical to see how meaningfully we are engaging with our fans because Oreo is so deeply loved.

In terms of measures, we look at our social media in terms of the numbers of people who follow the brand on Twitter and “like” the brand on Facebook. But we are also looking at the engagement of those fans: how many people retweet what the brand says; how many people like or comment on a Facebook post?

Q: You mentioned the challenges of digital coupon distribution via social channels and how they can backfire into bad WOM if/when retailers don’t accept them and/or consumers can’t print them. Assuming this means you won’t be offering coupons in the future, do you see social being able to drive retail traffic or will you think of it more as a retention channel?

We are always looking to provide value to our fans, and coupons – digital or otherwise – are certainly part of our consideration set when planning. That’s true for Oreo, and Kraft Foods more broadly. But in social media, it’s important to understand your fans and take a thoughtful approach to what is meaningful to them in the context of your community. With Oreo, we have seen that our fans have responded very positively when we provide information about new products, spark conversation about the moments of childlike delight Oreo brings, or celebrate fan generated content. We feel that builds advocacy for our brand, and contributes to our business success.

How This UK Start-Up Came to Be

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This is the abridged transcript from my interview with Paul Cook, founder of TagMan, a successful UK start-up that could very well take the US by storm.  For my thoughts on TagMan, see my article on FastCompany.com.

What is TagMan?
TagMan is a single piece of code that allows you to manage how you share data with companies that provide you with marketing software services. It’s a smart container tag for enterprising commerce. TagMan is a solution to a problem that the industry has had for a long time: implementing campaigns, collecting data, and sharing data with partners so they can provide marketing services and software.

What is your history and how did it lead to TagMan?
I was in media sales, almost got an electronics degree, and went into online advertising sales and found that clients didn’t actually know whether clicks were converting. I built a company called Redeye that was the first company to offer post analytic tracking services. We built that company into a full analytics platform and it was quite an intensive tagging process.

So from Redeye you discovered a new market?
People are drowning in tags and the solutions out there only solve part of the problem because they’re given free by a company with a vested interest. I wanted to provide something independent, something that would not just solve problems for the marketing department but also solve problems for the analytics department and conversion department.

What industry problems led you to start TagMan?
One problem was people had trouble implementing software-as-a-solution services. The second problem was everyone was stuck on a measurement system that worked thirteen years ago but in the modern age doesn’t really fit the bill.

Why did you think companies would embrace your product?
We thought that if we go to companies and give them the opportunity to separate the tagging from their web analytics platform that will give them enough on its own. We focus purely on the infrastructure so entrepreneurs will no longer be faced with this barrier of getting tags on the site. We wanted to make it really easy for companies to try a new product and service out.

The benefits are apparent very quickly, then?
One benefit of attribution with tag management is, rather than paying out affiliate networks and maybe a paid search click on top, you can control who sees the conversion and who gets paid. You save 30% on your marketing budget straightaway. We’ve got Europe’s largest travel retailer, Thomas Cook, on the platform and they saved around 20% on day one. People think the level of duplication is around 10% but actually it’s around 30%.

What does your competition look like?
There are other companies trying to tackle the same problem in the US. In the UK they’re essentially copycats and they can’t get funding. They’re not serious contenders for an enterprise-level customer. We’ve got global support and global rollout for clients, they couldn’t even begin to service that type of client.

Why is this different?
We provide a very simple path towards having attribution reporting in real time. In the US you have a lot of data but it’s not real time. What we’ve created is something that’s not quite as detailed but does the job and certainly a lot better than “last click” does. By changing the tags on the page we can plug data straight into figures seen by your ad agency. They’re actually seeing your attributions and figures.

Why are you solely a software-as-a-service company without a marketing consulting side?
We prefer to empower marketing service companies with quality data and tools so they can do that analysis and have them partner with us. If you want a tag management system the only choice is one tied to a search marketing company or a display advertising company. There’s a real question of their independence. We have no vested interest, we’re not trying to sell any marketing service company at the back of this. We’re purely providing independent tag management and attribution reporting. The industry needs an independent platform where this stuff can run through. We’re not going to hold anyone hostage.

