Entrepreneurs Club Semester Finale

Just a few years ago I wandered into the Entrepreneurs Club as a freshmen. There were about 10 people in the room. Fast forward several years, and the Entrepreneurs Club is now one of the largest student organizations at Northeastern University and in July 2011 was ranked the #6 collegiate entrepreneurship club in the world, sitting near titans like Yale, Oxford and Harvard Business School. Each week, 75-100 students come out to the club’s exciting get togethers and our email newsletter is sent to a whopping 2,000 recipients in the University community every Monday. A team of 24 passionate student leaders run the organization, and do so with a $34,000 budget, all fund raised by the students themselves.

This semester, we’ve attracted incredible speakers like the founder of Newbury Comics, COO of CampusLive, President of Strong Women Strong Girls and many more. The Husky Startup Challenge graduated 18 new student ventures, awarded $5,500 in prizes and even had 300+ attendees, including President Aoun. Our members landed great co-op jobs at startups like Perkstreet and Zeo. We expanded into the College of Engineering with EGG weekend, where 9 new physical products were created and $2,000 in prizes awarded. On top of that, together with IDEA and CRI, we helped to launch the Prototype Fund and awarded over $15,000 in grants to students to build prototypes for their ventures.

The Entrepreneurs Club has been the defining factor of my college experience. Every co-op job and internship I earned as an undergrad was a direct result of meeting awesome people at the club. The E-Club was my first major management experience, and the learning opportunities were plentiful. More specifically, I learned:

1. How to manage people

From motivation to delegation, I gained exposure to many different management techniques and found a passion for team building and coordinating a large group of people.

2. When you have to be bureaucratic

I gained an understanding for why larger organizations start to add bureaucracy and learned that some bureaucracy is necessary while too much can stifle creativity and innovation.

3. The value of brand and design

The Entrepreneurs Club was so successful in part because of excellent branding and design work by our Creative Director, Wells Riley.

4.  How to motivate students 

Student engagement is a powerful tool. I learned about what motivates college students and how to get them excited and passionate about something in order to produce quality.

5. Event planning and logistics

The Entrepreneurs Club is an event planning power house. I learned how to properly execute high profile events and all of the little details that go into them

6. Coordinating with “the man” (administration)

Being in a leadership role in a student organization provides an opportunity to deal with upper-level administration. I leaned how to ask the right questions, get the right resources and gain significant exposure.

7. The importance of aritculating a mission and vision

I figured this out half way through the year: it is important to have a clear mission and vision that everyone in the organization understands. I worked with senior leaders in the group like Cory Bolotsky to craft a great one for the E-Club.

8. How to innovate your way out of challenges

Our team got thrown challenge after challenge this year, from having a room that was 3 sizes too small for our events to keeping everyone dedicated while balancing full course loads. Time after time we had to be creative to work around these challenges and succeed as a group.

9. The value of a strong culture and team unity

The E-Club’s culture might be its most valuable asset. We created an entity that people feel truly passionate about. As a result, they pour their hearts into making it the best it can be.

10. How work and fun should blend together as one

Finally, I learned a lot about work-life balance, and how to deal with a lack of one. Ultimately, it is great to have work be fun and let it all blend together. That is certainly how it was with team E-Club.

It has been an honor to lead such an outstanding organization, and our entire team of dedicated members worked so hard to make all of it possible. 

To the Eboard of 2012-2013… have a blast, keep building and get us to #1 in the world. 

CEO is a Lonely Title

Last year, I served as the Director of our largest program at the Entrepreneurs Club, the Husky Startup Challenge, in addition to being the interim Vice President of the organization. I had the honor of working directly under Aaron Gerry, who was President last year and graduated in May 2011. During that year, Aaron served as a mentor and guide for me. I looked up to him and depended on him when I needed help or got stuck with a problem… and he was always there for me.

Having someone there for you is the key here - you get that privilege as a VP, a manager, an assistant or as an employee. You have a boss that you can defer to for big decisions, and who is responsible for you if you make a mistake. 

Well fast forward a year and I was promoted to President. I was beside myself with joy and excitement. Finally, I got to set the vision, lead a group of my peers and architect the building of something great at Northeastern. As I settled into the role, I suddenly realized, “Oh wow, Aaron isn’t here anymore.” And it was then that I realized how much I leaned on Aaron the year before. Because if I messed up, it was Aaron’s problem. If I missed a deadline or couldn’t figure something out, it was Aaron who had to pick up the slack. Now, things are very different. If I mess up, it is my problem. And if any single person on my team messes up, it is my problem. If something doesn’t get done, guess who has to do it? 

