WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I know Cally Crossley. This is the Cali costly show. We're looking at the world of startups. Despite the glamour and drama we've seen in films like The Social Network starting a business is usually plain old unrelenting work. Successful startups are built on an integrated set of principles that are flexible enough to ride out. Rough economic storms. But this is the 10 percent that make put about the 90 percent that go bust. The entrepreneurs who don't get the brass ring. Their failure can come with a silver lining. They have a wealth of hard earned lessons that other budding businesses can learn from. In the end what's bad for one startup could be an overall gain for Business Innovation. In Boston from there it's pop culture. Ask Dog Lady Monica Collins is taking your calls on all things dog. Up next the dog eat dog business world to the business of dogs. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi Singh. The Dow is on track for

what could be its biggest October advantage. At last check the Dow was up 293 points or nearly two and a half percent to twelve thousand one hundred sixty two. U.S. stocks are following overseas markets and moving higher following news that European leaders have agreed to a deal to address Greece's debt crisis. The agreement is designed to prevent the two year long financial crisis from throwing economies into further turmoil. But Sam Stovall chief investment strategist with Standard and Poors says there are still a lot of work ahead. Having the countries agree on something is a very nice first step. But you have to then get them to agree on the particulars to agree agree on the details and also to have those details be followed through and to have them be successful in the U.S. new claims for unemployment benefits dipped slightly last week down 2000 marking the fourth drop in six weeks but NPR's John Snyder reports applications are still stuck above 400000 new claims have been above the

400000 level for all but two weeks since March. And even though the government says the economy groom honestly in the third quarter easing recession fears Bernie Pall Mall the chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group at Princeton says claims need to drop further. We really do need to see jobless claims come down a lot 350000. The economy is finally growing and generating new jobs to boost hiring economists so you can omit growth would need to do better than the two and a half percent in the Commerce Department is reporting for the third quarter. Joel Snyder NPR News Washington. In New York 11 people are facing criminal charges in a long running investigation into alleged fraud in the Long Island railroad pension system. NPR's Joel Rose reports the indictment unsealed today says the fraudulent disability payments could have totaled up to a billion dollars. The complaint charges 11 people including two doctors and a former union president with running what amounted to a disability mill. Prosecutors say the defendants

engaged in a massive fraud scheme filing false disability claims in order to collect payments they did not deserve. According to the complaint one of the defendants who collects $100000 a year in disability payments plays tennis several times a week. Another collected disability payments while completing a 400 mile bicycle tour of New York State. The charges follow a series of investigative reports by the New York Times in 2008 which found that nearly all employees of the railroad were applying for and receiving disability payments leaving the Long Island Railroad a disability rate much higher than the national average. Joel Rose NPR News. U.S. stocks are surging at last check the Dow is up nearly 300 points or two and a half percent to twelve thousand one hundred sixty five Nasdaq up nearly 3 percent. Twenty seven twenty seven. This is NPR. Thousands of displaced earthquake survivors in eastern Turkey are enduring further misery bad weather and another powerful aftershock from Sunday's 7.2 magnitude

quake. The death toll is now over 500 and the Turkish government says the number of injured has also risen to 23 hundred. The government is sending in more tents and other basic supplies donated by the international community. What was Hurricane Rina is a weaker storm but it remains dangerous. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports the weather system is just south of the Mexican resort island of Kos. The Mexican government's downgraded hurricane warnings for Rina to tropical storm warnings and advisories are in effect for Kent Kuhn in the eastern side of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Authorities are still concerned that rain it could cause extensive damage when it comes ashore rain it was originally forecast to be a major hurricane to strike at the heart of King and Koontz hotel zone. Those initial warnings prompted many resorts to shut down and tourists flee. Roughly 100 flights have been canceled at Cancun's International Airport. Mandatory evacuation orders remain in place for some islands in the low lying coastal areas of the betaine Peninsula.

Jason Beaubien NPR News. Well a favorable weather holds out game six of the World Series will happen tonight in St. Louis. The game was postponed last night because of rain. The Texas Rangers are just one game away from winning their first ever championship. A Cardinals win forces a deciding game seven tomorrow. U.S. stocks gaining ground with the Dow up about 300 points at twelve thousand one sixty nine Nasdaq up nearly three percent to twenty seven twenty seven S&P 500 up nearly 3 percent as well. I'm Lakshmi Singh NPR News. Support for NPR comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation working to transform nursing to meet the needs of patients now and in the future at the future of nursing dot org. Good afternoon I'm Kalee Crossley. Today we kick off a new segment our ongoing series on innovation we call inventing the future. So why not share with everybody the secret to success. That would be failure. The

old saying says if you don't know your history you're doomed to repeat it. And so it is with so many entrepreneurs heading up promising new companies only to see their new ventures fail and maybe they could have benefited from the failures and understanding the failures of other companies that went down before them. Joining me to talk about what it takes to be a self-starter from the highs of making it to the all too familiar scenario for startups going bust our Greg Homer and Cortland Johnson. Greg Omer is a founding member and writer for Boston innovation court Johnson has been involved in a handful of startups among them is his most recent venture terrible labs a Boston based Well development company. Thank you both for joining us today. Thanks for having us. So let's start this way. You know there is failure and then there is failure. I'd like to know how you define it. Each of you. So I. About you call it off. Thanks Greg. So I think failure's an interesting word to describe what a lot of people end up going through no matter what what pursuit they

