“Funding Your Company’s Growth”

RobinHoodVentures
@RobinHoodVent

“There’s one thing that eclipses everything else in the failure of a startup company and that is cash flow. — Do you have the money to pay the bills for another month, another week, another day, until the next check comes in from one of your customers? The challenge is to find a customer that is going to pay you on a recurring basis so that you have some kind of predictable revenue, some sort of stability.”
— Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“My wife is an interior designer and I’ve always had an interest in real estate, so we decided that we were going start a ‘mom and pop’ business. We started buying older town houses in established neighborhoods, renovating them and renting them out for a year or two years to people who’ve immigrated to the United States to work in Delaware.” — Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“I decided that I wanted to look at the growth of small companies and be able to participate in taking companies from the very early startup stages to the point where they became successful and ongoing businesses.”
— Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“In 1983, the harvard business review published an article that became a classic. It encompassed the five stages of a company’s growth. Based on the Harvard Business review’s inspiration, I’ve reevaluated it from the perspective of funding a company.” — Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“No matter how well run the company is, no matter how much you’re able to use revenues coming in to grow your business, at some point you need an infusion of cash from the outside… at some point you have to maximize your company’s potential.”
— Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“Early stage investing is what some people call it angel investing. I was always feel a little uncomfortable about the term Angel investing. It sounds like we’re going to fly in from heaven and hand out a bag of money. The term came from the early days of Broadway, when people were looking get a musical started and they couldn’t get the funding. So, the entrepreneurial community took that term and ran with it.” — Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“I refer to it (angel investing) as early stage investing because I think it is a little more direct. Also, I think it is important to clarify that those of us who are investors typically are not investing purely because we love to see the next generation of entrepreneurs succeed. That is one of the reasons, but we also would like to make money too.” — Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“Robin Hood Ventures was started about fifteen years ago in Philadelphia. It is one of the largest early stage investment partnerships in the Philadelphia area. We invest in startup companies that are within an hour or two drive from Philadelphia. We want to be able to see them frequently and get to know them. Our goal is to have investors work with entrepreneurs to build great companies.”
— Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“We invest money and the money is very important, but we also want to make sure that we’re not just giving money. We make sure that all of our investors are able to act as mentors, advisors, capable of giving direction, join the board of directors and become part of the growth and success of that company.”
— Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“The liquidity event is a point within a company’s growth that you can take that investment, that you’ve made as an investor and turn it liquid.”
— Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“We do invest in pre-revenue. We do like if we already have paying customers but we do invest before that stage.” — Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“Typically, you’re going to have competitors. Having aggressive competitors, having big competitors means that you’re doing something right. It means you’re going after a market that people really care about. The question is, do you have some kind of advantage over your competitors? Does your product solve their problem in a more elegant way?” — Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“If you’re in a business that has no competitors, you’re either way ahead of the curve, of you’re in a business within a market that everyone else has figured out and nobody wants.” — Craig Schroeder, Robin Hood Ventures