I didn’t understand it at all until this year, and I couldn’t understand it until I had the honor of being in the top role in an organization. As the President or CEO, you have to worry about everything, because you are ultimately responsible for everything. Instead of a budget for one business unit, you might oversee 6 different budgets. You go from managing assistants and team members in your division to managing the managers who manage the assistants and team members. That’s a tongue twister. 

So what is the big takeaway?

I have a lot of respect for anyone in the CEO role.

Especially in large organizations, these folks have a tough job. They really are alone in their role. They can (and should) ask their team for plenty of input. But ultimately, they are the ones that have to make the big decisions. And they are the ones that are ultimately responsible for the outcome of those decisions.

Commercial Failure, Experiential Success

I know what you did last summer. Well, ok: that’s not true. But I do know what I did last summer: I tried my hand at a software startup, fell on my face, and learned a ton. Here’s the story:

It is January 2011. I am in Durham, NC, on co-op at Digitalsmiths, pretending to attend Duke University. In the cocktail hour before an entrepreneurial speaker at a campus event, I meet Kirill Klimuk, a freshman computer science major. Standing over a big bowl of chips and guacamole, acting as a scout for .406 Ventures looking for hotshot hackers I ask Kirill what he’s up to. He proceeds to explain what sounds like one of the craziest ideas I have ever heard: concocting some sort of web of information, making it easier for people or organize and share data online, and a whole bunch of other jargon. I have no idea what the heck he’s talking about. However, something tells me he’s special. So after the event I track him down and send an email inviting him to dinner.

We meet at 6pm on a Sunday evening at Panda Express on Duke’s campus. We end up sitting in that restaurant for 6 hours straight.We talk about everything from our childhoods, to our obsession with Legos, and the intricacies of this very clever idea Kirill had. The basic premise of the idea is that there is a lot of information content online (news articles, blog posts, etc) and we’d filter out the uninteresting stuff and only show people the content that they actually care about. At around midnight we leave, shaking hands as business partners in this new venture. 

Now, we weren’t signing contracts or NDAs: we were just two students working on a project. So we meet every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night while everyone else was out partying. We would sit in front of whiteboards from 5pm to midnight putting together the components of our product to make it work like a well-oiled machine. Working was glorious intoxication: we loved it and couldn’t get enough of it. We had a mission: to be a destination website where people could go to discover every topic from technology to mountain biking. One night we stayed up until 3am, filling the room with diagrams, outlines and mockups of our baby, which we called Quiree, after inquiry (a search leading to discovery). It couldn’t have been any more fun.

We did this all semester and all through spring break. At the end of the semester Kirill’s classes ended and so did my job, so we decided to walk away from high paying tech internships and work on this crazy idea full time, all summer. We decided we were really serious about the company and incorporated it to protect the IP, working with a great startup lawyer in Chapel Hill, NC. My parents, as crazy as they are, agreed to let us both live in their house in NY. So sure enough, I came back from co-op with a Duke student to live in my parents’ house in mid-May. 

We settled in and made a rigorous schedule. We started work around 9:45am and ended work around 11:00pm every day, with a couple of breaks for lunch, dinner and sanity. We did this 7 days a week.It was madness. As the weeks turned it to months, it became more and more challenging to keep up our insane work ethic. No going to the beach, no enjoying summer, or being kids. We were crafting code, graphics, and layouts like gears churning in a engine, without an off switch.

It was finally the beginning of August, and we had finished our website. It was amazing: we built it! Everything functioned just as we had drawn it out on the white boards months ago. It was still a minimum viable product (in our eyes at least), but, man was there a lot to it. Bells, whistles, the works. Features stacked up like a skyscraper and the instruction manual thickened with guidelines of how to use the product. We started sending the link out to our friends and colleagues to try out. They gladly signed up, looked around for about 60 seconds, left and never came back. 

“Oh, crap” we said. Realizing that there were a ton of flaws that we could quickly identify and repair, we set out to iterate and create the next version to release again in a week. We cranked it out during the week and sure enough pushed a new version out. It was a big improvement, butusers still did not seem to understand it or want to use it. Maybe it wasn’t social enough? So we added more Facebook and Twitter integration, more opportunities for users to interact and discuss topics they were interested in and comment on news content. But again, people tried it and left, not really giving it a chance or understanding what it could do for them.

