Entrepreneur USA february 2016

TURN YOUR PASSION INTO PROFIT

Making Money
in Politics
(Without
Feeling Gross)

THINK IT.

page 24

LOVE IT.

The
Creativity
Issue!
Everything
You Need
to Start
a Business
That Matters

How to Do
Good Without
Going Broke
page 64

DO IT.
FEBRUARY 2016 | ENTREPRENEUR.COM

And learn a thing

or two from Hanson
(yes, that Hanson)

Make Your Mark

Have a Good
Idea? Call
Your Lawyer
page 53




It’s All About

32

24

40

78

Politics Pays. But Does Civics?

You’re Going
to Love Sales

How Franchises
Grow Fast

Stop thinking of it as a chore and start
getting creative. Your business
depends on it.

Quick expansion is easy. But preparing
for strong, lasting growth? That’s harder.

Brigade has an ambitious, possibly crazy
plan: decrease voters’ cynicism and
turn positivity into profit.
By Jason Ankeny

32

By Jason Daley

By Joe Robinson

99

An Entrepreneur Is an Artist

64

Breakout Stars

You can learn a surprising amount from
Hanson, the one-time boy band that
transformed into a multifaceted brand.

PLUS: Meet the guy using bitcoin tech to
help artists sell their work.

Good Work
You can give back to your community
without going broke. First steps: Find the
right cause—and the right partners.

Learn what fuels the fastest-growing
franchises of the year.
By Tracy Stapp Herold

By Michelle Goodman

By Jason Feifer and Jared Keller

2

ENTREPRENEUR 2/16

ON THE COVER: Photograph by Bobby Fisher

PHOTOGRAPH BY BOBBY FISHER, GROOMING BY RENE MALONY

Rock stars, festival
kings, beer brewers:
Meet Hanson, the
2016 edition.

The Rendezvous found
something great to put
on top of their BBQ.
When Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous in Memphis ships out an order of their world-famous
ribs, custom FedEx shipping labels help them send a piece of their restaurant right there
on the box. That’s just one of the tools of the FedEx® Small Business Center that can
help streamline shipping, boost efficiency and improve e-commerce. To see how our
online shipping tools can help grow your business, go to fedex.com/smallbusiness.

#SolutionsThatMatter

©2015 FedEx. All rights reserved.


21
Culture
15

18

Esquire Guy

Marketing

In the worst of
times, how and
how not to help a
colleague in need.

Harness the power

of words to hook
new customers.

10
Editor’s Note

18

Channel your inner
Picasso and thrive.

Design

By Amy C.
Cosper

12
Feedback
Words from
our readers.

18

A textile designer
turned her father’s
sketches into
colorful fabrics
and launched a
new business.
By Margaret

Littman

By Ann Handley

19
Ask a Pro
The legal ins and
outs of company
vehicles.
By Christopher
Hann

48

20
Travel
Fly high with new
airplane Wi-Fi.

21
Business
Unusual
A glue developer
turns bad luck into
sticky business.

Tools

By Grant Davis

47

50

51

22

Shiny Object

The Fix

Smart Vision

The Ethics
Coach

Microsoft’s new
Surface Book
laptop-tablet
means business.

A restaurant chain
finds a smarter
way to hire.

Internet-connected
smart glasses can
change the way
we work.

Are severance
agreements a
slimy practice?
By Gael O’Brien

By John Patrick
Pullen

By David Port

By Michael Frank

48
Ask a Geek
Can streaming
video help
my company?
By Mikal E.
Belicove

51

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID RINELLA; ILLUSTRATION BY KEVIN WHIPPLE;
COURTESY OF APX-LABS PHOTOS; PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID MCCLISTER AND GROOMING BY TINA DAVIS

By Ross
McCammon

Where there’s business
there’s EPSON.
Epson’s innovative solutions are helping millions of businesses exceed their
vision in more ways than you’ve imagined. Like robots that improve quality
in factories worldwide. Industrial dye sublimation printers that marry fashion
and technology. Mobile POS solutions for exceptional customer service. Digital
projectors that enhance communication. And high performance printers that
help businesses run at full speed. See all the ways that Epson helps businesses
succeed, at epson.com/forbusiness

EPSON® Business Solutions

ROBOTICS

DIGITAL TEXTILE

epson.com/forbusiness

POINT OF SALE

PROJECTORS

PRINTERS

EPSON is a registered trademark and EPSON Exceed Your Vision is a registered logomark of Seiko Epson Corporation.
Copyright 2016 Epson America, Inc.


