Starting a business is hard. Running a business is even harder. Starting a business in one weekend is damn near impossible.
But I just watched 13 teams develop ideas into real-world, viable models in right around 54 hours. Local food, NFC-enabled business cards, writing lessons for kids and a new way to bring back that old birthday excitement highlighted the presentations last night, proving that difficult doesn’t mean impossible.
While my idea didn’t work out, the entire weekend was an amazing learning experience. Failure, when thought of as an experiment, is a fantastic experience.
But enough about my failure as a learning experience. Let’s talk about a local startup success that’s already making a profit, has made it through one pivot, and looks to be a sustainable business model.
Say hello to BusyBeeHouseCleaners.com.
Led by Ransley Carpio, BusyBee HouseCleaners started as a fun side project to raise cash for a vacation and has turned into an actually business that has quite a potential market. By keeping costs low, they’re able to undercut a lot of bigger companies who already handle housecleaning services.
As a guy who really doesn’t enjoy the business side of running a business, I’m impressed with Ransley’s ability to break down what they are doing in terms that even I can understand. In a world where most large companies hide their secret sauce and never reveal their true aspirations, it’s refreshing to see Ransley and team so up front with their approach.
Their rising success also proves that startups need not be software based. Too often we fall into the trap of thinking that every startup MUST be digital, it MUST be scalable and it MUST expand or it will fail. As Derek Sivers mentioned in his upcoming Domino Project book Anything You Want
(Disclosure – I’m friends with Ransley and his team cleaned my apartment for free.)
Props to Drew Manusharow for helping me and Donor Assure out this weekend. If you need a designer, he’s available.