Beyond The Pedway

Back in October 2010, I interviewed Eddy Lu, co-founder of a brand new Chicago social dining startup called Grubwithus.  After Eddy and his co-founder moved to Chicago to open a brick and mortar store, they started Grubwithus on the side to help them meet new people in the city.

Apparently a few other people had the same problem and loved their solution.  Grubwithus started taking off organically in Chicago.  In the 10 months since then, Grubwithus has participated in the Y Combinator incubator program, raised $1.6 million in funding, and expanded to 6 new cities beyond Chicago.

I invited Eddy here to catch up on their story and learn what has changed, and what he’s learned, in the past 10 crazy months of his journey.

I interviewed Jill Felska and Jen Krenn a year ago about their company POP! Social Media.  Recently, they started DreamChamps, a site which seeks to connect companies with unique cultures with employees that really fit those cultures.

On their blog Pursuing Our Passion, Jill and Jenn recently wrote about an expensive mistake they made with DreamChamps that they wanted to share with their readers.  I invited Jill and Jenn here to expand more on that post, and explain what they learned about the importance of asking customers for feedback.

Amy Hoy, co-founder of Freckle, on getting off your butt and doing something:

“My number one piece of advice is to get off your butt and do something now, because if you’re a creator and you’re only working for other people, you’re wasting your abilities. You’re letting someone else strip-mine your future, because you have the ability to create stuff, and they only have the ability to hire you, so if you’re a creator, you should create. It’s kind of simple, if you ask me. Creators create. It’s kind of the thing that we do. It’s our bread and butter…”

Mark Lawrence is the co-founder of SpotHero, a website that enables you to reserve parking spots ahead of time in cities like Chicago. If you’re ever driven around Wrigley Field trying to find a spot before the Cubs game, or arrived 30 minutes before your meeting in downtown Chicago because it takes that long to find parking, you appreciate a site like SpotHero.

In this interview, Mark and I discuss how SpotHero was created, and how best to approach building a website idea when neither you or your co-founder are technical people.

Carol Roth, author of The Entrepreneur Equation, on getting people to come back to your site:

“I think you need to take a step back and say where is it that I realistically think that this could go? Do I want it to go there? And what do I need to do to make it happen? And what risks am I willing to take to make it happen? Because I think too many of the entrepreneurs, particularly creative entrepreneurs get so caught up in the idea and the you know oh cool, creative passion that they never really set that intention or goal for the business and if you don’t have the goal, then you can’t really measure those risks and rewards based on your own goals and objectives…”

Ryan Evans is an amazing entrepreneur and person in general. In addition to his main company Rand Media Group, Ryan recently launched Bite Size PR, a new site that helps small businesses who can’t afford big budget PR firms.

Lesley Tweedie of Little Independent was raving to me about the service and how Ryan and his team had landed her some solid press. The more she told me about Bite Size PR, the more I knew I needed to sit down with Ryan and learn why he launched this unique service.

Ben Huh, founder of the CheezBurger Network, on getting people to come back to your site:

“Consistency. Be good every single day, beats the hell out of being great once in a while and being crappy most of the time. I don’t know how else to describe it to you, but being consistently good gets people to trust you and they will come back because they know they can get good from you every single day…”

Garrick Pohl is the founder of Zipments, a company in the emerging buyer powered market space that helps you get things across town by having local couriers bid on your need.

I interviewed Garrick to learn why he created Zipments, what his previous company did, and why Zipments was one of those ideas he had to act on.

I think first you have to look at what type of business you are and how you operate and then take a step back and look at where your values are and then start building it from there. It’s not going to be Camp Red Frog for every company, but every company I think does have something out there that would fit perfectly with them that would create a unique work environment that their employees would love…