Money

56

53

55

VC Viewpoint

Ask the
Money Guy

Before you do
anything else,
protect your
intellectual property.
By Jim Morrone

By Joe Worth

54

56

Startup
Finance

Your Money

Looking for funding?
Try your school’s

alumni network.
By Michelle
Goodman

64

Why would the
bank yank my
credit line?

The taxman
confusith: Behold
the new rules for
interstate business.
By Steph Wagner

Start Up
59

60

62

Wacky Idea

Q&A

Who’s Got VC?

A key chain

designed by a
robotics engineer.

Beware the high
cost of pursuing
perfection.

By Danielle
Beurteaux

By Ann C. Logue

A mattress
company enlists
celebrities to
promote its
charitable works.
By Michelle
Goodman

Franchise
Franchisee
A mobile screenrepair franchise
recruits future
owners from
In-N-Out Burger.
By Jason Daley

76
Franchisor

A small batch,
customized T-shirt
concept puts a shirt
on anyone’s back.

76

By Jason Daley

53
6

ENTREPRENEUR 2/16

116
Back Page
It’s a matter
of trust.
By James Victore

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ILLUSTRATION BY GARY NEIL; PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS DELORENZO;
PHOTOGRAPH BY JESSE CHEHAK; ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES VICTORE; PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW BETTLES

73


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Amy C. Cosper
EXECUTIVE EDITOR

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Editor’s Note

THE ARTIST OTHERWISE
KNOWN AS ENTREPRENEUR
“Learn the rules like a pro so you can break
them like an artist.” —Pablo Picasso

W

e’re all artists.
That doesn’t
mean we’re all
Picassos with
paintbrushes, mind you. But
we all have the capacity to
create something unique:
music, paintings, buildings,
sculpture, books, logos,

iPhones, businesses.
I know this creative spark is a cornerstone
to entrepreneurship (along with drive, talent
and balls of steel). But not everyone agrees.
Every once in a while, I find myself arguing
with someone from some corporation or
educational institution about what entrepreneurship is and what it means to our culture.
This is their recurring response: “Entrepreneurship means you are the sole proprietor
of a business, or you are a business owner
assuming risk—nothing more.”
No, actually, sir or madam, that’s wrong.
Entrepreneurship means creating something

OUR BOARD OF
ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVISERS

JASON FEIFER
Our executive editor has
worked at Fast Company,
Men’s Health and Maxim. He
kicked off his time with us by
discovering that he and the
Hanson brothers share a love
of great ideas and great beer.

10

ENTREPRENEUR 2/16

PAUL SAHRE

Paul is a world-renowned
illustrator, designer, entrepreneur, influencer and the
brilliant mind behind the
opening illustration in this
month’s Culture section
(pg. 15).

never imagined before, born from a passion
that wouldn’t be stopped. It’s in our DNA to
figure out how to solve problems. And thank
God for that because it’s how we’re going to
survive as a species.
Entrepreneurship requires people who
recognize blank canvases as opportunity.
What sets them apart is the innate curiosity
and boldness to throw paint on that white
space and see what happens. Even if it sucks,
having the guts to do it is what matters.
Of course it’s hard. Failure is expected. But
man, it is a hell of lot more fun than simply
owning and running a business. And when
it works, the rewards are magnificent. This
month we profile two very different versions
of entrepreneurial creativity. Our cover story
on the Hanson brothers (“An Entrepreneur Is
an Artist,” pg. 32)—yes, the boy band from the
1990s—and their evolution from pop-culture
phenoms to savvy entrepreneurs who dabble
in music, festivals and craft beer, says it all.
But we also wanted to show another side of

this ingenuity. As we are all painfully aware,
we are in the midst of the bloviating, flatulent
season that is a tenet of American society: the
election year. Politics is a tough racket, which
is why we decided to take a look at people
brave enough to turn it into a business plan.
Brigade (“Politics Pays. But Does Civics?” pg.
24) is a mobile app that aims to build a social
network for the politically inclined and to
drive citizens from talking about political
issues to doing something about them.
We hope reading this issue inspires
you to look for your next blank canvas and
start throwing paint. And along the way,
understand that you’ll pick up some rules of
the game. But don’t worry; you’re learning
them so you can then break them and make
something wholly new, per Pablo Picasso.

