Why SquareSpace Rocks!

I am not a techy.  I am mechanical engineer with a background in material science and its applications in the biotech industry.  My first company Mitos had nothing to do with the Internet.  We were a manufacturing company the build disposable systems for biotech companies.  I say this because since co-founding DreamIt Ventures people assume I am a software engineer.

The truth is this, I understand web and mobile applications well, but have not written a line of code since 9^th grade when it was C+.  I provide this background so that you can understand why I am so amazed with SquareSpace.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine put together a site for my new book, We are all Born Entrepreneurs, which is getting ready to release.  When I asked him to make some changes I could tell he was busy, and since I knew he put the site together in SquareSpace and I heard all the rave, I decided to try to make the changes myself. 

SquareSpace Rocks! I watched a 15 minutes video and I truly understand the base framework.  Over the last two hours I have revamped the site entirely.  SquareSpace has truly opened up the market for ordinary people to make very functional website that go beyond a static page.   Widgets are easy to tie in, form and data capture can be included with ease.  The value proposition is awesome.

I hope my friend will not be offended that I changed around his work.

HITTING PRIME TIME: AN ENTREPRENEUR’S DREAM COME TRUE
Two young entrepreneurs landed appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank after a summer with Philadelphia-based start-up accelerator DreamIt Ventures

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Sean Conway and DJ Stephan, founders of Notehall <www.notehall.com> lived every entrepreneur’s dream when they earned a full 22 minutes of airtime on ABC’s Shark Tank in the Fall of 2009, after spending the summer building their business with support from local start-up accelerator DreamIt Ventures (http://www.dreamitventures.com/).

ABC’s Shark Tank is a show that pits entrepreneurs against seasoned investors, or “sharks,” in a no-holds-barred pitch session. Impress the sharks and you get an investment offer on the spot. Fail to impress and you face public embarrassment on national television.

Conway and Stephan had the opportunity to leave the show $90,000 richer, with an investment offer on the table from the real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran, one of the show’s sharks. They’ve since gone on to close a critical round of investment from other sources.

How an unlikely application turned into a TV appearance

Conway and Stephan never planned to be on TV. They were spending their summer at DreamIt Ventures, an intense three-month summer program that’s been running in Philadelphia since 2007, which provides entrepreneurs with startup capital, mentorship, and a tight-knit community of top industry entrepreneurs.

Conway and Stephan credit the DreamIt summer program for refining their business model and the idea of a Notehall.com destination website. 

Originally, they had planned to have a different branded website with a different name for each school.  They also were challenged by the DreamIt partners to validate their assumptions, including their customer acquisition costs and expansion plan.

The DreamIt mentors also inspired them to try to make a big national splash and they were just waiting for the right opportunity. Then they heard about Shark Tank.

One of their peers in the DreamIt program, the founders of the ticket marketplace SeatGeek (www.seatgeek.com), told them that Shark Tank was accepting applications. On a lark, the Notehall team decided to apply.

“At first, all we had to do was send in a picture and a mission statement. It didn’t take long at all. Then we didn’t hear anything for weeks and pretty much forgot about it,” said Conway, Notehall’s CEO.

To their surprise, they received a 15-page application from the show, which made them think they might have a shot at making it.

But they didn’t want to get their hopes up or get distracted from their business. So they put their answers together quickly, including a video of them pitching their company. But the process still wasn’t over - they received a forty-page contract from the show even though they weren’t selected yet.

When came the big news that they were selected they hopped on a flight to L.A. just ten days later to film the show. It would be a full two months before their episode would air.

Two long months of waiting and preparing

Conway and Stephen had been a hit on the show, with three of the sharks fighting over the opportunity to invest in their company. Their segment was so intense and dramatic that ABC would decided to feature it in their ads and trailers for the episode.

But Conway and Stephan couldn’t talk about any of this, even with the people closest to them. “They were pretty adamant about saying, ‘don’t tell friends and family,’” said Stephan, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer.

So the Notehall team focused on preparing for the big day.

“We wanted to push it back as long as possible so that we had all of our operations in order,” said Stephen.