endeavor in life so like for me the way I think of it is it's just an opportunity for for us to to try something that we're pretty passionate about and give it a go and you know you're going to learn ultimately from whatever it is that you do and so failure isn't necessarily you know the ending but it's actually the opportunity for a new beginning which is you know I've gone through that experience enough. So that's that's kind of how I look at failure. So it's not a total bust per se. You know it's picking up from where you sort of slow down. If I'm understanding I want to be considered to be a slowdown. It would just be that you know what we try to do with startups is you want to find traction as fast as possible. And if you're not finding traction you want to change course a little bit. Iterate and see where you can actually pick up traction and if you're not finding it then maybe that initial pursuit of the idea isn't going to take and so rather than dying a slow death.

Moving on to the next thing. But along the way you get to meet a lot of different people. You get to learn a lot of different things. And so it's just a great experience no matter what putting yourself out there and pounding the pavement getting out there trying to get people excited about what you're doing. And so failure isn't necessarily a boss but actually. Just the end of some one thing in the beginning of the next thing. OK do you agree with that Greg. Yeah I mean you definitely covered quite a bit there. But you know more importantly it's the single most learning point that you will have for your company when you're at the brink of failure or at the brink of you know changing ideas and looking at the mare and trying to make those tough decisions. That's where you learn a lot about yourself you learn a lot about the company. And again to Corey's point about the opportunity it is just opening another door I mean it's just a blip on the radar. You have to take it in stride and again with start ups I mean so much of it is there are so many failures I mean every single day that we see that we go through it is that rollercoaster ride of the HA's and the lows. You have to constantly be on your game and be prepared for you know screw ups and failures.

But again I think the most important thing with any failure is the takeaways and the learning points so you can improve next time and hopefully share those failures with folks. When I think about failure in this context I think about how we feel about divorce in 2011. I mean there was one time that was a huge stigma and you know you're divorced nobody to talk about your shame. And that's the end of it. But people know you so you divorce. You know you go to the next thing. Is that where we are with entrepreneurial startup failure. So it's not the shame that used to be I mean you Gregg started tried to start a conversation out there in cyberspace about failure among startups. Yeah I mean I definitely think that's the case and you know another thing another another buzzword that a lot of companies use is pivot so pivot is essentially you have an I have an idea that it's not working in a lot of folks don't like to use failure associated with it. But essentially you know what we're trying to do and the conversation you know our goal was was to produce was to get folks to transfer that knowledge again from what happened and

to lift the shroud that the failures Okay. So maybe it is that kind of divorce thing where it was you know there was so much pressure early on it you know you were shunned or something like that from filling in on a company. But nowadays I mean people look at it and if folks want to talk about it it is OK and it's OK to fail and that was a whole real goal of the conversation that we wanted to put out there was to invite folks to talk about their failures. You know in the hopes of you know again bringing that conversation to getting more people to talk about what they did wrong. So other folks can I guess avoid those mishaps. So what did you you had one particular case gentlemen rode in to talk about his failed venture and what do you take away from what he wrote about and describe a little bit of the situation for us. Well I mean the biggest takeaway was that the conversation started worked. You know really is what happen I mean that was the whole goal is to get the community involved. But you know most importantly you know that gentleman brought to the table five or six points that he saw you know at that decision to rebrand his company or to pivot or to

change focus. There were five or six key points which he recognized that attributed to either the failure or you know what would hopefully turn out to be the success you know of the new company and sharing those was the most valuable piece I guess that came about for his writing. And I think was a great learning point for him and for everybody to be able to share that publicly. You know it speaks a lot to to him and you know to hopefully his success you know further on to be able to recognize your mistakes early on. You know we say fail fast because you know if you see something going wrong you've got to hit it quickly and then you know turn around. Well court let's be clear nobody wants to fail. I mean if you're pivoting having a new vision and slowing down and having a new enhanced conversation in your mind about what to do next who wants to be pivoting really. Well it's not that you want to but when you set out to start any company you have certain hypotheses about what you think who is going to be the early

adopter of your product what kind of value are you going to create for the end user. And what typically happens is we use these broad buzzwords all too much but what happens is you actually start learning once you put your product out there and you start learning how people interact with it you start learning. Do they even care about it. Now what did you learn that before. That's what I don't understand. Well because it was that easy. Yeah it was not easy then I be on my yacht right now is Greg sipping on the bottles of champagne or sipping from bottles of champagne. But yeah I mean it's the goal is you want to you want to throw out a product as fast as possible. See how people take to it. And then from that you either realize that you're initial hypothesis that you set out to prove was right or it's wrong and then you know we say iterate. Right so you learn whether or not it was creating value and if it is then you want to continue to explore that expand upon that. But if it's not then you've got to shift a little bit and figure out OK well the seed of the idea is

