Advisors Part 2

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Friday, January 22, 2010

As a follow up to our last post on advisors, we wanted to speak about the most valuable advisors we’ve found thus far. It wasn’t the entrepreneur with the ridiculously over-valued exit, the corporate rockstar, or the seasoned investor.  These types of people all have great advice, and advice that will become increasingly important as ChickRx turns into a revenue-generating business. But let’s be honest… we needed advisors whom we could ask the dumb questions. And for any first-time entrepreneur, there will be plenty.

We were lucky to have a few friends around our age who had successfully started their own companies or invested in startups through their jobs. For all our basic questions, they had been there and done that pretty recently. They provided not only informed opinions, but also time. The people with the fanciest positions aren’t going to sit on the phone for over an hour teaching you Startups 101. So our advice is to think about who knows their stuff and already likes you enough to lend some real help. And if you don’t already know someone like that, time to start networking (the topic of our next post!)

PS Huge thanks to Trip Adler of Scribd, Scott Harper of Charity Fusion, and Alex Rubalcava of Rubalcava Capital Management.

Advisors, Part One

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

As we’re getting ready to launch, one thing that’s been on our minds is our Board of Advisors. Through classes at HBS, events in NYC, and friends’ connections, we’ve been able to meet many highly accomplished individuals who would be great advisors to ChickRx. Many have been kind enough to offer advice over the phone, but at what point should we try to formalize the relationship? The entrepreneurs, angel investors, and corporate leaders with whom we’ve spoken are very busy individuals, and isn’t asking them for access to continuous advice a little presumptuous?

The standard advice we’ve gotten is to make someone a formal advisor after they show a real interest in you. So in other words, you shouldn’t even have to ask; they should be excited enough by what you’re doing to want to stay involved. And what about offering them equity? We’ve been advised to be careful about throwing around minimal equity stakes in exchange for continued advice. When an advisor is truly excited about your company, they’ll want to put their money where their mouth is. We’re sure there are appropriate exceptions, but this is the general approach we plan to follow.

ChickRx plans to be up online within two months

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Thursday, January 14, 2010

ChickRx, one of the winners of the New Media Women Entrepreneurs award, is gearing up to launch within the next two months. And they are quick to point out that winning the award has been instrumental in helping them prepare for a successful launch.

“Receiving this recognition enabled us to hire a fantastic web designer and
developer,” said Stacey Borden, co-founder and CEO of ChickRx. “We are working with Spiegel Design Group, based in Los Angeles, and glassfoundry, based in San Francisco. Eight-five per cent of the site’s coding has been completed and we are almost done with our homepage design.”

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