The Curbed Chronicles: Taking the Plunge

The Curbed Chronicles are my attempt to share a few lessons learned from the early days of Curbed.com.  To set the stage, I wrote a rather lengthy, navel-gazing first post in this series about The Road Trip that Started it All, with the obvious but crucial observation: start a company with people you trust & admire.

Veteran investor, David Hornik lists Team as his first seven criteria for evaluating startups per this recent Q&A Session on Sprouter – a highly valuabe read.

Below I offer up a few more observations from those early days:

2. Take a chance for the experience alone.

When Lock and I first mused about Curbed, we didn’t say hey let’s create an $XB company.  We talked about working on a fun, intellectual project that turned into an aggressive hobby that turned into a profitable company. 

That’s not to say we didn’t see value in the content proposition from day one - in fact, we did! - but we didn’t start at the macro level of sitting around a table with a financial goal in mind  trying to come up with ideas that would somehow net us millions and then argue about who got what % of nothing. 

We started with the idea - Lock’s idea – and then threw in 9-10 months of sweat equity (alongside our day jobs) and a little of our own cash behind it before incorporating.  We didn’t even have that equity ownership conversation until several months after product launch. #trust

Proof of concept for us came down to the question - would people read our site? When it was clear they would, that they would tell their friends, and that they would keep coming back, we took the next step, incorporated and started generating revenue. 

3. Build a product/service that you would use.

Another obvious but overlooked tenet.  I hear friends eager to start companies take a macro approached to assessing current market and demographic trends in hopes of coming up with The Idea that will net them millions.  I recognize that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that when the market is going in your direction it allows you room to make mistakes along the way, etc., but I'm a big believer in building a product/service that you would use first and foremost.

As the primary Customer, you’ll be best positioned to understand the gaps in current offerings and sell the value proposition. Plus you’ll remain passionate about the idea far longer than creating a product for a marketplace with pain points that don’t concern you.  For example, I couldn’t have been part of the founding team for Jalopnik – for many reasons – but for, one: I just don’t care that much about cars.

4. Back yourself first.

With Curbed, we were fortunate in that, once up and running, brands approached us and asked if they could advertise before we had ever created a media kit or lobbed an outgoing phone call.  It was a lot easier to sell ads once we had developed a site (product), which we felt filled a gap in the market, and could show that our readership base (customers) agreed.

Advertisers were willing to take a chance on us because we took a chance on ourselves first. I'd argue the same philosophy often holds true for early-stage investors and in fact has for folks like GroupMe. 

GroupMe founders, Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci dedicated personal time to build a service they wanted to use which caught the attention of seed investors and in a matter of weeks have raised $850k to build a business.  Jared shares the specifics of GroupMe’s founding on TechCrunch which also reported on the company’s launch.  I’m willing to bet none of this would have happened, or certainly not have happened so quickly with the caliber of investors involved had Jared & Steve knocked on doors with an idea & powerpoint looking for backing before they themselves took the plunge.

Next up for the Curbed Chronicles: Don't Be a Dick – mom’s gonna be so proud of that title - stay tuned...