It’s always wonderful to hear about someone taking cutting edge technology and making it available to people who might not normally be able to access it. Such is the case with Aron Schwarzkopf, founder and CEO of Leaf.

Leaf is an online platform that aggregates multiple cloud-based functions and makes them accessible to small and medium sized, brick & mortar, storefront businesses via one easy to use tablet. The goal of the business is to streamline the ability of merchants to take payments as well as track inventory, sales, customer satisfaction, loyalty programs and a whole host of other business management tools, using one affordable unit. They’ve recently added their own app store, to make their product even more comprehensive in scope. Schwarzkopf’s goal is to bring the technology of the mobile commerce industry to small businesses.

Although his company is often seen primarily as a mobile commerce company, Aron never imagined himself as headed for the payments industry. When he left his home in Ecuador to study at Boston’s Babson College, his interest was in entrepreneurship and technology. While attaining his business degree there, he began developing the idea for Leaf, even filing some initial patents. Upon his graduation in 2010 during the midst of the economic downturn, he launched his new company as a completely bootstrapped operation, headquartered from his friend’s couch, where he  lived for nearly a year.

Leaf was formally incorporated in January of 2011. Shortly thereafter, Schwarzkopf brought in co-founder and COO Sebastian Castro Galnares, who also contributed to the bootstrapped operation. Since that time, they have raised their first million dollars in funding and expanded their operations to include 30 employees. Although they started with clients in the Boston area, they have since expanded their operations nationally, and business is growing so fast that they expect to double their staff by the end of the year.

As a first time entrepreneur, Schwarzkopf likens the relentless challenges to his previous experience training as a boxer. “You let people throw punches at you, day after day, getting hit, knocked to the ground multiple times a day, and getting back up…” Amidst regular 18 hour days and the process of being judged by potential funders, he has learned the essential need for hard work, humility and conviction.

Like other entrepreneurs I have interviewed, Aron has learned the value of creating a close-knit working group of like-minded professionals. Although he has celebrated many successful milestones that have brought great satisfaction to his entire team, the most rewarding moments have been small ones, such as the day he realized just how important his recently expanded group of 15 had become to him. “You detach from your social life and spend so much time and interaction and share so much with your peers, they really become like your family.”

Indeed, Schwarzkopf’s advice to other young entrepreneurs always circles back to just this thing. He notes, “I’ve made a ridiculous amount of mistakes since I started…” clearly adding to the challenge, since, “…when you’re an entrepreneur, you not only have to believe in yourself, you have to convince others to believe in you.” Amidst all of this personal challenge, he maintains that his greatest asset is the human capital contained in the team he has assembled. He advises paying particular attention to the choices you make in this regard, since,“…those are the people you are basically going to get married to for the next five years.”

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

Lucas Mendieta’s story is unique among the array of young entrepreneur chronicles I’ve rolled out on these pages. About five and a half years ago, in his mid-20’s and without the benefit of a college degree, Mendieta launched Cutting Edge Elite, a New York City event staffing agency. He and co-founder Nathan Perry have since grown the company to be one of the top firms in town, regularly providing catering and support staff for well known fashion, design and A-list celebrity events nationwide. I have worked personally with this CEE several times over the last few years, and can attest to the quality of their work. It’s one of the reasons I was inspired to share this particular CEO profile…

Mendieta’s rise to success is a reminder of the power of sheer grit and determination. Born in New Jersey and raised in South Carolina by his construction worker dad and factory worker mom, he had his sights set on NYC, where he moved after “barely making it through high school.” Starting at the bottom of the employment food chain, he worked as a mail room assistant, a janitor on Wall St. and a box mover on Craigslist, until he fell into freelance event work, ending up in a position at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY.

During his time at the Capitol, Mendieta not only discovered his love for special events, but his talent for managing and dealing with people. A social butterfly finds his wings! Pretty soon, with little more than $1500 and a laptop purchased for him by his friend’s mother, Lucas decided to launch his own company. In fact, the Capitol Theater would later become his first client.

His partnership with Perry was also the result of a random assignment. Mendieta had been hired for a stint as a cater waiter, or so he thought. When he arrived at the job, he was told that he was scheduled to work behind the bar, for which he had absolutely no training. Fortunately, he was thrown in with the more experienced Perry, who handled all the mixed drink orders, while Lucas was able to manage the straightforward beer and wine requests. It was the start of a great working relationship.

Mendieta quickly realized that Perry, who graduated from Duke University with a degree in political science and economics, would make a great business partner. They soon parlayed their continued work for various caterers into opportunities to showcase their budding company. Slowly but surely, they earned the trust of these early clients, and word of mouth began to take over. In fact, up until a couple of months ago, the growth of their business has developed entirely through referrals, with no outbound marketing whatsoever.

Cutting Edge Elite provides full service event staffing, including waiters, bartenders, kitchen assistants, promo models, street teams and production assistants. Their clients consist of caterers, event planners, hotels and private chefs. What makes them unique is the fact that they invest considerable time training all of their staff in the nuances of special events and most particularly, in the needs of the guests as well as the clients.