actually good people actually do care about this and have a problem that we're trying to solve. But maybe we're not solving it the right way. And so that's kind of kind of what you're trying to do as fast as possible. Here's a stat that both of you put forward that is just shocking to me. Ninety percent of startups fail 90 percent 90 percent. Oh my God. Yeah. When you when you start a company I mean raising money is not easy you know. You know I guess to find success is the best way to say it. But there are so many ideas out there and there are so many folks trying. And you know it is true that 90 percent of them you know won't go on to the next level won't either go on to you know produce revenues get customers anything like that. But that 90 percent is where the 10 percent basically thrives I mean they're learning and if they're doing the research on what's happening you know there was there was one example which I read about the other day one of the biggest Internet companies right now Rovio the maker of Angry Birds a popular

you know application that's an enormous hit right now and everybody's heard of Angry Birds but we didn't know is that that company had failed 51 times before angry words. Yeah but that that information never got released until now after they got that big hit. So there are 51 times when we might never have heard of the maker Rovio if it wasn't for that one shot but they kept working they kept moving out it. And the reason why you know a lot of these companies fail was they just either can't get their head up. Or they go on to learn that you know maybe we're going to start up you know wasn't for them requires a lot of time a lot of patience you know a lot of hard work to really start something or to be a part of you know a founding team to be you know the first you know four to six employees that you really have a skin in the game. I mean there's no hours there's no vacation time you know. It's really your company and you go forward. OK with Angry Birds just just so they're going to understand that they're the company Rovio. What was it that made the difference on the 50 second time. And is there something that they

face. I have spoken about now the folks that started that company. I mean I mean I guess the magic I mean they really nailed. I mean they got user adoption user traction. So in court talks about trial and error so for 51 times they kept trying and they were able to shut it down and not waste their money. But when they found a hit when they found that industry's attraction they were essentially able to continue building on a continued reading and then pour gas on the fire. And then turn angry birds into be. You know what it is now. So it was finding that initial traction that led them to know that they had a hit and then had to continue building it to continue pushing out and working on it. Now see to my ear that doesn't sound like the products that they had were fail but that I just didn't know about it or my neighbor or my friend or whatever so that's kind of frustrating. You know you're failing because nobody knows about you not that that's what you are what you have created. So trying to figure out whether it's the product itself or somehow just not the response or you haven't put it out there in a proper way is tough I would imagine Gort.

Yeah. So that's a big part of the start of I mean. The way that I typically end of thinking about it is if your product creates value and you use it and you say wow that experience I just had was incredible. You're going to go and tell your family and your friends about that and that's the best kind of marketing right that word of mouth marketing. It's not necessarily any more about you know can I get the article in The New York Times. Can I get on CNN.com because that helps you to get a bit of initial understanding of your company and maybe it'll get some downloads let's say if you're doing consumer web or something like that. But ultimately people are going to stop using your product. If if it doesn't do anything for them. So even if you get all the publicity in the world that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to find success. All right it's all tricky and Boston for those who don't know has become well almost another Silicon Valley we'll talk about that on the other side of the break we're talking about Boston businesses and what it takes to get a start up off the ground from the highs of making it to the lessons that can be mined from going bust. We're opening up the lines we want to hear from you. If you're

an entrepreneur tell us what it took to make it. Tell us what you learned from failing 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 8 9 7 8 8 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy two shy to share on the radio airwaves send us a Facebook message or a tweet. We'll be right back after this break. Stay tuned to WGBH Boston Public Radio. WGBH programs exist because of you and new Repertory Theatre presenting collected stories from Pulitzer Prize playwright Donald Margulies directed by Bridget Kathleen O'Leary featuring Liz Hayes and Bobby Steinbach through October 30th online at new rep dot org. And the wall familles Artists Association celebrating its thirty fifth consecutive open studios weekend Saturday November 5th and Sunday November 6th 144 moody street Wal tham info at WM a a studio's dot org. And basic black provocative commentary by local voices provides a fresh

examination of the black experience your world our world unscripted. Watch basic black tomorrow night at 7:30 on WGBH too. On the next FRESH AIR a conversation with David Carr who writes a column for The New York Times about old media and new media. He says we may be entering a golden age of journalism. I look at my backpack it contains more sort of journalistic firepower than the entire newsroom that I walked into 30 40 years ago. Join us. This afternoon at 2:00 an eighty nine point seven WGBH 13th Annual classical cartoon festival lands at Boston Symphony Hall this Saturday October 21 we got a joy music from some of Boston's best ensembles. Meet WGBH characters. Make your own musical instruments and see your favorite classic Warner Brothers cartoons as they were meant to be seen. On the.

Big Screen. Tickets are available at the door or online at WGBH dot org slash cartoon fest. Join in every Saturday at 3:00 for a session with just like that on a Celtic sojourn here on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just joining us we're talking about start ups what is takes to start a business in Boston and failure as a business lesson. We're opening up the lines we want to hear from you if you've launched a startup. Is Boston a good place to start a business. Is it hard to advance your operation in this town. 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. I'm joined by Greg Omer and Cortland Johnson. Greg Gorman Gomer is a founding member and writer for a Boston innovation court Johnson has been involved in a handful of start ups

