By all accounts, Jeff Graley had a solid Air Force career.
The West Virginia native joined the service as a clinician in the early 2000s, eventually making his way to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for a transition from active duty to the civilian workforce. Over time, Graley was exposed to intelligence operations as well as program management and an open innovation initiative at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
While all the work was highly satisfying, Graley had lingering visions of being his own boss. Then a few years ago, he was energized by talk about a potential new entrepreneurial program at AFRL.
“When AFRL started to discuss improving tech transfer and commercialization, and whether entrepreneurship was a viable new vehicle, my ears perked up,” Graley said.
With a new sense of purpose, Graley left the Battlespace Acoustics Division in AFRL’s Airman Systems Directorate to start Dayton-based Mile Two. The software-as-a-service company blends traditional software development with human factors engineering. It supports those who analyze data to make conclusions, from the Department of Defense to the business community.
Graley and Mile Two co-founder Jorge Sanchez have since spun off a separate company, Effectivity, to grow product sales. In less than an eight month span last year, the two businesses combined have quadrupled employment to 12 and will soon be adding even more people.
“I love a challenge,” Graley said. “These businesses didn’t exist before. It’s just like some of the program challenges I had in AFRL. How do I take it, how do I grow it and let’s see where we can grow from there.”
Although Graley left AFRL before the Entrepreneurial Opportunities Program officially launched last fall, his effort was essentially the pilot used to formalize the EOP process.
EOP is the newest pathway to address intellectual property commercialization and workforce development at AFRL. The idea is that scientists and engineers from the lab will apply their skills, and possibly an AFRL intellectual property, to start or help grow a technology company.
The details
To be eligible for EOP, AFRL employees go through a stringent vetting process after agreeing to pursue one of three avenues: consider the possibility of licensing Air Force technology; apply their skills from the lab in a commercial role that could help solve Air Force problems; or temporarily support a business that is already licensing Air Force technology.
For those pursuing the first two avenues, the EOP is split into two parts. The first phase is a sabbatical, which allows AFRL professionals to retain their pay and benefits while laying the foundation for a business. That work includes feasibility studies, lining up customers and funding, developing a business plan and possibly the creation of prototypes. The second phase is the separation of the employee from AFRL, who is then free to incorporate the business and license an Air Force technology, if desired. The third avenue involves AFRL paying its researcher, for a specific period, to assist a business that is already licensing Air Force technology. This mutually beneficial relationship provides the company critical support for its commercialization effort while exposing the researcher to scientific advancements it can bring back to the laboratory.
Supervisors and leadership at AFRL have long been concerned with the impact of key personnel leaving to commercialize technology.
Ricky Peters, who retired from the Air Force and now leads a medical technology company, Ascend Innovations, recalls a well-respected AFRL researcher who left the lab about 20 years ago to start his own company. The revelation caused a fair amount of panic until a colleague of Peters spoke up.
“He said this was a good thing: the new company will be part of the local economy, it will support AFRL and we will still have access to the researcher,” said Peters, who was executive director of AFRL when the idea for a formal EOP began percolating several years ago. “That was something that stuck in my mind.”
By 2014, a major shift was happening within the Department of Defense as the importance of both commercialization and workforce development were both coming into the spotlight. So, Peters threw the idea for EOP on the table.
“A really solid organization, in my mind, grows more leaders than they have positions for, and so what do you do with those really good leaders?” Peters said. “I think you let them go out and start companies. Not only that, but if something doesn’t work out for them you bring them back.”
Ryan Helbach, now chief intrapreneur for AFRL, took the idea and with a group of others ran with it. He found getting the program to pass legal muster was the biggest challenge.
“AFRL had the authority to do something like this, it would just need to be clearly spelled out and address a variety of potential issues,” Helbach said. “It took a lot of work, support and ingenuity across different organizations to make this a reality. The first researcher I spoke to about EOP was adamant it would never happen. But here we are.”
Through EOP, researchers are exposed to business practices before making the commitment to start a company. Those who end up returning to AFRL bring back knowledge and practices that can help drive better outcomes for the Air Force.
“What will make this successful is that it wasn’t pushed down by leadership,” Peters said. “EOP was built by the people who would use the program and were excited about it.”
Another vehicle to drive commercialization
AFRL invests hundreds of millions of dollars annually into research and if it doesn’t move into the commercial sector, the Air Force never really gets the benefit, according to William “Bill” Harrison, director of the Small Business Directorate at AFRL. The problem is historic for the Air Force: technology that goes nowhere, patents that are never used.
Commercialization not only helps get technology to the warfighter, businesses often make improvements and bring down the cost. Having the AFRL researcher be part of the process increases the probability of technology being put to use.
“EOP is another method of getting that research, that investment, out of our lab and into the commercial sector,” Harrison said. “It’s rare for something to get from the lab straight to the warfighter. It has to get into that industrial base.”