Another distinction that Lucas makes is that he hires staff primarily for their personality (you can’t teach that!) and intelligence. Although there may be upwards of five to ten companies working behind the scenes to produce all the elements of a particular event, most guests, and even the clients, will judge the success of the evening on the interaction they have with the staff who are serving their drinks and passing their hors d’oeuvres. The folks that Mendieta hires are on the front line – the entire fate of every vendor’s hopes for continued business with this or other clients often rests on the shoulders of the person passing out the canapes. It’s important, therefore, that these individuals be not only good looking (and yes, his people are definitely easy on the eye), but quick thinking, upbeat and ultra-sensitive to the needs of the folks they are serving. Mendieta’s people succeed on all accounts.

Believe it or not, the biggest challenge in this particular line of work is receivables. Employees of the agency must be paid on a regular basis, while clients can often take from 30-60 days to pay their bills. The problem of cash flow necessitated Mendieta continuing to work freelance jobs of his own during the first two and a half years of his company’s existence, just to be able to make payroll! Fortunately, he and Perry have since instituted a stricter payment policy, and he’s been able to give up the freelance work and run his own company full time. But it certainly is a cautionary tale for others seeking to get into this line of work (and a note to clients to have a little compassion for the people who are working so hard to make your events a success)…

In addition to Mendieta and Perry, Cutting Edge Elite now employs three full time administrative staff and about 350 event freelancers. On a typical weekend, they might have twenty events taking place, with hundreds of their people out in the field. Scheduling and transportation logistics can become extremely demanding, especially when there are last minute changes.

But Mendieta takes it all in stride. Although it took a little time for people to take him and his partner seriously (when they started out, they were as young as many of the people they were hiring), his serious work ethic and commitment to treating his staff with integrity have paid off. His clients are extremely loyal to him, and his company’s reputation in the industry has landed them events with brands the likes of H&M, Saks Fifth Avenue, Next Magazine, Desigual, Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

Although his work regularly brings him into contact with an extraordinary array of celebrities, politicians and other influential people at a variety of spectacular venues and private residences, Lucas cautions that the work itself is not glamorous. It’s production! And that means long hours, grinding, behind the scenes preparation, and a million tiny details to attend to, in order to bring off a seamless evening that looks as though it happened effortlessly. For someone his age breaking into a competitive field, it also meant having to prove himself to allies and skeptics alike.  “Be prepared to have a lot of doors slammed in your face – a lot of people saying no to you…”

Of course, if you have the passion and the drive, and are willing to go for it… well… you’ve heard this story before, right?

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

Sometimes great companies are formed in a very straightforward manner. Identify a problem, come up with a solution and then implement it. Oh wait. That’s how it works in our dreams… In real life, we all know it involves many more steps, and a bunch of unexpected twists and turns. However, once in a while, the elements do come together in an exquisite case of perfect timing. This seems to be the case with the latest company I’m profiling, Plated.

I recently chatted with CEO Nick Taranto about the deceptively simple model he and his co-founder Josh Hix have developed to solve the problem of not having enough time to experience the joy of cooking good meals at home. Plated offers would-be gourmands an easy way to create home cooked recipes designed by top chefs, in under 30 minutes. Their online service offers home delivery of pre-portioned ingredients to delicious dishes, along with step-by-step instructions on how to prepare them. The selections are affordable and change weekly.

Clearly, it’s a case of the right idea at just the right moment. First of all, people have become more comfortable buying food online, and there appears to be a trend of rediscovering the value of healthy home cooking across the board. Then you have the rise of the locavore movement, and America’s incredible obsession with celebrity chefs. Into this mix comes a service that combines all of these elements in a neat and affordable package. It’s a brilliant bit of timing.

The success of the company speaks for itself. After an initial launch in June of 2012, they went through a major reboot in October. Since then they’ve seen weekly double digit growth. Currently employing ten full time staff to manage their operations throughout the northeast,  from Washington, DC to north of Boston and out to the middle of Pennsylvania, they are ramping up to a nationwide expansion planned for the end of this summer.

Taranto’s background mapped a circuitous path to his current role of helping to redefine the way that America eats. After obtaining a BA from Dartmouth and spending a year in Indonesia running a microfinance group, he returned to the US to earn an MBA at Harvard Business School and an MPA at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2010. He then enlisted in the marine corps as an infantry officer where he did a year of active duty before taking a job on Wall Street. After a year in what he said was “… the wrong life choice,” he joined forces with fellow Harvard alum Hix, and they spent about four months developing the idea for Plated.

Like many other entrepreneurs before him, he cites the challenge of scaling to growth as an interesting one. “How to physically get distribution set up and on the digital side, how to acquire, retain and engage customers,” remains one of the biggest problems he grapples with on a daily basis. Nearly a year in, and it all still feels like “…just a giant lab experiment.”

