I’m really psyched to announce that Highland Capital Partners and Charles River Ventures have invested $3.1M in CampusLIVE. In just a few short years the CampusLIVE team has grown from 1 to over 15. This is by far the most exciting time of my life. Thanks to all who have been a tremendous help to me and the rest of the CampusLIVE team.
TechCrunch: CampusLIVE Raises $3.1 Million To Help Brands Connect With College Students
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A great article was just posted on the Harvard Business School website (http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3348.html), listing out the most common legal mistakes made by entrepreneurs. I thought it would be worthwhile to see how many of them I’ve personally experienced – the answer is many more than I’d like. The good thing is, it just takes one time to learn these things. My future ventures will benefit from not having to learn all these mistakes.
The one that really bit my ass was #7. If there is ONE thing you do right in your startup, file the 83b election in a timely manner. If you don’t, you will get screwed, intensely hard by by the IRS – in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars kind of screwed.
The List:
(mistakes i’ve personally been through are underlined)
#10: Failing to incorporate early enough.
#9: Issuing founder shares without vesting.
#8: Hiring a lawyer not experienced in dealing with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
#7: Failing to make a timely Section 83 (b) election.
#6: Negotiating venture capital financing based solely on the valuation.
#5: Waiting to consider international intellectual property protection.
#4: Disclosing inventions without a nondisclosure agreement, or before the patent application is filed.
#3: Starting a business while employed by a potential competitor, or hiring employees without first checking their agreements with the current employer and their knowledge of trade secrets.
#2: Promising more in the business plan than can be delivered and failing to comply with state and federal securities laws.
#1: Thinking any legal problems can be solved later.
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Saved about $1,000 by building it myself.
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Amazon recently invested $175mm into the group buying underdog – LivingSocial.com. Of course it must be said that for an underdog, they are still doing extremely well – printing money.
I wondered what the first big move might be to establish themselves after jumping into bed with Amazon. Today I found out – $20 Amazon giftcards for $10. Brilliant. They have now far surpassed the $11mm in gross revenue brought in by chief competitor Groupon during their $25 for $50 Gap deal.
As of now they’re up over 1 MILLION sold. We can now count Amazon’s total investment in LivingSocial to be at least $185mm.
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Over the past couple years the vision and business model for CampusLIVE has significantly changed, in ways I could have never guessed. Overall for the better I must say.
The original goal I set out to solve was organizing everything students were looking for into one, easy to use, website. It’s amazing how university websites actually do the polar opposite of what their visitors actually expect/desire.
If i could recreate the pitch deck I originally went out to investors with, I think the image would sum it all up, without the need for any paragraphs or bulleted lists.
Image from Aimee Knight’s blog
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A big thanks to Lydia Dishman who wrote a great article about my startup CampusLIVE. You can check it out here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1688469/campuslive-is-college-101
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There is a great post up on SoftwareByRob right now about his experiments with offering a free plan for his SaaS tool for designers. The research by him, 37Signals and CrazyEgg all show that removing or shrinking the link to a free plan greatly increases conversion.
I experienced this subconsciously last week when i signed up for a CrazyEgg account. I had an account a couple years back and recalled them having a free plan. When i arrived at the pricing page there was no free plan, so I just paid for the $10/month plan.
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This article was run yesterday, announcing our first investment, complete with the following goofy photo of us. Think we need to hire a couple ladies?
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2010/02/amherst-based_campuslive_gets.html
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I found this ripped piece of paper from just over 2 years ago when CampusLIVE was in it’s infancy. Boris and I were in a small office, just under 300sq ft. This was our first organizational chart. I can remember how exciting it felt to create this. Fast forward 2 years: from 1 school to 88. From 2 employees to 10. Progress
Look back through your notes from 2 years ago. It will show you that you truly have made progress, even in the times you question it.
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Organizational chart
Some of the CampusLIVE team and I rode the T into Boston last night for a Keynote by Keith Ferrazzi, by far the favorite author of our staff. He was speaking about his new book titled “Who’s Got Your Back“. If you haven’t read Ferrazzi – now is the time.
The CampusLIVE team with Keith Ferrazzi
I knew the night was going to be great after Keith ended up in our elevator. We introduced ourselves and he showed a genuine interest in what we were doing. We all headed into the keynote at this point.
Keith is incredibly inspiring and the exercises he had the audience go through clearly resonated with the crowd. After discussing how we all needed to go home and really put his ideas to work he pointed out our company to the entire audience. He said we looked like a “Group of Mormons” which everyone got a chuckle out of.
After the talk almost everyone took off – not us. Anyone who has read “Never Eat Alone” knows one of Keith’s big lessons is to plan your attack and to be audacious – Get out there and find a way to meet the people you want to meet. We knew Keith would appreciate us staking out his entourage after the evening.
We stuck at the exit of the room and like clockwork Keith walked by us and invited us to drinks after his dinner with the governor (Deval Patrick). I was impressed – I’ve never heard someone say so matter of fact that they were having dinner with the governor.
Keith Ferrazzi's Birthday Cake
It turned out that it was Keith’s b-day and the governor was having dinner with him and about 25 of his close friends. After the dinner we were invited into the party and had a great time with Keith and a lot of the Greenlight crew. We bounced some questions off him and got some great feedback. The even invited Mark to play some guitar for the guests – we couldn’t believe it.
Lesson learned: Always dress well and be ready for anything. You just may see the governor, sip champagne and cut birthday with your favorite author – all without expecting it.
We told Keith we’d get back to him in a few weeks after trying to implement some of his strategies. I have a really good feeling that his feedback is going to make a big difference.
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Keith Ferrazzi
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