10 things you might not know about me
It has been a personal goal of mine to publish a blog for a quite a long time! Those who know me best, know that I love to talk, but I haven’t had the discipline to consistently write. That all changes today!
For my first post, I want everyone to know my story and background. Recently, I spoke on a panel of entrepreneurs discussing our journeys & what we learned along the way. The paraphrased version of what we discussed is below:
- Please begin by telling us what you do and when you started.
I am the Co-Founder of Favor. Favor is an app where you can get anything you want delivered. I was a pizza Delivery driver when I had the idea with my college roommate Chris Labasky back in May of 2011. I started the company with my two college roommates Chris Labasky, Grant Greenberg and my best friend from high school Zac Maurais. To build Favor we posted up in my parents basement in NH (July 4th, 2011) with a Coding for Dummies book (see picture below). We were all starting from scratch, just some good friends with a dream.
I’ll never forget, one of our first challenges was we couldn’t all read the dummies book at the same time. The book was really 7 books in 1, so I took it upstairs into my parents kitchen, grabbed a bread knife, sliced it into 7 separate books and then taped the binding back together. We split the books amongst ourselves and just started learning! 2 years later, Zac & I launched Favor in Austin (June 5th, 2013). I still work with Zac today, I like to think we’re startup soulmates. Favor now has 15,000 Runners, 120+ employees, has completed over 5M deliveries and has brought local merchants over a $100M in sales.
2. Simon Sinek is an author with a popular TED talk on “How great leaders inspire action.” The focus of his book and talk are about starting with “Why?” — can you tell us why you started your company?
The answer to this question has changed for me over time. At the inception of the idea, I just truly loved delivery, so I was incredibly excited about making two things happen that had never happened before:
* Creating a way to get anything delivered from anywhere.
* Creating flexible work that people would love.
Keep in mind this was before Uber or any of the on demand economy existed. At that time, there was really very little ways to make money on your own schedule!
3. At the early stages, entrepreneurs often times question if their idea is worth sacrificing their social life, time, money etc. When did you know you were on to something?
You’re right, when starting a company you do have to sacrifice your time. You end up spending so much time with the people you’re working with, so you better like them. Also, it better be a topic you’re passionate about because you’ll spend every waking hour thinking about it.
I got some great advice even before I had the idea for Favor. As a first time entrepreneur I knew I needed to dedicate at least 2 years of my life to make anything really work. After coming up with the idea for Favor I was immediately ready to dedicate two years to it. But I didn’t really feel like we were going to make it, until 1.5 years later when we raised $100k from Tim Draper.
4. What is the hardest part of being an entrepreneur?
The true art of entrepreneurship is seeing from point A to point Z but then becoming laser focused on moving to point B. Moving to point B becomes all you live for, just say no to everything else.
5. Looking back, what advice would you give yourself at the beginning?
Your time is very valuable, be maniacal about protecting your time and focusing only on making it to the next step in your journey.
After years of working with no success, Zac & I had learned how to do less. We woke up every morning asking ourselves, “what is the absolute most important thing to get done today to move the business forward?” Ignore everything else.
6. What are you most excited about in the future?
I get the most excited about building a global household brand. The same way most people in Austin know about Favor — they’ve used it and love it — I want to build a company that is a household name around the world.
7. Entrepreneurship is known for having peaks and valleys. Name a high and a low point of your journey.
One of the lowest points for me was Christmas eve December of 2012. We were in Boost VC incubator at the time and our demo day was only 3 weeks away. We had a product released called NeighborFavor that no one was using. We had been trying different iterations of the product for the past year that all failed. My parents were giving me a hard time because I was trying to code and it was Christmas Eve. They were telling me I shouldn’t work so much, but I was obsessed. I told them then that there is a good chance the company could be dead in 3 weeks, because our demo day would probably be a flop, since we had no traction.
That night after they went to sleep I coded from 10PM to 6AM Christmas morning making a huge dent on a new minimum viable product that we were building that would do only thing, deliver Beer & Burritos. 3 weeks later was my highest point, we had fantastic launch of our beer & burritos product and presented at demo day. A week later Tim Draper invested $100k to lead our seed round.
8. Talk about a time when you were discouraged. What kept you going?
One of the most discouraging times was when my co-founder Chris Labasky said he was going to leave. What kept me going was that I had made personal dedication that even if all my co-founders quit I was going to work for 2 years on this idea no matter what. Chris ended up sticking around for a few more months until we completely parted ways in February of 2013. Chris’ ideas & code lived on in the product that Zac & I launched in Austin that summer. Chris, Zac & I are still good friends today. We wouldn’t have made it to where we are today without him.
9. When you aren’t working, what are you doing with your free time?
In the early days, my free time was still working. I would go run favors as a “break” from coding. Even being out with friends I was constantly watching how they interacted with their apps; I tried to understand consumers better. I’m also always asking a lot of questions to understand consumer trends and habits. Nowadays, I like to play soccer, indoboard, skateboard, and a bunch of other board sports.
10. How do you balance it all (work, life, family, health etc.)?
I didn’t in the beginning and it’s something I’m honestly still not good at. I actually think pushing yourself really hard in the first 6 months can be a good thing. Most people haven’t really pushed the limits on how much work they can do. Especially when you have worked at a big company prior to this. You aren’t used to being able to move mountains by yourself.