In what is now becoming a strong tradition, Taranto follows a lean startup methodology that follows the familiar pattern of “hypothesize, test and either fail or succeed,” rinse, and repeat. His internal mantra is that there is “…no punishment for failing, only punishment for not taking risks.” The name of the game is innovation. Every. Single. Day.

Another thing that the Plated team has going for them is our cultural obsession with sharing food – everything from “recipes on Pinterest to food porn on Instagram” which of course is then posted on Twitter and Facebook. It’s a virtuous sharing cycle that Taranto hopes to simultaneously contribute to and monetize. It would appear that the market is ripe for expansion in this regard. According to Nick, the non-restaurant food industry is worth about $1 trillion, with only 1% of that happening online. In the UK, this figure is closer to 5%. This implies a US industry worth about $30-60 billion set to emerge over the next few years. He aims to capture a big piece of that market.

What are some of the interesting things he’s learned since Plated was launched? First off, that his company’s user demographic is largely female, between the ages of 25-35. He and his team have been dreaming up some interesting ways to expand that base, such as redefining date night. (If you ask me, I see a great opportunity here for a lot of really smart men to start cooking for their women… You’re welcome.)

Taranto’s also been really amazed by the deeply personal experiences customers have shared, “…people posting to Facebook thousand word soliloquies about how we’re improving and changing their lives and reconnecting them with friends and family over food – that’s very rewarding… and a big part of the reason behind why we continue to get up in the morning and continue to try and build this.”

In the meantime, Taranto echoes the advice of so many other successful entrepreneurs – don’t overthink, and get ready to be flexible! In the spirit of a famous 19^th century military quote, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy,”* he offers, “No business plan survives first contact with the customer.”

* attributed to the Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800-1891)

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

In keeping with the theme of my last interview with In Good Company’s Adelaide Lancaster, as well as one I did a little while back with Killstress Design’s Minglie Chen, I’m profiling another small business founder – friend and colleague, Liz King. Liz’s NYC based event planning company, Liz King Events, focuses on technology integrated events as live components to the branding efforts of smaller companies and organizations. She has also developed a number of programs aimed at developing relationships and sharing resources within the NYC event planning community and beyond (which is how she and I began working together a couple of years ago).

For the first two and a half years, King ran her company at the same time as she held down a full time position planning events for the Columbia University Career Development office. Her story echoes that of many would-be entrepreneurs – people in jobs that no longer satisfy them, but who crave the opportunity to pursue a course that better fulfills their passions. Their desire to strike out on their own, in light of the financial realities of survival, may seem difficult to fulfill. However, Liz’s passion for creating a new company was built on the foundations of a strong work ethic coupled with a strategic understanding of her industry. Throw in a little good timing, and you’ve got all the makings of an archetypical American success story.

Like many profiled in these pages before her, Liz did not start out with designs on the business where she ultimately ended up. She attended Nyack College in Rockland County, NY, where she majored in psychology. After graduation, she got a job in a counseling center running 12-step groups, and she quickly learned that this was not the right field for her. As a stopgap, she took an administrative position at Columbia University. When the idea of event planning was suggested to her, she did as so many other planners I know seem to do and realized that she had actually been planning events for quite some time. The idea of making money doing this thing she loved to do began to take hold.

The next part of this story is part luck and part diligence. Liz had always been an early technology adopter, joining AOL chat groups before anyone else she knew was even online, being the first one on the block with a beeper, and later a smart phone; her inherent interest in tech positioned her nicely to be on the cutting edge of this area down the road. She was also in the right place at the right time when it came to social media. In fact, it was her early forays into Twitter that were largely responsible for formulating the idea of launching her own company.

She had created the handle @lizkingevents for herself as a logical expression of who she was – her name plus the thing she was interested in exploring. As she began the business of starting conversations with people online, she quickly discovered the #eventprofs community, a group of event industry professionals who came together around the use of that hashtag, eventually translating their virtual relationships into real life ones. It was not long before prospective clients, recognizing her affability and natural planning acumen, began to approach her about producing their events.

At first, Liz turned down these offers, as she really didn’t have a company yet and did not feel qualified to hang a shingle around a mere idea. However, one day a client came along with whom she really wanted to work, and so she took a chance and accepted the job. She has never looked back.

Her job at Columbia also morphed into one that encompassed planning on-campus career and professional development events. This gave her loads of hands-on training that would inform her freelance projects. She made sure to keep all of her own client meetings limited to off hours, so as not to damage the integrity of her full-time position. Also, since she already had a regular income coming in, she had the luxury of picking and choosing which clients most interested her, instead of feeling, as so many new business owners do, compelled to accept each and every job that came her way. In so doing, she was able to quickly hone in on her brand and craft a client resume that accurately reflected her key strengths and values.

Ultimately, King hit a point where she knew that she would have to give up the security of her day job and take the leap into the unknown of the freelance world. Key friends and colleagues, including her longtime friend and business partner Ed Wagaba, made her understand that she would not be taken seriously as a business owner until she did so. It took a bunch of fits and starts to make it happen, but she ultimately made the break, and as of the beginning of 2013, Liz King Events is her sole and complete focus.

