We brought on a new developer who started putting the pieces of our thoughts together and turning it into a functioning website. By the start of 2009, our site was really starting to take shape. It was about this time that our primary developer had to step down from his position so we brought on a new lead developer, Chris Carlino, who is still with us today and doing an amazing job. Our vision was becoming more and more clear. The offering and potential we were creating in front of us was exciting yet very nerve racking at the same time. We started ramping up to hit the market and really go after customers but as the weeks passed, we realized that we were getting ahead of ourselves yet again. It was there, our moment in early Spring, the time when other businesses fail because it was getting to be to hard, partnerships split up because they just aren't seeing the same vision anymore, the moment where we were at the business point of quitting or continuing........
Monday, August 3, 2009
Time Flies By
It's hard to believe that the last posting to this blog was almost a year ago and that we've been at this thing now known as BrioBody for over 19 months. From our last post when we decided on a name, we were focused on a health and fitness social networking site that linked with our prototyped device. We were focused on academic institutions and sports teams as our primary market. It was after not achieving a milestone back in August of 2008 with our website where we discovered that our goal and vision needed some adjustments. We started to really take a look at the market and what our offering was. It wasn't till October when we decided to change gears and become a wellness company providing wellness services focused around fitness and nutrition.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Where we were
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Our Face Matures
After sitting down for several hours laying out the entire website on paper, we decided it was time to hire an experienced web design/development team to bring our rough sketches to life. Ron, James (our amiably boisterous consultant), and myself met our new team for dinner at a T.G.I.F located in the King of Prussia Mall. Mike and Patrick, our new team members, were great; they really seemed to feed well off each other. Mike seemed really down to earth and laid back; he was very easy to talk to and listened tentatively to all of our thoughts on the site. Patrick seemed very structured and it was easy to tell right away that he was going to be very detailed and thorough with all our development discussions. After a couple drinks and some good conversation, Mike (our designer) presented us with the initial website mocks. It was extremely exciting to finally see something for the website that wasn’t created with a pen and paper, but after carefully reviewing the designs, we decided it wasn’t quite what we were looking for. The meeting went very well, in respect to us finally having a team and believing everyone was on the same page now.After an initial revision by Mike, we still wanted him to go in a different direction with the site, so we asked him to go back to the drawing board and start over. The initial designs were too “young”; we wanted something a little more mature that people of any age would hopefully enjoy using. The next set of mocks Mike sent over was fantastic; he really hit the nail on the head for us! It was that set of designs that served as a template for the rest of the website. I’m sure we drove Mike crazy with all the slight adjustments we made throughout the design process, but through him working with us to make those changes, he really created a set of designs we were extremely happy with.As our initial project deadline continued to approach, we continued to work on one of our number one priorities; finding investors. We decided to take one of Ron’s coworkers out to lunch at a Smokey Bones restaurant to discuss our current and future projects and the potential investment opportunities we were offering. I’ll never forget Ron’s coworker’s response to our ventures during the meeting. He took the packet we had prepared for him and sat it down on the table and looked directly at me. He told me he didn’t need to read a single page of the packet, that the real reason he came out to lunch with us wasn’t to discuss our venture (he and Ron had already done that); that he had really come out to meet me. He began grilling me with questions, most importantly asking me what kind of life experience I had. At this moment I thought of my real-world business experience, or lack thereof, and I began to feel our chances of an investment slipping through my fingertips. I begrudgingly put my tail between my legs and began to tell him of my endless blue collar jobs I have had throughout my life. He asked me how long it would take to earn $15,000 at each of the jobs I mentioned. After telling him the multiple lifetimes it would take me to earn that kind of money working those jobs, he turned to me and paused. I could feel what I thought was going to be the next question of “Why should I invest my money in a kid with no real business experience?” about to leave his lips. It was then that he looked into my eyes and said, “Good, I wanted to make sure you understood the value of a dollar before I invested my money with you. I don’t want you going out eating steak dinners every night on my tab; I want you to work.” I could not believe it! The rest of the meeting went great and eventually we were lucky enough to secure him as our primary investor.We now had enough money to fund the entire first phase of our project and decided we were in great need of a more professional company website. We searched the internet an entire evening for a good flash template that we could use as our temporary company site. Finally Ron and I found one we both liked, but realized neither of us really had any experience with flash and the template needed an immense amount of editing. We downloaded Adobe Flash CS3 and within a couple hours, taught ourselves enough to edit the majority of the site. We were finally beginning to look