EOP is modeled after a program at Sandia National Labs, which is run for the Department of Energy. At Sandia, it took almost 20 years to produce a large pile of documented successes. AFRL officials expect the commercialization payoff from EOP to be spread well over the long term, as it will take years to get people into the pipeline and build companies.
The program also is just starting to become a recruiting tool.
“Over time, I think you’ll see this is really going to ‘amp up’ our game across the board,” Harrison said.
Joe Cogliano is a technical writer who works on-site at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to support outreach and communications for the AFRL Small Business Office.
Are you dreading the DFARS cybersecurity compliance deadline on December 31st and want to gain some informational insight into becoming DFARS compliant?
Lucky for you, 444 is hosting a DFARS Compliance Seminar located at 444 E 2nd Street from 2PM to 4PM. This free event, sponsored by TEC, Wright Brother’s Institute (WBI), and FlowVU, is geared on informing prime contractors, subcontractors, and government contracting professionals. This is one of the FINAL events before the December 31st deadline and has a limit of 100 spaces.
The United States Department of Defense is mandating that all Prime Contractors and their supply chain comply with DFARS cybersecurity requirements for almost all DoD contracts.
During the event, you can expect to:
-Understand the Requirements of DFARS
-Learn About Compliant Solutions to Meet the December 31st Deadline
-Cloud and Data Safeguarding Compliance
-Question and Answer Session with Experts
The event also features 6 guest speakers including Joe Sciabica of UTC, Eric Van Hoose of FlowVU, and Shawn Waldman of Secure Cyber Defense.
To register for the event and view the schedule of events, visit FlowVU’s website here.
Be sure to sign up today to ensure you don’t miss this wonderful opportunity!
It’s that time of the month again. You have payroll coming out of your account tomorrow and you had to buy materials yesterday. You check your business checking account and realize that there isn’t enough in your business checking account to cover payroll. Uh oh. Your stomach drops. You make the frantic call to the branch manager or business banker to transfer money from your personal savings account into your business checking. Did you make the call in time? How late is the bank open? Can you make the deposit in time? You’ll tell your accountant later, you have to get this done. You just figure this is part of the territory. This scenario is just another fire that you have to put out because you are the business owner.
What if I told you that this does not have to be your monthly routine anymore? What if there was a way for you to make sure all your bills are paid so you can focus on gaining more customers and growing your business? Well there is, it is called a line of credit.
What is a line of credit?
A line of credit is a loan agreement that gives the borrower a maximum amount they are allowed to borrow. The borrower can lend up to that limit. This is known as revolving credit. So let’s say a business, we will call it Brick Construction, LLC, receives a line of credit of $800,000, Brick Construction can borrow up to $800,000. So let’s say the business borrows $75,000 from the line that means they would have $725,000 left that they can borrow. If the Brick Construction pays off $50,000 of the balance it means that they have $25,000 that they still owe the bank and have $775,000 available to borrow. Now remember, you will need to pay interest on the amount that is borrowed but I want to keep the math simple for our examples.
How to use a line of credit
A line of credit is used to bridge cash flow gaps a business may have. Let’s say you have a construction business. You just received a contract for $1,000,000 but you will not receive your first payment until the project is 50% complete. This means that you will need to buy your material and pay your employees before you receive any payment. Sounds like a problem, right? Well this where your line of credit would come in.
Let’s use Brick Construction, LLC from our example before. Brick Construction figures it will cost them $300,000 to begin the contract work. Brick Construction uses $300,000 of their $800,000 line of credit. This means they now owe the bank $300,000 with $500,000 still available for them to borrow.
Brick Construction begins work on the contract and is able to complete 50% of the project after 3 months. Brick Construction is then paid $500,000(50% of the $1,000,000). Brick pays off the $300,000 balance on their line of credit plus any interest and pockets the rest as profit. This means they will have the entire $1,000,000 available to them to begin the second half of the project or start a new project. While this is rough math, this the basic way a line of credit works.
A line of credit can be used for retail shops or distributors who need to buy inventory as well. A line of credit is meant to bridge the gap between purchasing material and inventory and getting paid by your customers.
Benefits of Lines of Credit
Lines of Credit are a great tool to help you manage cash flow. They allow you pay the bills without having to dip into your personal savings to bridge the gap between starting work and getting paid for that work. A line of credit can help you rest easy that you have the cash to cover payroll or any other bills that may come due before you get paid by your customer. Like the example above, without the line of credit it would have been very difficult for Brick Construction to begin on their project for the customer.
Another benefit is that a line of credit will help you take on more work. Let’s say Brick Construction, during the current project, they had been asked to begin on a second smaller project. Because of the line of credit and them budgeting properly, they could use the line of credit to begin the second project as well. This means more revenue for Brick Construction.
Lines of Credit are also beneficial to businesses that may be seasonal. The business can use the line of credit during slow times of the year and pay off the line of credit during their busy time. In this scenario, you will be paying more in interest, but it is better then having to close your doors because you do not have the cash coming in to keep the lights on during the slow parts of the year.
