Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

Wherein I Go From One Business To Three

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A few months ago I decided that I wasn’t going to tolerate excuses any more and it was time to get started with my own business.  Since that time nothing has gone as I planned, but my quest to owning a business couldn’t be developing any better.  I have my hands in three different businesses right now.

The first is RuggedScents.  I mentioned this a little bit in my last post.  Sacha De’Angeli and I started this business half as a goof to enter in the BARcompany competition at BARcamp Chicago 2010.  Surprisingly we won the competition, so we used the prize money to develop a production process and start selling our line of masculine colognes. We have the process figured out for our first product; Smoque, a campfire scented cologne.  Our products will be available for purchase soon.

The next one to come along was Maker Tees, though it has its roots in some things I did much earlier in the year.  Pumping Station: One wanted to sell logo t-shirts, but nobody was interested in making that happen.  As they were crippled by indecision, a group of members including myself stumbled upon a separate awesome t-shirt idea, the “Sir, I Practise Hacking” shirt.  I had no choice but to have those shirts made, and since I was doing it already I made the Pumping Station: One shirts too.  I carried around a big box of shirts, selling them in person until I broke even, then I temporarily dropped out of the t-shirt business.  The process was so simple and appealing though that I decided to take it larger scale and sell a wide variety of maker themed shirts, and seek to sell shirts on behalf of hackerspaces.

Finally, I’m a big part of another venture that’s just getting some momentum.  A few months ago I had the idea that a social network for hackerspace members could be very popular and useful.  I mentioned this to a fellow PS:One member Jordan Bunker, and that mention along with some discussions he had with the Space Federation led to us working out a set of features, a few possible business models, and deciding to actually build it.  We will be building this software and developing the community around it in the coming months, and with sponsorship from the Space Federation we may actually get paid to make it.

This is definitely a very exciting, and far too busy, time in my life.

BARcamp Chicago 2010 and Why I Haven’t Built a Hero’s Fountain

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BARcamp Chicago 2010 wrapped up a couple weeks ago, and it was a great success.  Last year was the first time that Jason Rexilius, the founder of BARcamp Chicago, took a smaller role in planning the event and as a result it was a bit rocky.  This year we got a better start on planning, got enough sponsorship to cover all our costs, and were well organized enough that nobody had to run around putting out fires all weekend.  There were definitely some areas where we could improve for next year, particularly in marketing and managing content, and we’re already working on ways to do better.

One of the things I was most looking forward to at BARcamp this year was BARcompany.  We’ve tried to foster entrepreneurship in the past but there hasn’t been much success.  This year we had five teams start to build something, and three made it through to present their idea.  The winner was RuggedScents, a campfire scented cologne put made Sacha De’Angeli and myself.  Check out his write up of how the idea came about.  This is why I’m not building a Hero’s Fountain anymore: I was only focusing on that to make a kit that I could sell, but since RuggedScents fell in my lap there’s no need to work on the fountain.  I’ll still get back to the fountain and other kit ideas I have eventually, but for now RuggedScents looks promising!