Startups Archives

Serial Startup Development w/Kyle Riggle

Kyle Riggle, Partner at EWS, CEO of Orth Cleaners

Kyle Riggle wants your dirty laundry.

Seven months ago, the New York City-based entrepreneur bought Orth Cleaners, a dry cleaning business with locations in Coatesville and West Chester, Pennsylvania. As he delved into the industry, he found that traditional dry cleaners struggle with making the connection between customer and service.

“I want to disrupt the laundry model,” he says. “I should come to your house, pick up your laundry, clean it, and drop it back off. And the process should be enjoyable.”

He didn’t start out with the intention of cleaning up the laundry business, though.

Origins
“I’ve always been able to find passion in whatever I’m doing.”

Kyle’s entrepreneurial spirit first unfolded at Safeway, where he ended up after high school. “I’ve always been able to find passion in whatever I’m doing, even if it was chucking bananas out on the floor. I worked hard and was gung ho about it.” His enthusiasm quickly moved him up the ranks, managing stores and moving out to Seattle along the way. “I learned how to manage within a big corporation. I learned to delegate and to follow up.”

Safeway wasn’t enough, and after 3 years Kyle went back to school, completing a degree at Columbia University and then getting a job on Wall Street. “I hated it immediately,” he laughs.

Next Steps
“Joynture has allowed us to see a lot of cool ideas coming through the door.”

Kyle didn’t give up on New York City, getting a job with EWS, which had been an early investor in his very first startup venture, Advisoray. EWS focuses on helping clients become more effective by strategically using technology-based tools and processes.

His EWS team started seeking out some startups in which to invest. “We wanted to find a few that we thought had a good idea with a product we could get behind.”

Kyle and his team founded Joynture, a coworking space on Wall Street. “So far, the companies in the space have raised about 15 million dollars. With 30 private offices and extensive conference space, Joynture has allowed us to see a lot of cool ideas coming through the door.”

Cleaning Up
“One thing I found is that everyone has had at least one bad experience with dry cleaning.”

Kyle’s latest endeavor is reinvigorating Orth Cleaners through technology. Feeling that the traditional dry cleaning model was not very focused on customer service, he started asking around. “One thing I found is that everyone has had at least one bad experience with dry cleaning. I realized that being successful at it means you make as few mistakes as possible.”

One of his buddies from out of town told him about the text messages he receives from his dry cleaner when his clothes are ready. “I can schedule a delivery and they bring them to my work. It’s not memorable; it’s just easy. The dry cleaner is making a killing on me because I use it a lot more now.”

The lightbulb went off, and Kyle sought out a mentor, which he found in fish-purveyor-turned-dry-cleaning-entrepreneur Bill Albert. Bill had built an elaborate tech solution for his fish business, whose customers included big retailers like Costco. After he sold the fishing business, he applied the technology to his dry cleaning enterprise.

Bill flew his development crew out from San Francisco to help Kyle build Orth’s system. “Bill’s developers stayed on my couch in Brooklyn and drove to Pennsylvania with me,” Kyle recalls.

How it Works
Orth’s Android-based platform relies on heat-sealed barcodes applied to every garment to provide tracking information throughout the cleaning, packaging, and delivery process. Once a dry cleaning order is flagged as complete, the customer receives a text message with the option for delivery. Everything is handled through the system, including payment.

“New customers sign up with a few steps, but existing customers could, in theory, just leave a bag of their clothes outside my door and we’ll take care of it. That’s how easy it is.” Of course, they can also schedule their service through Orth’s web site.

For the future, Kyle plans keep building Orth, recently hiring a former Marine who is a fellow Columbia grad. Down the road, though? “I might tackle the parking problem in New York City.”

FaceCrunch Demo

FaceCrunch

Jonathon Beschen, Founder of FaceCrunch

What was the Problem that you planned to solve with FaceCrunch?

“There wasn’t a problem per se so much as new research that we found extremely intriguing. A/B advertising has been around for a long time but optimizing an ad based on people’s innate responses to the models seems less common and using that information to come up with formulaic answer to ‘will this image work for me’ was even more exciting. So if I were to frame a problem, I’d say a lack of understanding to how people naturally associate facial structures with industries.”
–Jonathon Beshchen, Founder of FaceCrunch

How does FaceCrunch hope to solve this problem?

“FC solves this problem by doing a full eigenface analysis on every image that passes through our system and cross compares it to every other face in the system. It then scores its ‘similarity’ and then those are associated with industry successes through A/B tests.”
–Jonathon Beshchen, Founder of FaceCrunch

What’s next for FaceCrunch?

“Next up is a massive open beta where we let in the masses to try our app, and increase the number of industries we support.”
–Jonathon Beshchen, Founder of FaceCrunch

Sometimes the Straightest Path is a Curved Line w/Tracey Welson-Rossman

Tracey Welson-Rossman, Chief Marketing Officer at Chariot Solutions and Founder of TechGirlz.org

@TechGirlz
@TWelsonRossman
@ChariotSolution

“If we don’t engage women and underrepresented groups, the U.S. is going to be in trouble. By 2020, there is going to be a job deficit of 1 million workers in the tech industry.”

Tracey Welson-Rossman is working hard to change those stats. She founded TechGirlz.org and chairs the Women’s Tech Summit in Philly, and is also the Chief Marketing Officer at Chariot Solutions, an IT consulting firm. She wasn’t always passionate about tech, though. “My path in my career has been highly curved. If you’d asked me what I wanted to be when I graduated, I’d have said an executive at a high-level women’s clothing store, married to my high school sweetheart. None of that happened.”