Amy C. Cosper

@AmyCCosper

Amy C. Cosper photograph by Nigel Parry/CPI


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Feedback

WE ASKED READERS:

What does it take to be a
creative entrepreneur?
I FIND IT HIGHLY valuable to be a

creative entrepreneur and not just a
“dollars and cents” business thinker
(although you need that, too). Building
something from the ground up, new

or better than it’s been done before,
takes a lot of skills/attitudes that
creative types possess: taking original approaches to problem solving,
willingness to make mistakes and learn
from them, not being tied to conventional thinking, and being able to take
criticism and turn it into motivation. Creative professionals are excited by the
process, not just this month’s numbers.
Creatives have huge egos and tons of
nerve (this is an asset and challenge) to
do things in a different way.
You have to be a high-functioning
creative thinker to succeed in a creative
industry. You can’t fake it or rely on
specific skills (accounting, legal, etc.) in
this type of business. The key is adding
left-brain skills to turn creative ideas
into potential business ideas. That’s the
biggest hurdle for most creative entrepreneurs. Some people can do both,
most can’t. Those who do most often
find success. 
Kyle Golding
OKLAHOMA CITY

I THINK I WAS born to make
up things that haven’t been
created yet. That characteristic
didn’t always work well for me.
I remember in high school
feeling anxious, like a misfit. It
seemed everyone else knew

exactly the path they would
pursue in life, and I had no clue. So
I went to college and began a life of
experimenting. I went down one career
path only to discover I lost energy
around it. I’d go down another and find
out that I didn’t have the right degree or
pedigree. One day when I was pissing
and moaning about feeling unsettled, a
very wise friend said I had the heart of
an entrepreneur. I recognized that she
had given me license to come up with
wild ideas, try them and put them out in
the world to see the response. If it was
negative, I’d move on to the next thing
that captured my passion.
All that experimenting paid off: At 30,
I became an entrepreneur and writer. I
would say that the defining moment in
my life—and the biggest uptick in my income—was when I went from pursuing
money to pursuing meaning, following
my passion. For me, this is the most
important gift I give myself every day.

CINDY WHITEHEAD,
WHO GRACED OUR
JANUARY COVER,
LEFT SPROUT
PHARMACEUTICALS
SOON AFTER, SAYING

HER WORK WAS DONE.
WE ACCEPT THE
COMPLIMENT.

Clarified
In December's Trends 2016 look into
bio-hacking, "Nature 2.0," we accidentally
inferred that Tim Ferriss was an investor
in Bulletproof Coffee. That is not the case
and was not our intent.

Scott Halford

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ENTREPRENEUR 2/16

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Live + Work

esquire guy

THE
WORST
OF
TIMES

HOW AND HOW NOT TO HELP
A COLLEAGUE IN NEED …
By Ross McCammon

Photograph by Paul Sahre

HILE COWORKERS ARE close physically, we are not
often close emotionally. But when one of us experiences
a personal crisis, we are forced into unfamiliar roles—
and this distance can be awkward and, at least for the
aggrieved, unhelpful. Professional relationships are anchored by hierarchy,
politics, obligation. Emotional support needs waters that aren’t muddy.
It requires purity and simplicity. And to achieve those things you need
enough humility to understand that your job is not to alleviate the burdens
of grief. Your job is to alleviate the burdens of work.

