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WakeMate (YC S09) on building their business and their YCombinator experience

Published: Apr 11, 2011

I recently had the chance to do an interview with the founders of the YCombinator backed startup, WakeMate. WakeMake wants to help you sleep better by tracking your sleep. In this interview we talk about how they came up with the idea, how they gained traction, and their experience with YCombinator. I’ve also included a summary below the video.

What is WakeMake

WakeMate is a cellphone accessory that tracks your sleep cycle, and helps you improve your quality of sleep.

Where did the idea come from?

• Idea came from an experience 6 years ago when they realized they didn’t always feel refreshed in the morning when they woke up.
• They’ve done a ton thinking and research.

What helped to set you apart?

• Dedication.
• Research.
• We had already built a prototype.
• Proved that we were determined (both had dropped out of school at this point to work on WakeMate).

Biggest plus to being in YCombinator:

• The YCombinator Brand. This opened a lot of doors.
• Direct Access to Paul Graham. You have a lot of people giving you advice and it helps to have just one voice to focus on.
• Incredible almuni network.

Getting in to YCombinator:

• Don’t let not getting into YCombinator hurt you. There are many successful startups that have nothing to do with YC.
• Focus on building a business. Statistically you’re not going to get into YC, but that shouldn’t stop you from building an awesome startup.
• Advance your startup, and don’t worry about getting into YCombinator. Focus on building a business.

How did WakeMate gain traction?

• WakeMate solves a problem that is easily communicable. The best salesman you have is a customer who loves your product.

How do you move from early adopters into the mainstream?

• Target specific market segments where sleep is a major pain point (traveling businessman, medical students, etc.)

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs and founder that are just starting out

• Talk to everybody. You need to gather research.
• You need to be an expert in your field so keep learning.
• Focus on your elevator pitch. Figure out how to comunicate your business in 30 seconds.

For more startup news, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

Turbulence and the Start Up Bubble- “If you freak out, I’ll freak out”.

Published: Apr 9, 2011


Editor’s note: The following is a guest post written by Jason Lorimer from CulturaHQ.

I was recently on a Southwest Airlines flight (not this one thankfully) from Philadelphia to Chicago, sitting next to a beautiful blond woman. Her being in the same general line of work and me being a nervous talker, we passed the time by talking shop. Specifically, how we were both amazed at how few innovative ideas seemed to be coming out the abundance of start up companies popping up all across the US.

How many task tracking and photo applications does the world really need?

With all the low hanging fruit out there waiting to be disrupted, why did everyone seem to be trying to build a better version of the same dozen or so things. My seat buddy, as adorable as she is smart, said:

“They build for the funding first and the customer second.”

Obvious and insightful — Marry me I thought.

On the return trip some days later, I sat in the back row having shown up late to the gate and was greeted with some of the worst turbulence I’d ever experienced. Not so bad in it’s depth as it was in it’s length. For several minutes at varying intervals, this 747 was being thrown around like a rag doll. Being in the back row and an avid people watcher, I noticed something that allowed me to refocus my brain away from the sheer terror that was creeping up my neck. The turbulence had gotten so bad that people were starting to be alarmed. They were slowly turning their heads to look at each other as if to say:

Should I be freaking out right now? If you are freaking out, I’ll freak out.

The flight soon after settled and once the attendants lined the aisle with over-priced booze, everyone seemed to go back to normal. The next day I was telling this tale to a friend back in Philly and I laughed to myself midway through as the parallels clicked: The start up scene is that airplane, the passengers entrepreneurs and the turbulence the investment capital. Everyone looking around at each other but not speaking up. Imagine the same mental monologue from an early stage entrepreneur:

“Is it me or is my start up pointless? I mean, if you don’t think yours is pointless, mine must not be pointless because if you thought yours was pointless, you would be freaking out about that 300K of investors money you are burning every month and you are not so I shouldn’t be worried that I have no customers or even a proof of concept, let alone revenue.

