Start-Up Adventures, Part 1: The MouseDriver Insider Collection

"We have no income and no venture capital funding. Our inventory is being financed by companies with names like Chase, Citibank, First USA and Capital One. Our office consists of a refrigerator, oven, sink, two desks, a bay window and one very large Texas flag...

Thus begins the first MouseDriver Insider, a newsletter in which John Lusk and Kyle Harrison chronicle their adventures as they launch their start-up, Platinum Concepts Inc. Their product? Computer mice, called MouseDrivers, that are shaped like the heads of driver golf clubs. What's more, as Mike Hofman notes in an article in the February 2001 issue of Inc. magazine, the MouseDriver Insider has picked up a surprisingly influential readership.

You can read copies of MouseDriver Insider below. You can also visit Platinum Concepts' Web site at www.mousedriver.com.

Important note: Inc.com has not attempted to verify the accuracy of the material in these newsletters or to edit them.

MouseDriver Insider Introduction (September 3, 1999)
#1 (September 13, 1999)
#2 (October 4, 1999)
#3 (October 25, 1999)
#4 (November 17, 1999)
To read installments #5 through #9, click here.
To read installments #10 through #13, click here.

Dear Friends,

We have no income and no venture capital funding. Our inventory is being financed by companies with names like Chase, Citibank, First USA and Capital One. Our office consists of a refrigerator, oven, sink, two desks, a bay window and one very large Texas flag. The only thing that makes our 7 second commute to work interesting is avoiding the inventory of computer mice stacked in our living room. We're motivated, passionate, excited, terrified and at many times, have absolutely no idea what we are doing. Every hour of the day is filled with constant mood swings and the question of "What the hell are we doing?" enters our minds on a daily basis.

But......we're having a great time and we truly believe that this is an experience of a lifetime.

Do you care to hear more?...

Since this venture began in July, we have received a number of inquiries from people asking us to keep them informed of our progress. Most of these inquiries have come from aspiring entrepreneurs currently working in the corporate world who want to live the "entrepreneurial experience vicariously through us." However, many of you have asked us to keep you informed simply because you're interested in finding out how this MouseDriver story progresses and ends. After all, some of you were around when this outrageous idea was first used as a class project at Wharton.

So, we've got an idea...and we're hoping that this one generates as much excitement as MouseDriver. Kyle and I would like to keep everyone informed of MouseDriver's progress. On a periodic basic, we'd like to share our successes, our failures, our issues, our stories and our feelings towards this entrepreneurial gig. We basically want to give all of you an opportunity to accompany us on this crazy ride.

Here's the deal: We will send out an email on a periodic basis. Depending on what we have to share, this email may go out every week, every two weeks, every month, etc...just depends on what's been happening and how busy we are. We have no idea what the email will look like, but imagine that the format will be constantly evolving. We will make all efforts to keep the progress update brief and to one page, as we are all too familiar with the annoyances of long emails. Plus, we don't want to create too much additional work for ourselves.

If you're interested, just reply to this email and say "I'm in" and we'll include you in the mailing.

Hope everyone is doing well.

John and Kyle

This edition begins with some of our lessons learned over the past three months and then briefly covers our progress to date and our more pressing issues. The format will almost certainly change in the future. By the way, future editions will not be this long... .we just felt like we had a lot to share this time around.

Lessons Learned

• "When your product or service is to existing products or services what toilet paper is to crumbled leaves, it's time to ship. S - h - i - p, ship" (Guy Kawasaki) If you think that you have a great product or service, it's best to get it out to customers and let them determine the success of the product rather than attempting to develop the perfect product/service. We spent over three months trying to perfect the initial MouseDriver design. Regardless of how good each design sample looked, we always managed to find something wrong with the size, weight, color, etc. Finally, around mid-July, we realized that any more design changes would result in missing part of the '99 holiday sales season. So, we decided to manufacture a product that we knew needed a number of improvements. The result: the response to MouseDriver has been very positive and we've received a ton of feedback on how to better improve the product... much better feedback that what the two of us working together could provide.
• Don't be paranoid about sharing your idea with others. Early on, we were afraid to even mention the MouseDriver name to distributors and suppliers, much less what the product actually looked like. We were convinced that someone was going to steal the idea, become an entrepreneur, find a manufacturer overseas, raise the money to design the product and find a distribution network before we even had a chance to get off the ground. Needless to say, we couldn't have been more naï ve. Once we started sharing the idea with people in the promotional products industry, we found ourselves learning more and more about how to bring MouseDriver to market. In fact, for a few weeks, our strategy was changing on a daily basis. Following our conversations with another supplier/distributor, we'd reserve a conference room (corner table) at Starbuck's and hash out another distribution strategy. Our advice: share your idea with as many people as possible. You'll learn a lot more.
• Take your initial time estimates on when you think things will start to happen and multiply by at least 4. Unless you've had a similar entrepreneurial experience in the past, chances are, you will miss every date and milestone that you have set for the company. Fortunately, in many situations, you are not the one to blame for screwing things up. As a start-up (with no major funding or strategic partners), you will find that larger companies do not share the same sense of urgency as you do. You will also find that, despite how great your idea is and how strong your background may be, you have NO LEVERAGE. You will want to move at 200 mph, but because you are in a constant state of waiting, you're forced to move at around 50 mph. This period is extremely frustrating and will cause you to constantly second-guess your entrepreneurial decision. One suggestion: keep plugging away and laughing at the situation. At some point in time, everything comes together at once and the speedometer very quickly hits 500 mph... and then you become frustrated for other reasons.
• If you have a family (i.e. significant other/kids), make sure that they fully understand the ramifications of you're new situation. We are working constantly and because we are working out of our apartment, we feel compelled to work every hour of the day. We definitely manage to get out a couple of nights a week, but most nights are spent working until 1am. Neither one of us can fathom doing this gig with 1) a wife or 2) with kids. In fact, we don't see how someone could pull this off without putting some sort of strain on the family relationship. Our utmost respect and admiration goes out to those entrepreneurs who are starting their own companies with a significant other and family in tow. Our advice (like either one of us is qualified to give relationship advice): make sure that you're family understands that you may be MIA (missing in action) for a certain period of time and make sure that the family is extremely supportive of what you are about to get yourself into.

What We've Done