How large of a line of credit should I ask for
Here is a quick guide to figuring out how large of line you should ask for:
Calculate Cash Conversion Cycle: Days of Accounts Receivable + Days of Inventory on Hand – Days of Accounts Payable
Find Cash Need per Day: Annual Sales ÷ 365
Take Cash Need per Day × Cash Conversion Cycle
Round Up
Note:Banks will give you 70%-80% of your current receivables. So you should ask for whichever is the smaller of the two.
Lines of credit are a great way to help you manage your cash flow. Managed properly, it can help you grow your business and reduce the number of fires you need to put out.
If you want to learn more about how a line of credit can help your business please send me a message or leave a comment! Or call me at 513-304-5576
Micah Dickson is a Community Business Lender at Fifth Third Bank. He is focused on helping small businesses in Dayton/Cincinnati get access to capital, small business loans, and solving their financial needs.
Wouldn’t it be great if the Dayton startup community had an opportunity to come together every month in a shared collaborative space to pitch ideas, make new connections, learn about business, and get some work done? If you answered “yes”, mark your calendar now for the Friday, October 27, launch of the new monthly event 4th Fridays @ 444.
A joint effort between the tenants at the new innovation hub dubbed 444, this reoccurring event will provide a full day of programming designed to help area entrepreneurs to learn, connect, and grow.
Here’s the lineup for the day:
7:30-9:00 am: Early Risers–a pitch event that brings together startups, big companies, investors, and startup enthusiasts in a mutually beneficial forum. Here’s who is presenting this month:
Aniruddha Puntambekar and Michael Jones of Celtein Biosciences. Celtein Biosciences produces cost-effective, high-performance microfluidic solutions for life sciences and diagnostics applications.
Michael Derr of Cervall. Cervall is revolutionizing the estate closure process. They provide clients software tools enabling them to save time, money, and stress when closing out an estate.
Michael Maher of Three Firefighters. Three Firefighters LLC was founded to offer tools which will help make firefighting safer and more effective by augmenting manpower.
8:00 am – 4:00 pm: Open coworking, collaborating, and networking in The Entrepreneurs Center’s newly opened space.
12:00-1:00 pm: Nucleus will be hosting “Video Marketing With A Twist” in which Andrew White of Indigo Life will discuss the importance of F.L.O.W. in video marketing and how success is at our fingertips with no money spent!
1:00-2:00 pm: Galois, in collaboration with the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) will host a number of TED-like discussions on Trustworthy Systems.
3:00-4:00 pm: Wright Brothers Institute’s speaker series which pairs an Air Force Researcher with someone “outside the fence” will be presenting on the topic of “Making Connection–a dialogue on force multipliers.”
4:00 pm: Happy Hour! End the day and celebrate the end of the work week!
The entire event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit our website under “Your Events” or our Eventbrite listing. We hope to see you there!
Part of being better is investing in the people around you. I’ve been privileged to see first-hand how a culture that invests in each other leads to better lives in and out of work.
Investing in Your Team
Part of being better involves understanding how we can help the folks around us be better. As someone surrounded by very smart people, my concept of what it means to invest in those people has been challenged. In the early days of Sparkbox, I could teach the people on our team something technical. These days, my focus has shifted away from writing code, and toward understanding how to build an organization. While I may not be able to teach my team the latest programming techniques, I’ve learned that being better contributors means much more than being the best experience or software craftspeople. In turn, I’ve learned that I can invest in my team members by helping them be better in many other ways.
I want to share with you a framework for investing in the people around you that can apply to any of the folks in your life. If you’re an employer or a team leader, this will result in more innovative work. If you’re a service provider at a studio or agency, your clients’ teams can benefit from your investment in them. And if you find yourself in the trenches every day, taking this approach with your peers will strengthen your relationships, thicken your skin, and build the kind of trust necessary to become a world-class team.
The best part about this is that once this idea takes root in your culture, it snowballs, gains momentum, and starts happening organically. Let’s get to it.
Three Rings of Investment
There are three rings to this concept, growing outward from investing in a specific skill to investing more holistically in a person, and, finally, to investing in that individual’s life and the lives of those around them. Let’s dive into each to consider how breaking things down this way is helpful.
There are three rings to this concept: Investing in a skill. Investing in a person. Investing in a life.
Investing in a Skill
The first and most common way we can invest in the people around us is to help them improve their skill in a specific area. The goal is to help our teammates become better at doing the thing they were hired to do, whether that thing is designing or developing, or even managing other people. This is the most focused and tangible of the three rings. Most of the time, we can look at job titles and have a good understanding of what kinds of things would help strengthen their skillsets. It’s also the easiest investment to justify to a manager or director, because we expect those people to care about developing employees’ skills in order to improve the quality or efficiency of their work.
There are plenty of ways to invest in education. Having individuals attend conferences or workshops, read books, participate in online training courses, contribute to focused side projects… I’m also a big believer in the idea that writing and speaking about a specific subject forces you to understand it more fully. Even just having intentional conversations around a subject raises questions and creates a curiosity that can only be silenced by digging deeper into a topic.
