The commodity that I see the majority of people who aren’t getting the places they want or aren’t achieving the things that they want in this business is strictly based on hustle. It’s strictly based on being outworked. It’s strictly based on missing crucial opportunities. I say all the time, if you stay ready you ain’t gotta get ready.

- Will Smith

Many thanks to Peter for sharing.

Source: youtube.com

Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus

This post originally appeared on the Rough Draft Ventures blog on Tuesday, March 5th.

By John Brennan

Partner, Rough Draft Ventures

I’m thrilled to announce that Rough Draft Ventures is investing $20,000 in Balbus, Inc.

This is exciting for us not only because it is our first investment but because the founder, Jack McDermott, is exactly the kind of ambitious student-entrepreneur we set out to support when we launched Rough Draft Ventures last December. Despite his full course load as a junior at Tufts University and his commitment as an athlete on the varsity men’s lacrosse team, Jack has built the foundation of what we believe will be a successful, high impact technology company in the field of special education.

As someone who’s had a stutter for his entire life, you’d be hard pressed to find a founder more entrenched in his product and target market than Jack. While Balbus is growing into its broader vision as a next generation special education platform, it started out to alleviate Jacks specific frustration with his own speech therapy experience. He saw the increasing popularity of smartphones and the emergence of the app economy as an opportunity to put his own speech therapy in his pocket, and he did just that. Since he started Balbus in the fall of 2011, his two iOS apps, Speech4Good and Fluently, have been purchased by thousands of customers trying to find their voice just like him.

Moving forward, we couldn’t be more excited to work closely with Jack and introduce him to the advisors and mentors in our network who can be helpful to him and his company. The $20,000 we’re investing in Balbus will allow Jack to build out his team and run the company full-time when he’s not in class or on the lacrosse field. This is something he’s been unable to do in the past—especially during the summer—as he’s always had to take internships to bootstrap his company on nights and weekends.

Jack has shown a tremendous commitment to solving a very real problem and we’re eager to support his venture as well as other student founders who share an equally relentless passion for their product here in Boston.

Read more about Balbus and what this investment means to Jack on his personal blog.

**

Contact Info:

john@roughdraft.vc | @bjp

Leveling up as a student-entrepreneur

This post was written in a coffee shop in San Francisco on January 4th. 

Where were you one year ago today? 

I think for most entrepreneurs—especially young ones—the answer to this question invites quite a bit of reflection, and I’m no exception. One year ago today, I was spending winter break of my sophomore year at home in Connecticut gearing up to launch my first venture in private beta, Navlit. But what’s more important than that is how I got to where I am today, one year later. Here’s a look into my reflection and how I’ve gone about “leveling up” as a student-entrepreneur, if you will..  

While Kenny and I started working on Navlit in August 2011, it wasn’t until I joined twitter (thanks Jack) in December 2011 that I truly “caught the bug.” I quickly realized that twitter, though an online service, can pay countless dividends towards your life offline if used properly. It quite literally introduced me to people who have gone on to become close friends, mentors, advisors, and colleagues. Twitter introduced me to the Boston startup community, and ultimately, what it means to hustle.

Sorry, “coffee hustle.”

With my introduction to twitter came my introduction to networking. I hate the word networking because it reminds me of stuffy career fairs full of disingenuous “conversations” and hopeless résumé drops, but networking in the startup community means something very different. It means sitting down at your local coffee shop and sharing where you’ve been, where you’re going, and what you’ve learned along the way. It means one on one conversations, sound advice, and the potential to foster real relationships. I began to meet incredibly interesting people this way—people who have a burning passion for whatever they are building and have so much to offer through their past experiences, both the failures and the successes. Many of these people have been my peers in Boston who juggle rigorous academic schedules with ambitious side-projects (or in some cases, real companies), while others have been seasoned entrepreneurs who have already built successful companies but are hungry to build more. These coffee meetings became contagious, and coupled with an endless desire to consume breaking tech news and thoughtful blog posts, I was caught in a whirlwind of startup addiction.

