A Divine Entrepreneurial Experience, Vision and Success very well Elucidatedby Dan Stewart, Happygrasshopper
[/b]
SC:[/b] What’s the story behind Happygrasshopper?[/b]
Dan[/b]: Happy Grasshopper started as a side project in October of 2010. My team and I had built a white label CRM tool that automated email marketing and discovered that content development was a major pain point for our customers. So it really started as an experiment to discover if we could create compelling content that performed better than what people were creating by themselves. Our first goal was to answer that question, so we offered our service free for the first few months. The response was very favorable, so we incorporated in March of 2011 and now have users in all 50 states, Canada, Australia, England, France and the Caribbean.
SC[/b]: What is your vision for Happygrasshopper?[/b]
Dan[/b]: Happy Grasshopper's mandate is to provide "effortless e-nurturing". That means that we want to help salespeople keep in touch with potential customers in a fun, friendly and completely automatic way. Today, our writers create timely, interesting email messages that our customers approve and we deliver to their sphere of influence once every three weeks. The messages are designed to be conversation starters that actually get read and replied to.
In the future we will also be automating social media commentary, allowing our users to indicate whose activity they want us to follow and what type of interaction they would like us to achieve.
SC[/b]: Which are the pivotal moments in your life that inspired you for commencing Happygrasshopper?[/b]
Dan[/b]: Happy Grasshopper never would have been started if I hadn't become an entrepreneur and that journey really started in childhood. In first grade, I saw an ad in the back of Boys Life magazine and started selling greeting cards door to door. My parents basically told me that I could do, have or be anything I wanted in life as long as I was willing to work for it - and then they gave me the freedom to do it. I probably knocked on a thousand doors that summer, but I started second grade with shiny new digital watch that I earned myself. It felt amazing.
In fifth grade I started selling bubble gum at school. I would buy a pack for $.25 and sell it for $.10 a piece. That was a 400% markup and it paid for leather Nike's. I was really fortunate to have these early entrepreneurial experiences. Years later, when I saw what life was really like in the corporate world, those experiences helped give me the confidence to strike out on my own.
SC: What’s life as an entrepreneur like for you?[/b]
Dan[/b]: It's busy, but it really would be anyway because I'm married and have three kids. Being an entrepreneur actually gives me the freedom to play a more meaningful role in their lives. I've never missed a school play or a soccer game and I manage my time so that I can be home at 3:00pm two days a week. Being an entrepreneur can be incredibly stressful and incredibly rewarding. It's really a choice that has consequences for your whole family. In our case though, my wife is also an entrepreneur, so we're very understanding when our career choices call for extra effort on nights or weekends.
SC[/b]: Most Entrepreneurs are workaholics. Are you too?[/b]
Dan[/b]: I think I'm a Lifeaholic. I really want to extract every bit of flavor from all aspects of my life. If I'm going to do something, I'm not going to do it half way. That's something my wife has taught me. She has the most amazing ability to give 100% of herself to the task at hand. I'm really just trying to live up to her standard.
SC[/b]: How was your experience working with 1M/1M?[/b]
Dan[/b]: Outstanding. I really can't say enough about the value of the program. Sramana Mitra is doing amazing things that simply cannot be overstated.
SC: [/b]Bootstrapping v/s fund raising. Which one would you favor and what makes it special[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: Bootstrapping. Happy Grasshopper is self funded, just as my last six companies have been. Before joining 1M/1M I thought I was really good at this, but the program would have saved me hundreds of thousands in two previous ventures. Bootstrapping is special because it helps you make hard decisions. The problem is knowing which are the right hard decisions and that's where 1M/1M provides so much value.
SC: [/b] When's the right time to raise funds in your opinion?[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: The first funds raised should be your own. Live simply and save as much as possible. Use those funds wisely to get to customer and market validation as quickly as possible. Then, if your total available market (TAM) is large enough, and you need the resources to manage a large growth surge it makes sense to raise capital. Happy Grasshopper is now starting the fund raising process.
SC: How does Happygrasshopper stay ahead of competition?
