Hey friends,
Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 21. 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.
No idea what The Founder is? Read this.
Mission control:
Learn -> Founder favorite resources
Free money -> Discount codes
And who am I?
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 21) 🦑
Guest -> Michael Kranitz, Founder and CEO of Eventsquid
Mission -> Eventsquid enables planners to automate event registrations, website and mobile app creation, virtual events, exhibitor sales, attendee communication, agenda management, surveys, volunteer signup, CEU tracking, check-in/out, speaker management, session ratings, speaker ratings, document management and reporting.
Episode available on -> Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
In this episode we talk with Michael about…
🔨 Building and scaling a B2B SaaS company
🤼 Why the event planning space is so competitive
💡 How eBay got their offer and accept bid software from Michael
🔮 The future of in-person events in a post-Covid world
📚 If going to law school is a good idea
Summary 🔍
What is Eventsquid and how did Michael get started?
With a background in speech, standup comedy and radio in his early life, Michael went to law school in an attempt to figure out what he wanted to do longer-term.
After graduating, he found himself practicing corporate litigation law for the next several years and experienced a broad exposure to a variety of different businesses and business models.
Although he was building a successful law career, he always felt in the back of his mind that it wasn’t his calling and wanted to make the jump to technology.
Through a series of twists and turns, he became a serial entrepreneur, launching software companies across automotive, mail catalogs, radio control flying, and newspaper syndication - selling his companies to bigger players along the way.
He eventually wound up building an event management platform for radio control events, a space he had a ton of personal passion for.
Along the way, he started branching out to events beyond radio control to things like archery, bodybuilding and golf. Those early verticals laid the foundation for Eventsquid.
Today at Eventsquid, Michael and his team have built a comprehensive event management solution. Their software helps event planners handle everything they need to execute a flawless event, including things like event promotion, setup, mobile app, day-of check-in, badges, speaker management, vendor management, reporting and more.
They work with a range of clients across all industries and have built solutions that facilitate virtual events as well.
Michael’s Startup Manifesto 📜
What’s a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask all of 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 Michael had to say:
Know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Ignore the pressure of your competition but don’t ignore your competition. Understand what they’re doing as a guide but don’t be obsessed by them.
Make sure you have the support around you in order to engage in a startup. For years, I was doing 14-16 hour days and loving every minute of it. If you have newborn kids, have a candid conversation with your spouse because one of you is going to be absent.
If you don’t have a particular skill, hire someone to do what you’re unable to do. Most people fall short in one area or another - know what you can’t do.
Give yourself benchmarks/goal posts and make them realistic. Everybody’s not going to be Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. You don’t have to hit the home run right now. If you do, great, but don’t aim for that. Aim for singles and keep progressing.
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔
After reflecting on my conversation with Michael, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:
The demands of entrepreneurship 🤯
It’s no secret that entrepreneurship has become one of the most celebrated careers paths over the last 10 years.
Kids are putting “entrepreneur” in their social media bios and more people than ever are starting to build businesses for themselves to avoid the corporate grind.
And it makes sense when you look at the evolution of technology capabilities for small and medium sized businesses.
It has never been easier to create a product (physical or digital), whip up a website on Squarespace/Shopify, connect to Stripe for payments, run Google Suite to manage email, and market via paid ads on social media.
But what people don’t often realize when they’re launching a business is the sheer amount of work that goes into it.
One of the points that was underscored by Michael in our conversation was how “all-consuming” it can be to run your own business.
He said he was working 14-16 hour days, 7 days a week for the better part of the last 10 years in order to put his companies in the best position to succeed.
He said that to him, the weekends felt like an opportunity to get a jump on his competition vs take a rest/recover. And that mentality, while partly fueled by his competitive drive, is largely necessary if you’re going to keep the business alive.
Because when you run your own operation, you’re not only responsible for creating/selling the product, but you have to think about things like customer service, tech support, accounting, legal, hiring, marketing, ops, etc.
That’s a lot of balls in the air for a small team to manage and each of those things just takes time.
Plus, when you’re doing something for the first time, you need to spend a significant amount of upfront time and energy learning what you’re doing and taking trainings. You often won’t get the benefit of the learning curve efficiencies until you’ve been doing something for a while. In the early days of a startup, you don’t have that luxury.
For example, if you’re in your 9th year of business and need to understand your P&L for the last quarter, you probably have a strong system built out that will allow you to quickly access and understand those numbers. The first time doing that however, you likely had to spend a good chunk of time thinking through the quarter-close process that makes sense for your business, learning any necessary financial reporting tools, talking to an expert/advisor to avoid pitfalls, etc.
It all adds up.
And that’s why, especially in the early days, there is a never ending list of things that need to get done and you end up working all day everyday.
It’s an important factor to realize before you jump into being an entrepreneur. Gary Vee says it best in that not every single person on this earth was cut out to be an entrepreneur.
There’s a lot of people that make really strong #2s, #5s, and #20s that can optimize their happiness and not have to deal with the stress and time load that the entrepreneur has to face.
Wrapping it Up 📕
I hope you found this interesting and inspiring! If so and you want to help support my journey to bring The Founder to millions of people across the world, here’s a couple things that would be really valuable to me and the show:
If you enjoyed this post, share it with one friend that you think is on the same wavelength. Can’t hurt and would help spread the word!
If you haven’t already, subscribe to the newsletter so you can get them delivered to your inbox each week!
Listen to the full podcast episode with Michael on Apple or Spotify. If you don’t have an hour to listen to the full episode, pick a couple of topics you’re interested in and skim through (topic time codes in the show notes).
If you’re feeling super giving:
Find our show on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/2VCosu6) and (1) subscribe, (2) give a 5-star rating and (3) leave a couple sentence positive review. This doesn’t seem like it would move the needle but it really is a massive help!
Till next time ✌️
Kallaway
Want more? Check out other companies we’ve featured on the show!
— 🧑🦰 17. Kombo Ventures | Kevin Gould
— 💍 11. The Clear Cut | Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon
— 🥘 7. Kettle & Fire | Justin Mares
— 🕵️ 6. Alpha | Nis Frome