The only problem with what I was doing was that I was living in the abstract of true hustle. I’ve read about how difficult it is to build a business, how struggle and failure are far more common than not, but I’ve never been truly battle tested. I’ve never been in the trenches with nothing but my will and alleged passion for what it means to quite literally “start up,” which is why I’m excited to level up. I’m eager to join Price Intelligently this month and put myself to the test to prove to Patrick that I was worth the risk and to prove to myself that I can help build the next high-impact, meaningful company of Boston and the world. I’m honest with myself that I’m both scared and excited for the future. It’s my first real opportunity to sink my teeth into something very real and make it happen.

So what about my “coffee hustle?” Well, I don’t regret one cup. I’ve met people that, at the very least, I’ll be in touch with for the rest of my life. I’m thankful to move forward on my journey as an entrepreneur with a network that I can rely on for emotional and mental support. I’ve gotten a lot of advice and made a lot of new friends and I think it’s all been important to my personal and professional growth. I’ll take a lot less coffee “meetings” this year, but for good reason. I’m leveling up.

Want to chat? Hit me up on twitter at @bjp.

Discuss on HackerNews.

As I mentioned, this post was written in a coffee shop in San Francisco on January 4th. I’ve been at Price Intelligently for one month now. Stay tuned for a post soon about my experience thus far.

Moving Forward

I’ve put a lot of thought into my goals lately, and not so much because it’s a new year but more so because of a big change approaching in my life—taking a semester off from school to work full-time at a startup. Tomorrow I’ll be moving from my apartment in Medford to an apartment in Cambridge and on Monday I’m joining Price Intelligently.

When I started thinking about my goals for the next six months or so I had about a dozen, but after speaking with some people close to me (thanks guys, you know who you are) I’ve narrowed it down to five, broader goals.

1. Do more stuff.

I’ve been pretty intrigued by the idea of simplifying my life and putting more of a focus on new experiences versus new possessions. I donated half of my clothes around Christmas and I just traveled alone for a week in San Francisco so I’ve already done a good job of kickstarting this goal, but, that being said, I don’t think experiences have to be expensive and time-consuming. I want to try yoga, learn to sail, and go skeet-shooting, all of which require just a couple of hours of my time and don’t break the bank. As for my possessions moving forward, this piece by Dustin Curtis really resonated with me.

2. Publish more.

I’ve actually been free-writing for about 15m a day for the past couple of months, but I never publish anything. To be honest, it’s usually been because I don’t think I’m a good enough writer and I don’t want to embarrass myself, but I’ve been convinced of late that writing and putting it out there for people to laud and/or criticize is one of the best ways to practice self-improvement. Writing is a great way to reflect and better understand your thoughts, and I think I’ll find that publishing my writing will do far more for me than just making me a better writer. 

3. Take more photos.

This one is simple and it goes along with focusing more on new experiences versus new possessions. I noticed when I was giving away those clothes that a lot of tshirts that didn’t fit anymore were from great vacations past, vacations I didn’t have many photos from. I’m no longer interested in buying a tshirt to remember Kirkwood, for example (one of the mountains I skied in Tahoe two week ago), but what I’d prefer is to take a photo of my buddies and I on the mountain. It’s cheaper, lasts forever, and is far more meaningful.

4. Listen more.

Anyone who knows me knows I love to talk and because of that I’d like to work on being a better listener. I really enjoyed this post on how to be popular—long story short the message is to talk less, listen more, and take a sincere interest in others. I think this will lead to stronger relationships and further learning, especially as I  enter the real world where most if not all of the people I interact with will be older and wiser than I am. 

5. Level up.

This is a big one that I won’t go too far into because I have another post in the works on what exactly this means to me, but as I mentioned I’m gearing up to join a startup full-time and I’m equal parts excited, anxious, confident, and nervous. I’m about to be battle tested for the first time and I want to prove to Patrick and the rest of the team at Price Intelligently that hiring me was a great decision. Once again, more on this soon.

That’s a wrap folks, hit me up on twitter at @bjp with your questions or comments. Thank you to Scott Britton for motivating me to get my goals down in writing, something he did a few weeks ago.