Start Me Up!

Tim DeMello: Think along with me about what it's like to build a startup company. Here I am, the budding entrepreneur. I have next to nothing. No money, no credibility. I also have a big challenge: I have to get people to understand who I am, what my company does, what we have to offer. I not only have to sell my product or my service, I also have to sell my company to the people I want to work for me -- people who will have to give up really good careers for this unknown startup. I also have to sell my company to people who will invest capital in it. I have to sell my company to vendors, to get them to extend me credit.

The point is that in the early stages of my startup, I have absolutely no credibility. So my challenge becomes, How do I use somebody else's credibility?

That was one of the ideas that I used to start Streamline. I looked at large corporations and saw what they had that we could use: not just money, but also credibility -- name and presence. Here's why: It makes a huge difference if I introduce myself as Tim DeMello, an entrepreneur who wants to deliver your groceries, or if I introduce myself as Tim DeMello, an entrepreneur whose company has received a total of $10 million in investment capital from organizations like GE Capital and Intel. Does that change your opinion of Streamline? The message is this: Large corporations represent a wealth of resources for the entrepreneur to tap.

The other major insight that we built into Streamline was a philosophy of the customer. Our model wasn't to push the consumer. It wasn't about taking a product and figuring out how to get it into the home. We started with the consumer -- the time-starved consumer who's looking to outsource pieces of his or her day-to-day needs. We decided to create value around the consumer relationship, to ignore the old supply chain, and to build a new one -- based on pull from the consumer.

That's where merchandisers are going wrong with the Internet today. They're using it as a mass-marketing tool. What consumers really want from the Net are the same things they want from retail stores: simplicity, service, and an experience that is built around them, not around the product.

Mary Furlong: Like Tim, I'm the founder of a company, ThirdAge Media. And before that, I started SeniorNet, 15 years ago. When I think about what it takes to make a successful startup, I ask three questions: What am I doing to build value? Do I have the right team in place? And -- in terms of using my own time and energy -- am I the right person for my particular team? Of these, the second is the hardest to answer -- because it requires you to be brutally honest about people who often are truly committed to getting your startup off the ground.

I read in a Fast Company interview with venture-capitalist John Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins, that the dirty little secret of startups is that people get popped out of them all the time -- even the founders. This is not something that they tell you when you start your own company: Your company may survive, but you may not. But it happens all the time.

All companies go through growing pains. The team you start with isn't going to be the team you end with. In the past three years, we've gone from 1,000 members to being bigger than the city of Atlanta -- and we're on our way to being bigger than the city of New York. As you go through changes like that, an individual team member's skills may no longer match the company's growth and direction. One job of the leader is to make changes that help the company to maintain its momentum and that treat people in a fair and considerate way.

But change is part of any company's story. We all have to ask, "What value do we bring to the table? How is that changing?" Right now, I'm looking for a new team member, an executive who can build the company and direct it to the next level as CEO. My role will change to become the company's chair. It's all a matter of having the right person at the right spot at the right time.

Nick Shore: What I see a lot of these days are giant companies trying to operate like startups -- slow companies trying to be fast. I'm working with one company in which the top leaders created a team that would work with startups. The team came right back at the leaders and said, "We're going to take you at your word -- we're going to operate like a startup too. And that means we're going to claim autonomy for ourselves." If the team hadn't done that, it would have just become embedded in the quagmire of the old organization's structure. Companies have brilliantly crafted jewels that are stuck in ugly, awful boxes.