like a legitimate company. With that in mind, we decided to entertain the idea of seeking some venture money.We scheduled a meeting with Chris Fralic of First Round Capital to find out how our company would be viewed in the eyes of the venture capital community and most importantly to see if he could connect us with anyone interested in our venture. The meeting went smoothly and we were able to answer all the questions Chris threw at us, but we ended up not being connected with any of the individuals he mentioned at the meeting. From there we decided to keep on track with continuing to build our company and with meeting potential partners.It was June 11th and we had much our website designed and most of our functionally mapped out, but we were lacking something pretty important to most companies… a name! After spending several weeks and countless hours trying to figure out a name for the website, Ron discovered the word “brio”. Brio, meaning the state of being lively in temper, spirit, and conduct was a perfect fit for what we were trying embody in our website. Because of the domain name squatting community (which I’m sure many of you would agree the world would be better off without), it took hours of searching to find something that should have been very simple. The website was being designed to assist people in creating a healthier, more energetic body, so it only made sense to use Briobody.com as our final domain name. Finally, after weeks of searching, our company found its face; now all we needed were some legs to stand on.
Posted by Matt at 7:30 PM 0 comments
Friday, August 1, 2008
A Company is Born
As Tony Robbins once said, “Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you truly haven’t decided.” For about three years we had been tossing around a myriad of promising ideas that we could potentially center a business around, but our day of decision and action didn’t come until December 28, 2007. Within a week’s time of deciding on a health and fitness monitoring system, we filed for the formation of the company M.R. Innovative Solutions, completed the first draft of screenshots for a small touch-screen device, drew a draft for the device itself, and designed the initial website. Within the next two months, we secured the patent that covered our business system and we laid out schematics for the construction of the device, complete with a basic chip selection and chip layout; things were really moving for us. It’s funny looking back now, we believed we were going to have our entire system developed and ready to hit the market by late March and that included building our own hardware device from scratch.After spending the next month writing a forty page business plan (which was helpful in hammering down a direction for the company, but superfluous otherwise) and trying to find someone to build the device for us, we decided we were getting nowhere and began to think more practically. We decided to focus the majority of our efforts on designing a website that people could really benefit from using. We knew regardless of what we decided to shift our efforts on, that we had lawyer fees we needed to pay and that we needed money…fast!With money on our mind, we began applying to every startup business incubation program in the country. Each of our applications included us building our own hardware device from scratch, which needless to say, is not very attractive to the startup incubation world (especially when they expect you to get your venture off the ground with $30k or less). Where most startup incubators seem to drop off the face of the planet after they deny a team, there was one in Boulder, Colorado called TechStars led by David Cohen, who were very willing to give advice to all applicants. We ended up not getting into any of the incubators, so we decided to build our own incubation environment through the professors at Penn State.David Barton, founder of the Blue Line suggests all the elements are in place for a startup to take off at Penn State, “a research powerhouse of a university, a bright and well educated population with costs of living that are BELOW the U.S. average. It should also be noted that most of the venture capital firms set up shop across the street from the Stanford University campus on Sand Hill Road, their equivalent of our College Avenue. That is precisely why the BLUE LINE™ is located on College Avenue, across the street from the Penn State campus.” With that in mind we built a talented board of advisors; several of the members being talented, passionate Penn State professors, including Robert Beaury and Khanjan Mehta. With an amazing board of advisors in place, it was time to really focus on bringing in some cash.I can remember receiving the phone call from Ron while I was out for dinner in D.C., that he had met with an investor and that the investor thought our idea was complete garbage. I remember feeling my stomach and heart briefly drop under my seat and then he told me he was being facetious; the investor had just written him a check for $10,000! Receiving that first investment from someone, inspiring someone to open their wallet, (whether it is $1,000 or $100,000) is a very hard thing to do and is such an amazing feeling when it finally happens.Speaking with Khanjan Mehta (one of the most passionate and dedicated instructors at Penn State), we learned of a website called ideablob.com that hosts a monthly national best small business idea competition. It was there that we focused a solid two weeks of our time in late May doing nothing, but trying to gather votes for our idea. It seemed like a long shot, as many of the other companies in the competition were already established with a website and customer base (we didn’t even have a name yet!). I’m sure many of you remember us bugging you to sign up on the site and vote; sorry for the inconvenience, but it paid off! With the help of everyone who voted, we became ideablob’s monthly winner with market validation from over six hundred people who loved the idea and another $10,000 now in our pocket to put toward hiring a website designer and developer. That’s when we met Mike and Patrick.