W

2/16 ENTREPRENEUR

15


O ’T S
First thing: Acknowledge the hardship.
This is most of it. This is the point. And yes,
it’s hard. I think the main anxiety we have
comes from talking to people who may not
want to talk. So…email. Really. But don’t
avoid looking at the person when you pass

in the hallway. Really. The problem isn’t
reaching out; it’s that we try to do too much.
And “too much” is what the aggrieved is
already experiencing. Don’t add too much on
top of too much. Don’t demand information
by asking “How are you doing?” or “What
can I do?”
Upon the death of her husband Dave
Goldberg, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of
Facebook, took to the social media site to
talk candidly of her pain. She returned
to work hoping for normalcy, but people
avoided her or looked frightened whenever
she approached because they were unsure
how to act or what to say. People often lean
on hopeful statements, like, “Everything
will be OK,” or filler questions like, “How are
you?” But in her first Facebook post after her
husband’s death, she warned that these often
lead to further pain and uncertainty. Instead,
Sandberg says, “Real empathy is sometimes
not insisting that it will be okay but acknowledging that it is not.”
A related point: Acknowledge that
the hardship has happened to them.
Acknowledge that you don’t know what the
hardship feels like. The two most practical,
helpful, loving, nonjudgmental comments
are “I heard what happened” and “I can’t
imagine what it’s like for you,” says Russell
Friedman, executive director of the Grief

Recovery Institute, which trains people to
help those who have suffered loss. Of course
you know grief. You know how you felt when
a similar thing happened to you, but you must
avoid the attempt to identify.
Also…

“
't
e
t so
o " ou' e
overreacting." Because
this is criticism.
"It could be a lot worse”
or “You’ll get over it."
Because this downplays
suffering.
"You need to pull yourself together" or "You
need to be strong.” Because you’re asking the
person to reject their
feelings.
“Everything happens for
a reason.” Because this
is stupid.
“I know how you feel.”
Because you don’t.
“What can I do?” Because
it requires the person
to make a plan for you.

“Did you see Scandal
last night?!” (Not now.)

Don’t be a therapist. Or a
cheerleader. Taking on either of these
roles is self-aggrandizing. You can’t make
things better, but you can make things worse.
Stop talking. Friedman suggests being—
and those of you who, like me, have an aversion
to cute metaphors will have to forgive me for
reflecting this one—a “heart with ears.” (Sorry,
everybody.) The point is: Grieving people
need to be heard, not spoken to. When you’re
offering advice, you’re doing the opposite
of listening. What’s happening is: They’re
hearing you. And this isn’t about you.

jargon

clocksucker (n.)
Definition: A lazy, unproductive colleague who wastes
company time and money. Usage: Don’t involve that

clocksucker Bob if you ever want to get this project done.
16

ENTREPRENEUR 2/16

Illustration by Patrick Vale

Don’t ask what you can do to
help. Say what you are going to
do to help. Or just help—no talking
required. A request for permission involves
the task of answering the question. Don’t
create tasks. Instead, relieve them of tasks.
They aren’t incapable of doing their jobs,
of course, but their jobs will be made much
more manageable if you remove tasks in the
short term. We’re talking meetings, projects,
softball team management…
That said, maintain their privacy.
Before you enact some plan to help the
aggrieved staffer get her work done—or deal
with less work—run it by her first. The plan
might involve other colleagues, and she
might not want everybody knowing what’s
going on in her personal life. Also, some
people prefer working through tough times
to distract themselves.
Finally: Do the thing. I don’t know
what the thing is. Maybe it’s flowers. Maybe
it’s setting up a cooler on the person’s
porch so people can drop off food (without
requiring anyone to answer the door).
Maybe it’s your presence at the funeral.
Maybe it’s a card. Maybe it’s finally sending
the email you wrote three days ago. Go. Do.
Hit send. Despite all the warnings about
overstepping and overburdening, err on the

side of doing the thing. When it comes to
helping, too much will always be better than
too little.
Of course, sending the second-to-largest
gift basket, not the largest, will do just fine.
Let’s not get carried away here.
Ross McCammon is a senior editor at Esquire
magazine and the author of Works Well With
Others. To learn more about Esquire and to
subscribe, go to esquire.com.


packaging of the month

A Bottle
of What?
It looks like booze.
It calls itself a spirit.
But what do you do
if you’re a branding
agency and a client
comes to you with
what it bills as
the world’s first
nonalcoholic spirit?
Answer: “Create a
category language
for a category that
doesn’t yet exist,”
says Hamish

Campbell, creative
director of the New
York-based branding
company Pearlfisher.
This is what he came
up with for Seedlip.
—Andrew Gibbs

Andrew Gibbs is editor-in-chief of
The Dieline and editorial and creative
director of How magazine.

