Startup Meetup Archives

Tips for Business and Career Pivots w/ Chris Cera

Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“If you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to do in life, you have to recognize that all possibilities come through new people. It’s pretty much a necessity that you meet new people to create new possibilities. You have to set yourself up to meet as many people as possible, and in the process of building a number of relationships, you’ll meet the hustlers; the people that you want to partner with in your next company.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“A lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, have experienced building features of little value, or perhaps the first iteration of a product that has little value. I try to focus on methods for minimizing risk and prove viable business models using the minimal amount of money possible.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“I think the first person to mention the entrepreneurial career path to me was Gabe Weinberg, who’s been very influential to me in my career.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“When you’re telling your partner or your family that you’re going to go work on this startup; what you really should be telling them from an expectation management perspective is, ‘I’m taking the plunge! I’m quitting my job and I’m never going back!'”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

10245400_747386148679695_7933586544682849943_n

“The whole reason why communities and coworking spaces exist is because it gets people out of their houses and into areas where they can be with likeminded people. I remember Indy Hall‘s original slogan use to be,’Because working alone sucks!’. I felt like that was a great slogan.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“What I found to be unique at Philly Startup Leaders was that everyone there was trying to hustle and build their next thing. It was something that was really special to me and something that I hadn’t encountered at other events during that time.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“Organizing an event is a great way to actually meet people and work with people that you wouldn’t otherwise work with.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“Many of the people that I had organized events with and hung out with at PSL are now people that are buyers and ultimately customers of my company, as well as entrepreneurial peers that I have close relationships with. I know Bob Moore spoke here recently. I actually met Bob at a PSL event.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“The community piece has been huge for me in terms of life pivots, and I would never underestimate the value of a places like Walnut St. Labs.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“In the Philly scene, you don’t want to shut the door on someone because, who knows; that person could be your next customer.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“I never seen a college class that teaches sales, which is amazing to me because selling is so important. Sales training even changed the way I dated girls.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

“The Awesome Pipeline: I built a list of everyone that I knew who is awesome, and even some of people that I wanted to know. And, the idea is to get in front of them and pitch them something, in order to test it out what you want to do.”
— Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb

Make Money, Change the World: Cora- A High Growth For-Profit/For-Purpose Startup

Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

@Molly_Hayward
@CoraWomen
corawomen.com

“My work at Cora has taken hold of me. It really found me. I certainly wasn’t looking for it, but it’s been incredible.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“My background was in economic development, women’s rights and human rights. I thought I was going to work for a big NGO, join the peace core, or work for a non-profit after college. Fate kind of intervened and I very serendipitously joined a tech startup in Philly.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“I started as a intern. They paid me a thousand dollars a month, which was awful. Yeah, it sucked! Although, now I look back and I’d kill for a thousand dollars a month.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“Within three months, I was out raising money with the CEO. That was where I cut my teeth, and I learned by doing. I really loved the CEO’s role. It was that high level, visionary work that appealed to me most.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“My first company was a draw. I invested a lot and somehow broke-even, myself. After two years, I couldn’t get an entrepreneurial visa to stay in London, and so I was unceremoniously deported.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“Its really funny looking back on my journey, because it was just a fucking mess!”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“(At Cora) wWe are a Women’s health company that aligns technology and products to a Woman’s natural cycles, across her entire lifetime. We started out as a monthly subscription box for organic feminine hygiene products.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“We let women create a customized box of organic feminine products, and we ship them to her every month. Like Tom’s Shoes , like Warby Parker, for every monthly box that we ship to a women here in the US, we provide a month supply of products to a girl in a developing country, who would otherwise be missing days of school every month during her period.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“This is a huge problem, all around the developing world. There are many NGO’s that are pumping tons and tons of money into girls education because we see these massive returns economically when we invest in girls’ education, and yet, girls at 12 or 13 drop out of school because they miss days of school, due to their period and they fall behind.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

Toxic Chemicals: “I found that most of the products that most
women use in this country, conventional products like Tampax, Kotex, Playtex, they’re made from cotton that has been heavily sprayed with pesticides, mixed with synthetics and bleached. All of those substances cause there to be toxic chemical residue, that are linked to reproductive diseases and cancers.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“Women are exposing themselves to these products for days at time , every month, for forty years of their lives. And it’s really just wrong. I couldn’t in good conscience contribute to that.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“Prior to (raising 30,000 crowdfunding with) my plum ally campaign, I had completely bootstrapped it, including money from the job, as well as multiple credit cards. I don’t think enough people talk about that.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“Now, we are raising a seed round. And, I say we’re because while for a long time it was just me, I’ve more recently and all the sudden, hired on a team of five people.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

“We advocacy center for women at Cora. We started out with menstruation, and we quickly noticed more comprehensive support system was needed. Our intention is to build a brand that is massive and inclusive, to become a mainstream provider, in a way that organic pr0ducts haven’t yet mastered.”
— Molly Hayward, Founder of Cora