“I started this company back in 2006. And of course, the Genesis was well before that. It was after Graduating from the University of Florida and then the University of Delaware that I started to think, ‘What am I going to do when I grow up?’. I got my Masters at the University of Delaware’s Longwood Program, which is a partnership between UDEL and Longwood Gardens. But I jumped shipped out of public gardens.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“When I was going the school, the textbooks said that compost will never work as a soil amendment because its too variable and it cant be used in production horticulture. I didn’t agree with that!”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“In all the major horticultural schools the historical mantra was ‘better living through chemicals’. In the gardening world, I tended to disagree. I am personally an organic gardener, and I think that works better. To be in tune with nature will harvest increased yields and as well as more nutrient dense foods.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“I started this company to provide a more earth friendly and sustainable option for gardeners. No matter what you buy, your voting with your dollars. Offering an organic option that was based in biology, as opposed to the dominant medium of the day, which was peat moss.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“Environmental sustainability is a core value of Organic Mechanics. It guides and shapes everything that we do. We use biodiesel for our equipment, wind power for our electric, we up-cycle or repurpose our pallets that we receive material on for our trade show displays.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“The Genesis of the company grew out of an interest to provide an earth friendly option because there really wasn’t one at the time. Everybody’s heard of Scott’s miracle grow. They have millions of dollars in ad champaign. Im sure everyone here has heard that name because they’ve been doing potting soil for the past 40 years. When we started potting soil was our first and only product. we had a one trick pony; one product and one size.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“Our very first product was a premium blend of potting soil. We had three guys design the bag at the same time, that was a bad idea! Because the primary buyer at garden centers is female, between the ages of 20 and 60. As a startup, you do all your research and you might really think you know what your getting into, but once you get into it and realize, “Wow! There’s a lot of stuff I didn’t know, or even think of’.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“Our big break came from just doing what we all have to do as a startup; keep our eyes open, take chances and jump when the time comes. I was shopping at a Whole Foods.. and I saw a little 8.5 x 11 flyer on a bulletin board that read, ‘Are you a local producer? Would you like to sell to Whole Foods? If so, email this person.’ So I did. I took a shot. One thing led to another and they gave us Philly region stores first, which had seven stores at the time.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“It (the product) did pretty well in the first year. So, they gave us the two southern jersey stores. And we just slowly kept expanding and expanding and expanding and expanding, over the years. Now we’re sold at every Whole Foods in the Mid Atlantic, Mid West, North East and North Atlantic. Most recently we just acquired the Florida Whole Foods stores.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“If you google search, or who ever you use (maybe, DuckDuckGo)’Organic Potting Soil’, generally we’re come up in the top three. And currently, we’re at the top. We trade spots with Home Depot, or with Grow Organic, which from valley farm supply in CA. Its a huge company. But Scotts is no where to be found, which is good for us. We’re no in 350 stores, nationwide.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“We also make Organic Mechanics ourselves in a warehouse facility, in Mogreena (Modeena, PA). Its in an industrial complex with Waste Oil Recyclers out there and a few other companies out there as well. If you’ve ever eaten at Avalon, those beautiful wooden tables are made by the guys at Philly Block & Board… But, we blend and bag, gather all the raw materials, mix the recipes, bag it up, palletize it and ship it out. We use some distributers, but mostly we ship direct. By going direct we cut out the middle-man. Many would say that as of now the distribution model is crashing, not only in our industry but in other industries.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“We sell to the  garden centers, we sell to the  natural food stores, but we have a huge growing contingent of landscape architects, landscape designers  and that field is growing due to Philadelphia. We have doubled-down in Philly (Yay Philly!) All the containers from Broad St, form City Hall to  the Avenue Yards, towards the Stadiums that’s Organic Mechanics. All the way around 30th St Station that’s all Organic Mechanics. We provided the soil for Split Rocker, a huge three-story, a 30ftx30ft installation that has annuals placed in it, and we’ve done soil for tons of other custom projects.”
— Mark Highland, @OrganicMechanics

“Story Slam actually started with a tweet”
–Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“Story Slam is an event where anyone can tell a story based on the theme of the night. The only other criteria is that the story should be true, there are no props, notes or music and it should be no longer than five minutes.”
— Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“A panel of three judges are selected at the beginning of the Slam and its is up to them to decide the best story of the night.” — Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“If you win the Story Slam you’re given the coveted Story Slam mug, and are entered in the chance to win the Grand Slam” — Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“If you win the Grand Slam, your name becomes immortalized on the Story Slam cup. I don’t play-up the prizes because I don’t want it to become too competitive. I want it to be about building community and friendships.”
— Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“In Story Slams, you don’t know what people are going to say, but with our event Center Stage theme is a little more heavy, so storytellers are vetted and work more closely with a producer.” — Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“Story Slam is in its fifth year, and we’re really excited to have such a strong following at this stage.” — Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“To celebrate the fifth year of Story Slam we are creating an anthology. I’ve selected stories that resonated the most with me.”
— Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“The last 14 Story Slams have sold out, it is to a crowd of only 70 people in West Chester, so they sell out pretty quickly.”
— Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“I recently wrote a novel, Shoplandia. It was inspired by my time as a TV producer at QVC.” — Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“The next Center Stage event is themed ‘Faith’, and the next Story Slam is themed ‘Scars’, which should be real interesting.”
— Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“Nowadays, when the story slams end, people stick around for another hour or so at least just to hang out and connect with our community via social media and become friends.” — Jim Breslin, @wcstoryslam @delcostoryslam

