
How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup - epi0Bauqu
http://faso.com/code618/34150/how-my-lifestyle-business-became-a-startup
======
rosariom
Thanks Clint... I love reading posts like these that emphasize that sustained
commitment and hardwork pay off and the fact that it also departs from the
traditional build-a-redundant-cool-product group think movement. Too many
niches are being ignored and unexplored by us tech-wanna-be or already made
entrepreneurs because we keep looking at the cool guys in TechCrunch and other
tech sites talking solely about tech industries and cool socially appealing
products.

So many businesses/niches are in pain because they do not have software
solutions or have to use substandard solutions to get the day to day going.
Your advice to go work for another industry is solid and I would even go
further and say volunteer on a part-time basis just to make the contacts and
see where the problems are. If us tech guys did this more, we would uncover an
abundant source of opportunity in need of addressing from people willing to
pay to have the pain go away! I am currently looking to do this in the
construction industry where some of my friends work.

Great post

------
typicalrunt
Great article, but it raises something I've been ruminating on for awhile.

It's funny that in the IT industry we need to define ourselves or our
businesses so that we stand apart from the rest. I rarely see other industries
say that Company X is just a lifestyle business or Company B is a startup. No,
they are both businesses. Plain and simple.

A great many businesses would never be able to start operations if they had no
profit motive, but in the IT industry it is admired and act as inspiration.
What Clint shows is that the old, boring[1], and profitable businesses can
still get a bit of attention among the new businesses we see on HN.

[1] I'm using the term loosely and without insult here.

~~~
viscanti
The IT industry is one of only a very few that can leverage technology so
successfully. This allows for some unique opportunities (like "lifestyle
businesses") that you don't see parallels to in other industries.

One guy with some skill, a computer and a marketable idea can build a business
for himself and live very comfortably. If he wants to work at the beach for
the day, he can. If he wants to work out of a coffeeshop, he can. That degree
of freedom and ability to leverage technology isn't found in many other
industries. That's why you don't find any parallels.

------
zippykid
Great post Clint, and good inspiration for "older" founders. We found the same
niche ourselves, "hosting" companies are a dime a dozen, but our company in a
year of operation has lost less than 10 customers. Solve an emotional problem
with empathy, and the world will flock to you.

~~~
clintavo
Gracias.

------
diziet
Very interesting story, it's nice to see someone targeting an interesting
niche like this and talking about it.

However, Clint, have you worked a lot on your signup page? For example the
'Get Started Today!' CTA button ( btn-activatenow_b.png ) has text that looks
like it is not aliased. The list of features right above it is a bit hard to
notice. The testimonials that are linked as 60x52 pictures aren't obvious that
they can be clicked on or that they contain testimonials. Also the logo (
<http://faso.com/static/images/logo3.png> 0 has different background color
than the header (#000 vs #333) so it stands out. The top right 'Sign Up!' (
<http://faso.com/static/images/btn-signup-head.png> ) has a bad font so the
'i' letter is rendered bad, and it also does not have transparent corners
(again #000 vs #333) and so the corners stand out.

I know I'm nitpicking a bit, but I think a website meant for artists should
get these things right :)

~~~
clintavo
Thanks, I do need to learn more about button design.

We A/B test that hero section and selling features didn't perform well so we
downplayed them. We've had a lot more signups with other ideas more prominent
(Like "Sharing Art Enriches Life"). Believe it or not, the current page is the
improved one. I never posted on HN before because I knew I get grilled over
how bad our old design was. Maybe I'll get it to "good" status soon......

Edit - I see now the button you refer to. My designer had a nice one that was
done properly but it had different text. I made this one to A/B test the
current wording, and amazingly it outperformed the original by a wide margin.
However, you are correct, we need to see if making the text on that button
"correct" (with the current wording) improves things even further.

~~~
gridspy
In the "Why professionals should use..." section, the names (i.e — A.G.
Blankenship, Artist) should link to the relevant galleries.

Also, you might want to work on better layout for <http://faso.com/artist-
websites/> and showcasing galleries to drive traffic to your clients (perhaps
directly to their art).

It would be great if you could create a feed that presents a random set of
images for those people who want beautiful backgrounds for their desktops. An
app that presents random art and takes you to the page to buy it with one
click would be nice.

Well done so far. Looks like you have a nice mature product. Keep taking it
easy - much better to take your time and make the right feature than to hurry
and make several poor ones.

------
qpixl
Thanks for this article. I have been working with my team for the past year
(part-time) putting together my idea and we are close to a pitch. At 38 I feel
ancient compared to all of these "techstars" that are right out of Grad
school. Inspired me that I am not "too old" :)

------
willpower101
I can't help but feel that, while this is inspirational to all those slow
starters, there are very obvious places where he could have catalyzed his
business much much sooner and without the need to jump in full time or quit
his job.

