Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
03-10-14, 08:23 PM
#301
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Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
WSJ interview with the DoorBot guy
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...trending_now_2
He Failed on 'Shark Tank'—but So What?
Entrepreneur Jamie Siminoff on How Startups Can Compete for Tech Talent
By CAITLIN HUSTON
March 9, 2014 7:47 p.m. ET
Persuading an engineer to join your tech startup 'involves creating a mission with a higher cause.' James Siminoff
Failing to get funding on "Shark Tank," the entrepreneurship reality TV show, didn't sink Jamie Siminoff's most recent startup. On the contrary.
After the show was taped for ABC last September, the company, DoorBot, the maker of a doorbell that allows homeowners to see who is outside by looking at their smartphone, raised $1 million from venture capitalists. And after the episode aired in November, the company sold 10,000 units in a month. Mr. Siminoff now has plans to expand the staff to 50 from 30 and to develop the product further, including adding video recording.
Mr. Siminoff, who has six startups to his credit, launched DoorBot in 2012 on a crowdfunding website he also founded, called Christie Street. The site didn't attract much traffic and is currently dormant. But DoorBot, based in Santa Monica, Calif., has racked up more than $3 million in sales, and backing from such venture-capital firms as First Round Capital and Upfront Ventures.
The 37-year-old Mr. Siminoff, whose other companies include PhoneTag Inc., a service that converts voice mails into text messages or emails, recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal about crowdfunding, competing for talent against deep-pocketed giants like Google Inc., and his startup management style, which favors few titles or meetings. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow:
What Works?
WSJ: How do you know which of your ideas will make a sustainable business?
MR. SIMINOFF: I don't, the business does. The best thing you can do is listen to the market and then let them decide.
I have never met anyone who's smart enough to pick their winners and losers before they actually happen. Even the best guys have no idea what's going to work and what's not going to work. I think it's impossible to really know.
The one thing we steer away from [is an idea] for a market that feels very, very small—too small to ever grow out of.
WSJ: Did your failed pitch on "Shark Tank" deter other venture capitalists from investing in the startup?
MR. SIMINOFF: There was definitely a snobbery of, "Oh you were on 'Shark Tank,' " almost like, "That's embarrassing." Then I showed them the numbers and what the show has done for us in terms of awareness and everything else. If you're a consumer brand, I don't think there's anything else quite like ["Shark Tank"] that can do that for you.
WSJ: What's the biggest challenge your company is dealing with now?
MR. SIMINOFF: When you're a new company launching a new product, you have no idea how many [customer-service people] you need, and we underestimated.
Then the problem is, once you underestimate, now you have a snowball effect happening. At the same time, you're trying to hire people, but the training process is not in place. We're coming out of it now because we finally now answer every [customer-service] ticket in real time. But we had to build our way out of it.
'Crowd' Psychology
WSJ: After your experiences with Christie Street and DoorBot, would you recommend crowdfunding?
MR. SIMINOFF: With the right amount of crowdfunding, you have money, you have customers. But you can also have too much crowdfunding. You get into this problem where you can't handle what you have, and it can actually backfire. Companies can just get ground down because they have 10,000 angry people almost trying to pick the company apart.
Crowdfunding definitely makes you rush to get the product out. You're preselling something and saying, "I'm going to ship in six months." Any sort of pushing back the schedule after that, and people get mad. But the other side is, you wouldn't have the product out at all if you didn't presell it.
The way to master crowdfunding is to try to set the expectations up front: that you're not shipping out everything at once, that the product will be kind of rough, that you'll need six months for it to be perfect. But that's for something that has software. If it's for, say, a charging cable, the product is what it is. It's either going to work or it's not.
If you don't use [crowdfunding] perfectly, all these variables can kill you.
WSJ: Is your company facing problems attracting engineers and designers?
MR. SIMINOFF: I think the only people who aren't facing problems getting engineers are liars. Every single engineer that's even decent has multiple opportunities to go other places. One of the keys to being a CEO right now in any startup that's anywhere in the tech space is being able to sell to an engineer to join your company, and that involves creating a mission with a higher cause.
Because it's not just about money; they can get money. It's how do you make them want to come to you.
'I Built This'
WSJ: But is a great mission really enough to overcome the salary difference between you and the big names?
MR. SIMINOFF: If Google offers an engineer $200,000 and you say, "I'll offer you $50,000 but here's this amazing mission we have," they're not going to join your startup. But you might have a chance if Google's offering them $140,000 and you're doing $130,000, and maybe you do a little bit of equity and it's a cool place.