“I think it was Brenae Brown that said, ‘the birthplace of all innovation and creativity is vulnerability’. So, we have to start by saying, ‘What are the risks?’ and accept that we might fall on our faces. Mistakes are a precondition to being an innovator.”
— Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“When interviewed, the primitivist movement said, ‘We don’t paint the world as we see it, we paint the world as we want it to be.’ I believe that part of the innovation that drives our work @SosteNica. We’re trying to get to a better place for the people of Nicaragua.” — Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“But, what is innovation? Heraclitus said, ‘you never step in the same river twice’, which means what? Well, (it means) the world is constantly changing, but we as people, are looking for stability, we’re looking for sameness and that is inauthentic to the nature of change. What is authentic is innovation. Noticing that today is different than what it was yesterday, and how am I going to respond differently?”
— Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“To innovate is great, but its even better if we innovate with a purpose. The Dalai Lama said, ‘the purpose of life is happiness’. Socrates, 2500 years before that said, ‘Everyone is driven by a longing to be happy’. We (@SosteNica) are innovating for happiness.” — Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“In United States today, we spend 5% of annual income buying food, based off of an average American’s annual earnings. The French spend twice that, 10% and Italians spend even more %15. The Nicaraguan government estimated that it would cost an average of $280 a month for a family for five Nicaeagua to spend on basic foods (beans and rice, etc.).”
— Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“The problem is that everyone has very low income in Nicaragua. People make about 120 bucks a month, two adults working full-time just to make enough money to spend 100% of both their incomes on food… So, we decided to open up seed banks, teach them to diversify their crops, build water catchments, and initiate a micro-loan lending system in order to help change this disparity.”
— Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“People don’t think about crop diversification. We taught Nicaraguans to plants different kinds of crops, so that people can survive one or two bad crops, rather than investing all their time and money on one crop that may or may not succeed.”
— Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“We also taught people how to produce home-made fertilizer. Rather than spraying harsh chemicals on their crops, we showed them how to process cow manure to make fertilizer organically.” — Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“We also setup a seed bank and decided to lend people plantain corns, instead of money.” — Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“Daniella Zapata owned a weaving company that was unable to make their product because she lacked the funds to run her business. We lended her $500, which by lending standards was a small amount of money, a micro-loan. They set up these looms and in four months they gave us 500 dollars of product … And 24 years later, the women in weaving co-op no longer need loans and are still running their business.”
— Dr. Alan Wright, @SosteNica

“I’d like to end with a poem from one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver:

‘My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers,
there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast;
there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old?
Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young,
and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still
and learning to be astonished.'”

Stash
@StashApps
@aschwabe

“I’d like to take a moment to talk about reinventing yourself, drawing from a story of my wife’s experience. My wife came from a small town in Lancaster township. One of those towns that serves meat and potatoes for meals, every meal, that’s kinda it … She went to WCU for Business and Finance, but her passion was really in food … She had to make an intentional choice to reinvent herself. The cards were not stacked for her to be a french pastry chef, but she made that (intentional) choice and over a period of time, through trial and error, family tastings and so forth, she has now developed a relationship with restaurants in Lancaster that request for her ‘Famous Cheesecake’.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Anybody Futurama fans in here? Got any Futurama Fans in here? Alright, A couple people. I’m a big Futurama fan. I’m that Big of a geek! (audience laughs).” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“I have a lot of background in encryption and data security. My previous company, Point.io, which is where I worked when I became involved in the Lab (Walnut St Labs). I’ve since hired a management team and transitioned all the control. Now that they’re all up and running, A and B round of funding, I got jazzed on something new and jumped out.”
— Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“(I’m) Mostly focusing on mobile, social and privacy, which is interesting stuff. I use to do some FBI help, hunting down sexual predators, about 8-10 years ago. It was interesting, but there was also some scary stuff. Now, Im official hacker ‘Numero-Uno’ at the new startup, Stash! And I’m an open-source software and privacy advocate.”
— Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“I love this quote from Jerry Seinfeld, ‘Whatever the opposite of planned-obsolescence is, that’s what I’m into’. What a great quote from Jerry Seinfeld!