among them is his most recent venture terrible labs a Boston based web development company. Let's go straight to the phone lines. Bill go ahead please you're on the Kelly Crossley Show. Eighty nine point seven I callate can hear me. I can think Great. I'm an entrepreneur I'm a software consultant with my own business and I've been in the software development arena for about 20 years in the Boston area. Want to comment. I had a great question before. Why can't you push these products out you know before maybe they're ready to see if they're going to successfully succeed or fail and if people are interested and then are not. And I kind of felt the response was I was maybe glazed over a little bit. I mean there's a pretty standard model of putting software out there to download for free with limited functionality with 30 day trial period. Very very commonly used to test the waters. So I guess I wondered why that wasn't you know how you guys feel about

that. I worked and I worked. All right let's get my guests to address that court. You want to answer that. Yes sure so I mean I completely agree that the objective is when you start anything is to get your product out there as fast as possible to get early adoption and whether or not you. You want to charge or do sort of a freemium model where you know it's free for a certain amount of features and then you charge for additional. It's totally viable. A lot of people will even I mean your objective when you start out isn't you don't you don't need to build out a huge feature set. You know you get. We call it scope creep where you have too many features that it becomes too confusing for the end user to actually find any value from using the products. So yeah you want it you want to have a lot of focus and throwing something out there with minimal functionality but you find that that functionality actually is creating value is really really important. And I mean I don't know Greg if you had any other thoughts on that. I mean yeah it's very important obviously to develop you know your minimal viable products or to really nail down that one feature that you want to get in the hands of users. You know being somebody who writes about a you know

a lot of startups in a lot of products you know what we've seen is that the founders are never really happy when they release a product but that's really the best case scenario because you're going to constantly iterate on it. And the most important thing you know to your point is to get it in the hands of users I mean constantly be receiving feedback whether that's focus groups you know using social media for feedback or just sort of soliciting them over e-mail. You know that's where I guess maybe it was skipped over but. But talking about user traction again the most important thing is to get it out you know to the users and to iterate on it to make it to make those changes that they really want. I mean ultimately best case scenario is that you leave features off and then you upset the users and then they constantly ask for them. That really shows them that they are passionate about your product. You know what he was talking about with scope creep you know that obviously talks about a product that has too many features and is confusing. You know if you're upsetting some of your original users that really shows their passion about your product so that you know show that you have it on your hand. I want to give you all a chance to talk about your own experiences because if we haven't made clear

you're both entrepreneurs and heads of startups more than one in some cases I mean Boston innovation Greg is a startup itself. Yeah I mean it's definitely and we essentially put ourselves out there. You know we started just writing about other startups we saw in Boston that there was really an opportunity to write about you know the great stories that a lot of the companies that were going to get you know some of that national or even local press. So we just started basically producing content around other people stories. And we grew. We were constantly iterating on the types of content the stories and then we were able to see that little bit of growth and where our readers really wanted to see us continue to see us move. And then we continued writing about that to writing about the startups we expanded our coverage into a lot of greater Boston area because that's what our readers wanted. You know the website to start was. Didn't really have any functions other than just words on a webpage. And now we have a bunch of other features were rolling out some new features soon. You know so we really started as just a simple web page talking you know telling stories and now we're going to constantly iterate

and move forward and kind of introduce you know more enhancements or features to the site before a court answers the question. Let me just be clear that Boston is suddenly becoming what many Silicon Valley or besting silica. How would you put Boston in the spectrum of a startup location. I mean it's tough to compare you know to any city. But I think it's an incredible time. You know first startups are for entrepreneurs. You know in the Boston area there are so many resources out there. I mean basically our job specifically is to go find the entrepreneurs and to tell their story to write about the startups. So you have us working for you. And again the community really is unselfish and they're putting themselves forward and they're really working not to not to to the best Silicon Valley or anything like that but just to really make this an entrepreneur friendly city you know city and state are doing a tremendous job as a program called mass challenge. You know that's really you know harnessing entrepreneurship. And there's a bunch of other incubators out there TechStars Dogpatch labs

where you can get in and work with other entrepreneurs and benefit from learning from each other. So as a whole I mean I think. It is a great time for the lot of folks out there that want you to succeed. You know us being one of them. And it's a lot of fun. There's a great community around it I mean CT was hosted a party last night with with live band karaoke which for some of the startups and entrepreneurs. So it just goes to show that you know there's a lot of fun out there within this community. You know that we're starting to build and again continuing to iterate on a move forward. You mentioned mass challenge again before court speaks on this. I just want to say that they just gave out a name to a bunch of winners and gave out big money for some of these startups. There was only one that I was aware of and that was her campus media. I am aware of that one. But there are other names here art venue cassock couture Coco mama foods I'm interested in that one I don't know what it is but it sounds good. Link sportswear resolute marine energy smarter shade all these are very sound very

interesting and great possibilities now to you court your own innovation and start up experience. Yeah. So I had the opportunity fortune opportunity to work for some great companies in Boston. I got to work at a startup in Cambridge called scavenger that a lot of great people there and then several people from scavenger had left to work on other things and we had all just gotten along really well together. And so our objective was to find a product that we could all continue to work on together. And so for example one of the engineers that scavenger Joe Lind he helped this other guy Ryan knew and I had to start this company called BlogHer offer. And he built out the product and I would go out and sell it and we just found that you know we got a lot of early traction and it turned out that the sentiment of the space that we were attacking just there wasn't enough demand there to make a really high growth business Rather then.