The one thing a startup has over a Google or a Facebook is that an engineer going to a big company can never say to their mom or dad or brother or girlfriend, "That's what I did." They can't show their work. And an engineer is kind of like an artist.
At a small company like ours, they can say, "I built this recording feature for this, and this is how it affected the company." I think that can make up for a 10% or 15% gap in salary.
Minimizing Meetings
WSJ: Why did you choose to go without many titles or meetings, compared with a traditional company structure?
MR. SIMINOFF: We wanted to go no-titles because we thought that was going to be cool. We ended up doing a hybrid of it. There's enough titling so that people know who does what.
Secondly, I think it's just a waste of time holding meetings. If we're doing a big, new rollout of a product, we'll get everyone who needs to be together and talk about it. But I try to minimize meetings and any sort of politics. It lets really talented people flourish.
It's more if you need an answer to something, you ask someone. Or, if you're working on something, you say, "Hey, Jamie, get over here. What do you think about this?" It's definitely ad hoc. And for people who aren't in the office, everyone's on Skype. So it's like everyone's together all the time anyway.
WSJ: What's the hardest part about building a startup?
MR. SIMINOFF: That it takes seven years to really build. Some are lottery tickets and go a lot faster, but to really build a company takes five to seven years. You have to be able to focus and take bite-size chews.
If you get too hyped up and [focus too much on] what the competitor is building, you just end up burning out of your cash and going out of business. Being able to focus and execute is the most important thing.
Ms. Huston is an editor of The Accelerators, a Wall Street Journal blog on startups. She can be reached at [email protected].
Corrections & Amplifications
Jamie Siminoff raised $300,000 in venture capital for DoorBot after his episode of "Shark Tank" was taped but before it aired, and $700,000 after the show aired. An article in Monday's C-Suite report incorrectly said he raised the entire $1 million after the show aired.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...trending_now_2
He Failed on 'Shark Tank'—but So What?
Entrepreneur Jamie Siminoff on How Startups Can Compete for Tech Talent
By CAITLIN HUSTON
March 9, 2014 7:47 p.m. ET
Persuading an engineer to join your tech startup 'involves creating a mission with a higher cause.' James Siminoff
Failing to get funding on "Shark Tank," the entrepreneurship reality TV show, didn't sink Jamie Siminoff's most recent startup. On the contrary.
After the show was taped for ABC last September, the company, DoorBot, the maker of a doorbell that allows homeowners to see who is outside by looking at their smartphone, raised $1 million from venture capitalists. And after the episode aired in November, the company sold 10,000 units in a month. Mr. Siminoff now has plans to expand the staff to 50 from 30 and to develop the product further, including adding video recording.
Mr. Siminoff, who has six startups to his credit, launched DoorBot in 2012 on a crowdfunding website he also founded, called Christie Street. The site didn't attract much traffic and is currently dormant. But DoorBot, based in Santa Monica, Calif., has racked up more than $3 million in sales, and backing from such venture-capital firms as First Round Capital and Upfront Ventures.
The 37-year-old Mr. Siminoff, whose other companies include PhoneTag Inc., a service that converts voice mails into text messages or emails, recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal about crowdfunding, competing for talent against deep-pocketed giants like Google Inc., and his startup management style, which favors few titles or meetings. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow:
What Works?
WSJ: How do you know which of your ideas will make a sustainable business?
MR. SIMINOFF: I don't, the business does. The best thing you can do is listen to the market and then let them decide.
I have never met anyone who's smart enough to pick their winners and losers before they actually happen. Even the best guys have no idea what's going to work and what's not going to work. I think it's impossible to really know.
The one thing we steer away from [is an idea] for a market that feels very, very small—too small to ever grow out of.
WSJ: Did your failed pitch on "Shark Tank" deter other venture capitalists from investing in the startup?
MR. SIMINOFF: There was definitely a snobbery of, "Oh you were on 'Shark Tank,' " almost like, "That's embarrassing." Then I showed them the numbers and what the show has done for us in terms of awareness and everything else. If you're a consumer brand, I don't think there's anything else quite like ["Shark Tank"] that can do that for you.
WSJ: What's the biggest challenge your company is dealing with now?
MR. SIMINOFF: When you're a new company launching a new product, you have no idea how many [customer-service people] you need, and we underestimated.
Then the problem is, once you underestimate, now you have a snowball effect happening. At the same time, you're trying to hire people, but the training process is not in place. We're coming out of it now because we finally now answer every [customer-service] ticket in real time. But we had to build our way out of it.