First Steps
“I’m a type A, sometimes a type A+.”

Her first job was for Philly clothing maven Strawbridge and Clothier, where she loved the excitement but not the striation of the corporate ladder. “If you were innovating, it didn’t matter. I’m a type A, sometimes a type A+. I’ve always been rewarded for doing good work. What I was being told here, though, was that I had to wait my turn. And that didn’t sit well with me.”

She moved on, joining QVC when the company was in the beginning stages of building its empire. It didn’t take her long to realize it wasn’t a good fit. “I was seen as a maverick. Which was not a compliment there.”

On the Road to Entrepreneurship
“The people you work with are really important to your overall happiness, whether you realize it or not.”

ValPak
Tracey reconnected with one of her old profs at Drexel, which led her to her first foray into entrepreneurship, working in sales for ValPak. She applied her work ethic to the new industry. “I’m a planner. I planned my first birth to be between sales deadlines.” Within a year, she was making more money than she had in retail. And yet ValPak left her restless, too, which taught her the lesson of making sure you understand what drives your employees.

KangaKab
Her next move was to buy KangaKab, a NJ-based transportation system for kids, in 1996. “At the time, running the company was the most challenging thing I’d ever done.” But Tracey was a bit lonely. Although she liked the people she worked with, she felt she couldn’t share with them. The feeling was a harbinger for her transition to the next phase of her career, and her life.

She sold KangaKab in 2000. “If I hadn’t bought KangaKab, I would’ve just rolled through my career being ordinary.”

You Can’t Do It on Your Own
“In the team, there is power. Vision will only get you so far. Execution is where you fall down.”

Something clicked when she walked into the offices of Skylight Systems, an accounting software firm just down the street from her house. “I felt like I’d known most of the people in a prior life.” The move led to her latest venture, Chariot. “We had an incredible team there but not a business. So we decided to build one. The company needed Java development, and we had some developers who were getting really good at it.”

Chariot started out when the economy was terrible. “Starting at the bottom, you have nowhere to go but up.”

This July, Chariot will celebrate its 13th anniversary. “It’s a team effort. We have a focused mission and message, a strong culture. It’s not all been perfect. We’ve made mistakes, we’ve gotten lucky, and we’re still here.”

Activism and the Philly Tech Community
“This is Philly. We don’t flip companies here. We build them.”

Always passionate about Philly, Tracey is a founder and board member of Philly Startup Leaders, as well as chair of the Women in Tech Summit. She also started TechGirlz, a nonprofit that supports 11 to 14 year-old girls learning about careers in tech.

“We’re creating a community of women and girls to change the conversation about what’s going on. At Chariot, we see this parade of men coming in, but not women. TechGirlz gives us a way to talk about that, and to solve the gender disparity in tech.”

The program has been growing. At their first event this year, they had a 50-person waitlist. “We have some of the girls who started with us in middle school teaching for us now that they’re in high school. Girls want to be there, even if it’s their parents making them come.”

Tracey’s measure of success for TechGirlz is eventual obsolescence. “My goal is that TechGirlz won’t exist in 5 years. That there won’t be a gender issue. We’re creating this culture where girls belong here.”

ClusterPuck 99 Demo with The PHL Collective

Post #ClusterPuck99 Demo Interview

@PHLCollective

What was the problem that ClusterPuck 99 hoped to solve?

“We set out to develop a game that brought back local multiplayer experiences where friends gather in a room and play games. We wanted to take the isolation out of current games and throw it back to our youth when internet connected games weren’t a thing.”
–Nick Madonna, Founder of The PHL Collective

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How did you guys go about solving the problem?

“There were a number of design goals we set with the game and hitting them was paramount to creating a successful product. Gamers who enjoy local multiplayer experiences look for a certain number of features that help enable the party atmosphere. We wanted to make sure we could satisfy those needs while also doing something new and exciting. Outside of features we wanted to boil down the gameplay into a simple loop and button combination. The game needed to be easy to pick up but hard to master. This design choice helped bring new players in and easily introduced them to the core mechanics.”
–Nick Madonna, Founder of The PHL Collective

What’s next for ClusterPuck 99?

“Next up we will be releasing ClusterPuck 99 on Xbox One. It’s a huge task and we’re currently working our butts off to make sure we deliver the best ClusterPuck experience on consoles.”
–Nick Madonna, Founder of The PHL Collective

Jesse Piersol’s Office Hours Testimonial

We’ve asked WCU Professor and Founder of 16 Lloyd Productions, Jesse Piersol, to share her Office Hours experiences with us. It’s our hope that connecting with the right people will save your startup time, energy and other finite resources that propel your business, and ultimately the community forward.

“I started a small independent film production company last summer and needed some guidance on the business aspects of it. I scheduled some Office Hours time, which got me thinking about my business in a completely different way. It probably seems obvious, but I never realized the power of networking or the importance of building the community you want to eventually serve. My time at the Lab started me on that journey. I began attending all of the events. At each one, I would meet at least one person who had salient knowledge or connections, and most importantly, wanted to share that knowledge.”
— Jesse Piersol, Founder of 16 Lloyd Productions

“My involvement with the Lab grew, and I began working on Indie Film Nite, a free monthly event that features a local filmmaker and his/her work. Today, I also blog about the Tuesday morning startup meetups and interview tech entrepreneurs about what it takes to be successful in the job hunt process. It all started with that one day when I decided to see what was going on at 23 N. Walnut St.”
— Jesse Piersol, Founder of 16 Lloyd Productions

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