So you kind of it. Was a sort of a big pivot if I call it a restart. So we decided to kind of exit that space and you know Joe and I wanted to continue doing something together and focus on our core competencies. And Joe is just an incredible developer and so we built a team with people that we had worked with in the past that we really enjoyed working with who are really really good at what they do and we got terrible abs going. And so we've been doing that for the last four months and have found a ton of success and get to help a ton of companies and get to work with them and you know that's what we're excited about is just helping everyone in the overall ecosystem succeed. You're listening to eighty nine point seven WGBH an online a WGBH dot org. We're talking about Boston businesses and what it takes to get a startup off the ground from the highs of making it to the lessons that can be mined from going bust. I'm joined by Greg Omer a founding member and writer for a Boston innovation and court Johnson. He's been involved in a handful of start ups among them is his most recent venture terrible labs a Boston based

web development company. We're taking calls we want to hear from you if you're an entrepreneur. We're 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. So David Frum dating. Go ahead please you're on the callee Crossley Show eighty nine point seven I tell you I said early early on I heard your guest say something about not you know of course the product has to be good and if it's not then the user ultimately isn't going to continue with it. But oddly about 30 years ago I got an awful lot of good exposure from a promotional and WGBH. And I think it made all the difference in the world so I think as far as getting good press and and good radio I mean maybe it was an odd situation. But I but I have to say it was every bit as important as the goodness of the product. I'm happy to say has endured. Well I would have to say before my guests weigh in David that you must have had a good in a ration maybe you had a premium and I bet you got traction from your product right away. That's

what I've learned. Good go ahead Greg. Yeah I mean I guess you know there are certain milestones obviously right and you know if a press mention you know takes you to that next level I mean it was obvious that you were creating value because if you weren't creating value and you got a press mention then you still wouldn't you know you know jump to that next level. So to your point absolutely there are a lot of cases where you know it is a certain mention in a press outlet that really takes in that level it really gives you that extra exposure that you really you know were able to get you know but obviously a lot of change and social media plays such an enormous role right now which is why I think you know court I forget to mention about the press but you know there are so many different ways to get your voice out there to tell the story to market your product. But I think you know there may be a little bit less on some of the national press at all. It's all about the community essentially now it is at least a start. Yeah and just to get to you on that yeah I do think getting some traditional press exposure is great and like Greg said you know it's all about the product after that. But you know without

guys like Dragon boss innovation those guys do an incredible job and really. Don't laugh you would get you guys did a great job. You guys do you know bring the ecosystem together and really help a lot of companies out there so you know without without people like Cali and WGBH for shining light on this and boss innovation for helping out other companies. That does offer quite a bit to these startups and you know it should be overlooked. All right. So Riva on the road right now we can honestly show. Oh great thanks. So my question is for people who are creative types or maybe binaries but don't have the technological or engineering know how to create what's in their head. Is there any sort of. Recourse can act people with technological know how. Creative right. I mean absolutely for want to just say you

know Visit our site we have blossomed and it made a lot of you know folks but I think the biggest thing you know that the networking events you know and getting out there. I mean there's no real you know room where there's a bunch of you know tech developers hanging out just waiting for work. You know I think a lot of it is is you know get it getting heard out there going and meeting great new people there's so many events here and the other thing is you know specifically we're here to help you can look us up she doesn't e-mail I know court court gives out more introductions that I can keep up with. So if there's any you know thing we can do would be happy to help. I mean I'd also recommend checking out venture Fiz dot com green horn connect dot com. They have you know if you're looking to get involved in community meet people you know like Greg said it's the best ways to get out to events and those two resources along with Boston of aviation are great to go to to find those events. Before I take this call just a quick question. I've read. One of the critics critiques about so many start ups in Boston and this critic

was writing maybe there's too many. And that perhaps what should happen with some of the failed startup folks is that they should work for somebody else first. Get a sense of you know what really it takes to put this all together. So this complaint was that there's too many people you know two people in a garage trying to be jobs and and was in the act when if you just work for somebody for a while get some knowledge then go start your thing how do you respond to that great. Yeah I mean I know the piece well we actually had a couple of guest posts on our site and I wrote a response I mean I think the biggest thing is I mean personally I worked at Fidelity beforehand. I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't get the knowledge that I worked at Fidelity. I can't. I don't think you can make you know statements like that that are very general I think. There are so many different situations that occur you know to the point of I guess failing fast and fail start ups if you are working on something it is a two person and you're bootstrapped yourself funded is only a guess so for that you can go. And so you know you better know

I guess when it's time to either close up shop work on something else. But there is you know to his point there is a lot you can learn from work in other companies seeing what they did iterating on. You know same accord he started another startup company and that led him to you know to create another company as well so. So you agree. CT Yeah. So I got to work at scavenger which was awesome. Right so you're learning on someone else's dime. You know you're taking risk off the table and you're getting paid which isn't bad either. So but I would argue no. Yes go work at other companies but rather than take a look at a company that you're really interested in and passion about but also look at the people who are there and figure out what you're really interested in and what you want to learn and then find the best people that are doing that right now and go and get a job and work for that person. I mean I can't tell you enough how much I've learned from so many incredible mentors in Boston and I can't thank them enough for you know there are people out there just so willing to help. And if you can get