And there’s a different perspective on this (quote) from a neat new book that I’ve been reading. Anyone who is interested in reading science fiction, (it depicts) crazy technology that actually has done a pretty good job of predicting nifty new things in the internet culture; Check out Cryptonomicon. Incredible book!” — Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“We’re ultimately challenged that without the ability to adapt, we may have to face the possibility of being squeezed out and be completely left behind. Technology is an obvious example. How crazy has smart-phones tech changed in the last ten years, Right? If your in that industry and you haven’t kept up, you’re irrelevant now! Every industry is like that, not many move as fast as technology, but it’s a reality.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Today is a chance to take a new step forward in reinventing yourself. The truth is, we should all be learning. We should all be continue to be adapting because the world changes around us.”
— Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Ronald Reagan was a B-movie actor, he was in westerns, and they were ok, but he ended up radically changing things in the government. He shook everything up! … He was a man who reinvented himself, in a major way.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“(For) National geographic, 1888 was there first magazine. In 1914 they did their first color photographs. And, in the 70s, 80s and 90’s it became increasingly obvious that national geographic was that thing on the bookshelf at your grandparents house. They weren’t relevant to a new age. They reinvented themselves because they didn’t want to die! So, they relaunched the national geographic channel, in 2001. They even broke some of the rules in the process. They found new ways to excite people about learning.” — Andrew Schwabe, FOunder @Stash.my

“Did you know that Nintendo started in 1989, selling playing cards? That’s ridiculous!(Big laugh from the audience) Playing cards! Even more crazy, they actually ran a taxi service. In 1977, they came out with this thing called TV-game 6, which no one bought, but it was a massive leap forward in technology. And then 1980, Donkey Kong, which made all of us loose our quarters. And Lastly, NES in ’85, which just changed the game! A far, far, leap from their playing card days.”
— Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“The whole idea of being true to yourself is to say, if your going to enjoy life, if your going to be able to sleep at night, if you actually want to become anyone of significance, the most important thing you can do (for yourself) is take care of yourself, and make sure that you’re the kind of person that you want to be. Do you want to be that person who people look up to?”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“One of the most critical aspects of reinventing yourself is tapping into your passions!”
— Andrew Schwabe, Founder of Stash.my

“Personally make an effort to reinvent yourself. In the process of intentionally shifting your priorities will change the game. Commit to yourself to learn new things. Reading is a great way to get inspired and start to learn new things.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“You want to be able to pivot, to use a technical term, intentional choice is essential to this change.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Accept failure. It’s just an another step towards success. This is a problem for most entrepreneurs. We’re typically our own worst critic. And when you fail at something, it’s really easy to have a pity party for a long time. Its also really easy to give up and take a job somewhere, which in some cases is necessary.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @stash.my

“Failure is an opportunity to learn. You will fail, otherwise your’e not trying. When you try you’re going to have failures. Learning from them makes you a better person and gives you more confidence.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @stash.my

“In order to make a successful pivot, continually test your strategies and theories. We are coming out of an age where we’re overall protective about ideas and some of us are even paranoid that people are going to steal our ideas, which really fights the idea collaborative growth.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Once you realize that everyone you talk to knows a lot more than you in certain areas, then everyone becomes a gold mine of knowledge.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“You have to take risks and you have to learn to trust if your ever going to get anywhere. There is a balance. If your writing a patent, don’t publish online for obvious reasons. And, don’t publish your source-code if your early stage.”
— Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Don’t forget to acknowledge your weaknesses and learn form other’s success. I do know that I don’t know it all, and that’s critical.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder of @Stash

