(Ep 2) THURSDAY BOOTS -> Disrupting the boot industry 🥾
Connor Wilson | Co-Founder & Executive Chairman
What up founder faithful! <— [going to work on a new name for the crew]
Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 2. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less. (If you missed it, check out the previous episode on cookie dough).
(But what’s The Founder Podcast?)
The Founder Podcast is a weekly show where I sit down founders and have real-talk chats about the highs and lows of their entrepreneurial journeys. We cover things from where the spark for their idea/company came from and making prototypes to marketing tactics, tips from investors and their morning routine. Basically, it’s me going head to head with Guy Raz in the podcast octagon (just kidding Guy, you’re awesome and welcome for the backlink).
I’ve found the conversations really helpful for motivation, inspiration and just generally fascinating to learn more about my favorite brands - I think you might too.
Alright, to get this out of the way - Here’s the podcast show link, here’s our website (mission control), here’s our Instagram (where I spend way too much time making quotes and audiogram content), here are all the discount codes we’ve gotten from the companies we’ve had on the show.
(And who are you?)
I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself. Let’s get it.
This Week’s Episode (Ep 2) 🥾
Connor Wilson, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Thursday Boot Company.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google
Summary 🔍
What’s the business?
Thursday Boots makes high quality boots at more accessible prices. Their initial goal was to make a boot that enabled you to go from work to play on a Thursday - picture being in the office and then heading to a happy hour and looking fly in both environments.
Today, they sell a bunch of different boot styles (e.g., lace-up, chukka, chelsea, etc.) as well as shoes and other leather goods for both men and women. Even before having Connor (Co-Founder) on the podcast, Thursday Boots was always my first stop when I needed a new pair of boots because their quality is unmatched for the price range. Here’s a couple of pics of their boots:
Who’s Connor?
Connor grew-up in a small town in Colorado and said he was wearing cowboy boots since he was 6. That’s one 6 year old you do not want to come across at a thrift store. Yikes.
After going to Harvard for undergrad, he spent the next few years working in financial services before finding himself at Columbia Business School. It was there he met his bff and Co-Founder, Nolan Walsh. As the story goes, the two of them were on a spring break surfing trip to Nicaragua where they sparked the idea to start something together. Later on the trip, Nolan complemented a guy in a bar on his boots and that guy told him he had them made in Pastores, Guatemala - a hot spot in the region for handmade leather boots. The rest is history.
Connor’s Startup Manifesto 🗣️
What’s a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask my founder guests the same question:
If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?
Here’s what Connor had to say:
Startup Manifesto 📜
You gotta show your passion. A lot of people are a little bit embarrassed initially, but I think there’s a lot of value in sharing your passion with people in a way that they can understand it.
Add real value. A lot of people are looking for things that are trendy or hot. You should be looking to add real value every single day for your customers. If you can do that, they’ll come back to you.
Team building starts day 1 with who you choose to partner with and work with initially. You have to remember that you’re not just building a business, you’re really building a team. Whether you’re a 1 person, 2 person or 5 person startup, you have to be leading immediately and bring in good people to help you. You can’t do it alone.
Thank your haters. A lot of startups are effectively launched because you’re looking at the world as it is and saying “this isn’t good enough” and there are other people looking at the world and saying “it’s fine as it is.” You need to thank them for that skepticism and feedback because that’s what allows you to build companies that add real value.
Go fast. I see a lot of people that have good ideas and are super smart / motivated and they just dither. Life is really short. If you want to start a business, then start it now - don’t think about it for a long time. If it doesn’t work, you might as well figure that out quickly so you can move on with the rest of your life and do the other things you were meant to do.
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔
After reflecting on my conversation with Connor, there were a couple of things that really got my wheels spinning:
1. MBA / Grad School 🎒
As Connor walked through his founding story for Thursday Boots, I couldn’t help but listen in awe to the picture he painted when he launched Thursday Boots with his Co-Founder Nolan. They were in grad school in NYC, had few “real” responsibilities and were able to dedicate their nearly undivided attention towards building the foundation of their business before graduation.
The MBA debacle is something I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately. As someone who’s aspiring to start my own company one day (but doesn’t have a clear vision for what that should be right now), there are a lot of reasons pursuing an MBA at a top school can be attractive. For me, the two big ones are (i) the access to the network and like minded people that are pursuing a similar vision and (ii) the unrestricted time to actually pursue an idea and put in the groundwork it takes to make it successful.
For most of us, the reality is that if we want to meaningfully pursue something, we either have to take an “all-in” financial leap, quit our full-time job and try to make it work before we run out of Ramen noodles, or keep our full-time job and try to put in the leg work between 8pm-3am on a nightly basis. As someone who has spent the last couple months doing the latter, I’ll be the first to admit, it’s not easy. The MBA gives you that flexibility.
On the flip side, most top MBA programs cost upwards of $100K+ for tuition and an equivalent $50-$60K of living expenses over the two years. Not to mention, the opportunity cost of two years salary. Assuming you’re making $75-$100K per year, that’s a $300-$360K all-in proposition. My gut tells me that if you have the idea you’d like to pursue, that $360K could get you pretty far into testing the MVP and/or proving product market fit.
I guess what it boils down to, as it always seems to, is that it depends on your situation. If you have a good beat on the idea, market opportunity, and/or Co-Founder, then I say pull the cord and let it rip. If you’re looking to get either inspiration or surround yourselves with a collective of people that are as hungry as you are to hopefully find a spark for what to channel your energy towards and you don’t currently have a clear direction, a top-tier MBA program might make more sense. As someone who has thought about it, but hasn’t gone, these are just my assumptions. Would love to hear from successful entrepreneurs on both sides of the argument. What are your thoughts?
2. The Workload in Starting a Company 😓
Towards the end of the episode, I asked Connor, “What is the one thing you know now, that you wish you knew when you started?” and he said what a lot of founders I’ve interviewed have hinted at in one way or another…that it’s a TON of work.
It’s crazy to think about all of the little things that go into getting a company from step 0 to step 1, with step 1 being ready to sell anything to anyone. The strategy, the approach, the team, the brand, product design, testing, iteration, distribution, logistics, the website, the legal, the financial model, the supply chain, marketing, messaging, imagery, etc. It’s amazing any of these companies get off the ground with just a couple people covering all of this stuff.
Even crazier to think that most of the time, founders don’t have any technical experience or prior reps doing most of these things. In Connor’s case, neither him nor Nolan had any experience with product design / making boots. They both had to learn on the fly.
I think that’s one of the things that struck me most is how important curiosity and willingness to learn are for a founder. Early on, it seems like you’re learning something new every single day. Wake up, 10 new things for you to accomplish that you have never done before.
I think the difference between founders and everyone else is that founders genuinely enjoy that process. They thrive in it, and more often than not, they see it as a competitive advantage.
Wrapping it Up 📕
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Till next time ✌️
Kallaway