Investing in a skillset can also take the form of mentorship. I’m a big fan of this when it happens organically, but we’ve also found a more structured approach to work well via our apprenticeship program. The opportunity to have hungry minds asking difficult questions in our office every single day is one I can’t pass up. There is an obvious benefit to apprentices as they work through the Sparkbox apprenticeship curriculum, but Sparkboxers also grow through pairing and teaching these foundational techniques each year. As my business partner Rob says, in a world full of talent consumers, I want us to be talent creators—apprenticeships help us cultivate new learners and continue to expose our team to the joy and benefit of learning.
Investing in a Person
The second ring is “Investing in a Person.” At this level, we are focused on a more holistic approach to investing in the people around us. We’re still investing in them as individuals, but we’re considering aspects outside of their primary skill. Investing in a person is about finding ways to broaden our understanding of the work we do, but also of what it means to be human. Wellness benefits have become common in the workplace and are intended to help people live healthier lives. Anything that helps an individual deal with life in a healthy way will have the added benefit of helping that person deal with work in a healthy way. Think about it this way: If I haven’t slept well for the past few nights, I certainly won’t be able to do my job very well. This tier of investment recognizes that fact, and works to address it by helping people live healthier lives.
But wellness is just one example—diversity and inclusion programs are important to this growth and challenge people’s perspectives, often requiring our egos to be set aside. Finding the humility to recognize we may not be right about everything in life (surprise!) leads to more willingness to collaborate at work. We’ve seen great benefit in unique pairings. We ask folks with very different roles to solve a problem together. Watching someone who has a very different set of skills and experiences work through a problem demonstrates in a very tangible way that our way may not always be the best way. Giving people these opportunities is investing in them as a person, and it can be a powerful force for good on a team.
More broadly, this could also be demonstrated in any way that helps develop empathy for the other people on the team. At Sparkbox, we’ve been experimenting with a simple program called “Threshold of Empathy.” It’s a way for us to give one another the opportunity to see and participate in all the roles involved in keeping Sparkbox moving. We keep track of activities that aren’t common to most folks here (maybe reviewing a contract or helping write an estimate), then we invite individuals to participate every once in a while. It’s not that we expect people to shift into owning these things, but only good can come from them understanding the context in which decisions are made. A teammate who recognizes the impact of their choices on the rest of the team is one you don’t want to lose.
Investing in a Life
The third and final ring is “Investing in a Life.” This is likely where most of us start to feel a little out of our element. This ring asks us to consider the people surrounding our team members: their significant others, kids, parents, sisters, brothers, friends. Everything we ask of the people on our teams impacts the people closest to them. We can’t ignore the fact that people take their work home with them. And the opposite is also true—we bring stress from home to work with us. It’s easy to justify helping our team members get better at their skillsets, and it makes sense that they need to be healthy and have higher levels of empathy in order to perform their jobs well. But as soon as we bring the people surrounding our co-workers into the picture, things can get a bit sticky.
A commitment to investing in someone’s life means we are willing to find ways to help them help their loved ones. Sometimes it’s as easy as a note written to someone’s significant other saying how much we appreciate having that person on our team. Sometimes it’s a dinner with a team member and a loved one. Sometimes it’s ordering pizza for their family while they are traveling for work. These tend to be simple actions but they mean so much to the people who receive them. Understanding that work is just a portion of someone’s life helps us to see the value in the relationships they have outside of the office. Being willing to invest in those relationships demonstrates our commitment to them as a human.
These kinds of investments are not common in the workplace. In fact, there’s a lot of research showing that many people in the U.S. are not friends with the people they work with. In this climate, can we really expect people to go even further, caring for their employees’ and coworkers’ close friends and families? It is a lot to ask. And, it may not work in every company culture. But what I’ve learned is that the value of the trust developed when you are willing to take care of one another makes for a team that can solve anything. When people don’t feel safe at work, the same chemicals are released that generate “fight or flight” responses. And the kind of safety we’re talking about here is not even restricted to physical threats—socially challenging environments also generate this response. Nobody can do their best work when this is happening internally. Knowing that your team has your back creates that trust—that safety—freeing you to fully participate.
The Ripple
My favorite thing about this concept is how it ripples.
Investing in a life is investing in that person. Investing in a person does make them better at their job.
You see, investing in a life is investing in that person. And, investing in a person does make them better at their job. The work part of a person is not separate from the life part of a person. We are who we are because of our skillsets, but also because of our experiences and the other people in our lives. We all know from personal experience how difficult it can be to do our jobs well when things are not going well in other parts of our lives. Recognizing this, instead of pretending it doesn’t happen, frees us to take preventative action—to help be part of the support system someone needs so that the challenges outside of work don’t overwhelm them.
And the ripple effect of this framework means that these things start to happen organically. People start creating sign-ups to take someone a meal when they are going through something difficult. People help each other transport new refrigerators and move to new homes. It’s unbelievable to see these things happen on your team without some top-down program. This is the power of fully investing in the people around you. It’s hard work, but it’s totally worth it.