Of course, one would say hind site is 20/20. But for a lot of serial
entrepreneurs they'd rather fail fast than drag something out. This post could
just have easily been about how someone spent 10 years chasing a different
business model that wasn't viable. You just so happened to nail it.

~~~
clintavo
Good point. If I had abandoned the art industry like PG maybe I would have
sold my startup to Yahoo by now....

I think that you may have highlighted something I was trying to say. Sure,
maybe I got lucky and "nailed" it, however, spending 12 years working in a
given industry makes it more likely that you'll nail it. Not that you need 12
years experience, but, I guess that was one of my points. That if you actually
experience "problems" of a given industry, you have a better shot of hitting
upon a solution that people want.

------
wirebug201
What a great story for those of us who can't jump out of life to be a
freewheeling startup. It is ironic that I found this link on Ycombinator of
all things - a site I find somewhat elitist to many of us who don't have the
luxury to shift into 'hackers'. More stories like this need to be told -
especially from those seasoned veterans who have massive amounts of
experience. Kudos to you!

------
ngsayjoe
Very inspirational .. especially from someone who is already in his 30's and
running a profitable startup.

~~~
acangiano
Nothing wrong with your comment, but comments like this are so symptomatic of
a Silicon Valley mindset. Most entrepreneurs outside the valley become
successful well in their 30s and 40s... not at 21. There should be no surprise
here.

------
bosch
Thanks for the article, it was a good read and interesting. I have one thing
to ask you about that really bothers me when companies do it. This gets old
REALLY fast:

"Unlimited plan subject to terms and conditions."

Why don't you simply rename the plan if it's not really unlimited?

~~~
clintavo
Been burned legally a time or two - it's CYA language in case of blatant
abuse. Our plans are for individual artists, it would be against terms, for
100 artists to get together, pay for one plan and load 10,000 works and use
our newsletter module to send millions of emails.

------
ExxonValdeez
As a college student in the Valley, I really appreciate your perspective. Its
quite easy to get caught up in the rush to do something now without realizing
that I have a life full of opportunities ahead of me.

------
BalancedCode
Great post Clint. Your comment about all the good ideas being taken and narrow
focus is spot on. Great to see a single founder startup and keep going until
they reach critical mass even if it takes years.

------
Prospect
Great post. We have a similar experience and its nice to read about those of
us who didn't start coding / building our companies until late 20s/30s.

~~~
suking
Wow - love your 2 sites - would be awesome if you did a similar blog post.
Those pictures->canvas things are getting pretty popular at local boutiques.

~~~
Prospect
Thanks!

------
eminkel
Inspiring post. Thank you for the enlightenment. It's always great to hear
from single founder companies. I look forward to your future posts.

------
RexM
Great post. I didn't realize it until half way through, but you're in the same
space that I'm looking at getting into.

~~~
clintavo
Maybe there's a way we can collaborate.

------
suking
Congrats Clint - do you have any employees now helping you out?

~~~
clintavo
Not technically, although I do have a lot of help.

I've managed to build a good "team" by outsourcing as much as possible. I use
Rackspace so I don't have to manage servers or do much sysadmin. I work with a
freelance programming firm for things I need done that I can't/don't have time
to do in house. I've hired freelance writers to produce content for our art
blogs (usually artists. Also-I write for those art marketing blogs, drawing on
my 16 years of gallery experience). I usually hire customers who know what
they're doing as part time support agents - they work freelance from home via
our forums and ticket system.

It's actually getting easier over time to outsource services as more and more
Saas and Paas offerings come online (Do you know how much easier storing
Terabytes of images is now that S3 exists?). A few Examples: I used to
maintain a mail server, now that's outsourced to MailTrust, we outsource
customer analytics to getclicky.com, we outsource email newsletter deliver to
Cakemail.

Having said all of that, I am starting to look for an in-house developer.
There are some aspects of a code-base and server configuration that are hard
to outsource to another firm.

~~~
suking
Nice - you got a business doing 400k+ in revenue per yr, growing nicely. I'm
sure someone would be willing to put down a few to several million if you ever
sold. Keep it up.

Do you market mainly via word of mouth, pay per click, etc.? Seem like word of
mouth based on the growth curve.

~~~
clintavo
Is that a buyout offer? ;-)

How I market is another blog post I have planned. I think I've maxed our PPC
and it doesn't bring in that many customers but is self-sustaining (in that
the revenue off PPC customers is higher than what we're paying in PPC
expenses).

Some things I've done very effectively in the past are full-page magazine ads
(in artist magazines) and old-school direct mail. I wrote a direct-mail letter
and purchased a mailing list of artists and over time sent the promo pieces
out with a special discount code to sign up online. Some artists are very non-
techy (especially going back to early 2000s), I even toyed with the idea of
having a mail-in form to setup the website.

Probably our best marketing has been our free daily art marketing newsletter
and blog (<http://faso.com/fineartviews/>). Our daily email list is over
15,000 and growing and we regularly promote to those artists. I think this is
a strategy FAR too many startups ignore. We don't spend most of our time
writing articles for other startups, we write articles that are of interest to
our CUSTOMERS. That keeps them coming back to our site day after day.

Also - PARTNER with other companies. The gist of my marketing advice is this:
Ask yourself, "Who else reaches the same customers I do?" Now partner with
those people. For example, we host an online art contest for an art supply
company. They promote our service to their customers and visa-versa.

Sorry if this is rough, will clean up and expand these ideas in future blog
posts.