Dan: [/b]We do it through innovation and a focus on sustained incremental improvement. Every quarter we review our progress and ask ourselves what we can do to get better. We're not always looking for exponential improvement, but we never stop searching for the 2mm adjustment. That's how you become a market leader[/b].[/b]
SC: What keeps your team going?
Dan: Just like every company, Happy Grasshopper experiences peaks and valleys. We're still a very small team that's never had to ask that question - the people that are here are 100% committed. As we scale we'll be protecting our culture by hiring for the personality traits that can share that commitment.
SC: Marketing and public relations are a vital component to new business, how would you relate this to Happygrasshopper? [/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: We've experimented with different advertising platforms and have never really had much success but PR has been outstanding. In April, REALTOR Magazine featured us in their 'Cool Tools' section and it really gave us a nice bump. We're now more focused on sharing the success our customers are having using Happy Grasshopper.
SC: How would you define success? When should one believe has achieved success?[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: I think success is a process. If you're fortunate enough to be able to pursue your dream, you already have a measure of success. Billions of people haven't been so fortunate. We happen to be alive at an amazing time that's ripe with opportunity. Ultimately, at least for me, success is the ability to make important choices in your life. Choices like where and how you will invest your time, which experiences you will savor and how you will improve the lives of others.
SC: How would you perceive Happygrasshopper for next 10 years?[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: It's far too early to know. We're still only looking 90 days out, but we have achieved some major milestones. Our technology is solid, we have thousands of users and are growing rapidly. I expect that 10 years from now we'll have been acquired by a larger firm or will have integrated several other companies and services into the Happy Grasshopper brand.
SC: Would you like to share any experience with our audience that we missed??[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: I would like to say that Happy Grasshopper has just introduced an Enterprise Plan that is designed to allow large sales teams to benefit from using our service. The plan includes a free management portal and individual users are just $9 each and $.01 per contact per month. Details are available at www.happygrasshopper.com.
You can contact Grasshopper at:
[email protected] and @gushopper
Website: http://happygrasshopper.com
facebook.com/happygrasshopper
Dan Stewart is a 1m/1m participant, if you want to scale up your venture as well, Join 1m/1m premium program
SC:[/b] What’s the story behind Happygrasshopper?[/b]
Dan[/b]: Happy Grasshopper started as a side project in October of 2010. My team and I had built a white label CRM tool that automated email marketing and discovered that content development was a major pain point for our customers. So it really started as an experiment to discover if we could create compelling content that performed better than what people were creating by themselves. Our first goal was to answer that question, so we offered our service free for the first few months. The response was very favorable, so we incorporated in March of 2011 and now have users in all 50 states, Canada, Australia, England, France and the Caribbean.
SC[/b]: What is your vision for Happygrasshopper?[/b]
Dan[/b]: Happy Grasshopper's mandate is to provide "effortless e-nurturing". That means that we want to help salespeople keep in touch with potential customers in a fun, friendly and completely automatic way. Today, our writers create timely, interesting email messages that our customers approve and we deliver to their sphere of influence once every three weeks. The messages are designed to be conversation starters that actually get read and replied to.
In the future we will also be automating social media commentary, allowing our users to indicate whose activity they want us to follow and what type of interaction they would like us to achieve.
SC[/b]: Which are the pivotal moments in your life that inspired you for commencing Happygrasshopper?[/b]
Dan[/b]: Happy Grasshopper never would have been started if I hadn't become an entrepreneur and that journey really started in childhood. In first grade, I saw an ad in the back of Boys Life magazine and started selling greeting cards door to door. My parents basically told me that I could do, have or be anything I wanted in life as long as I was willing to work for it - and then they gave me the freedom to do it. I probably knocked on a thousand doors that summer, but I started second grade with shiny new digital watch that I earned myself. It felt amazing.
In fifth grade I started selling bubble gum at school. I would buy a pack for $.25 and sell it for $.10 a piece. That was a 400% markup and it paid for leather Nike's. I was really fortunate to have these early entrepreneurial experiences. Years later, when I saw what life was really like in the corporate world, those experiences helped give me the confidence to strike out on my own.