a job at a company where somebody can really just teach you day in and day out there's nothing better than that. All right. Mark in the car. Go ahead please. Hello I was wondering if you have any suggestions for people who have experience as software engineers. No experience running a business. Would that be sort of what you just offered to the last caller. Is there a different set of resources. Well I mean it comes down to you know I mean there are very few if any start ups that really succeed as a one man show. So know what you're really good at and my recommendation is if you find a co-founder that can take care of the weaknesses that you have but also doesn't have the strengths that you have so you know I know there are incubators like Greg talked about TechStars in Boston where they typically won't take a one founder company. You need co-founders because you know there's data to back up that successful companies

require multiple people to get them going. Thanks very much for the call Mark. So I have a question for you I'm reading this Harvard Business Review article why most product launches fail this is by Joan Schneider and Julie Hall and they have some they know some things that folks don't do. No market research on the product or the product has been done which happens a lot. Apparently the product is interesting but lacks a precise market. The sales force doesn't believe in the product and isn't committed to selling it this is just a few of the things in the pre launch phase. OK and then they go on in the launch phase and say the products launch too hastily doesn't work reliably doesn't fit into any key selling season. The manufacturers claims can't be backed up. The ad campaign is untested and ineffective This is quite a detailed article. But here's my point is this not common sense. I don't know. Somebody doesn't know this already if you're about to launch a business it seems to be common sense. But obviously lots of folks are not doing this because they've written a big article about it.

I mean I think you know to some of those points not enough market research or anything like that I mean any entrepreneur you know they're going to think that they can do it better and bolder than before. So maybe they did do that research maybe that maybe the big dig enough their thing is you know with with you know movies or whatever like The Social Network starting products that the barycenter to start a company have decreased tremendously. So a lot of folks maybe they are doing maybe it does seem common sense but you know I guess nowadays you know that the technical cost of like that you can put up a web page you can start a company and put your product out there very low. So that's why maybe some of the statistics are up there are a lot higher than maybe they should be. You know but the biggest thing is you know if your product is good if you have a great team you're going to succeed. Just to make sure I'm not jumping up and down on small entrepreneurial startups. They know in this article that some products from big companies that were launched quote successfully from 2002 to 2008 and disappeared within two years.

Pepsi Edge Dr. Perry berries and cream and everyone saw that Saran disposable cutting sheets. The Coca-Cola see to her Hershey Swoopes who thought of these. CT go ahead. Yeah I mean again you want to. You have an idea typically you know to start a company. You initially face a certain problem that you want to solve and so that problem you just become wrapped up with it and try to find a solution to it and so you try to launch your product as fast as possible get it out there solve that problem and you know like like these bigger companies think that there's a market for these flavors or products or things like that but you know you quickly find out you measure data you just be very diligent about that and you look at the feedback that you're getting from you know from a tech point of view say users or hits to a website or something like that but you basically just want to fail fast if it's not working and move on to the next thing or keep going if there's if you're finding success.

Now looking for those big companies they have the budgets to trial so they have money in the bank for actually setting up failures if you will. Oh nice. OK Bob from Boston Go ahead please. Hey Courtney Greg I was just wondering what you guys think of the Angel scene in Boston and how it's growing versus the venture capital scene and probably probably Howard Stern. OK the Angel scene in Boston these are investors rich. Yes angel investors typically high net worth individuals they don't have association with you know venture capital funds. You know they're growing and they're learning every single day. There's a lot out there. And you know I think the biggest thing with with Angel investors in Boston you know is creating relationships with them and getting to know them you know put yourself in their shoes. A lot of times that you know you're not going to just throw money at certain things are going to have to you know work out a great relationship. So I do think you know the angel investors you know here are doing a lot to help this community. You know we think court.

Yeah I think that the community itself the overall ecosystem is just blowing up right now and it's really exciting to watch and be a part of it and especially like the investor community I would say that you know several years ago you know first being introduced to the startup scene here in Boston it was felt a little bit tough to get accessibility to all these people with money and figuring out who they were and all of that stuff. But now it's like the excessive. All of that from VCs down to angels are super accessible there would be venture capitalists. Oh yeah sorry also that you're capitalists down to angel investors they're all super accessible and they want to talk to you they want to you know whether or not they're going to invest money is another story but they're there to lend their advice and expertise and there are ton of great people here in Boston doing that. All right well thanks to you two for a stimulating conversation I have to leave with a quote from Henry Ford. He said Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again this time more intelligently. Good luck to you both. Thank you Kelly Kelly Crossley we've been talking about start ups what it takes to get a business off the ground here in Boston and to to survive failure. I've been joined by Greg Omer a founding member and

writer for a Boston innovation and Portland Johnson. He's been involved in a handful of start ups among them is his most recent venture terrible labs a Boston based web development company. Up next it's another edition of pop culture ass dog Lady Monica Collins is taking your calls. If you need advice about your dog read 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. This program is made possible thanks to you. And innuendo in Natick presenting the hundred Douglas celebrate the season event featuring Hunter Douglas child safe cordless light rise options as well as the duet arc a tele silhouette and illuminate shading systems more at innuendo dot com. And Bentley University's design and usability Center working with corporate clients to make

technology accessible and easy to use through customer focused research design and evaluation. Bentley dot edu slash usability. I'm Lisa Mullins A college student flew into San Francisco with twenty thousand dollars in her handbag so she could pay her tuition bill. U.S. sanctions against her home country Iran prevent bank transfers. I can't imagine that the policy makers sat around the tables and thought that that's the way in which they're going to be able to get us to a safe global environment and unintended impact of the Iran sanctions next time on the world. Coming up at 3 o'clock here at eighty nine point seven WGBH celebrate 25 years of Celtic music on WGBH by joining the Celtic club. It's a great way to support the news and music you depend on every day on. The received discount. Concerts in advance and if that weren't enough WGBH to say thanks with a pair of tickets to a Christmas Celtic sojourn. Heaters all over.