The company currently has three full time employees, and reaches into a strong network of designers, independent consultants and volunteers when necessary for its larger projects. Major clients include the On Deck Sports & Technology Conference, Claudia Chan’s SHE Summit Week as well as a new, undisclosed client for whom her firm will be handling all strategic branding and live event production as well as participating in their actual product development.

A key differentiator in King’s business model is her decision to make her office more sustainable by creating her own events, and not just relying on the events she plans for her clients. She recognized that the traditional model of a slow and steady expansion of a client base might not pan out in this unpredictable economy. Thus, she has launched several of her own initiatives to independently power her business. The first is an online radio program called the Event Alley Show, a free online Power Branding class, and the event technology showcase known as PlannerTech. She’s also created a series of networking evenings for event industry professionals, known as The Planner Collective that has distinguished her brand nationally as a center of NYC industry activity.

For King, the biggest challenge has been the ramp up to finding that tipping point when everything starts rolling in naturally. Maintaining continuity of staffing is particularly difficult when the resources to support them are not yet flowing steadily. It would appear from the outside that Liz King Events has certainly hit its stride, but she’s still prepared for the possibility that she might have to supplement her income waiting tables or brewing lattes.

Observing her as I have done over the last couple of years, I can see that she has implemented a familiar model of testing and refining her business practices, “…knowing where the opportunities lie and keeping true to the brand.” This has included a major focus on building relationships, a hallmark of the events industry, and leveraging them in creative ways at every turn. Unlike some other planners, she prefers to work with clients who are interested in a deeper relationship involving a more comprehensive implementation of branding strategy than just the mere planning of a one-off event.

Most rewarding has been the evolution to the place where her brand is now being recognized by the ideal clients she’s been working to attract. She says, “The power of social media has been the most shocking to me.” She recommends that new entrepreneurs focus on refining their brand and remain open to unexpected possibilities along the way, and “…balancing between planning and faith.” Ultimately, “At some point you just have to decide, I’m gonna make this thing work no matter what comes my way.” She really makes it sound like the prospect of taking that leap off the cliff may not be so scary after all, doesn’t she?

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

Image Credit: lizkingevents.com 

I recently had an opportunity to chat with Adelaide Lancaster, co-founder of In Good Company, “a first of its kind community, business learning center, and coworking space for women entrepreneurs located in Manhattan.” When we think about entrepreneurship, we often imagine tech startups, hitting the ground running with angel funding or VC investment, then scaling to a national level until they are big enough to be bought by one of the internet giants. However, this scenario really describes only a small fraction of new businesses.

According to Lancaster, at any given time up to 98% of small company owners are very content operating as micro-businesses, where they can realize precisely the kind of lifestyle they are seeking. Helping women achieve these ends among the many options available to them has been a prime focus of In Good Company WorkPlaces, as well as the book, “The Big Enough Company,” both of which were collaborations with business partner Amy Abrams.

The two had previously worked together at a consulting company that was dedicated to assisting women looking to transition out of corporate positions into starting their own businesses. In 2007, they opened their space to provide women entrepreneurs a place to come and hang their shingle at a time when the coworking movement was still in its infancy. They currently serve approximately 300 entrepreneurs each year with a variety of workspace solutions available hourly, by the month, as well as numerous workshops, classes and networking opportunities.

In Good Company’s founders have personally benefitted from their own advice with regard to flexibility in creating a career path. Amy has recently cut back on day-to-day involvement in the company in favor of her own business pursuits, while Adelaide continues to oversee operations of their Manhattan operation from her home in St. Louis, Missouri, where she and her family moved last spring. In fact, although she did her masters work in Organizational and Counseling Psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College, she had already moved to Philadelphia by the time they originally founded In Good Company back in 2007.

Lancaster recalls the grueling time of commuting back and forth between Philly and NYC as a key period of investment in creating the type of business that could sustain her current need to operate from a different city. With two on-site staff consistently running the day-to-day operations since the company’s inception, they’ve been able to maintain a level of continuity of services and relationships with members of the IGC community that continues to this day.

The community of women that benefits from In Good Company’s services are a diverse group with regard to industry and age, although the bulk of them are self-supporting – either the sole income source or key contributors to their family income. Since the economic downturn, the group includes more women who may not necessarily have become entrepreneurs by choice, but are nevertheless dealing with the same serious issues of professional development as well as ongoing business concerns as most female entrepreneurs.

On a number of fronts, it has made sense to keep the business small and focused. For one thing, the requirements of operating a physical space are particularly demanding, and not the most fulfilling aspect of the job for Lancaster. If IGC had pursued the strategy of operating spaces in numerous cities, real estate management would be more of a focus than she would really like. In addition, capitalizing such an operation required a significant up front investment, and spending additional time on fund-raising has also not been at the top of Lancaster’s list. Perhaps most importantly, being in a position to interact personally and build relationships with so many of the women she serves has been a great reward for Lancaster. The ability to continue to spend her time this way as well as in the thought leadership space through public speaking and consulting has been a top priority.