Anyway, Are you guys going to the Tumblr party at SXSW? I heard Jon Hamm is going to be there.”

For the record, anybody willing to put their neck on the line to build something instead of running their mouth about what they are going to do is good in my book, but is it possible
that start-up bubbles might just be caused by vanity as much as they are by an abundance of available capital?

Are revenue models not cool?

Maybe I am being naive but I just think if most entrepreneurs would put aside the idea of being crowned the Internet King on the Month and just focus on transforming pre-internet business models into post internet. ventures, everyone down the line would be better served.

For more startup articles, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry

Mint’s Original Marketing Plan (circa 2007)

Published: Apr 8, 2011


When personal finance assistant Mint.com launched in late 2007, their app was warmly received by the startup community. You couldn’t go anywhere on the web without someone talking (positively) about Mint. A huge key of Mint’s success was the brilliant marketing plan they put together and executed.

For the first time ever, Noah Kagan (Mint’s former marketing director) gave TSF readers an inside peak at Mint’s original marketing plan. Noah has since moved on from Mint and now runs AppSumo, a site that provides “daily deals for web geeks”.

This document is pure gold for any startups that need help with marketing. Don’t miss this.

Marketing Game Plan for Mint

Again, special thanks to Noah Kagan from AppSumo for making this available to TSF readers.

For more startup news, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

Love of the Game: Be foolish enough to believe your startup will make it.

Published: Apr 6, 2011


A close friend of mine has been struggling with his startup for the past 2 years. He’s dropped out of school to work on it full time and is still working hard on gaining traction. He has recently moved back to his parents house so he could keep his expenses low and not have to take any funding. His diet primarily consists of Ramen Noodles and whatever fruit is on sale. His income is under $15k a year.

His lifestyle isn’t this way because he lacks options. He’s turned down Angel funding on 4 separate occasions. Within the past week he’s turned down two different jobs (which would have require him to quit his startup) where both companies were offering six figure salaries. Many of his friends called him foolish.

He isn’t looking at the startup world with rose-colored glasses. He knows that entrepreneurship is a bipolar existence. You can embrace his idea or dismiss it, but you can’t ever shake his faith that his startup will make it. Job security, comfort, and money paled in comparison to the thought of him building a startup.

As I’ve talked to more entrepreneurs about my friends experience, I’ve discovered his story isn’t unique. Many entrepreneurs are driven by an intrinsic belief that what they’re working on truly matters. Despite all the odds stacked against them, they believe their startup will succeed.

This sort of lifestyle can only come from a love of the game and belief in your startup. I absolutely love this about the startup community. Just remember, you’re not entitled to anything. Hustle for everything you’re worth.

Be foolish enough to believe you’ll make it.

For more startup news, please follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

Teaching developers UX: Use Fitts’ law to build a polished landing page

Published: Apr 5, 2011


I’ve had several technical founders ask for advice on building landing pages. Typically it’s bootstrapped companies that want to increase conversion rates, but don’t have the capital to hire a UX designer. In this series of articles I’m going to identifiy a common problem I see, and how to fix it. Today I’m going to give you a brief overview of Fitts’ law and how developers can improve their UX.

What is Fitts’ Law?

Fitts’ law can be described in the mathematical formula to the left. T is time. a is the intercept and b is the slope. D is the distance to the center of the target. W is the width along the axis of motion.

Essentially Fitts’ law describes how long it takes you to point to an object. This is a pretty basic concept, but the mathematical formula gives us a framework to know exactly how to build things. Since we are looking at this through a landing page lens, the objects I will be focusing on will be buttons and links.

How should we design buttons and links?

1. Buttons and links are some of the most important elements on your landing page. You can improve the UX by increasing the target size. A common mistake I see is developers often build their buttons were only the text is clickable (see figure a). The rest of the button is just used for eye candy and is non interactive. By changing the whole button to a clickable state (see figure b), you will dramatically lower the amount of time a user spends trying to click. A good UX will minimize pain points, no matter how small.

