Armchair Advisors

PaLaCart is proudly based in New York. Its team, customers and investors are global and as such there are plenty of meetings in various parts of the world. 

During my travels, whether it is for fundraising or sales, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a lot of incredibly smart people - and all of them envious for a number of different reasons about “startup life.”

The reason I put startup life in quotes and add the word envious in the prior statement is because if you ask any entrepreneur, startup life for most outsiders is looked upon as:

1. Globe trotting
2. Flexible hours
3. Freedom

Where as, here is how a startup founder looks at those things:

1. Globe trotting: spending a considerable amount of time away from friends and family making sure you are closing deals so that you can run your next payroll.
2. Flexible hours: not because it’s false, but because flexible hours means working when the rest of the world is sleeping. And hustling when the rest of the world is working. 
3. Freedom: this one a misnomer. As a start-up founder, your freedom relies on 2 things - the ability to keeping going through hell or the calling it quits. 

Lately, with booming success of technology companies and multi-billion dollar exits, it is difficult to not look at this industry with rose colored glasses. Some days, being an entrepreneur is the best thing in the world. Other days, everything works against you. 

However, these successes have also generated armchair investors and advisors. People who have tons of feedback without the experience, knowledge or risk. 

Some of the feedback I’ve been hearing from the sidelines:

• Burn is too high
• Burn is too low
• Design is too forward
• Design is dated
• Technology is too easy to duplicate
• Technology is extremely powerful

And the issue isn’t about positive vs. negative feedback. It’s about feedback without context. 

A few weeks ago, I was seeking advice from people who have been in the tech start-up space. After scouring AngelList, I came across Joe Caruso. He spent nearly an hour with me on the phone - simply asking questions and clarifying items in our investment deck. And that feedback - despite being an hour long is incredibly valuable. Joe is a person who is experienced, knows the market and more importantly - gets to know you and your business. 

Positivity, feedback and criticism are all incredibly valuable for entrepreneurs. They thrive and survive on this information. 

These things define the future of a startup and hence why founders and entrepreneurs are hesitant in accepting feedback from someone they don’t trust - because unless you know the entire story, a decision based on incomplete background and experience will more likely than not, result in disaster. And worst of all - if you ask for a consulting fee and a retainer just to show up to a startup meeting, you will be ignored by any serious entrepreneur. 

Business is Personal: The Story of PaLaCart

“Starting a company is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.”

— Ron Conway

A few weeks ago, we launched PaLaCart to a small group of friends and family to test the product and get some feedback. 

Thankfully, these select group of people have been extremely patient and for that, as a start-up founder, I am grateful. 

The journey till this point has been an incredibly unique one - a story that captures talent, vision and determination. But more than anything - it is a human story. A story about founders, investors, advisors, engineers, marketers and a whole lot more. It's a story about how you realize a dream without giving up. 

A friend of mine sent me an email not too long ago and at the bottom of his email was the following quote. It's one that reminds me every single day - that entrepreneurship is more personal than any other job in the world. 

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

— Calvin Coolidge

The trade press largely focuses on stories that show a very one-sided view of startup life: venture capital funding, acquisition, growth, etc. 

But for every one of those companies - it doesn't show the level of effort it goes into building those companies. The good. The bad. The ugly. But more importantly, the personal. This story is about people that have helped build PaLaCart. And it's a story of those people that have always had our back - regardless of circumstance. 

The first investor in PaLaCart is my brother - a 22-year old at the time who wrote over a significant check. Our most recent investor is a friend of the family for nearly 2 decades. These investors don't necessarily invest in the idea, but more so than the people. 

And they're not unique. Yes, they're investing because they know us and trust us to do the right thing. That's why every VC fund has the same criteria - invest in the people, then the idea and finally the execution. 

Money aside, there are significantly more criteria to running a company - it requires dedication, passion and more importantly the need to succeed in order to actually succeed. 

PaLaCart - even prior to product launch - has gone through a significant amount of ups and a considerable amount of lows. When we started on the path to unify the shopping experience across the web, we didn't realize we needed specific licenses from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc. We didn't know that retailers don't have technical teams to integrate a set of complicated APIs to make this vision work. Yet, we worked through all of it and delivered. 