The day the show aired

Once their segment started, Notehall rocketed to the #1 most searched term on Google. Their website buckled under the traffic, which exceeded even their best hopes and their intense preparations. The site went down but they were able to bring it back within 5 minutes.

Conway grimaced at one of the most talked about moments of the show, when he wagered his stake in the company that they would hit $1 million in revenue within 24 months.

“I regretted it a little afterwards. They used it to make me look like the over-confident entrepreneur,” said Conway.

But that segment and the whole episode was a big hit for ABC. In fact, when ABC aired it for a second time in February, the Notehall website received so much traffic that it was brought to its knees for a second time.

The Aftermath

Notehall has grown considerably in the last few months with some help from the show but also according to plans they laid out before they had applied to Shark Tank.

Notehall was popular in just 3 schools in May, before they joined the DreamIt summer program and appeared on Shark Tank. Now they are used in 24 schools and growing fast.

“We ended up launching at 14 schools in the last semester alone. And we saturated many of these schools in terms of the how many students were active users of our system,” said Conway.

Their team has grown to over 10 people and they are renting their first office space, graduating from the makeshift office in Conway and Stephan’s apartment.

The Notehall team credits their summer experience in DreamIt Ventures for their recent success as much as they credit their appearance on the show.

“DreamIt really is the reason we are where we are right now,” said Stephan. We went into the summer thinking we were going to individualize every site for every school, even with a different name at each school. After about a month or so at DreamIt, and talking to all the mentors, and looking at all the metrics, we realized it wasn’t a good thing to do.”

What’s Next for Notehall

The Notehall team says their next big move is to expand to graduate and professional schools. By the end of the year, any student at any type of school should be able to exchange notes and study guides using the Notehall system.

They are also looking to raise their next round of funding and are starting those conversations now.

Otherwise, they are going to keep applying the formula that’s been working. It’s not easy, they say, but say they know it can work.

“Anytime you’re pioneering a new idea or a new concept, it takes a lot, a lot of education,” said Stephan.

The following is one of a series of blog post that were written while I was in China in the spring of 2009 as part of my Eisenhower Fellowship. If you have interest in China’s culture I think you will enjoy this series.

A Relative Perspective

One of my many hopes for this trip is to spend at least an hour each day speaking with random local people.  Yesterday provided an excellent opportunity to spend some time with an ordinary Chinese couple.

I had convinced my interrupter that we could walk to our next meeting which was about 5km away.  In an interesting process, we navigated our way to the meeting by stopping about every two blocks and asking for directions.  (No need for a map according to my escort).  One of the individuals that we asked for directions was an older lady who turned out to be extremely helpful and at the same time was as curious about me as I was about her and her husband.  Neither she nor her husband spoke English, so we walked for several miles with the interrupter translating back an fourth, a process that the older couple obviously enjoyed.

It turned out that the husband and wife were in their 70’s, although I would have guessed that they were in their 50’s.  They were both retired from the local steel mill which they worked at for over 30 years. The couple was taking their daily mid-morning walk to the local park just outside of the Forbidden City.  

As we slowly walked through the busy streets of Beijing there was, a striking difference in what each party was interested in.  They were interested in my thoughts on American politics and movie stars. I on the other hand was interested in the details of how they lived day-to-day in China’s largest city.  

They had two children, a boy and a girl, each who had a single child. They were clearly proud of their son who was working at a private company in Beijing. They were excited about the recent announcement that the government was going to increase spending on healthcare, though few details were provided as to how this would be a good thing.  They survived off a monthly pension and a small amount of savings.  

Since they were over 65, almost all government services were free, including transportation, healthcare, etc.  They lived in a two room apartment with running water, electricity, heat, but no air condition. They had a radio, but no television.  They certainly had heard of the Internet, but neither had ever used it, and most interestingly, never understood why anyone would want to! 

The couple seemed genuinely happy.  

They were a very nice couple, and I hope that they enjoyed our discussion as much as I did.  I’m sure I learned a lot more today about Chinese culture during my walk than I would have during a taxi ride.