This article was originally posted at Betaspring.com, and is republished with permission.
Written by Max Winograd, President & Co-Founder of NuLabel Technologies, Inc.
It's Spring 2009. Citigroup stock is trading below $1. Nearly a trillion dollars of stimulus has been signed into law. The economy is - to quote Coolio - "in the valley of the shadow of death." But me? I'm in a Gangsta's Paradise. I'm a Senior in my last semester of college, and I've accepted a great consulting job offer. Job security. A nice base salary. A several hundred million dollar employer with great stability. The anti-startup.
Meanwhile, I'm in the midst of a yearlong engineering project with two partners – Ben Lux (a polymer science whiz) and Mike Woods (an engineer who hasn't met a mechanical device he has not taken apart) – and we saw an opportunity to eliminate the back of the label - the "liner" that companies like Walmart and FedEx pay for, then print out, then throw away.
With Ben's polymer science expertise and Mike's engineering hacker skills, we knew we could invent a zero-waste, liner-free label solution once we started up after graduation. But when you're in a classroom, you don't scale up. You don't close deals. And you don't hire and make payroll. As soon as we started talking to the biggest label users and the biggest label makers in the world, we realized we needed to scale up. We needed to close deals. And we needed to hire and make payroll. We could not go it alone.
As Ben, Mike, and I prepared for graduation, Betaspring, a new startup accelerator, launched in Providence, RI, and we saw the chance to acquire the survival skills we needed without bleeding to death in the wilderness alone. So we formed NuLabel Technologies, applied to Betaspring, and were accepted into the first class of Betaspring companies….
As we wrap up 2012, we now have several PhDs, engineers, chemists, and designers, a patent portfolio of chemistry and hardware technology, and some of the largest brands, retailers, and logistics providers that are adopting our solutions.
So what happened between the dorm room and the board room? Betaspring. Having the first three months' of our startup take place in an accelerator gave us the chance to connect with mentors and serial entrepreneurs at the critical point where we were defining the NuLabel DNA. You can cut your hair, change your wardrobe, and even put lipstick on a pig, but you cannot change your startup DNA. Plugging into a network of some of the most successful entrepreneurs, technologists, and investors in the greater Boston and Providence community and having a constant mentor feedback loop at Betaspring (but on your own terms) helped us define the NuLabel DNA so that we could scale up, close big deals, and hire and make payroll.
What did Betaspring and these mentors teach us? Once we launched out of Betaspring, in keeping with the four nucleotides in DNA we distilled what we absorbed from the accelerator network into four core principles:
- It Takes What It Takes.
- Prove Yourself Wrong.
- Fly Low. Fly Far.
- Have A Vision; Be Demanding.
To scale up, close big deals, hire and make payroll, you need to do all be true to all four principles:
- Do whatever it takes to get the order, to launch beta, to convince that investor, to hire that A-team engineer
- Challenge your hypothesis by seeking truth, rather than confirming the pre-conceived notion
- Seek recognition and the spotlight only when it enhances your brand and your vision; otherwise, keep your head down and build on your vision
- Have a vision, not just an idea or a product, and empower everyone that can derive benefit from that vision to make your vision a reality
While at Betaspring, NuLabel's DNA was not only influenced by the mentor network but also by the fellow entrepreneurs that were experiencing the same challenges, the same small victories, and the same emotions that I was experiencing launching NuLabel. Betaspring helped me anticipate the challenges, shepherd me to success, and enable my co-founders and me to scale NuLabel on our terms and in keeping with our vision.
And that's why I'm still in the sexy world of bar code labels and not waste deep in TPS reports.