“Stash is the name of the new company that I just started, Dana (Hoffer) is my new partner. The two of us are tag-teaming this, and Im really excited about it! The idea itself gelled quickly, a lot quicker than previous companies that I’ve done.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“I had to make turn to now become an expert in cryptography, cryptology. I’ve had to continually educate myself and notice my blind-spots. It takes going to events and have people ask questions that I don’t know how to answer to.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Why does Stash exist? Well, we use to think that security on the internet just rocked and rolled. We relied on SSL and we were pretty sure that things were all together. We were OK that our kids posted pictures of themselves and their location all the time. We just thought, ‘this is social networking, this is the new way of the world’. All of the sudden, internet security became a bigger problem.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Hacked and Spied On. Lets review some examples. Passwords get hacked; 1.2 billion usernames and passwords, 2 million twitter and facebook passwords stolen. If this doesn’t scare you, then I don’t know what does! Then wiki-leaks and Snowden leaks went public, and we came to realize that the people who had warned us for years that the government was spying on us were validated and we said, ‘wholly crap, they’re right!” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“No Privacy. Check this out, google glasswares can steal your passwords at a distance. It triangulates the angle of your fingers when your tapping at the front screen. With my google glass I can record it and figure out your password. This is just the technology that got published online, that we know about. What about all the stuff that’s being made in China that we don’t know about.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“There’s a new handset that is being manufactured in china. It’s an android. Someone did a dissection on it, took it all apart and found that inside was a backdoor that feeds every piece of information, from every app and sends it over to a Chinese server for big-data collection. That’s obviously not a documented feature!”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“The Prism Project is what was revealed by the NSA whistle blowers, there are actually multiple (NSA Whistle Blowers). Edward Snowden gets the medal for being the most prominent one. They (the federal government) are able to take all this information, collected directly from these services (Major Multi-National Conglomerates). 2007 is when Microsoft joined the prism program. That’s ancient in terms of internet life-cycle! And Google joined (Prism) in 2009, which why everyone is so freaked out by all the data google has!

And so, we’re finding out that all this stuff that we’re relying on is no longer secure.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Anyone know what photo dna is? No? It’s a Microsoft product that takes images and it flattens them into two colors, black and white. It chops them up and turns every image into a number, into a hash. It then uses that library of hashes to scan people’s email, and report offensive content. Cool that they’re actually able to can clean up that type of stuff (child pornography, piracy, etc.) but the process or concept of how they can do that scares the heck out of me. Because when will they decide it’s not limited to images, or offensive images? When will they start scanning hashes of all the rest of your content?” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“You guys have heard of the ‘Right to be forgotten’? Its been all over the news. I think the ‘right to be forgotten’ is kind of a big fat joke! The concept is right. It was the right answer of what the people wanted to hear. But the truth is, asking a service like google to just forget you is like one of us calling up the FBI and asking them to drop all their illegal phone taps on us.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“So, is the answer to be anonymous?” The truth is, if we allow truly anonymous stuff we will actually be causing more problems. It opens a door to the dark-side of the internet.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“TOR is another system. TOR is another way for you to anonymize or encrypt and obfuscate your connection on your computer. The Kremlin (Russia) put out a bounty, large volumes of cash for people who can provide info to crack who is using TOR. Why? because the government is gonna get in (there). Its based on standards technology, and so its only a matter of time. And now, they have the best hackers in the world on it.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“We think anonymous peer-validated for data integrity is the answer.
We need to allow things like whistle-blowing, anonymous submissions to know entries. We need technologies that encourage responsible use.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“We think that social content needs to stay social, and never get collected for big data.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“We don’t have all the answers today, but we actively searching for those answers.”
— Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Stash is the world’s first peer-validated ephemeral messaging platform influenced by bitcoin and TOR (https://stash.my)” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“We’re working towards what we think is the holy grail.” –Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“What we’re building here is not an app… we’re building a platform, which enables people to build apps.”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my

“Be the next Nintendo! Dream big, never give up and keep learning!”
–Andrew Schwabe, Founder @Stash.my