How This Framework Applies to Internal Teams
I’m a firm believer that these ideas aren’t relegated to employer-employee relationships. In fact, we’re working to consider how we take this kind of approach into our relationships with our customers. I want organizations to see hiring Sparkbox as an investment in their team. If we can help make our own people better, then perhaps we can help the people on our customers’ teams be better too. This reciprocal dynamic is key in earning one another’s trust and continuing to work together.
If you run an internal team, I’d encourage you to make it part of your partner evaluation process to consider the potential vendor or partner’s culture around education, mentorship, training, writing. See if they’re doing their part to pour back into their community and employees. These are key signs that they are focused on the right things—that hiring them will be an investment back into your team as a natural effect of having invested employees.
And beyond your relationships with your vendors, think about your relationships with other groups inside your company. You can have this kind of impact on these other internal teams. This kind of in-house investment can be the most impactful because these are people you will work with for a long time. When they realize they’re getting better through their partnerships with you, much of the internal tension and politics will dissolve. What’s left will be humans who want to do their best, and the freedom in which to do it.
How this Framework Applies to Contributing Individuals
Certainly some of our readers find themselves on a team, perhaps with a feeling of helplessness as it relates to the programs and benefits offered by their company. While you may not be directly involved in hiring or benefits decisions, that doesn’t get you out of the job of investing in the people around you. Many of these kinds of changes can happen without initiation from leadership.
One of the women on our team recently bought a house. It had a lovely backyard deck that was in need of resurfacing. One day in Slack, a Google Spreadsheet showed up with all the Saturdays in the summer listed out. She had added her name and the deck-resurfacing project to one of the dates and invited others to add their home-related projects to the list. She also volunteered to help others on a few Saturdays and suggested that we could all help each other with these larger projects if we’d agree to chip in on some weekends too. This was not something I or my business partner orchestrated. This is what happens organically when people decide they want to be all in, to invest in one anothers’ lives.
And there’s another side to this coin: We tend to be too proud to allow others to help us. I know I’m guilty of this. But there is growth in helping others. Saying no to their offer to support you is also denying them the chance to be there for you. No doubt it’s difficult, but being willing to accept some support when you need it is just as important as being willing to offer it. All of this leads to healthier lives outside of work and better products inside work.
How this Framework Applies to Team Leaders
Investing in the people on your team is investing in their ability to innovate.
To those of you who lead teams, I implore you to remember how valuable the humans on your team truly are. And that value extends well beyond the specific skill for which they were hired. Remember the inseparability of that portion of who they are from the other parts of their lives. And remember the value those other parts bring: Our unique perspectives based on our past experiences (sometimes called our “acquired diversity”) cause us to approach problems in different ways which is the key to truly innovative ideas. This has been proven time and time again, including in this article from the Harvard Business Review on how diversity can drive innovation. The kind of investment we’re talking about builds trust that enables what’s called a “speak up” culture: “…employees in a ‘speak up’ culture are 3.5 times as likely to contribute their full innovative potential.” As a team leader, this is your primary job—to motivate your team to fully contribute!
I will even take this a step further. As someone in a position of authority, your actions set the tone for the rest of your team. With this power, comes (you guessed it) great responsibility. I believe taking that responsibility seriously should lead you beyond the obvious “treat people with respect” attitude toward these kinds of deeper investments. It’s your job to lead that effort. Know that it may be uncomfortable to support people with very different perspectives than your own. Know that it requires tremendous humility. Know that it requires you to honestly believe you have something to learn from each person on your team. But also trust that it will result in you being better at your job and in a team capable of much more innovative work.
Work is Life
Work-life-balance is a joke. Work is part of life. Life bleeds into work. Trying to keep these things separate only leads to more stress worrying about the overlap. Instead, I believe we need to see these things for what they are—all part of the experience of living in our communities. Becoming better humans will help us be better at our work. But becoming holistically better workers will also help us become better humans, better parents, spouses, sisters, brothers, friends. It’s all intertwined, and that’s okay.
Instead of compartmentalizing the different parts of our lives, we need to focus on growing as people. In this way, we can make a bigger impact in all the places where we have a role.
Here’s to never being satisfied with the status quo. Here’s to being better.
Interested in speaking further about this? Drop me a line.
Ben is the President of Sparkbox and Founder of the Build Right workshop series. Ben shares his ideas about the web on the Sparkbox Foundry and other leading industry blogs. He regularly works with large brand e-commerce to reconsider their web experiences while consulting to helping them shift their design and development workflows.
Mutt’s Sauce has a story that is almost as good as the secret recipe. First developed by Charlie “Mutt” Ferrell Jr. in 1956, Mutt’s Sauce was designed to be a versatile sauce to be used with every meal. This tasty topping recently won $25,000 from Bob Evans Farms and coaching from Daymond John of ABC’s Shark Tank. This grant competition is from their “Our Farm Salutes” program, designed to help former military members achieve their dreams as successful entrepreneurs.