Overall, Lancaster has sought to find ways to bridge the perceived gap between funded businesses and micro-businesses, particularly when it comes to issues facing women entrepreneurs in both areas. Her focus has been more about detailing paths to growth in a way that expands options for women. In this regard, she has found peer modeling to be key. “The more you engage with other entrepreneurs, the more likely you are to emulate the things they are doing.” Hence the importance of a community space offering many opportunities for interaction between different women.

In addition, she encourages women to view their businesses, particularly during the first couple of years, as works in progress. “I wish entrepreneurs gave themselves the freedom, and particularly women are not always good at this – to give themselves permission to treat their businesses like a research project.” She recommends observing the course of your progress and suspending all judgement until a significant period of time has passed – one, even two years. Then, you’ll be in a position to make an informed decision about what to do next.

Approaching the prospect of creating a business with this kind of flexibility and resilience makes for the possibility of maximum options and more than a few surprises. Sounds like the makings of a great adventure to me…

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

Every so often, I interview someone from a company that’s still in the early stages of development, but has created a truly unique business with enormous potential. Such is the case with Noa Santos, the co-founder and CEO of HomePolish. Together with company president Will Nathan, Santos has created a full service interior design firm whose mission is to make this luxury service accessible to the masses.

Their formula is simple. They start by recruiting top young designers from the best firms in the city. For a mere $50 fee, clients can schedule an in-home or virtual consultation with a designer who has been carefully matched with them. From there, design packages begin at $500. With no added design fees or furniture markups, HomePolish designers are free to seek out the best deals for their clients, since they are not motivated by commissions.

As Santos explained, they endeavor to create a collaborative environment in which designers work to embody a client’s personal style into his or her home. Furthermore, the company fosters a non-competitive spirit of cooperation among all their designers, so they can easily help one another to deliver their best work on behalf of their clients. The centerpiece of their 1100 square foot Flatiron district office is the “design bar” – an original piece of furniture crafted out of packing crates that not only shows off a bit of design ingenuity, but also functions as a great spot to consult with members of the design team or even enjoy a glass of wine. The space is already attracting attention as a venue for outside events.

Originally from Hawaii, Santos attended Stanford University, where he studied business and architecture. Craving a faster lifestyle, he moved to New York City, where he was fortunate to land a position in a high end residential interior design firm. There, he got a crash course in lifestyles of the rich and famous, as well as a ton of hands on experience in all aspects of the business, including client meetings, proposal development, furniture sourcing and billing.

It was here that Noa also learned about one aspect of the interior design industry that he felt was becoming antiquated, namely the secrecy regarding the pricing and purchasing of furniture and accessories. With so much information and incredible deals available online, Santos decided it was more in step with the times to adopt a policy of transparency. All client purchases are documented – receipts are shared, charges are put on clients’ cards so they can receive their miles, etc. Their designers are motivated to get excellent deals on behalf of their clients.

This type of disruptive approach to an industry that has long been seen as the exclusive purview of only the very wealthy seems to be paying off. While their early clientele were working with budgets of 0-$20,000, current clients include those with six figure projects ranging up to $250K, as well as 9000 sq. ft. start-up offices.

By cultivating a truly collaborative environment, Santos has succeeded in attracting clients who truly love the process, making it more enjoyable for everyone involved. In his prior company, 50 for 50, (“Champagne Interiors on a Beer Budget”), this approach was so successful that he realized he needed to scale the idea. In fact, co-founder Nathan was a former client! After working together, they realized they could pool their skills and experience to co-create HomePolish. With less than $1000 each, they bootstrapped the company and have never looked back. Perhaps some fundraising will exist in the future, but for now, they are quite happy to meet their monthly goals with increasing success.

Santos’ biggest challenge, he says, is maintaining focus amidst the plethora of great ideas and potential collaborators. His goal is to continue to form strategic partnerships in service of the goal of bringing great designers to people’s doorsteps.

Most rewarding for him is the kind of joy brought to people’s lives when they realize they can afford to create a home that they are happy to return to each evening, where they can spend time relaxing or entertaining guests. The happiness of his clients is his main priority. Second is that of his designers. He is dedicated to working on their personal brands, currently developing custom profiles for each of them, and rewarding them for bringing in new clients.

As for advice to new entrepreneurs, he advises going in with immediate, short term goals, and being prepared to iterate every step of the way. “The most important lesson that I learned is never refuse a lunch.” He believes that there is something to be learned from everyone. He also suggests, “Never lose touch with your clients.” Santos spends much of his time staying in touch with them, especially the problematic ones who require a little extra hand holding. He is always trying to figure out new and better ways to make them happy.

As Santos looks toward the coming year, he is filled with great enthusiasm and confidence. “It’s gonna be huge – this is gonna be a big deal.” You heard it here first!

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

Jonas Falk is an accidental activist. As a businessman with a vision to provide cost effective, nutritious, restaurant quality lunches to schoolkids, he has created a company capable of serving the needs and desires of many concerned parents and health conscious individuals.  Falk is the founder and CEO of the Chicago based company, OrganicLife, currently the leading provider of healthy lunches for early childhood and elementary schools in the state of Illinois. They specialize in high end restaurant style food management for preschools to high schools, colleges, hospitals and other institutions.

