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Bootstrapping to $5 Million: IdeaScale CEO Robert Hoehn (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

The Innovation Management software space is quite crowded. Ideascale has managed to carve out a niche. Read on!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by going to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Robert Hoehn: I am from Northern New York, almost bordering Canada. I actually did Computer Science in high school. I was a pretty lucky kid to have experience in programming at a pretty young age. I went to the University of Vermont and joined their Computer Engineering program. I studied Computer Science and Business.

After that, I decided to take a little time off and think about where I wanted to live and what kind of environment I wanted to >>>

Scaling a Family E-Commerce Business: Lucky Vitamin CEO Sam Wolf (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you a couple of questions in terms of the process of building this company. In this journey, what are some of the most important strategic moves that you’ve made?

Sam Wolf: One of the most important strategic moves is to really understand who our customer is and what’s important to them. We’ve made sure that we’re aligned with what we think and know is important to the consumer. We put a lot of focus into the products that we sell in curating and implementing standards. We’ve got a team of merchants who scour the globe, if you will, to find some of the most unique items that we bring in.

We’ve got a lot of companies that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Some of them have eventually grown into fairly large businesses starting with us. We spend a lot of time really making sure that we’re bringing in the right items and that they’re going to align with the values that we promote and that our customers believe in. >>>

Scaling a Family E-Commerce Business: Lucky Vitamin CEO Sam Wolf (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Help me understand what kind of ramp you saw from the point where things started finding their stride. What kind of growth have you seen?

Sam Wolf: The business has been through an evolution. We’re now 10 years old and our 11th anniversary is coming up. There’s over 200 people involved in the business, but we still have a lot of ties to our family roots that we grew out of. For the first couple of years, we were growing really fast and we were trying to put in the systems and technology to support it.

We are totally self-funded. We were funding everything out of cash flow. It eclipsed the size of the brick-and-mortar business that we were doing. We were pulling resources from my father’s side of the business saying, “Can I get somebody to come over here and help me because we have orders to ship out?” I would say that the first five years of the business was growing so quickly that we were putting out a lot of fires, building the infrastructure, building the foundation of the business, making mistakes, and learning. That was the beginning. >>>

Scaling a Family E-Commerce Business: Lucky Vitamin CEO Sam Wolf (Part 2)

Sam Wolf: I started working three months after I graduated and launched it the in following June. I hired a couple of developers. We worked on putting it together. We launched with 7,000 items mainly vitamins and supplements that I knew were selling well and were good items from my experience in the health food business. Two to three weeks went by and I didn’t get any orders. I said, “Good thing I have law school coming up.” I wasn’t ready to give up either.

Sramana Mitra: Why weren’t you getting orders? What was your analysis on why you weren’t getting orders?

Sam Wolf: I put up a website and said, “Let’s see what happens.” I was naive going into this. I knew how to design a site and get it developed but I didn’t really have a lot of marketing experience to drive traffic to the site. I started to learn. I read everything I could about ways to drive traffic—SEO, SEM, and affiliate marketing. >>>

Scaling a Family E-Commerce Business: Lucky Vitamin CEO Sam Wolf (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

All kinds of niche e-commerce businesses have been built over the last 20 years. Sam and his family have built a health and wellness products business that is doing quite well.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Sam Wolf: I was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I still reside there now. I grew up in a family that had ran, operated, and owned a family business since the day I was born. My father was fairly entrepreneurial. He inherited a family business from my grandfather. All of the family businesses had always been anchored in health and wellness. I ultimately went to college in Washington DC. I went to American University and graduated from there in 2004 with a Business degree with a specialisation in Information Technology and E-Commerce. >>>

Self-Management Trumps Passion in Design-Driven Startup Performance

By Guest Author Soren Petersen

Although all startup founders of design driven startups are passionate – still 92% of them will fail within three years, according to a joint Berkeley – Stanford study. While passion may be a core capability, it can hardly be called a competitive advantage, so, what characteristics separate a design-centered founder from the wannabe’s? >>>

From $100k to $1 Million: How to Manage Anxiety

Startups are extremely difficult, so if you venture into this world, please assume that these challenges will come, no matter what. You will feel anxious, there will be moments of fear, self-doubt, frustration.

I can share a few tools from my own experience both as an entrepreneur, as well as from running the 1M/1M global virtual accelerator where we nurture and mentor numerous entrepreneurs.

First, I suggest you create a set of clear goals that you can follow step by step. This must include small milestones, small action items, and hence, opportunities to win small victories on a daily / weekly basis. This keeps you going, with a positive energy, and a sense that you are making progress.
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Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from Indiana: One Click Ventures Co-Founder Angie Stocklin (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: The mode in which you’ve done this is actually very interesting. I find it quite fascinating. What else is interesting in the story?

Angie Stocklin: We tested our hand in drop-ship businesses.

Sramana Mitra: That’s a very important point.

Angie Stocklin: Even when we were still in our home, we tested drop-ship businesses. We thought it was a great way to grow without adding inventory. We didn’t have anymore room in our house. It was a process that didn’t work for us for a few reasons. The main reason was that we liked to be in control of the whole process. >>>