SC: What’s life as an entrepreneur like for you?[/b]
Dan[/b]: It's busy, but it really would be anyway because I'm married and have three kids. Being an entrepreneur actually gives me the freedom to play a more meaningful role in their lives. I've never missed a school play or a soccer game and I manage my time so that I can be home at 3:00pm two days a week. Being an entrepreneur can be incredibly stressful and incredibly rewarding. It's really a choice that has consequences for your whole family. In our case though, my wife is also an entrepreneur, so we're very understanding when our career choices call for extra effort on nights or weekends.
SC[/b]: Most Entrepreneurs are workaholics. Are you too?[/b]
Dan[/b]: I think I'm a Lifeaholic. I really want to extract every bit of flavor from all aspects of my life. If I'm going to do something, I'm not going to do it half way. That's something my wife has taught me. She has the most amazing ability to give 100% of herself to the task at hand. I'm really just trying to live up to her standard.
SC[/b]: How was your experience working with 1M/1M?[/b]
Dan[/b]: Outstanding. I really can't say enough about the value of the program. Sramana Mitra is doing amazing things that simply cannot be overstated.
SC: [/b]Bootstrapping v/s fund raising. Which one would you favor and what makes it special[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: Bootstrapping. Happy Grasshopper is self funded, just as my last six companies have been. Before joining 1M/1M I thought I was really good at this, but the program would have saved me hundreds of thousands in two previous ventures. Bootstrapping is special because it helps you make hard decisions. The problem is knowing which are the right hard decisions and that's where 1M/1M provides so much value.
SC: [/b] When's the right time to raise funds in your opinion?[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: The first funds raised should be your own. Live simply and save as much as possible. Use those funds wisely to get to customer and market validation as quickly as possible. Then, if your total available market (TAM) is large enough, and you need the resources to manage a large growth surge it makes sense to raise capital. Happy Grasshopper is now starting the fund raising process.
SC: How does Happygrasshopper stay ahead of competition?
Dan: [/b]We do it through innovation and a focus on sustained incremental improvement. Every quarter we review our progress and ask ourselves what we can do to get better. We're not always looking for exponential improvement, but we never stop searching for the 2mm adjustment. That's how you become a market leader[/b].[/b]
SC: What keeps your team going?
Dan: Just like every company, Happy Grasshopper experiences peaks and valleys. We're still a very small team that's never had to ask that question - the people that are here are 100% committed. As we scale we'll be protecting our culture by hiring for the personality traits that can share that commitment.
SC: Marketing and public relations are a vital component to new business, how would you relate this to Happygrasshopper? [/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: We've experimented with different advertising platforms and have never really had much success but PR has been outstanding. In April, REALTOR Magazine featured us in their 'Cool Tools' section and it really gave us a nice bump. We're now more focused on sharing the success our customers are having using Happy Grasshopper.
SC: How would you define success? When should one believe has achieved success?[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: I think success is a process. If you're fortunate enough to be able to pursue your dream, you already have a measure of success. Billions of people haven't been so fortunate. We happen to be alive at an amazing time that's ripe with opportunity. Ultimately, at least for me, success is the ability to make important choices in your life. Choices like where and how you will invest your time, which experiences you will savor and how you will improve the lives of others.
SC: How would you perceive Happygrasshopper for next 10 years?[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: It's far too early to know. We're still only looking 90 days out, but we have achieved some major milestones. Our technology is solid, we have thousands of users and are growing rapidly. I expect that 10 years from now we'll have been acquired by a larger firm or will have integrated several other companies and services into the Happy Grasshopper brand.
SC: Would you like to share any experience with our audience that we missed??[/b][/b]
Dan[/b]: I would like to say that Happy Grasshopper has just introduced an Enterprise Plan that is designed to allow large sales teams to benefit from using our service. The plan includes a free management portal and individual users are just $9 each and $.01 per contact per month. Details are available at www.happygrasshopper.com.
You can contact Grasshopper at:
[email protected] and @gushopper
Website: http://happygrasshopper.com
facebook.com/happygrasshopper
Dan Stewart is a 1m/1m participant, if you want to scale up your venture as well, Join 1m/1m premium program