“We all relate to one thing, which is we had really bad food when we were growing up in school.” Falk decided to do something about this. Growing up in a big family with an appreciation for his mom’s amazing home cooked meals, he later trained in Hotel and Restaurant Management at Michigan State and then received a degree in Culinary Arts from Kendall college. After working in the kitchen of five-star restaurants Les Francais and Le Lan under James Beard Award-winning chef, Roland Liccioni, he decided to apply the knowledge gained from his mentor to the business plan for institutional food preparation he’d devised in college.

Like many entrepreneurs, Falk started his company as a one man band, working out of his apartment in Chicago. He was fortunate enough to meet Justin Rolls, a long time restaurant and hotel food services consultant, who became the company’s COO. Five years later, with a strong foothold in Illinois and over 300 full time employees, OrganicLife is now expanding operations into Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan, with New York well within its sights. Although originally bootstrapped, with some private investors to get things going, they have moved into more funding, and currently have some major food service backers.

The company’s main operating terrain is the highly competitive RFP process of the national school lunch program, which governs billions of dollars spent on providing free lunches for school children across the country. Illinois (along with New York) has a low bid policy for these contracts, which of course has fostered the mediocrity we have come to associate with public school lunches. Until changes implemented by Michelle Obama in 2012, this landscape had seen no significant changes in decades. The new regulations designed to support good health are part of a growing movement that has helped OrganicLife develop its considerable foothold in the industry.

In endeavoring to provide the best quality, low cost food to kids each day, Falk and Rolls have dedicated themselves to applying four star kitchen values and practices to their business. Some of the schools they service have amazing kitchens that have barely been used in years beyond reheating frozen foods! They have put real chefs and crews on site and run them as proper restaurants, serving, for example, high quality meat on wholegrain buns as opposed to grade C meat on processed white buns. In fact, their menus offer a welcome variety of healthy and delicious sounding options – a far cry from the tired offerings I’ve seen in my son’s cafeteria!

Despite receiving tremendous support, the company has also experienced some pushback. After all, when you disrupt a 50-year-old system, you’re bound to ruffle some feathers. There is much at stake. Last year alone, the federal government funded 31 million free meals a day to kids across the U.S., and the system contains many hidden regulations. Becoming comfortable in this environment has proven to be one of Falk’s biggest challenges.

Although the public schools operate under a budget of $2.85/meal, privately funded school districts and other institutions have enabled the company to offer options as diverse as a public shopping mall type food court, for a reasonable price. Falk’s mission is to bring this same quality to the federally funded districts, and OrganicLife has been able to provide amazing meals under these guidelines. They have had to be extremely creative and aggressive to fight the low bids of larger companies, but so far, their brand of innovation seems to be working. Growth of the company has been relatively fast, with more expansion on the immediate horizon. It would seem they are riding a rising wave of demand for healthy and nutritious food that is likely to continue.

According to Falk, the response has been overwhelming. “To build a company this large this fast, based on an uncomplicated premise of great food and great service, has been wonderful.” Indeed, he has been recognized for his efforts. In 2009, Jonas was named as one of the Top 5 Emerging Entrepreneurs in America by Entrepreneur Magazine. This year, he is a Forbes Magazine 2013 30 under 30 recipient for Food & Wine in the U.S.

Not surprisingly, Falk is an advocate of sticking to your beliefs and pursuing them with passion. His advice to others looking to scale their simple ideas? “Put the business plan down and go sign the lease. Make it real… [because] the first day you open your doors, your business plan is going to change… Put yourself on the line and put your business on the line, and you’ll see that great things will happen. if you never take that chance and you never have any risk, you’re never gonna see your business reach its full potential.”

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Alison Johnston, the CEO and co-founder of InstaEDU, an innovative, online tutoring on demand service she founded a couple years ago with her brother, Dan and their Stanford classmate, Joey Shurtleff.  Alison and Dan had previously operated an in-house SoCal tutoring service called Cardinal Scholars, where they quickly learned that they could do better than the local competition by offering more affordable rates to clients and providing their tutors with better compensation. They set out to solve these problems.

They paid someone $600 to build them a basic website, gathered up a dozen qualified Stanford students and began marketing to Palo Alto families. Their business grew quickly and they immediately started discovering what they could do to improve their product. Although they recognized the value in providing high quality instruction, they also saw that there were holes in their current service delivery system, and sought to bring more personalization and technical facility to the way their website worked.

One of the main reasons the team was drawn to develop their service in its current form is that they realized that many students, although not in need of regular hour-long blocks of assistance, might need small amounts of support in a “moment of need,” such as help with two troubling math problems at 10:30 at night. They developed their product so that students could not only schedule lessons in advance with a specific tutor via the website, but they could also  get matched up with a tutor from a leading university in a matter of minutes.