What product support do you provide?
We provide enterprise-level support. We’re targeting retail corporations who expect a certain level of support. The whole point of the product is for companies to do the tagging themselves and making it sufficiently easy for them to solve their own problems. They no longer need to put in an IT request that will get done in two weeks time. They can do it themselves.

Why did TagMan enter the US market?
First, ad technology looks the same all over the world. If you’re a brand of smoothy, is that going to work in the US? Probably not because those brands are specific to culture. For us the positioning might have to be slightly different in the US but the base is the same. Second, it’s the biggest global market. It makes sense to go to another English-speaking market, one that’s 5-10 times the size of the UK.

Why do you think you’ll be successful in the US?
If you look at the online data ecosystem it’s far more developed here. Theoretically the need for tag management is far greater here and we’ve got a great product that’s been developing for four to five years.

Is there a bias among US companies for US software?
As far as if US software is better, I would say yes it is on average but averages can be dangerous. It doesn’t mean that every piece of US software is better than every piece of UK software. We have a proven track record for technology and have proven we’re the real deal, that we’re committed, that the product works.

Talk to me about TagMan’s growth.
It wasn’t until 2009 that we started to get traction. We had a few case studies and were lucky enough to win clients like Boden who are probably the best company doing direct marketing. By the end of 2008 you’re talking about less than ten clients, end of 2009 about 25, and end of 2010 near 100.

So you and co-founder, Jon Baron, are now living in the US.
We looked at the companies that were successful and the founders coming to the US was the common theme. We’re fully committed to the US market and we’ve shown that. Wherever the founders are is really where the company is based.

“We’re Not in the Like Business”

Posted on by Drew Neisser

The following are highlights of my interview with Deborah Eastman, the former CMO and current GM of Global Consulting at Satmetrix, shortly after her presentation on Social Media at the Satmetrix Net Promoter® Conference. By the way, there were over 500 people at this conference with a sizable representation from a number of really big companies like Verizon Wireless, Symantec, AAA, American Express, Dell, Fidelity Investments, Merck, and Intuit.  (You will find the article inspired by this conference on MediaPost.com.)

In the off chance that Net Promoter is a new concept to you, click here. The rest of you are probably well aware of the idea that was first popularized in Fred Reicheld’s book, “the Ultimate Question,” and have seen my references to it in several past posts.

What are the challenges of integrating social media and Net Promoter?
The challenge is that if you do [integrate social and NPS®] you also need to integrate it with your CRM system so you can do NPS by segment. You need to know if they are customers or not. You need to know if they are high value customers or not. And we would advocate this is not about collecting a score, this is about improving the experience in a closed-loop process is a critical part of that.

Would it make sense to put your Net Promoter Score right up on website?
I’m not a big fan of publishing your NPS especially to your customers because, who cares! I mean, do your customers really care what your NPS is? What customers care about is what experience they get. And our personal philosophy is that Net Promoter is about building a customer-centric culture, which you deliver a positive customer experience. The result of that is a high Net Promoter Score. Focusing on the score is having the wrong conversation.

Should we anticipate Net Promoter being asked on a Facebook fan page?
We’d like to see a better integration of Net Promoter and social media. In face, we’d love to see that. The challenge, I see today is that its all about social media marketing. We [marketers] haven’t connected the dots between Net Promoter and social media in a way that allows us to really take advantage of those visitors.

In the egalitarian world of social media, even a small voice can have a big impact. Is there a risk in treating some customers better via social channels?
We have what we call “the voice according to value,” so when you think about Net Promoter as a customer feedback process, [not all customers are equal.] If I call American Airlines as an Executive Platinum member, I should get a differentiated experience from the guy that flies once a year to go visit grandma. The example I gave with Stephen Fry, is the potential brand impact that [his tweets] had differentiated him [because of] his influence not necessarily his value as an [individual] customer. That influence translates to value.

Does this same notion apply to B2B customers?
I think you should always be looking at segmentation of your customers in order to treat your customers differently. In a B2B environment you should be treating – understanding the needs of a decision maker differently than an end user. So I absolutely believe in that.