Membership starts at $150 a year is a WGBH. For more innovation. It has a huge impact on business and life here in the hub. I'm Carol Miller join me each week. For Innovation have. The big ideas happening in Boston. Saturday mornings at 7:00 and Sunday night at. 10:00. Here on eighty nine point seven. The walking. Was good. I'm Cally Crossley it's time for another edition of pop culture. Joining me in the studio is Monica Collins aka ass dog lady or as we like to call her them Fido Queen canine mutt maven and her royal hound Highness. She's here today to take your calls if you need advice about your four legged friend. We're at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 seventy eight 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. We have limited time with Monica so call in now don't wait until the last five minutes. 8 7

7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 8 9 70 so dog lady. Yes I howling. That one of the biggest purchases that people are making even in a down economy. Yes Halloween costumes. Oh and I got to say if I went I don't care. Twenty dollars right outside and set a map. Well I'm just I just want to point out that this is really interesting is that you know if I'm dressing myself up or my friends or whatever it makes sense that you know I might want to dress up my dog and in fact you have a letter here from someone who wrote in so let me just read it. Recently I was browsing a dog magazine. Most of the articles were interesting but one stinker turned me on how to get your dog into a Halloween costume seemed like the stupidest excuse to fill space. What's your stand on Halloween costumes for dogs. And I should say that Doug lady stand is very shaky

because first of all dogs hate being dressed in anything really. Dogs are natural nudists. They really are they like being naked. Just let me be in whatever my birthday suit. But people put costumes on dogs and they force them into these customs and they spend a lot of money for these things. And it's a five minute walk up if that because the dog often wants just to shake it off. And it's funny today I was posting pictures of dogs and Halloween customs on my site which is this dog lady. I've got one of a dog as a Yoda and it's the cutest little picture and I think they look so cute. Why am I so Grinchy on this topic you all your emotions so yours your are two you feel two ways about it then you know how the dog feels but you still think it's cute. I don't really know how the dog feels because we never know how dogs feel. Yeah but

I can assume that when I've tried to put any bit of clothing on my dog he wants to shake it off in a second. I understand. Well let's hear from Linda from Wakefield Rhode Island Go ahead please. You're on with ass dog lady Hi Linda. I how you fine. It's not in reference to an iPod. That's OK I have a question because I'm getting ready to go on a vacation I have a miniature Aussie male poodle who is five years old and I have not gone on any vacations or done anything with my life since I got her. Yeah I know yelling and I am getting ready to go and I am really having a hard time trying to figure out where to put her because I have for the most part of people come stay overnight from time to time in the house. But this is going to be a seven day trip and I need to put her somewhere and I've got references. My girlfriends who have small dogs not Boodles

and they putting them in a can. No I highly recommend the kennel. I can't even imagine I think she'd be devastated and would never recover. What is her name have we may give her a name. When you make me show you. If you like you I grew up with you she would mean me so I have money. We need to meet you. OK here's what I think emotionally I think people don't want to put the dogs in kennels. You see a kennel and you think oh I would die before I put my dog in a kennel right. I will take the contrarians view here and say that for seven days it's OK. Your dogs can be in a place where it may have to stay in the kennel space which is a little hard to look at but it will be fed and you have to do your own research to make sure that it gets out for walks and that you know that basically it's just going to go into the little kennel space to sleep but that it's well taken care of so that

I would say that that's OK if you've done your research on it. OK it's hardest for you. It's not right for you and not the dog. It breaks your heart. It doesn't break the dog's heart. Your dog will be over the moon to see you when you return but won't be in the depths of despair while you're away. Right. To put it into perspective that is the DOD. Yeah you're right it's a dog. Thank you so much for your call Linda. Yeah well OK. Gordon from Providence Go ahead please you're on the callee Crossley Show With ask dog lady Hi Gordon. Hi thanks for taking my call. I just met a girl who I really like and she has a large male dog. I also have a male dog. He's about medium sized husky comes to be a caress of with a larger dog that he's scared. Yeah I'm hoping to introduce the two dogs and I'm really hoping they get along but I'm hoping you might have some kind of suggestions as to how to introduce just likely that

they get into a fight. Well they haven't any nice music to put on. Just kidding. You know I don't just like OK where are the dogs. I hate to ask a personal question but are the dogs but fixed my dog is not fixed her dog is OK. She about 45 pounds she's got some kind of large people next hundred pounds. OK Gordon I'm not going to get into the fray and reasons on why your dog felt all dogs all male dogs should be neutered. I would first of all I would think about getting your dog neutered. And second of all what I would do always is to introduce them outside always introduce them on a level playing field i.e. outside a way you know not in your home or her home but out in a field somewhere. Also make sure both of them are on the leash

or off the leash. Whatever you prefer but they should just be of equal status at that point. However they will never be of equal status because your dog isn't fixed so that is a problem and I would ask you to consider having your dog fix is just good for the environment it's good for your dog. And I just think that's the right thing to do. Thank you so much for your call Gordon. Thank you. All right Kristen from. Newton Massachusetts I think not in Massachusetts going on please. You got it. I my life and I are in a pit bull mix coming to us from Kentucky has had a high kill shelter down there and them after it for about a month now in North Carolina are getting in on Friday the 4th and he's about a year old and are wondering if it's OK to change his name and how that works. Oh very good question now what is his name now.