InstaEDU utilizes a variety of tech tools to facilitate communication between tutors and students, including text, audio and video chat, as well as text editors and digital whiteboards, and they utilize Gchat to source tutors for their on-demand service. From the time the company formed in 2011 and launched publicly in beta in May of 2012, they can now boast of almost 1500 tutors offering assistance in all academic subjects to students aged 13 and up.

Originally bootstrapped with funds from the old company, they were able to raise a little over a million dollars last Spring. The staff currently includes eight team members, including the three co-founders, and plans to sit comfortably at this size for the time being.

Johnston describes the challenge of broadening the notion of tutoring as more than just a luxury for wealthy families or a remedial measure for sub-par students. InstaEDU has built its success on the near universal need of every student for occasional assistance. In fact, some of their tutors have occasionally returned as customers for help with their own studies!

Math and science comprise about two thirds of their tutoring requests; computer science is by far their most popular subject. The other third is in the “fuzzier” areas of language, writing, term papers, etc. It would appear that their service is filling a real need for both high school and college students, their two major markets. Johnston finds it most rewarding when they receive tutor reviews expressing gratitude for the help they have received. “Knowing that someone came into our site feeling frustrated with a concept and left feeling confident – it’s awesome.”

Alison credits her early startup experience as being key preparation for running her own company. After majoring at Stanford with a focus on human/computer interaction, she interned at Box when it was just a five person shop, and had a front row seat to its tenfold growth over the next three years. Subsequent work with Aardvark helped provide the inspiration for what would become InstaEDU’s on-demand model.

For anyone considering jumping into the creation of a new tech start-up, Johnston’s key piece of advice is to first hook up with good mentors. The relationships she formed during those early years became invaluable later on in her career for both advice as well as funding. Her experience offers one of the best cases for interning I’ve heard from any of the entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed. The takeaway? Pay your dues, be patient, and you can later reap the rewards.

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

When Shama Kabani graduated with a Masters degree in Organizational Communication from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008, Facebook’s popularity was just coming up on that of MySpace, and Twitter was still the new kid on the block. Social media was a nascent field, ripe for someone with her intelligence and drive to step in and plant the seeds of a new consulting firm. The Marketing Zen Group, which she launched in 2009, rapidly found itself a place in this burgeoning industry as a full service entity.

From its fully bootstrapped roots and original four members (Kabani invested $1500 in getting it off the ground), the Marketing Zen Group now encompasses over 30 people and is a full service web marketing and digital PR firm. Kabani is also the author of the top selling book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing. In fact, offering quality content via her website was a key early choice that contributed to her company’s development. Shama was blogging at least once a day well before the trend towards robust online content became a driving force in SEO rankings.

The desire to be a source of education and assistance for her clients was the fuel behind the Zen Marketing Group’s early success and rise in what has become a crowded market. Her book, although written as a kind of expanded FAQ page, became a surprising source of income and exposure. Although she doesn’t deny that good timing was definitely on her side, Kabani’s sincere enthusiasm for sharing quality information has allowed her to grow her company sheerly through word of mouth and inbound marketing.

Following the trend of many new firms, while she is based in Dallas, Texas, The Marketing Zen Group exists solely in the cloud. (A client, curious about the location of their offices, asked her if that was uptown…) Kabani manages her international team tightly, with weekly meetings on Google Hangouts and regular team leader check-ins, and holds quarterly company conferences in Dallas.

Operating in an entirely virtual space demands that her employees be quite independent and focused, particularly as there is no way to get around sharp deadlines in this kind of fast paced industry. Over time, Kabani has learned that the best way to tackle the challenge of scalability and vet new talent is to pull from the pool of trainees, interns or contractors with whom she has already worked, and require a 90 day probation period before full hiring. In this way, she’s able to maintain a cohesive, upbeat company culture and draw on the best of the growing number of applicants for positions within her firm.

The Marketing Zen Group enjoys a diverse, international clientele in a variety of industries. As pioneers in the field of social media, they have learned how to successfully integrate online strategies with a number of other approaches. As such, they now have the luxury of being able to pick and choose from prospective clients,   In addition, Kabani continues her focus on education. In addition to regular writing and speaking engagements, she has launched Shama.tv, a regular web program covering a variety of topics related to digital and online marketing.

Kabani sees her job as being a “chief value officer,” and is always looking for ways to add value to what she considers her three main stakeholders – her clients, her internal team, and the larger audience. This outlook provides the foundation for her multiple business and outreach activities. In addition, she takes an evolutionary approach to her work, her “learn, fix, learn, fix” mindset echoing the kind of focus on iteration that so many successful entrepreneurs seem to employ. She admits that when she first published her book, it was not exactly perfect, but she felt it was important to get it out there right away. Apparently, the quality of the information was good enough, because it’s now in a third printing, and sits among Amazon’s top sellers in its category.