Is there any kind of equivalency between a Like on Facebook and a Net Promoter?
Like to me is opting in. I don’t think it identifies you as a Promoter or a Passive or a Detractor. You could be liking a particular thread, you could be liking the brand, [there are] all kinds of ways to like. And quite honestly, I don’t think Net Promoter is about like, its about love. When you really create a Promoter, you create an emotional connection that is closer to love than like.

Should we expect a Satmetrix plug-in that will work right on Facebook?
Not on our immediate road map. I am much more interested in integrating the voice of the customer into the closed-loop process, which is the most important part of a Net Promoter program. Having fragmented listening channels without a closed-loop process is a disadvantage for our customers. Whether or not we collect scores through Facebook or those types of things, we’ll let our customers drive us there.

A lot of people here have the title “customer experience executive,” and a lot of companies have social media people, is there a world where these folks are in all in the same department?
In my perfect world, yes! What Symantec has done is interesting–they’ve established a Social Media Council and I actually think that’s where we’ll see this go. This [type of council] brings together all of the key stakeholders which would include marketing, customers experience execs, probably include the support organization and the product org for idea generation. This would bring together multi-functional representation to be looking at social media from an enterprise perspective.

Whats happens if these departments aren’t working together?
Social media is another channel for customer experience but its fragmented [right now]. Marketing is doing their thing; service is doing their thing. To me, Starbucks would be a great example. You go to the Starbuck Facebook page — you can actually top off your Starbucks card (clearly owned by marketing) and then there’s Starbucks Ideas which is this community that consumers can provide ideas for what they want from Starbucks. But you can’t access Starbucks Ideas from their Facebook page. [That]just illustrates a siloed mentality.

A year from now, do you expect the folks here will come back with their social media stories?
I don’t know if it will move that fast. We’ll want to watch their progression with NPS. Companies like Symantec are very advanced on their Net Promoter communities so they are integrating NPS in social media channels but many of the attendees here are still early on their journey. They are still trying to figure out how to build a closed-loop process, never mind integrating it with social media.

Any final words of wisdom bringing these two worlds together?
I don’t think it is about [getting the Net Promoter] score, I think it is about creating a social experience that creates promoters. Right now we just want to get the Net Promoter guys at the table because [social media] is typically owned by marketing and treated in a very fragmented fashion and we would advocate that you want to make sure that at least that’s connected with your Net Promoter program.

FYI: Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

Behind Fusion-io’s Crappy Code Games

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Interview with Trip Hunter & Mat Young, Co-Marketing Directors for Fusion-io in Europe about a new promotion called the Crappy Code Games which I will be writing about on FastCompany.com.

When do the games begin?
TH: The Crappy Code Games will launch in the UK, and take place over three events in March and April. The first event is at Revolution, a modern nightclub/bar in Manchester on the 17th of March. The second event is at Revolution in London, on March 31st, and the third event, which doubles as the Grand Finale, will take place in Brighton on April 7th, on the first night of SQL8, which is the largest SQL community event held in the UK, and be hosted by Apple co-founder and Fusion-io Chief Scientist Steve Wozniak.

What is the idea behind the Crappy Code Games?
TH: The Crappy Code Games highlight the problem that most SQL programmers are constantly experiencing in the workplace, and demonstrates the performance and efficiency gains of Fusion-io Memory.  Badly written SQL code can really stink up an enterprise database, resulting in poor performance, increased resource allocation and ultimately system breakdown. But cleaning up crappy code hasn’t always been easy. It can mean hundreds if not thousands of man hours spent rewriting inefficient code to conform to best practices. Until now. Fusion ioMemory is so powerful, that it actually flushes away crappy code.

Where did this idea come from?
TH: Crappy Code is not a term that Fusion-io made up. If you do a Google search on Crappy SQL code, you will see that this is language that the community understands and uses to quantify this problem. We are just using this insight to engage our audience in a more entertaining way. Crappy code is the problem. Fusion is the solution, but if we talk about how great our solution is it is just marketing, and no one will pay attention. By engaging our audience through the problem, we can show people how our solution works, which is much more fun, engaging and effective.

