Based on this I can only assume that workiva builds spaceships or life support systems. You know, something where absolute perfection is far more important than having a fulfilling and constructive workplace environment.
I’m sure a lot has changed since 2014 when I last raised in Austin but in my experience it is possible to raise money for consumer businesses in Austin. Before we pivoted to Cratejoy we had raised a significant seed round from almost entirely Austin investors. It’s also possible to get west coast (and really all over the world) investors to invest in you and stay in Austin. We’ve raised $11M, about 80% of it from non-Austin investors.
For me the secret for raising successfully in Austin was getting individuals on board — high net worth individual investors that I established a personal rapport with. With the exception of the Capital Factory all of the angel funds (for me) were operating off of FOMO and social pressure more than fundamentals. The VC scene does contain some bad actors, and I probably wouldn’t spend a lot of time looking for institutional money in Austin. I would get my growth funding west or east coast.
Having raised millions in both SF and in Austin I can say that it is definitely easier in SF. However, the cost of living is so much lower (and I would say quality of life is so much higher) in Austin that I’m glad we’re based here. It’s also relatively easy to recruit from all over the world to Austin, everyone has seen the continuous stream of articles rating Austin as one of the best places in the US to live.
There’s also another great side-effect of being Austin which I didn’t notice until we were already scaling very quickly. There’s a smaller number of startups in Austin that are producing millions in revenue very quickly (as compared to SF) but the enthusiast and talent pool is very large. When we started to hit scale we had way more advocates than we ever expected. Austin wants home-town winners and it throws its weight behind the ones that look promising, but you have to have something to show.
My cofounder and I consider having Cratejoy based in Austin a competitive advantage.
It's like someone from a future in which they can perfectly model the human brain and predict it's reactions wrote an article designed to perfectly stimulate all of the anger centers of my brain.
This is a much better version of the original article. Here's solutions to situations that arise when you have access to information that you feel should be acted upon that doesn't have broad organizational support already.
Cratejoy has created a new ecosystem of subscription businesses. Thousands of first time founders and new business owners have created subscriptions on Cratejoy with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. We've recently launched a shopping portal for consumers to find subscriptions operated by Cratejoy merchants. We have raised about $11M from the best investors in the valley and are driving millions of dollars in revenue.
Cratejoy is literally creating thousands of new jobs and an entire new set of businesses, come help us build something that people truly love.
It seems like many of the commenters here are confusing corporate strategy/tactics with individual mean-ness. I'm not saying its good when a corporation takes action to derive profit at the expense of the public interest or that of one of their competitors - however, it's not nearly the same as an individual being malicious or petty when given power over others (such as a founder routinely has).
We have 20 something investors and on a given month there are ~2 that send more than one e-mail, 5 that send 1 e-mail, and basically nothing from all of the rest. I don't feel a burden, tbh. I like it, when I need help I get it - and I have a few really solid mentors in the group.
The only pain is at series A when I'm going to have to go get all of them to sign the closing docs. That'll be hard.
I love the professional product photos and the clear "what last month's box" contained photo on your home page. Some of our merchants @ Cratejoy have been experimenting with including a "last month's" box section/photo and have been getting very favorable results.
I'm curious, what is your monthly retention?
Have you done experiments with box contains and how it impacts retention?
We're starting to run optimization experiments where we take the product inventory and try to optimally allocate it amongst all subscribers to maximize retention. So like month 1 subscribers get the exact optimal set of products to make sure they stay subscribed until month 2, etc.
It's awesome that you are doing product surveys. I hope you do them every month. Have you ever considered sharing the results of your product surveys with your suppliers? Frequently that will be a great relationship building thing, maybe even get you better pricing or free product.
Sending the optimal things to people might be good, but it reduces the community aspect of everyone getting the same thing. It's probably a win to send different things, but at this stage I think I want to keep it simple for a while longer.
That's it. The author doesn't believe the on-demand economy can work. The rest is just lead up.
I disagree with his assessment.