His name is Nick but he goes by a couple name that seems like he goes by Kentucky neck and and Nick truck. Nick talk I like that. First of all what you should do is. Always keep Nick part of the new name that you're thinking of and just kind of hyphenate it for a while. Sparky Nick spooky Nick whatever you're thinking of put Nick at the end of it just so there's that sound that your dog is familiar with. But no trouble at all changing the name. I am free to read but I just wanted to make sure. Yeah yeah no no trouble at all. Thanks very much Christian for the call. Yes I wear it 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 This is a calla Crossley Show With ask Donald Lady Monica Collins Astrid from Salem. Go ahead please. Hi Mike could you actually help me for a couple of months ago my oh I'm glad to hear it. That and you know it's great. My colleague and we have an office dog along to my colleague Greg. Yeah and yeah

I've been with him and he was the dog was having a hard time because sometimes he would leave me present in my office and he doesn't do that anymore. Oh good. Which is a great. Oh I just got that deposits going in Christ's presence OK. So he latest thing however ended giving Patrick had some anxiety is that he will run up the stairs. Not really good at staying and I was wondering what was the good. Whether it was some good training technique or the office people because because Finn comes into the office every day. Yeah. And if I'm in the office and capped off at court I'll take it out and have him with me in my office and I will you know sometimes close the door. But then sometimes if everybody has their office. Just in that common area and it will take off there.

OK auto dog lady what do you say to that. You have to teach Finn the Finn right. Yeah and it's short for it. OK Finbarr Finn you have to teach in a sit and stay. This is the basic rule of dog. This is set. OK we got that right. And then hold your hand up in front of the dog's face. Stay. And that means stand. So Finn has to at least have that basic rule of dog etiquette before coming into an office and being allowed to roam around the office that someone has to have the authority to go sit stay. And believe me from the non-dog owners viewpoint I'm interested in him say oh yeah no saying absolutely for a dog to be in an office without this basic command. I'm not going to say it's unconscionable

but I'm going to say that it's very very unprofessional since it's a it is a workplace I can use that term. All right thank you very much for the call Astrid. Doug let me I want to point out that the American Pet Products Association is out with their new national pet owners survey. Yeah. Sixty two percent of U.S. households own a pet and dog owners topped the list at forty six million. Just had to get that out there I think. Thank you very Mays exam I hope all the 46 million are listening to this show right now. Breaking news in the dog world just talk about that a little bit. There is a move afoot to get a dog park in West Roxbury. Oh and how do you feel about that. Oh I feel great about it. I mean it's just great when the city when a municipality recognizes that there are a lot of citizens voters that have dogs in fact there have been surveys that show that dog owners go to the polls in great

numbers because they care about their environment they care about where they live and a dog park brings the community together. Brings puts the dogs in a place where they are safe and it's just a very good thing to do. This is District 6 with city counselor Matt O'Malley who called the meeting together apparently and there was standing room only. So care about this there are dog parks now legal dog parks in the city of Boston in the south and in South Boston. And now there's this move for West Roxbury. Well this one will be fenced in I guess the controversy is whether or not it might lead some say to a crackdown on leash law. But anyway I think that your point about dog parks in general is a gathering place is an important one. With seconds to go you got a letter about a woman saying or a person seeing a dog outside in the rain. Yes such as a rainy day today. Right. And your response would be she felt sorry for the friend she held an umbrella over the dog's head.

The dog was tied up outside as you know when he held an umbrella over the dog yet until the owner came out of Starbucks where she the dog was up and the guy explained hey it's a husky. He likes the rain and she didn't quite believe this and just kind of walked away. And Dog Lady sided with the guy because the owner the owner of the skis ran across the Arctic. Huskies run the I did a ride sled race. They can stand outside in a little rain but if you must hitch your dog up like a western frontier town horse in front of a store shop. Always make sure that you keep eye contact with your dog while you're inside inside. We don't want anything happening. Thank you so much dog lady. I'm Cali Crosley you've been listening to another edition of pop culture with Monica Collins she writes Ask a dog lady the syndicated pet lifestyle advice column. You can go to ask dog lady dot com to ask a

question or make a comment or visit the ask dog lady Facebook fan page. You can keep on top of the Calla Crossley Show at WGBH dot dork slash Calla Crossley follow us on Twitter. Become a fan of the Calla Crossley Show on Facebook today show was engineered by Antonio you are produced by Chelsea Myers will roll slept and Abby Ruzicka this is a production of WGBH Boston Public Radio.