2. The next thing that we can do to improve our UX is to increase target size. The basic premise is big buttons are easier to click. For example, it’s much easier to point at a car then it is to a key.

3. The last common button placement issue I see is with button placement. Take this example from Reddit user jbu311 .

Keep Fitts’ law in mind when you’re designing your landing pages to increase conversions. It’s amazing how small tweaks can minimize the amount of friction users encounter.

For more startup news, please follow us on twitter @startupfoundry.

Month Two of TSF: 140,000 page views, $500 in revenue, and how I screwed up

Published: Apr 4, 2011


Running a startup news site, I ask founders for hard numbers all the time. I think it’s only fair to publicly share mine once a month as well. This article is focused on the second month of TSF. You can read about our first month here.

The second month was hard for me. Running a startup full-time and a side project (The Startup Foundry) is paradoxically draining and fulfilling simultaneously. Alexis Ohanian (a co-founder of Reddit) nailed it when he said “Entrepreneurship is a bipolar existence”.

Hard numbers:

Traffic was up from 120,000 pageviews to 140,000 a month. 60 days ago TSF didn’t even exist and we’ve still managed to serve over a quarter of a million page views. This is very encouraging to me and I would like to say thank you to our readers.

Through sponsors we’ve generated $500 in revenue this month.

Things I did correctly:

1. Increased Revenue: Last month we made $462 dollars in revenue. This month I increased that number to $500. Even though it’s not a huge jump, it’s progress. The more money I generate, the more time I can spend on TSF. Slowly but surely I’m seeing this grow.
2. Viral Promotional Piece: I doodled a Startup Death Clock on a napkin for fun. An hour later I had a rough version put together in Photoshop and HTML. Two hours after that a TSF reader (Ashley Williams) helped me with some javascript and we completed our silly clock. In the first 6 hours after launch, the death clock received 5,000 page views, and people had spent over 11 days playing with it. This promotional piece helped drive traffic to the main site and increased our followers on twitter significantly.

Things I sucked at:

1. Article output has dipped: Situations arose in my life when I was unable to publish an article for the day. I should have had several stories in my backpocket that I could fill in the holes.
2. Better submission process for startups seeking coverage: I need to streamline this. Entrepreneurs and founders are already busy people. I want to make their life a little easier.
3. Mailing lists: Currently I have two mailing lists. The Weekly and the Daily Digest. I need to do a better job of creating value with my newsletters, and promoting them.

Next Steps:

Each month I focus on one metric to improve. This month I’m working on lowering the bounce rate. Currently we are at an 80% rate. I would like to see this number drop to about 50%. Most of the changes to TSF in this month will be addressing this issue.

Any Questions?

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments. I will try to answer each one as openly as I can.

For more startup news, follow us on twitter @StartupFoundry.

Startup Riot’s Sanjay Parekh on “How to Put Together a Slide Deck”

Published: Apr 2, 2011

Sanjay Parekh has a lot of experience with startup pitches. Sanjay runs Startup Riot where, once a year, 50 companies pitch their deck in a single day. He has seen the whole gamut of pitches from fantastic, to horrible, to captivating. He recently Skyped in to share with TSF readers some basic tips on how to improve your own pitch. Don’t miss this 8 minute video!

This is part 2 of our interview with Sanjay. Be sure to check out part 1, “I pitched 200 VCs in 10 months before I closed the round”.

Highlights:

1. Don’t skip the “why” of your startup. Assume the crowd knows nothing about your startup.

2. Keep it simple. Text is fine for a document, not a PowerPoint.

3. You want to emotionally connect with the audience.

4. If you see a lot of text on a slide. Your attention shifts to the text instead of the presenter.

5. The point of the slide is to convey information and augment what the speaker is talking about

6. The ideal slide that complements what you’re saying (instead of speaking for you) would have a lot of visuals, but wouldn’t describe . That’s your job.

7. Create an outline before you fire up PowerPoint or Keynote. Know what direction you’re headed in before you start creating.

