Inside the Issue: March 2009
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Jake Chessum
Victoria Chow
Sagel & Kranefeld / Corbis
Gregg Segal
Michael Edwards
Paul Blow
Nicholas Baum
Gianna Marino
ScanDisk, Kingston, IronKey, Corsair
Ramona Rosales
Cover Story: "It's Going to Be Big"Coolest College Start-UpsStart-up StaticThe Wexley WayPandora's Near Death ExperienceThe Ultimate Business MakeoverPricing: How low is too low?Surviving the RecessionThe Goods: The Best Flash Drives and MoreJeffrey Sweeney: Yogi
In this month's cover story, learn how a young Marc Ecko (above) dreamed up a T-shirt business in high school and never dropped the notion that he could make it work. Inspired by the likes of Sean Combs and Spike Lee, he decided at a young age that he could be a heavy-hitter too. "Everyone was a businessman. Everyone had a hustle. There had to be a market," he tells Inc. In the young and edgy demographic, Ecko found his market and turned a business plan that "wouldn't make it up the elevator in this building" into a billion-dollar clothing company.
In the face of the worst job market in years, Inc. presents a list of college students who have taken matters into their own hands by starting and growing their own businesses on the side (or at least that's how they explain it to their professors.) Danny wakes up at 3 a.m. to run his drive-through donut store. Zac created an energy drink based on his Grandma's fruit punch recipe. Jessica was looking for an internship and having trouble, so she created a website to help her classmates find jobs. They may be young, but they aren't short on ambition. And they're not afraid of some friendly competition. You can vote for your favorite college start-up at www.inc.com/college.
In "How Hard Could It Be?," Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Fog Creek Software, has a theory why most new ventures fail: the founders just lose motivation. He compares starting-up a business to trying to find a signal on the radio. "Certain aspects of a business can be off by just a little bit and then, one tiny adjustment, and BING! The thing starts working," he writes.
The Seattle-based Wexley School for Girls is not a school--it's an advertising agency--and in no way a conventional one. The agency's founders are willing to do anything to attract business for clients, including suiting up in costumes, composing songs, and throwing parades. Though the work is a little wacky, some serious clients, including Pepsi and Microsoft, have signed on. Wexley's like-it-or-not philosophy suggests that acting silly can sometimes be a pretty smart move.
Pandora's founder Tim Westergreen (above) tells Inc. why owes his customers big time. When federal regulators imposed rules that brought his online radio business close to extinction, grassroots support from loyal customers came to the rescue. "If that didn't work, we were finished," he says. He discusses what it's like to be on the brink of shutting down ("terribly negative and draining") and how to orchestrate a turnaround.
Sometimes, it's too late for small steps--survival depends on changing the very core of a business. For one Silicon Valley boss, that meant taming her temper. For another entrepreneur, that meant taking out a mortgage and buying a real headquarters. And for yet another executive, that meant handing over the reigns to someone much younger. For the sake of their businesses, these entrepreneurs made the changes they had resisted but knew were necessary.
The tough economy has many companies wondering whether they should cut prices. "Our fear was that once you get people hooked on cheap prices, they wouldn't pay full price again," says Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos Promotional Products, a New York City-based seller of corporate gifts. But sometimes slashing is the only way to get anything sold in a down economy--especially discretionary items like gifts or jewelry. These companies have already made the tough calls and reassessed their pricing strategies. Learn from them what works and whether discounting can really hurt your business.
In this month's "Street Smarts" column, Norm Brodsky argues that, if there's something to fear, it's fear itself. "Fear can be a motivator, but it can also lead you into bad decisions, particularly in times like these," he writes. They key to survival in tough times is to proceed prudently despite any desperate feelings you might have about the state of your business.
Curious about the coolest gadgets, products, software, and services? Check out The Goods and learn about the tools that help you manage your business and your life. In this issue: The best netbooks, web tools to simplify your schedule, and a new flash drive so skinny "that you could practically floss with it."
Jeffrey Sweeney can run a business--and put his legs behind his head. In his life outside the office at financial services firm U.S. Capital, he does yoga. He says it's taught him about his own limits. "You realize you can't necessarily achieve perfection," says the entrepreneur, shown above. Read about his sense of inner peace and what else that bending and stretching has done for his mind, body, and business.
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