Photograph by David Rinella

Nod to process.
Copper makes the
bottle’s cap glow and
adds some light to
the label illustration.
The metallic touches
“reference the copper
stills used to create it,”
C
ll says.

Fi d he verlap.
The bottle looks like it
belongs on a liquor shelf,
but there’s something
unique about it. “It’s

a shape not currently
owned by a particular
liquor category,”
Campbell says. Rather, it
calls back to “botanical
distillates and the
language of apothecary
shops,” he says.

Create atmosphere.
Seedlip was founded by
a Brit who comes from
a long line of farmers.
The illustration plays
off that, “revealing
itself as the profile of
the native red fox, a
creature indigenous to
the English countryside,”
Campbell says. It’s also
supposed to represent
“the disruptive nature of
the spirit.”

Define the essence.
So, okay: What’s a
nonalcoholic spirit,
exactly? Seedlip says
it’s based on herbal
concoctions from the

1651 book, The Art of
Distillation. Bark, spices,
citrus peels and other
woodsy ingredients are
distilled in a way similar
to whisky, and the result
can be used like many
liquors—mixed with
tonic, say, or in a “clean
martini.” Pearlfisher
used the ingredients to
tell its story—and was
inspired by centuries-old
botanical illustrations.

2/16 ENTREPRENEUR

17


design

SOURCING
INSPIRATION
Sometimes, the greatest
business ideas are found at
home By Margaret Littman

A

NDRA EGGLESTON
WAS a trained
textile designer but
recent career moves
took her far afield—movie actress
and user-interface designer.
After a move to Nashville, she
was wondering: What’s next?
For inspiration, and to pass the
time, she started making weekly
trips to Memphis to visit her
dad, William Eggleston, the
photographer widely credited
with popularizing color photography as an art form.
William also did drawings,
and Andra began scanning the
pieces to preserve them. Then

she started playing with them.
She enlarged one image, adjusted the colors and turned it into
a pattern. “I said, ‘Dad, look at
this!’,” she recalls. “And he said,
‘Goddamn it, that’s beautiful.
What is it?’ I said, ‘That’s your
drawing.’ And he was shocked.”
She knew her next career
move: Andra turned those designs into fabrics, which she had
produced in the U.S. on Belgian
linen, and in 2013 launched her
textile business called Electra

Eggleston. (“Electra” was the
name her father wanted for his
daughter. Mom vetoed it.) The
work has attracted international

marketing

Hook
’em With
Headlines
WITHOUT THE RIGHT
WORDS, YOUR BLOG POSTS,
FLYERS AND ADS
MAY GO UNNOTICED
By Ann Handley

18

ENTREPRENEUR 2/16

A headline isn’t a final flourish, just something to tack on after the writing or video
production is done. It’s your critical first
impression: 80 percent of visitors will read
your headline, but only 20 percent will go
on to read the piece itself, according to
Copyblogger. Draw readers in this way:
Trust. BuzzFeed may score with hyperbolism like “36 Of The Absolute Worst
Things That Could Ever Happen to You,”
but your goal is to inform, help and inspire
your audience. If you overplay the headline,

your audience will feel misled and skeptical
of your next headline. Be useful, and never
waste your reader’s time.