How are you measuring success?
TH: On a number of different levels; PR impressions is certainly one, as is event attendance, which we are hoping will be around 125 SQL coders for each event, and 300 for our final event at SQL8 in Brighton. We will also be conducting pre and post interviews at each event which should gauge how well Fusion is telling their story, and how compelling it is to our audience. We also have a robust social media program, so success will also be judged by the number of followers and level of engagement we can drive through social media efforts.

Why do you think your target will respond to this promo?
TH: Because the Crappy Code Games, despite its name, actually celebrates great coding. In order to win these challenges, you have to be really good at what you do. This is a very competitive community. Every SQL coder in the UK will want to prove to their peers that they are the best. The Crappy Code Games is the perfect platform to do this. Not to mention that there are some really great prizes that you can win, like developer laptops, win-mo phones, X-box 360’s, and more.

How are American tech companies perceived in Europe?
MY: In general American tech companies and their products are very well received over here in both the UK and wider EMEA. From my personal history there is quite a good amount of UK folks that go and work for US tech companies at their HQ in product development and that can further reinforce that bridge.

Why are you starting this promo in the UK?
MY: What I find interesting is that in general the UK and Germany tend to be early adopters of new technology, especially if it makes a radical change to the value the business derives from it. That’s not to say there aren’t innovators in every European country but the others in general terms tend to wait until there are a number of good cases studies, at that point they move quickly to adopt.

Why do you think the Crappy Code Games will cut through in the UK?
MY: In the UK market there a number of major players with large budgets that dominate pretty much all traditional marketing approaches but to my mind with limited real engagement. What we are trying to do is engage in a slightly humorous way, educate and then let the prospects decide (we know how good our products are and believe in them).  Also, the technical heart of Crappy Code Games is based around some very real performance issues.

What does the fact that you are running a Crappy Code promo say about Fusion-io?
TH: It says that Fusion understands the day-to-day challenges and issues facing our customers. It also says that while our solutions are completely serious, we as a company like to have a little bit of fun.

Do you see a risk in this approach?
TH: I’d be foolish if I said no, but if we weren’t taking calculated risks, we just be one more boring,  invisible marketing program. As we see it, risk is proportional to reward. So obviously, we believe that the potential reward is greater than the potential risk.

What are you really selling?
TH: Fusion-io sells a family of NAND flash-based ioMemory technologies that offers an entirely new building block for data center applications. Containing 100 times the density of RAM, ioMemory overcomes the physical and thermal limitations of the medium and provides near limitless amounts of fully scalable memory for accelerating throughput, driving higher performance density and efficiency in applications server platforms.

What problem(s) does your product solve for your target?
TH: Fusion ioMemory reduces latency so markedly that CPU’s can be used more efficiently, enabling our customers to do far more with far less than they could with other storage technology solutions.  In a recent survey of 274 Fusion customers, 95% said they bought us for performance gains, and 75% of them experienced performance improvement of 3-10x over what they had prior to deploying Fusion.

The Ups and Downs of Being an Entrepreneur

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Why did you want to be an entrepreneur in the first place?
My career started in a creative corporate environment, the advertising world.  But  the idea of someone monitoring and curating my ideas didn’t sit well with me. I wanted to run with my ideas and figure out for myself if they were good or bad; not have someone else tell me.

Where did the idea for Blurts first come from?
I was working hard at a major ad agency and not seeing my kids a lot.  They kept leaving voice mail messages for me, and I kept saving the ones I thought were really special like: “Daddy, I know you couldn’t be here but I scored my first goal today.” One day I went to play one of my favorite saved messages for my wife but it was gone, eaten by the voicemail devils.   Losing that voicemail stabbed my heart emotionally much like losing the only picture I owned of my beloved dog growing up. At the moment of that loss I realized that under the right circumstances and as told by the right person—- a voice mail or a voice memory, or a blurt— was as important a media for saving and sharing memories  as text, photo or video.

What does it really take to be an entrepreneur?
The three P’s:  passion, persistence and patience.

Did you have any major pivots?
I’ve evolved the business model at least three times in response to market direction and consumer behavioral shirts.  Because I was at JWT I was as the forefront of the convergence of brand story telling and user generated content. I thought to myself what better way for brands to encourage consumers to be part of the online conversation then by suing their voices.  By letting them literally be heard.  This was a major moment for us.  Also the concurrent rise of mobile and social media which has created an online environment in which millions of people want to share everything including their voice and opinions.