“The value of what Bob Evans Farms has done is to show the world the importance of investing in veteran-owned small businesses. Veterans, in my opinion, are ‘hard wired’ to serve others. They hold themselves to a high personal standard, and are taught the importance of maintaining excellence in all they do,” said Charlynda Scales, current CEO of Mutt’s Sauce.
Charlynda formerly served in the United States Air Force as a data analyst for the Small Business office in the Pentagon. Her duty to serve came from her grandfather, Charlie. Charlie served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, serving his country bravely. Charlynda’s grandfather was instrumental to her success, as she grew up in Cookeville, Tennessee with her grandparents, mother, and aunt.
Scales says that, “He was the main provider for all of us as well as a father figure in my life. Many of the largest decisions I’ve made in my life were due to his influence.”
When Charlie died in 2005, many in the family wondered what would happen to his beloved famous recipe. Then suddenly, in 2013, Charlynda’s mother told her that Charlie had left the secret recipe to her. She was shocked and humbled by the honor given to her. With no instruction, a company was born.
Making sure the sauce tastes great to the consumer is a top priority of Charlynda. Although she is allergic to pepper, she ensures that she is serving a great product to her customers by tasting the first production.
“Yes, I’ve taste tested the Sweet N Spicy and the Ghost Pepper” Scales said. “It involved ‘pre-gaming’ with lots of Benadryl!”
Her ultimate goal is getting her sauce into stores in states across the country.
“The grant for $25,000 was just enough to help each entrepreneur get to the ‘next’ level, not the highest,” she said. With the grant and invaluable advice from Daymond John, the sky is the limit for Mutt’s Sauce. Charlynda hopes to see explosive growth this upcoming year and continued expansion. “The success of Mutt’s Sauce is a testament to his [Charlie’s] leadership and passion,” she added.
Through her success, she also wants to help out those who served our country. Beginning on November 11th, Mutt’s Sauce camo apparel will be released to “pay homage to our veterans and veteran owned businesses.” A portion of the proceeds raised will be donated to help out homeless veterans in our community.
To keep up with Mutt’s Sauce and order your own, you can visit their website here. To visit Charlynda Scale’s personal entrepreneurship website, click here.
Third Wave Water, a company that specializes in making the perfect water for your cup of coffee, will make their pitch to prospective investors on ABC’s Shark Tank on Sunday, October 8th.
To celebrate, there will be a viewing party with Third Wave Water’s founder at Cedarville University’s “Stinger’s.” There will be a question and answer session before and after the Shark Tank episode. Guests will have the opportunity to try their drip coffee for free and will receive amazing discounts on their products at Rinnova.
Interested in going and finding out if the sharks bite?
Event begins at 8:30PM with Q&A and viewing following directly after. The address is:
Do you want to share your startup company with others in Silicon Valley? Do you want to be exposed to industry leaders including Apple, Forbes, Target, Twitter, Facebook, and many others?
If you answered “yes”, check out Startup Grind’s event in Silicon Valley. Startup Grind is hosting their annual “Global Conference 2018 Startup Showcase” from February 13th-15th in Redwood City, California. This event is dedicated to small business startups that have fewer than 20 employees, less than $3 million in funding, and is an all around “awesome company.”
Startup Grind’s event provides many invaluable experiences for all attendees. For the cost of $2,395, startups will have the opportunity to set up a demo table at the exhibition, get tickets to a VIP mixer, and gain access to 7,000 potential customers. 5,000 investors and founders will be present in addition to many keynote speakers. Past speakers include Waze CEO Noam Bardin, Slack co-founder Cal Henderson, and WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum.
The top 50 startups from the exhibition will be inducted into the Global 2017 Startup Program and will receive even more great benefits. These startups will get mentions to 300,000 followers on social media, onsite branding, and even the opportunity to pitch their startup onstage. Sound like a pretty cool opportunity? We think so!
Startup Grind educates, inspires, and connects 1,000,000 entrepreneurs of 250 cities from 115 different countries. The next Startup Grind Dayton event is happening next week on Monday, 10/9 at 5:30 pm. Check out the details here!
Over the past two years being the Program Manager at Ocean Accelerator, a startup accelerator located in the heart of downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, I have probably seen close to 1000+ startup business pitch decks and applications cross my desk. Trust me when I say I have seen it all. Crazy ideas, dumb ideas and some brilliant ideas. For those of you who have a business idea or maybe even have some early paying customers, stop what you are doing and take 5 minutes to read this post. I guarantee it will give you insight into the world of startup accelerators that you did not have before.
There are over 200 accelerators in the U.S. And before I go any further, allow me to let you in on a little secret: Accelerators do not receive hundreds of high-quality applications with rockstar founding teams. That just isn’t true. Every year accelerators are competing with one another for the best companies, and on the other end, companies have gotten smart and have started “shopping around” accelerators. Believe it or not, accelerators have to grind it out just to fill out their roster of 10 companies in their next cohort.