Bootstrapping a MilkCrate; A Digital Hub for Sustainability

Morgan Berman, Cofounder and CEO of MilkCrate Philly

MilkCratePhilly.com
@MilkCratePhilly
@morganberman

“I didn’t know how to write. I didn’t know how to code. I just had the desire and the insanity to do it.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“My confusion on how to live more sustainably is what inspired MilkCrate Philly. When I was writing my master’s thesis I learned that pretty much everyone else was confused too. People want to make transformative choices, but we get stuck in our habits because we’re confused and the information too spread out.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“There are a lot of green apps out there, but they’re all very niche. Many are siloed by the technology they’re focusing on, the category they’re focused on, or the geography they’re active in.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“What will make MilkCrate Philly successful is providing engaging everyday experience, where you can see what people are doing in your community to be more sustainable. A lot of those actions are going to be sponsored by places like the water department, the energy Co-op, or local green companies. Each sponsor will have signup forms with simple calls to action or lifestyle tips.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“With the use of social logins, we’re giving your interests, as consumers, to related parties and organizations. We’re capturing that interest and creating a funnel for local programs. With one click, you can make those decisions and the rest is up to them.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“We also have a searchable database that will allow you to browse for businesses on your own, but we’re giving your interests to them and creating a funnel for participation and engagement, so that it can evolve naturally.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“We just got into Project Liberty , which is an incubator with the Philadelphia Inquirer and Benjamin Franklin Tech Partners, SEP. We’re really excited about potential for creating more engaging content for sustainability.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“We’ve been talking with Ticketleap about how to integrate with them, in an effort to make it really easy for you to engage with our community and actively participate”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“We’re not creating our own criteria system or standards. We’re using the existing standards of our partner organizations. B Corp is a partner. SBN Philadelphia is a partner. We basically get their lists, import them into our database and it codes whether someone is a member or not, and those badges will show up on the app.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

We’ve also been talking with Change.org in order to expand beyond conscientious consumerism. We’re venturing into opportunities for political action and civic engagement, so that you can support other causes that matter to you.”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

“Our collaborators are truly at the heart of what we are doing!”
— Morgan Berman, Cofounder of MilkCrate Philly

Building a Better Startup Ecosystem in Philadelphia w/ Eamon Gallagher

@PHLStartupLaw
@gweberlaw

“Through my work as a recruiter, I quickly found out that the good clients to target were companies that were going through series A, series B, or series C rounds of financing because they needed to grow very rapidly, and they needed quality individuals in order to scale up their businesses. I really became involved in companies in growth mode at that time.”
–Eamon Gallagher, Associate of Weber Law

“I was very fortunate that Drexel Law had a business and entrepreneurship program. It’s actually focused on training students to become attorneys in a transactional law practice, not litigation, not in the courtroom, not tearing things apart. I wanted to be on the constructive side of things.”
–Eamon Gallagher, Associate of Weber Law

“I graduated last May and now I’m a practicing startup attorney. I was very much the beneficiary of a certain level of randomness, which is the amazing growth of the philadelphia startup scene and the startup tech scene.”
–Eamon Gallagher, Associate of Weber Law

“The Keiretsu Angel Investment Forum was partnering with Drexel Law to form what they called the Due Diligence Fellowship Program and that meant I got to help them screen deals, look at pitches, be a part of their forums with their investors, see how they critiqued deals, and what their pain points were.”
–Eamon Gallagher, Associate of Weber Law

“I built up a network over a period of time, and places like Walnut St. Labs, Seed Philly, Venturef0rth, 3401 Market (Innovation Center @3401) are the types of places where you can get plugged into a community really really fast and avoid some of the pitfalls that first, second or third-time entrepreneurs are susceptible to. You are able to move and grow exponentially faster with a community.”
–Eamon Gallagher, Associate of Weber Law

“When you look nationally; there are often those touchstone places for the tech scene where investors can source companies, service providers can find companies. I’m not just talking about accountants and attorneys, but Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, can all go into those spaces and help get companies off the ground, which means a serious competitive advantage.”
–Eamon Gallagher, Associate of Weber Law

“The general value of startup communities is that they can get you further down the line, faster, by collaborating with other people who are solving similar issues in different way or entirely different problems. There’s a lot of cross-pollination that can happen if you’re in those spaces with a critical mass of people working towards similar outcomes.”
–Eamon Gallagher, Associate of Weber Law

A Decade of Decision Points with Bob Moore

@robertjmoore
@RJMetrics

“I knew before starting RJMetrics that there was a 13 Billion dollar market in just selling Business Intelligence to the fortune 5000, to the biggest companies in the world.”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“Not only is our product complex, but the space that we are in is like this ‘data-soup’, where everyone seems to a have a data-related startup.”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“In 2004, I built this thing called the ‘Mooraculator’, which was the beginning of a trend of me obnoxiously naming companies after myself!”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“In 2007, I decided to start a company (SmartRaise) on the side while I was doing my job full-time. I had no time. I had no money. I outsourced everything to the cheapest possible offshore vendor that I could find. Great decision! Sarcasm! Things got really painful, really fast!”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“Building a business has these really really long feedback cycles and you don’t really know if you’re successful or not in your day-to-day. But with programming, you get these beautiful short feedback loops! For me, it was always super satisfying.”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“Deciding to shift the majority of my time away from engineering to focus on building and growing the business allowed us to do better, over the course of the last two years.”
–Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“We ended raising a 5 million dollar series A, in May of 2013 because we were able to provide evidence that we were capable of spending money, while keeping those customer economics in-check. It was our biggest year, ever!”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“In 2014, we doubled our staff from 40 at the beginning of last year to 85 and moved from a 3,000 sq/ft space on Walnut St. to 13,000 sq/ft space on Chestnut St., which we have now completely filled. And, we raised a 16.5 million dollar series B just a month and a half ago from August Capital, which haven’t even started to deploy yet. We are just swinging the bat, really hard!”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“We are a meritocracy of nerds! That means the best ideas win and everybody’s really smart. The marriage of those two things is what makes RJMetrics a really excellent place to work.”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

“Pick your startup stereotype, in terms of office environment. We got the ping-pong table, we got the nap room and there’s bean bag chairs everywhere, but none of that crap matters. Those are outputs, not inputs to culture. The inputs for us are that we don’t hire people who aren’t intellectually honest, or admit when they are wrong.”
— Robert J. Moore, CEO & Cofounder of RJMetrics

« Older Entries

Next Entries »