At this point it was mid-August. School was going to start soon, and the project looked like it needed to a major pivot that would require massive re-coding. Kirill and I were so tired that we could barely lift a finger. Our spirits were down, our energy depleted, our enthusiasm at an all time low. Suddenly, going to class didn’t seem so bad at all. At that point we made a choice to put our product on the shelf, and so ended the story of Quiree.

What did we learn?

1. Simplicity

Products MUST be simple. The best software product is a button that does one thing the same way every time. Our product had 50 buttons that were color coded and felt like an airplane cockpit command center to most of our users. On top of that, the interface was so busy that users didn’t understand what they were looking at. You need to be able to sum up in one sentence what your product is, and it needs to be in clear, simple language. Ex: “My product is a software program where you can voice and video chat with your friends.” - Skype. Or, “My product is a website that teaches you how to code.” - Codecademy. Simple, simple, simple. 

Here’s a guideline to simplify your product. Dream it up, write down all of the features you believe are necessary. Now, ditch half of them. I mean it, ditch them right now. And now, cut the amount of features left in half. There: that is your minimum viable product. Seriously. It needs to be MINIMUM, the absolute bare essentials. 

2. The user is LAZY

One of our biggest mistake was overestimating our average user. My partner and I are technical guys. We build software and understand its intricacies. But the average user doesn’t always realize the most basic aspects of navigation on the web, like the issues of using the browser’s back button from within a web application. Your product must be so EASY to use and so OBVIOUS that the user does not have to exert energy trying to figure it out, because I assure you that they will not. Instead, they will simply walk away from the product.

3. Design and User Experience (UX) are key

Neither my partner nor I were great designers. It showed: our product was ugly. There are some really beautiful products out there that place a great emphasis on design, like Zaarly. Do yourself a favor: have a design co-founder on your team or hire a top notch firm like Bionic Hippo to consult on UI/UX. If your product is not appealing to the eye and warming to the soul, people won’t want it. 

4. Pivot quickly

If a software product takes 4 months to code, you are probably doing something wrong. Get something out quickly (i.e. in weeks), get user feedback, and test again. We spent way too much time on our first iteration. Adapt to what your customers want and be willing to completely change your product or business model to suit the needs of your customers. There is zero room for stubbornness in web software startups, especially targeting mass consumer markets.

5. Partners will fight

You start out your business loving your partner. You are best friends; all is sweet in the world, etc. I promise that at some point in your career, you will fantasize about smashing your partner’s head into a telephone pole. It is ok; it is normal. Remember, you are all people. You have your own opinions, desires, and agendas. You need to learn when to give each other space, when to compromise, when to take a stand, and when to back down. Most importantly, you need to act like a decent human being, otherwise nobody will care how smart or skilled you are, and they won’t work with you.

6. Cost control is good

My partner and I lived for free in my parent’s house (and ate their food). Luckily we were young enough to be able to play that card. At the end of this adventure, we lost very little money. We spent a lot of time, but we also learned a lot. Our costs were incredibly low. Position yourself the same way.

7. Code, code, code

We learned a ton about coding through this experience, and anyone who tries to attack a similar venture will too. I became comfortable with JavaScript and my partner had PHP shooting out of his fingers. 

8. Product management

It is really easy to get picky on details of the product. Don’t do that - it is not important in the beginning. Whether the icon is blue or orange doesn’t freakin’ matter. What is important:do people understand your product? Is it easy to use? Does the basic functionality work properly? Can you easily scale it when the time comes?

So, that is the story. It was a magnificent summer and I learned a huge amount. I’m very glad I took the plunge to make our crazy idea a reality and despite it being a commercial failure, it was certainly an experiential success.

Thanks to Kirill Klimuk for his input on this post.

The End of an Era - 7 Years of Armonk Web

Armonk Web & Computer Solutions was my first company - co-founded as freshmen at Byram Hills High School in 2004 with Jeremy Blum and Zach Lynn. The company started out providing PC support services, and later moved into deeper small business IT consulting and ultimately website development. To date, the firm has created 80+ websites for small businesses across the country. In 2008, I moved the company to Boston, MA so I could continue web development while attending Northeastern University. By operating Armonk Web, I learned a ton of lessons as a young entrepreneur:

• The customer is king - ultimate goal is to please the customer
• Web design is a great business to be in - everyone needs it - opens doors
• Develop skills that not everyone has - technical skills are highly valuable
• Learn how to speak the language - technical acronyms are everywhere

Overall, Armonk Web has been a fantastic experience for me to learn how a business works and the basics of entrepreneurship. It served me well and I enjoyed working with all of my wonderful clients. As of today, I have left Armonk Web to focus on some even more exciting opportunities on the horizon (more details coming soon!)