FastCompany Interview about GuyHaus, GetMinders and WeWork Labs

While I try to use this blog for a lot of things that help others out, sometimes I have to just self-promote a little. For those of you who don't know, I'm a co-founder of GetMinders, WeWork Labs and GuyHaus (all based in NYC). One is a healthcare-related startup, one is an awesome office space for early-stage entrepreneurs and the last is my latest company which is focused on making ecommerce simple, useful and fun to use. Check out the article on FastCompany:

There's serial entrepreneurship--when someone starts company after company, handing over the reins at a certain point to focus again on the early stages of building a business. Then, there's simultaneous entrepreneurship, which involves starting and running several, not-necessarily-related ventures at once.

Two famous examples of the simultaneous startup CEO are Jack Dorsey, with Twitter and Square, and Bill Gates, who ran the photography business Corbis alongside Microsoft. Now, a host of upstarts (like Citelighter, a company we wrote about in August) are trying to make this method work, sometimes financing one business with profits from the other.

READ MORE AT FASTCOMPANY.COM

From idea to product in 24 hours...

Many would think it's not possible but it is once you've got a little practice under your belt.  It's great to continue to hone your skills. When you're a business man or woman you should be out there closing deals. As a technical guru you should be fixing problems and coding away. And when you're a startup guy you should be making things that solve problems or provide people joy. That's what I decided to do this weekend.

While I was getting ready to go to bed around 10:30pm on Saturday evening I came up with the idea. I had a few things I needed to get done on Sunday and I needed a quick way to make sure I got reminded to do simple tasks when I needed to. So I set out to build it myself.

I woke at 10:15am on Sunday morning and I got to coding (eh, it's more hacking than coding when I do it) and within a few hours I had a framework for my product built on a platform called Twilio. Twilio lets you build apps that interact with real telephones (both phone and text) and that's exactly what I needed.

As I walked out the door at 1:30pm to wander around the city with my wife I also set out to figure out a name for the project. I turned to a friend's awesome product, Domainful, that was built to solve a personal need as well. Domainful lets you check on available domain names and then purchase them all through a couple of text messages. It's super simple and in only a few minutes I found one I wanted and bought it - HitYouBack.com.

Once I finished grabbing coffee, wandering around Union Square and checking my mail at the office we headed home. As Magda made dinner I put a few finishing touches on HitYouBack. I added some error checking and helpful messaging and threw up a simple site. It went live at 7:28pm with a tweet.

So in actuality it took me about 21 hours to go from an idea to a simple product. Since I'm building a startup full time right now, GetMinders, I need all the help I can get. And what better way to continue to educate myself than launching new things all the time?

P.S. - If you'd like to give HitYouBack a whirl it's pretty easy to use: Create a new text to 484-819-0577 that begins with the number of hours (from 1-24) until you'd like the reminder to come and the message you'd like to receive. If I wanted to remind myself to go to the post office tomorrow around noon, I'd send "12 Go to the post office" since it's almost midnight here. Enjoy!

Just smile and say "Hi." It can't hurt.

I've talked to a lot of people over the past couple of months. I've been working with my new business partner, Mike, on our new company, GetMinders, and part of my role is to meet people, make deals and fundraise when necessary. One reason I love this role is that I get to make new friends and have conversations with some of the most interesting folks!

As I've been working hard to meet people in the industry from VCs and advisors to business people and awesome developers, I've found that simply saying and meaning it, "Hello there, I'd love to meet up at some point over coffee to get to know you," seems to be the best way to get the ball rolling. There are great services like Hashable or LinkedIn for e-introductions and they can help a lot but a Tweet or email saying "How are yah?" really does go a long way.

We're all only human so this technique works better than you'd expect. Whether you're the richest man alive or someone just getting started in the biz, everyone enjoys socializing. Most of the time when someone doesn't respond to your virtual wave it's not because they don't want to (or they don't like you) but because they may not be able to. Time is not always on their side and responding to each and every request would be nearly impossible. But give it time and your "Hello", if sincere, may stand out from all of the other pitches and requests out there.

Drew Neisser from Renegade posted an interview of yours truly!

"This is the transcript from my interview with Jesse Middleton, founder of GetMinders, a start-up service that hopes to make missing your meds a thing of the past.

What is GetMinders?
GetMinders connects people with their medical reminders, their medical professionals and their families/support networks all via a quick phone call or text message. Our system calls patients to remind them to take their meds, get to their appointments or do their therapy and then offers to connect them with all of the above people to help keep them compliant, happy and healthy.

We’ve been running a super early pilot and the feedback has been amazing so far. We now have a private beta launched that is making over 350 calls per week and we’re really excited to continue to grow the company, build the product and gain more advice and feedback throughout the industry and from people like you.

       

Where did the idea for your business come from?

While I was traveling recently I began a discussion with a distant cousin who is a dentist. As we got talking about the needs of his patients I thought of my grandfather, in Florida, who is in a very late stage of Parkinson’s. It’s easy for someone in his position to forget to take their meds, mess up which ones they take when most importantly become disconnected with his family, friends and medical professionals."

Check out the rest of the article over on Drew's Blog, The Drew Blog.