'Crowd' Psychology
WSJ: After your experiences with Christie Street and DoorBot, would you recommend crowdfunding?
MR. SIMINOFF: With the right amount of crowdfunding, you have money, you have customers. But you can also have too much crowdfunding. You get into this problem where you can't handle what you have, and it can actually backfire. Companies can just get ground down because they have 10,000 angry people almost trying to pick the company apart.
Crowdfunding definitely makes you rush to get the product out. You're preselling something and saying, "I'm going to ship in six months." Any sort of pushing back the schedule after that, and people get mad. But the other side is, you wouldn't have the product out at all if you didn't presell it.
The way to master crowdfunding is to try to set the expectations up front: that you're not shipping out everything at once, that the product will be kind of rough, that you'll need six months for it to be perfect. But that's for something that has software. If it's for, say, a charging cable, the product is what it is. It's either going to work or it's not.
If you don't use [crowdfunding] perfectly, all these variables can kill you.
WSJ: Is your company facing problems attracting engineers and designers?
MR. SIMINOFF: I think the only people who aren't facing problems getting engineers are liars. Every single engineer that's even decent has multiple opportunities to go other places. One of the keys to being a CEO right now in any startup that's anywhere in the tech space is being able to sell to an engineer to join your company, and that involves creating a mission with a higher cause.
Because it's not just about money; they can get money. It's how do you make them want to come to you.
'I Built This'
WSJ: But is a great mission really enough to overcome the salary difference between you and the big names?
MR. SIMINOFF: If Google offers an engineer $200,000 and you say, "I'll offer you $50,000 but here's this amazing mission we have," they're not going to join your startup. But you might have a chance if Google's offering them $140,000 and you're doing $130,000, and maybe you do a little bit of equity and it's a cool place.
The one thing a startup has over a Google or a Facebook is that an engineer going to a big company can never say to their mom or dad or brother or girlfriend, "That's what I did." They can't show their work. And an engineer is kind of like an artist.
At a small company like ours, they can say, "I built this recording feature for this, and this is how it affected the company." I think that can make up for a 10% or 15% gap in salary.
Minimizing Meetings
WSJ: Why did you choose to go without many titles or meetings, compared with a traditional company structure?
MR. SIMINOFF: We wanted to go no-titles because we thought that was going to be cool. We ended up doing a hybrid of it. There's enough titling so that people know who does what.
Secondly, I think it's just a waste of time holding meetings. If we're doing a big, new rollout of a product, we'll get everyone who needs to be together and talk about it. But I try to minimize meetings and any sort of politics. It lets really talented people flourish.
It's more if you need an answer to something, you ask someone. Or, if you're working on something, you say, "Hey, Jamie, get over here. What do you think about this?" It's definitely ad hoc. And for people who aren't in the office, everyone's on Skype. So it's like everyone's together all the time anyway.
WSJ: What's the hardest part about building a startup?
MR. SIMINOFF: That it takes seven years to really build. Some are lottery tickets and go a lot faster, but to really build a company takes five to seven years. You have to be able to focus and take bite-size chews.
If you get too hyped up and [focus too much on] what the competitor is building, you just end up burning out of your cash and going out of business. Being able to focus and execute is the most important thing.
Ms. Huston is an editor of The Accelerators, a Wall Street Journal blog on startups. She can be reached at [email protected].
Corrections & Amplifications
Jamie Siminoff raised $300,000 in venture capital for DoorBot after his episode of "Shark Tank" was taped but before it aired, and $700,000 after the show aired. An article in Monday's C-Suite report incorrectly said he raised the entire $1 million after the show aired.
03-15-14, 11:13 AM
#303
DVD Talk God
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
none of those ideas were terribly interesting. i do like how Cuban gives money to kids who hustle and might have a decent idea.
03-15-14, 11:30 AM
#304
DVD Talk Legend
03-15-14, 04:29 PM
#307
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
Heard yesterday that O'Leary is leaving Dragon's Den. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Unfortunately, Bruce Croxon, a decent fellow, is also departing. Both will be replaced.
03-15-14, 10:58 PM
#309
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
I'm not a big fan of the cute kid as business owner presentations. 99% of the time those ideas would be laughed off by the Sharks if presented as an adult concept, and reminds the viewer this is not a real business venture but a gimmick to keep the ratings up.
75% equity ownership in that last presentation seemed awfully rich and very greedy by Robert, even if it did involve two sharks. A seasoned negotiator could have probably knocked that figure down.