I wanted to mention that quick sidebar as a word of encouragement to those of you who are self-doubting yourself or think that your business isn’t good enough to get into an accelerator…because the simple truth is, you probably are. Anyways, running an accelerator program has been both a joy and an honor and I wanted to take time to pass along knowledge I have accumulated over the years.
So here we go.
Here are 3 tips for how to get accepted into an accelerator program.
Have paying customers. This is the most important secret to getting accepted into any accelerator. You must having paying customers. It could be 1, it could be 10, it could be 100. Why is this so important? Because when people are willing to pay for your product it means you actually have found a problem worth solving. Secondly, investors are starting to move their investment criteria further and further down the line. 10 years ago all you needed was a passionate founder who could cast vision and a working website and you could raise a seed round of funding. Not the case today. Investors want to see paying customers and they want to see customers who are not your mother or distant uncle. You can get creative here too, let’s say your product is 50% complete and will not be done for another 3 months. You can still generate Professional Service revenue by working as a consultant for your customer base to help solve their problems while your product is being developed. Who knows, I bet they will probably end up loving you so much that they’ll offer to prepay for your product.
Know the problem you are solving. I see this way too often and it is a darn shame. Very talented founders with a snazzy looking product, but no one will pay for it. Why? Because they forgot the cardinal rule: Always know what problem you are solving. It is tempting as a founder to fall in love with your product, it almost becomes your baby. You are constantly adding features and you forget the entire reason you built the product in the first place. When applying for an accelerator, be crystal clear on what problem you are solving and the work you have done to validate that it is actually a problem. The best applications I have seen supplement their application with a Google Doc listing the 100+ customers interviews they have performed…word for word. Some applicants even submitted MP3 audio files of recorded customer interviews (although I suggest you can verbal consent from the customer before doing this). The worst applications I have seen say something like “my mom said she would pay for it if she had the money”. No joke! Know what problem you are solving and tell me how you validated it was a problem.
Understand how you make money. There are all kinds of buzz words I could throw in here: revenue model, go-to-market strategy, scalability, BLAH BLAH BLAH. Putting all that aside you need to have a fundamental understanding of how you actually receive cash in your banking account and what are your associated costs. Now, in reality, when you are startup, how you make money and how much it costs will always be changing. You might think you are going to do direct sales and make money through annual contracts, then the next month one of your mentors tells you about this sweet little model called a “SaaS” model and you get all excited so you pivot to that. Here is what I say….who cares. What accelerators are looking for is an awareness that you at least have a list of assumptions for how you THINK you are going to make money and what you THINK it will cost you.
In summary: If you have an understanding of how you make money, know what problem you are solving and actually have a handful of paying customers then it is very likely you get accepted into an accelerator.
There are ways for you to get creative in all three of these areas. That is ok! You may in all honestly not know with 100% accuracy what problem you are solving. Guess what…that is ok! Some of the strongest applications I have seen are companies that literally say “we have surveyed 100 businesses and here is what we think the problem is that we are solving although we are still continuing to test and speak with customers to learn more.” Honesty goes a long way in your application.
Hopefully this post added some sort of value to your life or business. If you have any questions, shoot me an email, would love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions.
Ian is a graduate of The Ohio State University and a seasoned technologist. He is a serial entrepreneur having founded over 5 high-tech businesses and currently serves as the Program Director at Ocean Accelerator, a startup business accelerator located in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. When he isn’t coaching entrepreneurs you can find him renovating his house, playing golf, shooting clay pigeons or hiking.
This day marked one year since Galatune, my startup gaming company, was brought to life thanks to fan support of over $20,000 on Kickstarter. August also represents two years since establishing my company and roughly 19 years of game development. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever pictured myself in this moment, now out in the marketplace selling a card game that I created as a kid for so many people to enjoy.
Look how far King has come since I was 10. So far, King is the oldest existing character. He started out as one of the first characters in the original version of the game back when I was 10. King’s character and backstory have seen countless revisions over the years, but some reference to King has been in every iteration of the game throughout development.
It all started about 19 years ago, back when I was just 10 years old. Like many millennials, I grew up as a gamer. The Pokémon and Yugioh card games were exciting, new, and popular. The Nintendo64 and Playstation were blowing our minds with 3D gaming for the first time, and everyone who’s anyone was a geek. I met all of my friends through gaming, and it was through gaming that I learned so much about friendship, competition, and imagination.
Eventually, 10-year-old me got the idea to start making my own Pokémon cards. At first, I started with sketching my favorite Pokémon onto index cards and making up my own attacks, but then it turned into making up my own Pokémon. As I was making up Pokémon to play with my younger brother and friends, more and more I’d get frustrated by little thing and started making up my own rules that were more fun to me. What began as creating my own Pokémon rules then sort of spiraled into creating a completely new game entirely.