Photograph by David McClister; Illustration by Patrick Vale


(Above) A young Andra
Eggleston was her father
William Eggleston’s model in
this iconic image. (Left) Now
she’s wrapping her luxury fabric
business around her famous
father’s aesthetic.

press, and she’s expanded her
offerings every year since. She
now has a showroom in Los
Angeles, is looking to open one
in New York and expects to
become profitable this year.
But to reach this success,
she had to overcome a great
challenge: her father’s legacy. “I
had this ‘man hiding behind the
curtain thing’ a little bit. I was
so intimidated by the reputation

that my dad has accumulated
in the art world. My standards

were almost too high when I
started,” she says. So she focused
on a market very different from
his: She started selling her fabrics at very upscale prices only to
interior designers—and that, she
decided, would be the only way
she did business.
But as the business progressed, she experimented and
added $280 pillows. Originally,
she sold them through highend home décor boutiques;
eventually she added online
sales through her site, electraeggleston.com. “I never thought
the pillows were going to sell
that well. I thought they were a
side project and would serve as
a vehicle to sell the fabric by the
yard,” she says. But instead, the
pillows revealed a new market
for her. People bought them
when they couldn’t afford an
interior designer or yards of her
fabric. “Maybe you’re not going
to buy a Chanel suit, but you
might buy some Chanel glasses,”
she explains.

Her 2015 line consisted of
15 vibrantly colored designs,
which were based on five
of her father’s drawings. In

2016, she’ll add neutrals in the
same patterns. But she doesn’t
plan on basing her company
entirely on her father’s aesthetic
sensibilities. She’s branching
out with future collections that
draw on other artists’ work. In
2014, she made limited-edition
bow ties with Nashville-based
designer Otis James. And she
had prototype vinyl wallpapers
made, using the same drawings
from James.
“I’m taking it very slow,”
she says, “because I don’t want
any carelessness.” She thinks
back to some meetings at her
Los Angeles showroom, where
designers asked her, “Do you
want to be [only] great, or do
you want to nail it?” And that
got Andra thinking about how
much work she still had to do.
“I’m at about 94 percent right
now,” she says. “But there is a
huge margin between 94
percent and 100 percent.”

ask a pro

Road
Sage
Q

What legal issues
do I need to address when providing
company vehicles for
my employees?

A

Ke h
a
Cleveland lawyer
and a former chairman
of the National Small
Business Association,
suggests covering
these three bases:
Liability “Make sure
y u
right
insurance coverage,”
Asthmus says. When
talking with providers,
explore liability issues
both for your employees (should one claim
you provided a defective vehicle) and for
third parties (should
the employee get into

an accident).

COURTESY EGGLESTON ARTISTIC TRUST

Taxes Is the employee
e i led o drive the vehicle for personal use?
If so, Ashmus says,
the employee might be
responsible for paying
taxes on it. Check with
your accountant and
your lawyer.

Context. Tell your readers what’s in it for
them. For example, “Things to Consider
Before a Business Launch” is vague and uninspiring, but “9 Things I Wish I Knew Before
I Launched My Last Business” captivates.
Another tip: place the reader into a headline.
“14 Kinds of Pumpkins to Grow” offers little,
but “7 Kinds of Pumpkins You Can Grow on
a City Balcony” speaks to a target audience.
Curiosity. There’s a sweet spot in headlines: It’s called the “curiosity gap,” when
you’ve made the a reader curious enough
to click and read. (Consider the pumpkins
on a city balcony. Don’t you want to know
what they are?) But don’t toy with readers.

A headline that says “This One Simple Trick
Saved My Business” might as well say “I’m
Desperate For You To Click.”

Clarity. Be direct, simple and tight. Your
headline should have fewer than 70 characters—half a tweet. Longer headlines may get
truncated in search results and social shares.
A good way to see what works: watch how
your headlines do on social media and study
what the best-read ones have in common.
Ann Handley is the author of the book
Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to
Creating Ridiculously Good Content.
@MarketingProfs

Comp
e
cl r about the terms
of use. For example, is
the employee responsible for vehicle maintainence? One solution
is to provide company
cars only to employees
classified as exempt;
that is, salaried employees who, under
law, are not eligible for
overtime—or compensation for time spent
fixing the car.
—Christopher Hann

2/16 ENTREPRENEUR

19

travel

WELL CONNECTE
AIRLINES ARE FINALLY GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT WI FI.
HERE, FOUR OF THE MOST INTERESTING PLANS
JetBlue

Southwest

Virgin America

Delta Air Li

s

The
pitch

JetBlue’s stated
goal is to be the
only U.S. carrier to
offer free Wi-Fi on
its entire fleet.