I asked Shama if she had any advice for new entrepreneurs. She discouraged copying other business models simply because they have been successful, unless you have a true passion for the idea. However, if you know what you are talking about, and you are genuinely excited, “…then by all means – every industry has room for innovation, and if you can find a niche that you’re good at, great!” She also stressed the need to remain objective. As she sees it, everyone thinks their own baby is beautiful, but in the end, you have to be willing to let go of a less than stellar idea when the market tells you otherwise.

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.

Getaround founders Jessica Scorpio, Sam Zaid and Elliot Kroo

Getaround is a marketplace for peer to peer car sharing – think Airbnb on wheels! The idea is simple. Car owners can share their cars when they’re not using them, and renters can get access to anything from a Tesla roadster to a Prius. There are no membership fees, and the entire process is smart phone accessible, including initiating the rental and unlocking the car doors.

The company is the brainchild of Jessica Scorpio and engineers Sam Zaid and Elliot Kroo, who were all members of the inaugural class of Silicon Valley’s Singularity University graduate program. As part of that institution’s mission to foster the use of accelerated technology to solve the world’s grand challenges, the team took on the problem of “car overpopulation.” Thus, the idea for Getaround was born.

I had the recent opportunity to chat with the Getaround’s co-founder and Director of Marketing Jessica Scorpio, about the trajectory of bringing the group’s vision to fruition. From the start of development in 2009, it took a year and a half to bring the company to launch, and another 18 months to scale to over 10,000 car owners currently signed up to rent out their vehicles.

The benefits of this service are multiple. On the environmental side, there are already one billion cars on the road globally, most of which sit idle for about 22 hours a day. Each shared car takes between 9-13 cars off the road. On the financial side, the average car owner spends nearly $9,000 a year to own a car. How great would it be to earn a significant portion of that back by renting it out?

Early challenges regarding insurance and product development have yielded some great innovations within the company. A big hurdle was the question of liability insurance. Getaround has been able to work with their insurer, Berkshire Hathaway, to develop a one of a kind insurance policy that applies during the rental period, offering $1 million in coverage, while car owners get to keep their standard insurance for private use. The company also offers their customers roadside assistance and 24 hour support.

At present, Getaround is active in five cities – San Francisco, Austin, Portland, San Diego and Chicago, with plans in the works to expand to new markets. Although the company was basically bootstrapped for the first year or so, in 2012 they raised a $13.9 million Series A round of financing in a deal including Menlo Ventures, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, A-Grade Investments and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. They are currently headquartered in San Francisco, and have 40 employees.

One of Getaround’s key differentiators is an electronic hardware device they’ve developed called the Getaround Carkit, which, when installed in the vehicle, enables drivers to unlock the car door using their smart phone. Real time driver screening integrated with state DMV’s and identity verification through credit cards and Facebook add to the high tech, disruptive quality of the product.

Scorpio’s background in politics (she used to work for the Prime Minister of Canada), has been quite useful in combination with her marketing and prior entrepreneurial experience (she founded the non-profit organization IDEAL, pairing young Canadian entrepreneurs with their mentors). Not only has she been able to leverage the power of social media to its best use in creating a unique flow between business and community, but she’s been able to apply her political acumen in helping pass laws that would support the growth of her company and its mission, including California legislation to clarify how insurance works for personal vehicles.

A key piece of Getaround’s success so far has been the development of strong ties between drivers and car owners. Rental transactions have given people an opportunity to meet their neighbors and develop new relationships. The website features a ratings and review system for both sides of the marketplace. All of this has helped in fostering an overall sense of trust and safety in the Getaround community.

Some of the feedback has been especially gratifying for Scorpio. When people say, “… they can’t live without it, they love it, that we’ve changed their lives – it’s just amazing to hear that.” Their founding mission to take cars off the road seems to be expanding greatly. In fact, they have recently received a $1.7 million grant for a Portland study examining the impact of peer to peer car sharing on driver behavior.

All in all, Getaround is showing tremendous promise as a disruptive force in the car rental industry. With its innovative technology, strong social media foundations and competitive rates, the company offers a fresh alternative to traditional car rental options. They also offer customers the opportunity to try out a wider variety of vehicles than they would normally be able to access. Scorpio reports that people have rented cars for everything from weekend getaways and weddings to music video shoots… or even just to have a chance at test driving a Delorean.

As a woman who created her first startup at the age of 18 and helped found Getaround at age 22, she’s clearly a big fan of starting young and starting now. Acknowledging that startups take a lot of energy and focus, she echoes the thoughts of so many other successful entrepreneurs when she says, “You’re also going to learn a lot and make a lot of mistakes.” She advises, “… being prepared to work really hard and seeing it through – most importantly getting a lot of people around you, whether investors or advisors, who can help you along the way… and picking the right team is really key.”

Listen to the full interview here:

Deborah Oster Pannell is a writer who specializes in the arts, culture, special events and creative & innovative projects of all kinds. As Director of Communications for the tech start-up eventwist, she also manages their blog. Some of her favorite work is featured on modernlifeblogs.com, lizkingevents.com, and her own blog, shesaysyes.wordpress.com. Currently she is preparing to launch Project Mavens, a content branding firm. On Twitter @projectmaven.