
An Entrepreneur Juggles Six Companies and One Worker: Herself - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/business/an-entrepreneur-juggles-six-companies-and-one-worker-herself.html
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jeffbarr
Danielle also created the Physical Cloud:

[http://www.physicalcloud.co/](http://www.physicalcloud.co/)

I have one on my meeting table; it is a great conversation piece!

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placeybordeaux
Thats a really cute product.

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marcusgarvey
What a hustler. I'm sure she'll make it work the way she's made everything
else work, but my heart sank when I read:

>To churn out products more quickly, she plans to automate aspects of her
production processes. Doing that requires a larger studio space with better
ventilation, which Ms. Baskin said would be easier to find in California. So
this month, she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she plans to
start a fabrication lab next year.

With rents the way they are, this seems ill-advised. Unless she's planning to
take funding. Even then, I'm not sure why she'd want to spend gobs of it on
rent.

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tinbad
NYC and SF Bay area seem the perfect places for marketing her products at a
premium though. Plant one of those tricycles in the mission district and SF
tech hipsters will hand her their money.

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reedlaw
The bicycle helmets could be made anywhere and shipped. The article implies
most of her business comes from online sales.

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Grishnakh
If she's as successful as the article implies, the cost of rent probably isn't
that big a deal to her. It's more important that she be in a place where she
can forge local connections, especially with places to do manufacturing.
That's why SanFran is a good choice: there's lots of tech manufacturing there.
NYC, not so much.

NYC keeps trying to push its "Silicon Alley" and various tech stuff, but it
seems to fall flat. It's a shame too because there's tons of old factories and
stuff there that aren't really being used well, and could be converted to
low/mid-volume flexible manufacturing using modern automated equipment. I
imagine there's a few factors working against this: 1) the very high rent
costs make it hard to attract new people to the area (unlike the Bay Area
where the tech people and tech companies are already there, and have been for
decades), 2) the public transit isn't that great unless you're in or close to
Manhattan (a lot of those old factories and such are in other boroughs or on
the NJ side; anything in a decent place in Manhattan has likely already been
renovated and converted into something else by now), and 3) the taxes and
regulation probably stifle things too much (Silicon Valley certainly has its
taxes and regulation too, but the local government has decades of experience
in taxing and regulating in a way that mostly supports the tech economy and
not driving it out). In a nutshell, inertia is a very, very hard thing to
overcome.

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danso
Reading this made me homesick for the hustling life that seems ingrained in
New York life: sure, you can have a 9-5 job, but you "should" also have 2-3
other side projects -- whether it's the traditional entertainment dreams of
writing a screenplay or doing standup, or increasingly common today: a startup
at a co-working space. I got much more into photography after the 2008
recession...I needed portraiture for my portfolio, and there were lots of
actors who needed headshots for cheap, so we would just arrange to meet up at
Central Park on a weekend or after work.

Note: I'm not saying that living Ms. Baskin's life, or otherwise not being
fulfilled with a 9-5 work life with satisfying home/nightlife, is the
_optimal_ way to live life. I'm just saying I had never even felt the pull
until moving to New York, and it undeniably made me a more well-rounded
person, at least in the arts.

I imagine it's just as easy to do what Ms. Baskin is described as doing
elsewhere (at the end of the article, it says she's moving to the Bay
Area)...but the mode of transportation in New York, plus just the density of
creativity/craziness, makes NY stand out in my mind.

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reedlaw
"The hustling life" and becoming "a more well-rounded person" don't typically
seem to go together. I admire Ms. Baskin's creativity and industriousness. But
I don't imagine constant hustling to be amenable to well-roundedness. Just
from reading the article it would appear she's got everything together and is
really enjoying what she's doing. If that's the case then I congratulate her
because work satisfaction is increasingly difficult to find in the modern
world. For every one Ms. Baskin there are thousands who wear multiple hats not
because they enjoy it but because that's their only way to survive.

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Mz
Count me green with envy.

But I kind of fail to understand why she can't take the orders for 200
helmets. It seems to me that if she is selling up to 75 per month already, you
say "Well, I can take the order, but it will take me X amount of time. (call
it 3 months)" If they are okay with it taking the time, you have income
security for that period. Then you increase the price on your other products
in hopes of slowing sales and you put up an announcement that orders will take
X amount of time now instead of whatever the previous time was. If sales
aren't slowed by that, you have just increased your profit margin.

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pen2l
> Ms. Baskin couldn’t afford to invest in a sophisticated website, so she
> built what she describes as a “really scrappy-looking” one. Customers could
> look at photographs of the helmets on the site but couldn’t order or pay for
> them there. Instead, they ordered them via email and paid with PayPal.

This is a great thing to think about. Many of us are getting lost in the
details of it all with premature optimization while Ms. Baskin goes out there
and just ships. She's truly someone to aspire to.

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vinceguidry
Art's a lot easier to sell than software products.

Lean Startup, the 'premature optimization' that software entrepreneurs do, is
an attempt to handle the sales end of a software business in a similar fashion
to how the operations end is conducted. If just getting out there and
schlepping your wares worked, more people would do it. Obviously shipping
early and often is necessary, but if you ship too early then your MVP will be
missing the 'V' part.

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caseysoftware
I think most "premature optimization" that software entrepreneurs do is to
avoid actually interacting with people.

Payments? Stripe! Support phone number? Forums! Cold calling? Self-service
platform!

There is _so_ much to be gained from talking and interacting with potential
and current customers and most of us - myself included - avoid it way too
often.

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puranjay
This reminds me of internet marketers who are used to spending time between
2-10 different websites.

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lumberjack
>Peddler Pop-Ups, rents out tricycles as pop-up shops.

How does she afford the insurance on those things? I say this because those
things are pretty tricky to ride: you either have to go really slow or you
need to ride with one hand on the handbrake at all times as the pedals will
throw your feet off them if you try to slow down that way due to the momentum
of the whole thing being much more than your typical bicycle. I bet lots of
costumers would end up causing some cosmetic damage to cars and such, just
getting used to riding them.

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SwellJoe
The only trike I've ridden had a coaster brake. No feet being thrown off, at
all, you just turn it backward a bit to stop.

I'm sure insuring bicycles or tricycles is much cheaper than insuring
automobiles (and actually not required, by law, as it is with autos). I would
think the rider would be responsible for damages, and not the owner of the
vehicle, but that's just a guess.

Regardless, somehow bicycle rental businesses manage to exist in every major
city. So, it must be possible to insure them. I would think the personal
injury risk to her customers would be the bigger insurance concern, but if I
were doing it, I'd require customers to sign a very strongly worded waiver of
liability for injury.

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draker
I believe she would have more risk than a typical bicycle rental business
because she has to assume the liability for both the rental business and the
product.

If the bicycles I use for my business have defective brakes and are recalled
by the manufacturer, my rental customers are at risk but some of that
liability is shouldered by the manufacturer. If bikes I manufacture have
defective brakes, I have to assume that liability and could be found at
greater fault because I have the ability to test and recall the product.

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anaip1
Such an inspiring piece. My life currently lacks hustle. I need to get back
into it.

