An Inspiring Story of Entrepreneur Without Venture Capital During its Commencement
When thought of running a business without adequate funds in the first year itself is an horrible situation but there is one who launched company without adequate venture capital. Brooke Moreland launched her company, Fashism.com, an online community that provides real-time fashion and style advice, one year ago. Brooke Moreland shares how Fashism has grown to 40,000 users since it's inception in 2008, how she devised the idea and created a website with no technical background and discloses how her startup gained traction. She reflects on her first year as an entrepreneur, and shares what she would have done differently.
The idea of starting such a concern came from the very fact that everyone loves to be vogue and hence love to receive fashion tips that care for them. People who are really technically skilled are few and far between and, a lot of the time, they want to do their own thing. So it's hard to get someone who believes in your idea and will put forth the time, especially if you can't pay them. Speaking about the process she says she has many favors to owe. In September 2009, the firm was launched to the public. All of this is on basically no money and very little money we spent on server space.
She started her business during her employment & hence would wake up really early, write for the blog, answer e-mails, do all the marketing, plan all the events. I'd do all that before work -- 5:30 or 6 ranges.
In the evenings, she used to attend many networking events as possible where I could talk to influential people so I could grow the users.
She has worked her entire life since she was in high school, so just the prospect of not having a paycheck scared her. She wasn't seeking investment, & didn’t see any kind of money coming in the near future, so it was about taking that leap of faith.
After leaving the job the first thing done by her was publishing an article featuring all details about Fashism which was the first step towards marketing. After the NY Times article came out, Fashism got a ton of other publicity. They were on Good Morning America, The Early Show, and then investors started approaching them.
What Fashism accomplished is a nice working product, community, users, a lot of interest and a lot of press. Fashism didn't have PR or anything, all the press is via word of mouth.
Our average time on the site is 15 minutes, so our users are really engaged -- Fashism tapped into something they really liked. We have about about 40,000 registered users now. And we have an iPhone app.
Fashism released an iPhone app on August 30th of this year, which was huge because it really contributed to the number of people who upload. It's very easy for people to comment, but it's always been a little challenging to get people to upload and create the photos. After Fashism released the iPhone app, uploads went crazy. Fashism usership went from 10,000 to 20,000 in one week. The registered users doubled and the amount of content people created tripled.
When thought of running a business without adequate funds in the first year itself is an horrible situation but there is one who launched company without adequate venture capital. Brooke Moreland launched her company, Fashism.com, an online community that provides real-time fashion and style advice, one year ago. Brooke Moreland shares how Fashism has grown to 40,000 users since it's inception in 2008, how she devised the idea and created a website with no technical background and discloses how her startup gained traction. She reflects on her first year as an entrepreneur, and shares what she would have done differently.
The idea of starting such a concern came from the very fact that everyone loves to be vogue and hence love to receive fashion tips that care for them. People who are really technically skilled are few and far between and, a lot of the time, they want to do their own thing. So it's hard to get someone who believes in your idea and will put forth the time, especially if you can't pay them. Speaking about the process she says she has many favors to owe. In September 2009, the firm was launched to the public. All of this is on basically no money and very little money we spent on server space.
She started her business during her employment & hence would wake up really early, write for the blog, answer e-mails, do all the marketing, plan all the events. I'd do all that before work -- 5:30 or 6 ranges.
In the evenings, she used to attend many networking events as possible where I could talk to influential people so I could grow the users.
She has worked her entire life since she was in high school, so just the prospect of not having a paycheck scared her. She wasn't seeking investment, & didn’t see any kind of money coming in the near future, so it was about taking that leap of faith.
After leaving the job the first thing done by her was publishing an article featuring all details about Fashism which was the first step towards marketing. After the NY Times article came out, Fashism got a ton of other publicity. They were on Good Morning America, The Early Show, and then investors started approaching them.
What Fashism accomplished is a nice working product, community, users, a lot of interest and a lot of press. Fashism didn't have PR or anything, all the press is via word of mouth.
Our average time on the site is 15 minutes, so our users are really engaged -- Fashism tapped into something they really liked. We have about about 40,000 registered users now. And we have an iPhone app.
Fashism released an iPhone app on August 30th of this year, which was huge because it really contributed to the number of people who upload. It's very easy for people to comment, but it's always been a little challenging to get people to upload and create the photos. After Fashism released the iPhone app, uploads went crazy. Fashism usership went from 10,000 to 20,000 in one week. The registered users doubled and the amount of content people created tripled.