Posted by Matt at 1:30 PM 2 comments
Our Face Matures
After sitting down for several hours laying out the entire website on paper, we decided it was time to hire an experienced web design/development team to bring our rough sketches to life. Ron, James (our amiably boisterous consultant), and myself met our new team for dinner at a T.G.I.F located in the King of Prussia Mall. Mike and Patrick, our new team members, were great; they really seemed to feed well off each other. Mike seemed really down to earth and laid back; he was very easy to talk to and listened tentatively to all of our thoughts on the site. Patrick seemed very structured and it was easy to tell right away that he was going to be very detailed and thorough with all our development discussions. After a couple drinks and some good conversation, Mike (our designer) presented us with the initial website mocks. It was extremely exciting to finally see something for the website that wasn’t created with a pen and paper, but after carefully reviewing the designs, we decided it wasn’t quite what we were looking for. The meeting went very well, in respect to us finally having a team and believing everyone was on the same page now.After an initial revision by Mike, we still wanted him to go in a different direction with the site, so we asked him to go back to the drawing board and start over. The initial designs were too “young”; we wanted something a little more mature that people of any age would hopefully enjoy using. The next set of mocks Mike sent over was fantastic; he really hit the nail on the head for us! It was that set of designs that served as a template for the rest of the website. I’m sure we drove Mike crazy with all the slight adjustments we made throughout the design process, but through him working with us to make those changes, he really created a set of designs we were extremely happy with.As our initial project deadline continued to approach, we continued to work on one of our number one priorities; finding investors. We decided to take one of Ron’s coworkers out to lunch at a Smokey Bones restaurant to discuss our current and future projects and the potential investment opportunities we were offering. I’ll never forget Ron’s coworker’s response to our ventures during the meeting. He took the packet we had prepared for him and sat it down on the table and looked directly at me. He told me he didn’t need to read a single page of the packet, that the real reason he came out to lunch with us wasn’t to discuss our venture (he and Ron had already done that); that he had really come out to meet me. He began grilling me with questions, most importantly asking me what kind of life experience I had. At this moment I thought of my real-world business experience, or lack thereof, and I began to feel our chances of an investment slipping through my fingertips. I begrudgingly put my tail between my legs and began to tell him of my endless blue collar jobs I have had throughout my life. He asked me how long it would take to earn $15,000 at each of the jobs I mentioned. After telling him the multiple lifetimes it would take me to earn that kind of money working those jobs, he turned to me and paused. I could feel what I thought was going to be the next question of “Why should I invest my money in a kid with no real business experience?” about to leave his lips. It was then that he looked into my eyes and said, “Good, I wanted to make sure you understood the value of a dollar before I invested my money with you. I don’t want you going out eating steak dinners every night on my tab; I want you to work.” I could not believe it! The rest of the meeting went great and eventually we were lucky enough to secure him as our primary investor.We now had enough money to fund the entire first phase of our project and decided we were in great need of a more professional company website. We searched the internet an entire evening for a good flash template that we could use as our temporary company site. Finally Ron and I found one we both liked, but realized neither of us really had any experience with flash and the template needed an immense amount of editing. We downloaded Adobe Flash CS3 and within a couple hours, taught ourselves enough to edit the majority of the site. We were finally beginning to look like a legitimate company. With that in mind, we decided to entertain the idea of seeking some venture money.We scheduled a meeting with Chris Fralic of First Round Capital to find out how our company would be viewed in the eyes of the venture capital community and most importantly to see if he could connect us with anyone interested in our venture. The meeting went smoothly and we were able to answer all the questions Chris threw at us, but we ended up not being connected with any of the individuals he mentioned at the meeting. From there we decided to keep on track with continuing to build our company and with meeting potential partners.It was June 11th and we had much our website designed and most of our functionally mapped out, but we were lacking something pretty important to most companies… a name! After spending several weeks and countless hours trying to figure out a name for the website, Ron discovered the word “brio”. Brio, meaning the state of being lively in temper, spirit, and conduct was a perfect fit for what we were trying embody in our website. Because of the domain name squatting community (which I’m sure many of you would agree the world would be better off without), it took hours of searching to find something that should have been very simple. The website was being designed to assist people in creating a healthier, more energetic body, so it only made sense to use Briobody.com as our final domain name. Finally, after weeks of searching, our company found its face; now all we needed were some legs to stand on.
