These are the stories that rarely get told at the cocktail party when the answer to your occupation is “I am an entrepreneur.”

Five years since starting ViralPrints in his dorm room, Sean had gone through two companies, three different names with five or more pivots, raised money, built teams, pushed product. All while in the middle of his 6 year, full-time MBA.

SingleOps Is Spawned

Undeterred by previous scars, Sean got back in the arena. He started first with people in 2013. In this case, it was with his friend and mentor, Matt Lowe. Matt is the CEO of SwiftStraw, an Inc 5000 company that is disrupting the pinestraw industry. Sean had known Matt for years and respected his work ethic, values, and business acumen. Matt and Sean had been getting quarterly coffee together over the years since his returned from Northwestern.

A friendship soon turned into a 6 month consulting gig for Sean and SwiftStraw.

The consulting gig was focused around finding a better system to run and operate a landscaping business. Traditional CRMs that many of us think of today, like Salesforce.com, were not built for landscaping businesses.

Matt said about the consulting project, “if you can’t find a good solution, would you be interested in building one?”

If you can’t find a good solution, would you be interested in building one?

Sean replied, “Absolutely.”

Sean worked out of the SwiftStraw office for 6 months. In the first couple of months, he realized there was not a good solution. He participated in demos with dozens of potential vendors, and none of them fit the needs of SwiftStraw. At the time, they were using Salesforce.com and customized it dramatically to fit their needs -- but as the business grew, they needed more. Example features included scheduling, obtaining field data, job costing, route planning, time tracking, and much more. Sean quickly learned managing a field workforce required a unique set of tools.

After two months of research, Sean got some of the band back together, including his lead engineer from ViralPrints, to start building. Mixed with Matt’s infectious enthusiasm and vision, SingleOps was born. At the end of the 6 month period, the minimum viable product was built. SwiftStraw was their first customer, and they had 10 more who were providing feedback on what features to build. One key go-to-market benefit, unique to this industry, was the tight-knit web of contractors and subcontractors. If a product is valuable, customers will share it.

Through Matt’s reputation and industry relationships, finding the first 10 paying customers was a quick email or ride-along away.

The product became so desirable to SwiftStraw’s circle of vendors and contractors that Sean was able to pre-sell deals under the assumption that they would build a particular feature, knowing it was applicable to hundreds of other potential customers. There were even two deals valued at a total of $25,000 that he was able to sell before the product was even built!

Iterating on Business Ideas Since the Beginning and Beyond

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