8. People connect with stories, not facts and figures. Focus on your narrative.

9. Adjust the deck to the audience.

For more startup news, please follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

Why entrepreneurs and founders often have trouble sleeping: Closure.

Published: Apr 1, 2011

When I’m physically exhausted and craving sleep I close my eyes and I see code. Methods and variables gleefully dance on the inside of my eyelids and new ideas pulse through my veins. My brain doesn’t care it has spent the last 12 hours focused on my startup, it wants more. It’s addicted.

Last night was no different. After an hour of unsuccessful negotiation with my body to go to sleep, I admitted defeat and jumped on the computer and worked so I could get my fix. After several hours, I decided to send out a quick tweet to see who else was hacking away at 3:30 am. An outpouring of entrepreneurs began to flood my Twitter timeline.

It appears I am not alone.

Background:

I never had this problem when I was working a 9-5 job. My sleeping problems began when I started working full time on my startup. I’ve tried changing my diet, exercising more (I’m already pretty active), and Ambien without having much success sleeping.

My Diagnosis:

After talking with several other entrepreneurs (and my own personal experience), I believe that founders often have trouble getting closure in a work day. For most people working a corporate 9-5 job, they can checkout the second the clock strikes 5 and have little trouble leaving their “work at work” (not always true, but I’m speaking in generalities).

Entrepreneurs aren’t afforded that luxury. An entrepreneur has his fingerprints all over the company and the startup often reflects much of the founders personality. I’ve found that so much of myself is wrapped up in my business that it can be hard to mentally check out at the end of the day.

It doesn’t help that I had an arbitrary goal of “making it big” without any clear definition of what that actually meant.

My Solution:

Figure out your end goal. If you could snap your fingers and give your startup success, what would that look like? After you have this big picture view of your company, break down your success into steps you can take. Then start a checklist of things you must get done each day to move you forward. Doing this helps you get “closure for the day” by reminding you that you’re actually making progress.

Remember, you are a separate entity from your startup.

If you have any other advice, I’d love to hear it in the comments. I don’t have this issue completely figured out, and I would appreciate additional insight.

Please follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

The audacity of charging from day one.

Published: Mar 31, 2011


“We will start charging in version 2.” As the entrepreneur wishfully daydreamed he tacked on “Perhaps not till version 3. Or maybe 4”. I asked the entrepreneur if his product was buggy, and he said “No, it just doesn’t have all the features we have planned yet”.

His answer baffled me. They had a stable, secure product that did a few things very well. Their app didn’t have feature X,Y, and Z (like their competition did), but they had a superior workflow that saved small business owners a lot of time.

After further prodding I discovered they had a user base of over 1,000 business, many of their customers were practically begging to pay for premium access, and yet the startup was running out of money. “Charge for it”, I replied. “Your customers obviously like what you’re doing and you’ve clearly demonstrated value”. His face conjured an expression equally split between disgust and contempt. He felt that by charging for his product he would be a “sell-out” in the startup community.

Why is there apprehension about making money in startup land?

Is it possible that quite a few entrepreneurs simply aren’t interested in making money? Perhaps they are more intoxicated with the process of building a startup then ringing the cash register. Entrepreneurship is about more then just money, but money is a necessary to keep the lights on.

Don’t be ashamed to charge money for a product or service that has value. If your community tries to shame you for this, ignore them.

Old is the New new

Earlier today I asked, “Has anyone successfully bootstrapped their company by charging from day one?” I received several responses, and my favorite reply came via email from Peldi Guilizzoni (Founder of Balsamiq) “Ehm, because that’s how the world has worked since the invention of commerce? I give you something of value, you give me money in exchange. Why is that audacious?”

Go build something of value and charge for it. If you need some inspiration, checkout The Startup Death Clock.

For more startup news, please follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

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Hi, I'm Paul Hontz.

I'm a YC alumn and I love startups. I created TSF to highlight companies I find interesting. You can learn more about me here.

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