Talk to me about the challenges of raising that first round of money
The first round was the easiest in many ways. It was an emotional appeal to friends and family. They were mostly older and I said you’re at an age when you’re starting to look back and understand what your life story and history was. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could easily tell that story in your own voice and have it preserved for generations to listen to?  That struck a cord.

Give me a sense of the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur
Not everyone has the immediate emotional connection with Blurts that I want them to because Blurts is my baby.  I hate when they give me a blank stare which means they just don’t get it.   This happens all the time in money raising to. Every high net worth individual, VC or angel has their own point of view.  Sometime I’ll have a meeting one day and the potential investor rails on the model for X reason.  The next day in a different meeting a different potential investor LOVES X.  This drives me crazy.  Can everyone please just make up their minds and get on the same page?!

Is there a moment as an entrepreneur, where you say “What am I doing?”
I have a moment like that almost every day. To keep going forward those moments have to be balanced by moments of exultation which we are lucky to have our share of.  For example, a couple of weeks ago the  #1 video news site in France ran a two minute story on Blurts.  They get 19mm unique monthly viewers in the US and over 50 mm globally. When we saw that we were like “wow!, we’ve birthed something, from scratch that people are talking about. Without those moments I think many entrepreneurs would be jumping off cliffs.

There’s a lot of angst. A lot of time, effort and thinking invested into the business.  There are people you inevitably disappoint along the way and you try to limit those. But no matter what happens you have to stubbornly stick to the vision because if you didn’t have stubborn visionaries you would never get past the naysayers and the bumps along the way.  I have to say that life during a company’s early growth is not the most pleasant or healthiest  way to live.

Did you have any epiphanies along the way?

I remember the CEO [Note to reader: that would be me] of our agency  walking into the room one day after we had been through meeting after meeting and  he said, “it’s not easy making something simple.” If you’re going to build a utility like blurts make it stupid simple.  In the end we did that.  We spent a lot of time and effort that I wouldn’t take that back for anything in the world. Because everyone talks about how easy it is to use  blurts to infuse passion and nuance into flat unemotional tweets. photos, texts, emails and more.

What’s next?
We’re at a tipping point:  great reviews, fantastic and expanding partner base, and  growing usage.  We’re looking for the next level of financial partners. Strategics who not only bring money but also experience, relationships and a passion for disruption and change.  Partners who share our vision for building a global open mike and soapbox that makes it easy for everyone to be heard in the social sphere…with the texture, tone and authenticity of their own voice.

Start-Up Service Connecting People With Their Medical Reminders

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This is the transcript from my interview with Jesse Middleton, founder of GetMinders, a start-up service that hopes to make missing your meds a thing of the past.

What is GetMinders?
GetMinders connects people with their medical reminders, their medical professionals and their families/support networks all via a quick phone call or text message. Our system calls patients to remind them to take their meds, get to their appointments or do their therapy and then offers to connect them with all of the above people to help keep them compliant, happy and healthy.

We’ve been running a super early pilot and the feedback has been amazing so far. We now have a private beta launched that is making over 350 calls per week and we’re really excited to continue to grow the company, build the product and gain more advice and feedback throughout the industry and from people like you.

Where did the idea for your business come from?
While I was traveling recently I began a discussion with a distant cousin who is a dentist. As we got talking about the needs of his patients I thought of my grandfather, in Florida, who is in a very late stage of Parkinson’s. It’s easy for someone in his position to forget to take their meds, mess up which ones they take when most importantly become disconnected with his family, friends and medical professionals.

Why are you doing this?  I mean why not just get a job at a fast growing company and stop killing yourself?
I’ve been on both sides. I started my first company at 16 and I’ve worked for numerous large corporations and start-ups over the past 8 years. I felt like it was just the right time to take the leap and try to build a business that could help people on my own. NOTE: My wife gave me a kick in the ass to really get the ball rolling. She told me that right now we have some cheap rent and two annoying cats to take care of. One day we’ll have kids and other responsibilities and it’ll be a lot harder to do.