Posted by Matt at 7:30 PM 0 comments
Friday, August 1, 2008
A Company is Born
As Tony Robbins once said, “Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you truly haven’t decided.” For about three years we had been tossing around a myriad of promising ideas that we could potentially center a business around, but our day of decision and action didn’t come until December 28, 2007. Within a week’s time of deciding on a health and fitness monitoring system, we filed for the formation of the company M.R. Innovative Solutions, completed the first draft of screenshots for a small touch-screen device, drew a draft for the device itself, and designed the initial website. Within the next two months, we secured the patent that covered our business system and we laid out schematics for the construction of the device, complete with a basic chip selection and chip layout; things were really moving for us. It’s funny looking back now, we believed we were going to have our entire system developed and ready to hit the market by late March and that included building our own hardware device from scratch.After spending the next month writing a forty page business plan (which was helpful in hammering down a direction for the company, but superfluous otherwise) and trying to find someone to build the device for us, we decided we were getting nowhere and began to think more practically. We decided to focus the majority of our efforts on designing a website that people could really benefit from using. We knew regardless of what we decided to shift our efforts on, that we had lawyer fees we needed to pay and that we needed money…fast!With money on our mind, we began applying to every startup business incubation program in the country. Each of our applications included us building our own hardware device from scratch, which needless to say, is not very attractive to the startup incubation world (especially when they expect you to get your venture off the ground with $30k or less). Where most startup incubators seem to drop off the face of the planet after they deny a team, there was one in Boulder, Colorado called TechStars led by David Cohen, who were very willing to give advice to all applicants. We ended up not getting into any of the incubators, so we decided to build our own incubation environment through the professors at Penn State.David Barton, founder of the Blue Line suggests all the elements are in place for a startup to take off at Penn State, “a research powerhouse of a university, a bright and well educated population with costs of living that are BELOW the U.S. average. It should also be noted that most of the venture capital firms set up shop across the street from the Stanford University campus on Sand Hill Road, their equivalent of our College Avenue. That is precisely why the BLUE LINE™ is located on College Avenue, across the street from the Penn State campus.” With that in mind we built a talented board of advisors; several of the members being talented, passionate Penn State professors, including Robert Beaury and Khanjan Mehta. With an amazing board of advisors in place, it was time to really focus on bringing in some cash.I can remember receiving the phone call from Ron while I was out for dinner in D.C., that he had met with an investor and that the investor thought our idea was complete garbage. I remember feeling my stomach and heart briefly drop under my seat and then he told me he was being facetious; the investor had just written him a check for $10,000! Receiving that first investment from someone, inspiring someone to open their wallet, (whether it is $1,000 or $100,000) is a very hard thing to do and is such an amazing feeling when it finally happens.Speaking with Khanjan Mehta (one of the most passionate and dedicated instructors at Penn State), we learned of a website called ideablob.com that hosts a monthly national best small business idea competition. It was there that we focused a solid two weeks of our time in late May doing nothing, but trying to gather votes for our idea. It seemed like a long shot, as many of the other companies in the competition were already established with a website and customer base (we didn’t even have a name yet!). I’m sure many of you remember us bugging you to sign up on the site and vote; sorry for the inconvenience, but it paid off! With the help of everyone who voted, we became ideablob’s monthly winner with market validation from over six hundred people who loved the idea and another $10,000 now in our pocket to put toward hiring a website designer and developer. That’s when we met Mike and Patrick.
Posted by Matt at 1:30 PM 2 comments
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