The main inspiration behind Galatune started with 10-year-old me removing the things I didn’t like about other popular card games. Then I started mixing in things that I really liked about the video games I played into the game as well. I wanted a card game that felt like Super Smash Brothers, something fast-paced, and full of chaotic free-for-all action that lots of people could play at the same time. Well, it was fairly messy at first, but sure enough, my family and friends really enjoyed the direction I was heading already. By the time I was 14, I had a game that my friends would actually pick over anything for sale in the game shops. That alone was pretty awesome. From that day on, all my geeky friends would pick my homemade card game as our go-to entertainment for hang out nights. We’d stay up late, playing the game until the early morning, eating pizza and having some of the realest, soul-searching conversations of a lifetime. I loved how my game was bringing everyone together, and I was always excited to share that experience with new friends.
Every now and then, I’d get friends who’d push me to sell my game idea to a big game company, but I never took any of that too seriously. Firstly, I had no idea how to actually make a REAL game, I was like 16 years old at this point. By the time I got to college, I had a rough idea of what’d it take to bring my game to stores, but there were still more questions than answers and most importantly no way to afford to take that leap.
Then came Wright Venture. Wright Venture is Wright State University’s version of Shark Tank. It’s a program created by the Raj Soin College of Business that’s designed to connect entrepreneurial students with mentors and compete for a chance at some seed money. When I first heard about Wright Venture Iwas excited but terrified. Do I really want to take that leap? Do I even have what it takes? Well, in the end, I applied to Wright Venture as a sort of personal dare. I didn’t know if their judges would take a card game that seriously, but I told myself that if these impressive business leaders thought I had potential, then I would take this thing as far as I could.
Wouldn’t you know it? My card game concept actually won the grand prize! From there, I had what I needed to revamp the game I created over a lifetime into a shelf-ready product supported by a strategic business plan. Of course, there was still a long road ahead of me.
I used the Wright Venture funding to create a proof of concept for the market-ready game, and then spent about a year campaigning to raise awareness and build up a fan base in preparation for a Kickstarter campaign, all while working behind the scenes with my mentors in the community, the Small Business Development Center, the Entrepreneur Center, and anyone willing to give me advice. Kickstarter was my best bet at bridging the final funding gap to production, but I knew that even Kickstarter wasn’t magical; it was going to take a lot of people to get the game into production.
I was out every chance I could get, running game demos at local game shops and gaming conventions, but in the end, it was worth every bead of sweat. People loved the game and together we were able to just barely scrape by what we needed to move into production.
The story of the startup entrepreneur always has an element of comedy to it I think. In many ways, you fake it till you make it. I brought my A-game to every convention even though 99% of my business was kept in the back of my car and super ‘bootstraps’ for lack of a better word. Here I was just doing whatever it took to make things happen. Another symbolic and hilarious moment was when we had a shipping crew deliver our first set of inventory to my parents’ basement. At that point, I was working at Wright State University and I had a small apartment with my wife, but no space of my own to store anything and certainly no warehouse or anything like that. So there we were on shipping day, with my family and friends helping us to load thousands of games into my parents’ basement for temporary storage.
It’s been a crazy journey since then too. Since our release party in April 2017, we’ve grossed about $10,000, and if you include Kickstarter orders that amount to a total of $30,000 in sales since the company began. We’re putting 100% of that back into the company at this point and hope to have new merchandise and our first commercial ready in time for the 2017 holiday season. With any luck, we’ll keep the brand growing beyond the Midwest, and even beyond card games into mobile games, videogames, comic books, and –well my ultimate dream of an animated series someday. We’ve set a strong enough foundation to take the brand as far as the community wants us to, but we’ll need to keep innovating and also figure out some more financing options. Small business loans of any sort can be pretty difficult in this market, but hey, if you know somebody who might be able to help out, please let me know! I’m always looking for more mentors and funding opportunities, willing to do whatever it takes to share this game with more gamers and to keep on making great content for everyone to enjoy.
Follow Galatune on social media to join us as the journey continues. And if you’re a hopeful entrepreneur on the cusp of taking that leap for yourself, well, I have this much to say: Do it because you love creating something out of nothing. Do it because you live for bringing smiles to people’s faces. If I were in it for the money, I wouldn’t have made it anywhere near this far, but I believe that if we stay focused on putting people first, this could very well evolve into the next Pokemon.
Adam Wik is the founder of Dayton-based startup Galatune. Galatune produces fantasy entertainment for the world through creative storytelling expressed through table top games, video games, books, comics, promotional merchandise and other media.
The story of the startup entrepreneur always has an element of comedy to it I think. In many ways, you fake it till you make it. I brought my A-game to every convention even though 99% of my business was kept in the back of my car and super ‘bootstraps’ for lack of a better word. Here I was just doing whatever it took to make things happen. Another symbolic and hilarious moment was when we had a shipping crew deliver our first set of inventory to my parents’ basement. At that point, I was working at Wright State University and I had a small apartment with my wife, but no space of my own to store anything and certainly no warehouse or anything like that. So there we were on shipping day, with my family and friends helping us to load thousands of games into my parents’ basement for temporary storage.