What does success look like for you personally and for your company?
As a company, getting our product in the hands of millions of people that need to remember to take their medications, keep track of their compliance or take care of their loved ones would be pretty amazing for us. For me personally I’d like to make it to a point where I can invest in others’ ideas that can make the world a better place.

How long have you been at it and where do things stand right now?
We’ve been working on GetMinders for only a couple of months. The real coding and build out came only about a month ago. We’re now in a very early stage where we’re making over 350 calls per week and looking at next steps including funding and market testing.

Other than money, what are the biggest barriers to your success right now?
The biggest barrier for us is the need for a real voice. Speaking to the right people in the industry can be hard. Insurance companies are huge, pharmaceutical companies are even larger and medical networks and hospital systems have so much red tape it can take years to get things from idea to production. Making sure that we’re getting the right introductions and talking to the right people are very important to our success now.

Describe some of the highs you’ve experienced thus far
Right after the first weekend I built a very simple prototype we were making over 100 calls per week with our platform. When I put out simple request for testers on Twitter/Facebook the emails were overwhelming. The fact that people jump at the opportunity to help their friends (and others in the same industry) gives me a strong feeling that we will be successful.

Just a day ago I presented at a technology Meetup in Stamford, CT run by Roger Wu. After presenting our product to over 40 people along with 4 other start-ups we won the user-choice award. It wasn’t so much the winning that mattered but the fact that people sat and listened and offered fantastic input as to the future of GetMinders and the health industry as a whole.

And what are the low points?
I’m not sure that there have been any real low points so far. The hardest thing has been cutting back on spending. Having spent a few years in larger corporations (I last worked for LivePerson, a publicly traded tech company in NY) with a real paycheck it was easy to forget about the budget that my wife and I had set out. Now that my partner and I are working really hard on the start-up, I need to really focus on the spending. No one is signing expense reports or bi-monthly checks anymore.

Where has the money come from to get you this far?
It’s come right out of our pockets. My co-founder, Mike, and I have put smalls amounts in where we need it. We’ve had little overhead as we don’t have an office space yet and the minutes and message costs are all pay-as-you-go through Twilio. For now we’ve kept costs low but eventually we’ll be ramping up and that’ll be a whole new ballgame.

How hard has it been to raise money?
Well we’re still in the process so I don’t know that I can speak to the final outcome. What I can say is that the most important thing I learned through the process is that you have to ASK if you want to get money. Too many times I’d end a conversation with thanks for the input instead of, “So, do you believe in us and would you be willing to invest?” Learning to say this sentence has done wonders for us while raising funding.

Looking back, what would you do differently?
I would have done this two years ago instead of now. I was afraid before to go out on my own. Now that I’ve taken the leap I’ve found that the support network that I have spreads much further than I thought. We could be so much further along had we started long ago.

Did you think it was going to be this hard?
Yes. I’ve heard the stories of how hard it is to start a company, build a product, raise money and then sell the product to people from friends who have been through it. I was lucky enough to enter this whole thing pretty grounded.

Has you business taken any major pivots from concept to where you are today?
Not any major pivots. The idea began with medication only. We’ve branched out to looking at all sorts of healthcare and wellness but we’ve stuck to the same industry.

How much money do you need to raise now to get you to the next stage?
We’re currently looking at a small friends and family round (below $200k). This will let us really figure out the right market, build out an even more stable product and to get even further along with discussions all over the healthcare world (pharmacies, insurance companies, etc).

If your friend was about to start a business, what advice would you give them?
Just fucking do it. A good friend of mine has JFDI tattooed on his arm. He’s been telling me those same four words for a long time and finally did it. If you don’t give it a shot I can guarantee you will not succeed.

Do you see yourself as a serial entrepreneur or is this your one big idea?
I am pretty sure I’ll wind up being a serial entrepreneur. If I do my job right this start-up will grow into a real company. My hope is that my next steps involve helping others do the same thing.

What lessons do you wish you’d learned from others?
As I mentioned in the advice I’d give to a friend, JFDI. So many friends have went off, raised money and built successful companies. They all struggled until they finally dove it and did it. I think I learned that lesson now but it took me a heck of a long time to get here.