Its screenless
seats mean the
planes weigh less
and burn less
fuel—and Southwest believes
customers prefer

their own devices
anyway.

Welcome to the
fastest internet
speeds in the sky,
at 140 gigabits per
second (eight to 10
times faster than
other airlines, a
Virgin spokesman
says).

The airline is no
offering upg
satellite-ba d
service on
ghaul flights d
faster grou d
to-air spee on
short route bo h
via Gogo.

Wi-Fi
option
today

All its 150 Airbus
A320 and A321
jets contain Wi-Fi

—or as JetBlue’s
punny writers
named it, “Fly-Fi”—
with speeds up to
20 megabytes per
second.

Wi-Fi is available
on about 80
percent of its fleet;
the carrier won’t
disclose speeds.

Wi-Fi provided by
Gogo is available
on all planes, and
ViaSat’s superfast
Wi-Fi is available
on the first of 10
new planes that
went into service
last fall.

About two
s
of domestic
aircraft and 85
percent of international fligh s offer
connectiv y

Cost

Free

$8 per day, which
also comes with
more than 20 TV
channels.

Virgin America
plans to start
charging for ViaSat
service in March.

Some bas c
access, in l di g
movies, is
;
more rob
access s a s a
$3.99 an
.

In the
future

It expects to have
the entire fleet
wired with satellite technology
—meaning no

interruptions on
its new Caribbean
routes—by next fall.

There is no time
line on full-fleet
connectivity,
but a Southwest
spokesman says
all new planes will
have it.

By June, all 10 new
planes loaded with
superfast Wi-Fi will
be in the air.

By mid-2
, l
internatio al fligh
will be eq
d
with Wi-Fi.

Despite all this, don’t expect totally smooth, cheap connections. “The whole plan
ly has
a certain bandwidth,” says Seth Kaplan, managing partner at Airline Weekly. If ever one l
on, everyone’s Wi-Fi will be slow. That’s why many services come at a cost—if fewer people
connect, service stays fast. —Elaine Glusac

20

ENTREPRENEUR 2/16

Illustration by Robert Samuel Hanson


business unusual

Sticky
Business
HOW A GLUE DEVELOPER TURNED
BAD LUCK INTO A DIY SENSATION

by Grant Davis

J

ANE NÍ
Dhulchaointigh’s
glue has gained
legions of fans who
use it to seal cracks,
fix busted bathroom fixtures or,
in the case of a British TV show,
affix their cameras to the outside
of a small rocket that they then
launched into space. A farmer
even used it to make and attach a
prosthetic leg to one of his chickens, who got nipped by a fox.

And ní Dhulchaointigh knows
all this because people tweet and
Instagram and YouTube their
crafts—it’s an online community driven by the question,
“What else can this stuff hold?”
But this booming business
almost didn’t happen, because
ní Dhulchaointigh, a Londonbased product designer, wanted
to just sell the thing off.
The project first started small:
She was creating an ergonomic
knife handle with a mixture of
silicone caulk and sawdust. Then
she spent six years experimenting with 5,000 different
variations of her formula until
she had made a moldable, rubberized glue, which she planned
to sell to a large multinational
like 3M. But it was 2008 and the
recession stopped that idea cold.
“A lot of experienced people told
me that I had to partner with a
big company to succeed,” she
says. “But, often things have to

Photograph by David Rinella

go really bad for us to have the
confidence to do something different. We didn’t have a choice
but to go and do it on our own.”
It worked: Last year, her

revenues doubled to $4 million.
Here’s how she got there:
Step 1. Think
internationally.
As soon as she had a working
product, her business partner
insisted they file for patent
protection across Europe, the
U.S., China and India. “Even
though we’ve only been selling
Sugru in America since 2014,
we knew almost six years before
then that we would,” she says.
“Having that protection made
it much easier to find investors
who would let us scale manufacturing to meet demand.”
Step 2. Launch a
community.
“When we started, we made it
very user oriented, not necessarily application oriented,” she
says. “We let the users tell us how
Sugru could work.” The company showed off users’ photos

online, and eventually launched
a blog and a page where anyone
could ask the company how to fix
anything with Sugru. Users ran
with this, trading their own tips
and insights.
Step 3. Follow the data.