The first retailer on PaLaCart is a brand that has been around for a long time. They are highly visible in the community, they are experts and specialists in what they do. When we had some QA issues, instead of calling us out and asking us to not be a part of PaLaCart, they helped us diagnose a platform level issue. 

Convincing retailers to sign-on with PaLaCart is a unique challenge - it's a different way to shop and conduct transactions. Far easier and yet at the same time, far advanced. Without the first few retailers - all personal relationships - PaLaCart wouldn't be doing transactions or earning revenue today.  

We launched PaLaCart on an Indian holiday - Diwali. The PaLaCart engineering team is in India. When we had a critical error in a situation we had not tested earlier, they woke up in the middle of the night - went to the office - fixed it and then went back to celebrating the holiday with their family. 

And lastly, the support system of a startup - the friends, family and fellow founders - are absolutely essential to the success of a startup. Like most founders, I go through a lot of freak out moments - whether the situation becomes overwhelming or something falls through. But, without these people - it would be a lot harder to build a company. 

So, to those who say business isn't personal - I ask them to speak to the founder of an emerging company. Because, business is incredibly personal. 

On never giving up

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

— Calvin Coolidge

An Entrepreneur's Vision

The people who move the world forward are those that make the biggest sacrifices. They challenge institutions, they are looked upon as rebels and they fight harder than anyone else. 

Why? 

For one simple reason: they want to live in a better world. A more comfortable world. A more connected world. A world that has solutions to problems - easy and hard. And for this one reason alone - entrepreneurs are rewarded handsomely when they succeed. And if that financial payday doesn't come, they reap their rewards via experiences. Anyone can be a millionaire if they don't live life. 

Not entrepreneurs. They leverage everything they have - they are the first ones to clear out their bank accounts and then ask friends and families to do the same. 

As I've built PaLaCart over the past few years, I've been privileged to meet so many entrepreneurs who are making the world a better place in their own way. 

A friend is building an ed-tech company. Another is making it easier for investors to track their investments. A third is making communication easier. And dozens others. 

Outsiders often criticize entrepreneurs - the market is not big enough, the idea is dumb, the team is inexperienced, the product will never work, etc. But outsiders are outsiders for a reason - they don't have the entrepreneur's vision. 

Entrepreneurs don't start companies because it's an easy path to success. Sure, some have gotten lucky. However, more often than not, building a company is a lot of work. It requires far too many sacrifices. But, entrepreneurs stick to their vision. 

That vision is simple - to make their product better than anything else available and to solve a problem. How do you challenge that vision? How do you challenge an entrepreneur's vision to make the world a better place, so that you, your family and the next generation of people to occupy our places can live in a better world?

You don't. 

On scary decisions

One of my favorite pieces of content is The Risk Not Taken by Andy Dunn. If you've ever had to make a tough decision, I would highly recommend reading it. 

Scary decisions are not unique to entrepreneurs. They are universal as people go from one phase of their life to another. Whether it's dropping out of school or proposing to your girlfriend or moving to a country 10 time zones away. . 

For entrepreneurs, this decision is compounded by the fact that once you take the leap into being involved in a start-up full time, your entire life changes - stability gets thrown out the window, friendships start deteriorating and on some days, stress levels make you question if any of this is worth it. 

Here's the thing - it depends on who you are and your ability to stomach all the ups and downs while building a company, managing your employees, reporting to your board and working on your personal life. The only thing I can say for certain is that it you always need to be pushing forward. Building a company is not an easy task. It is one that requires determination to succeed when the entire world is against you. 

But, scary decisions are easily mitigated by knowing that despite success or failure, you can always go back to your previous life. It may take you a bit longer, but your perspective and outlook on everything will change - regardless of outcome. 

Scary decisions are only scary because of the unknown. And to quote H.P. Lovercraft:

““The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” ”

The best thing about scary things? They're temporary. They last for a quick second and then they're gone.