75% equity ownership in that last presentation seemed awfully rich and very greedy by Robert, even if it did involve two sharks. A seasoned negotiator could have probably knocked that figure down.
03-22-14, 12:09 PM
#313
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
Soooo did anyone else have a strange audio glitch last night? Like "sharks circling above, two men in glasses walking down hall" etc.
03-22-14, 04:33 PM
#317
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
Mr. Wonderful knows that textbook market inside and out, if he didn't even nibble on their offer it's not a wise investment.
03-22-14, 05:01 PM
#319
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
I don't remember much from college but I'm know that I used my textbooks on a daily basis. The service would turn into a complete rip off if the books end up being very important.
I've heard of MorningHead before and even thought about buying into their Kickstarter campaign. It's a helpful product even if it's very simple. I think I decided not to buy one because I wanted to wait for it to hit the market and then I forgot all about it. I think if he didn't have such a Frat Bro name for his product he would have fared better with the sharks.
Anyone ever try cricket? It probably doesn't taste all that bad with the chocolate bar but I can't imagine it ever being much of a company. If you want something sweet and healthy there are options where you don't have to eat a cricket. I would try it though.
I've heard of MorningHead before and even thought about buying into their Kickstarter campaign. It's a helpful product even if it's very simple. I think I decided not to buy one because I wanted to wait for it to hit the market and then I forgot all about it. I think if he didn't have such a Frat Bro name for his product he would have fared better with the sharks.
Anyone ever try cricket? It probably doesn't taste all that bad with the chocolate bar but I can't imagine it ever being much of a company. If you want something sweet and healthy there are options where you don't have to eat a cricket. I would try it though.
03-22-14, 06:34 PM
#320
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
There's no way you would ever taste these crickets. They became a flour and blended into the ingredients. It's there as a powdery protein, not as a taste factor.
People were grossed out like he was selling chocolate covered bugs in the same dipping process as a chocolate covered strawberry. Not the case.
People were grossed out like he was selling chocolate covered bugs in the same dipping process as a chocolate covered strawberry. Not the case.
03-22-14, 10:21 PM
#321
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
^We all eat insects every day and don't realize it. They are inadvertently included in all sorts of foods. However, I wouldn't pay $2.99 for a chocolate bar (or whatever the hell it was) made of crickets. What for?
Funny double-entendre name, but the thing is, that item doesn't do anything I can't do by running some water through my hair with my, um, hands, which I do every morning.
As for the e-textbook rental, it's an excellent concept for heavily indebted students, but what a ripoff at their proposed cost! Paper textbooks are enough of a scam as is. This is even worse.
Originally Posted by Goat3001
I've heard of MorningHead before and even thought about buying into their Kickstarter campaign. It's a helpful product even if it's very simple.
As for the e-textbook rental, it's an excellent concept for heavily indebted students, but what a ripoff at their proposed cost! Paper textbooks are enough of a scam as is. This is even worse.
03-23-14, 12:50 AM
#322
Senior Member
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Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
^We all eat insects every day and don't realize it. They are inadvertently included in all sorts of foods. However, I wouldn't pay $2.99 for a chocolate bar (or whatever the hell it was) made of crickets. What for?
Funny double-entendre name, but the thing is, that item doesn't do anything I can't do by running some water through my hair with my, um, hands, which I do every morning.
As for the e-textbook rental, it's an excellent concept for heavily indebted students, but what a ripoff at their proposed cost! Paper textbooks are enough of a scam as is. This is even worse.
Funny double-entendre name, but the thing is, that item doesn't do anything I can't do by running some water through my hair with my, um, hands, which I do every morning.
As for the e-textbook rental, it's an excellent concept for heavily indebted students, but what a ripoff at their proposed cost! Paper textbooks are enough of a scam as is. This is even worse.
And the cricket bar just seems like a gimmick. Something that people will try once just to say they tried it. I checked out the website, and you only get 8g of protein with it. You can literally get similar bars with twice that for the same price and no insects.
03-23-14, 01:24 AM
#323
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
I think the best case scenario with the cricket bar is hoping it catches fire as a fad amongst hipsters and wealthy greens. The American public is not clamoring for a bar made out of insects.
03-23-14, 04:29 PM
#324
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Shark Tank (ABC) -- Series Thread Part II
True, but they probably have some safeguard against that. I can't imagine what it is, but that eventuality must have occurred to them. It didn't to me, but I'm not a tech wizard.