When Sugru first went on sale
through Amazon U.K., half of its
orders came from the U.S. After
a few years, ní Dhulchaointigh
had sales data proving that
Americans were interested,
which helped her break into the
market.
Step 4. Lock up capital to
fund rapid growth.
To help fund Sugru’s U.S. expansion, the company launched an
equity crowdfunding campaign
in 2014. (The U.K. has allowed
this kind of fundraising for three
years, and the U.S. followed last
summer.) Sugru asked for £1
million, and hit its goal in just
four days. It went on to raise £3.4
million ($5.2 million).
Step 5. Remember your
strength.
“We’re in a category where not
much new or innovative takes
place, and the space is dominated by companies like 3M,” ní
Dhulchaointigh says. Buyers are
intrigued, but she knows they
won’t sign right away; they may
not see a need. So she keeps the
conversation open. It took about
a year to finally get orders from

Target and Lowe’s—but now
she’s there, on the shelves next to
3M products.

Sell, Improve, Repeat: Once ní Dhulchaointigh developed the first
version of Sugru—what she considered a minimum viable product—she
put it up for sale online and closely followed early users’ responses. Her
team never stopped iterating based on that feedback. Sugru’s shelf life has
improved from six months to 13, and they’re now working on a version with
no chemicals so it can be used in hospitals, and so parents feel okay about
using it on children’s toys.

2/

UR

21


.

the ethics coach

SEPARATION ANXIETY
Are severance agreements slimy business? By Gael O’Brien

We had to lay off an
employee who wasn’t a
good fit for us. I wanted
to offer her a severance

package of five weeks
of income, to help her
and her family as she
searches for a new job.
But I read that I should
also have the employee
sign a severance
agreement. I know it’s
common, but it feels slimy. What are
the ethics here?
Your instinct to offer
severance is compassionate and appropriate. It’s also the
right message to send in the marketplace: Your company treats
people with respect even when
things don’t work out. But the
accompanying agreement isn’t
slimy at all. It’s good business.
Severance agreements
are business documents that
clarify expectations, says Elaine
Varelas, managing partner of
Boston-based outplacement
firm Keystone Partners and an

A

22

ENTREPRENEUR 2/16

expert in separation negotiation.
Employees often sign written
agreements when they start
a job; the same should be true
when they end it. The agreement
can outline what assistance
an employer will provide—for
example, additional weeks of
salary, benefits continuation, or
career-transition assistance, she
says. It also spells out what the
employer needs in return, such
as acceptance of the severance
amount; release of liability;
in some fields, reiteration of a

noncompete; perhaps an agreement not to discuss the severance or badmouth the company.
“The assumption is the company
and employee both went into an
employee/employer relationship
with good intentions, and there
k
Y

l

p
y ’ p
g y
f f

g
l ld
h h d t
y
y
f
f able doing it. Give the employee
ample time to review it and
consult with a family member
or expert. Not all binding legal
documents have to be written in
legalese; yours can be straightforward and supportive. The
goal, Varelas says: Make the
document feel like “a mutually
supportive relationship.”
Now here’s the bigger question: How do you avoid future situations where an employee isn’t
“a good fit”? Have you and your
team clarified what behaviors,

attitudes and values—in addition
to skills and competencies—
create success for a team member, the business, and clients
or customers? Are you clear
about that in interviews? Or do
you assume that a new person
will catch on to the culture and
contribute accordingly? (Bad
plan: Not everyone has psychic
abilities.) Your team surely
has thoughts on how to screen

job candidates and help them
succeed—if you don’t know those
thoughts, you should. While
you’re at it, ask how you can
improve communication. If you
believe you’ve covered these
bases, consider your team: Are
they so close knit that new arrivals have trouble fitting in? Once
you solve this riddle, you can put
your efforts into helping people
start right, rather than worrying
about how they leave.
Gael O’Brien is publisher of
The Week in Ethics and founder
of coaching/consulting firm
Strategic Opportunities Group.

Illustration by Brian Rea


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