This is your brain on fundraising

I am looking forward to moving past the crushing stage.

Anita Roddick the founder of The Body Shop passed away on September 10th and while I can’t say that I was a heavy user of Body Shop products, I was very aware of the Body Shop’s brand positioning. Body Shop was the first that I can remember, I am 28, practitioner and marketer of environmentally and socially conscious corporate practices. What I was not aware of till this morning, was that the Body Shop’s conscious was founded on 5 points that guided Anita Roddick’s development of the Body Shop into a billion dollar brand.

1. Take your business personally: Business has, traditionally, addressed the world with profits in mind, which is to say: impersonally. We can no longer afford this. More than any other generation – [today’s] business people are in a position to lead in making the world a better place. We must take more responsibility, which is to say, take it personally.

2. Be daring. Be first. Be different: Or no one will notice.

3. Be good.: Because you can.

4. Business is not beyond morality. Business is no longer a cold-hearted, objective, pseudo-scientific project to manipulate customers…it can’t be that anymore. The future of the world depends on us doing business with heart. Without ‘heart’ the creativitiy of the human spirit dwindles, too.

5. Business is like activism: It is a way of saying what kind of world you want to live in. Protest is not enough. You need a vision.

If you had come up to me on the street yesterday and asked me the maxims that drive PlansForUs, I probably would have given you a long winded answer that eventually would have described how these 5 points describe our business goals and vision. But now here they are, encapsulated in 5 neatly numbered sections that can serve to elucidate the goals ahead for PlansForUs. I will work on building out how PlansForUs achieves each of these points in blog entries to come. For now, enjoy the visionary genius of Anita Roddick,

Just a quick update on the PlansForUs business. We have been really excited about our growth so far. In fact the internal target that we set for number of users going into September was surpassed by nearly 3 times. However, we still have our issues and we continue to receive and prioritize the feedback of our users. For those who have provided feedback, thank you. While you may not necessarily see your feedback on the site yet, rest assured that it is in our development queue and Steve is hammering on it.

This discussion of growth and incorporating user feedback brings us to a post from On-Startup’s which I just reread depicting two go-to-market strategies. Take a look below and take a wild guess as to which one PlansForUs has adopted.

The “Big Bang” Strategy

1. Have idea
2. Raise Capital
3. Code like crazy in “super stealth mode”
4. Hire VP of Marketing to plan big launch
5. Hire PR agency to launch
6. Launch!
7. Success!(?)

Sony, Microsoft and many others seem to use this strategy to marginal effect.

The “We’re Only as Smart as our Users” Strategy

1. Have idea
2. Bootstrap / Beg / Borrow
3. Tell the World
4. Release product to the unsuspecting
5. Get feedback
6. Iterate, iterate, iterate!
7. Success!

PlansForUs would add the following caveats. The 3 B’s in Step 2 endure for awhile. We’re hoping that we can curtail step 2 after the first “iterate” in Step 6 (investors we’ll be talking soon) and we actually flip flopped steps 3 and 4. We released the product to the unsuspecting and are using the product and some elegant 8 sentence pitches to tell the world.

Well I guess I answered my own question, sorry to ruin the fun. We of course are working hard to get to that step 7. As always let us know about how we can improve.

Today PlansForUs took another step towards our goal. That step was that I am now workig full time on PlansForUs. It is an exciting step for our team as it solidifies our commitment to executing on our vision and making a positive impact on the teaching community and on the classrooms where they change the lives of students everyday.

One of the new features that I added was a personal Twitter widget. My thoughts are to use this twitter account to let you know what I am up to and where I might be. I think it would be great to meet the users of PlansForUs, so stop by and introduce yourself and tell me what you think of PlansForUs. I look pretty much like my Meez (see below):

So I went to see Arcade Fire with my buddy Brad at Radio City Music Hall tonight.

I realize that this is totally unrelated to education and building a business, except that I was amazed with how Arcade Fire created its sound. It got me thinking about how to manage a team of talented people. Arcade Fire had 10 different players on stage and it was remarkable to see them interchanging instruments and roles on stage. Amidst this creative chaos Win Butler, the lead singer stayed in total control.

As PlansForUs grows I am going to work hard to be like Win Butler (albeit a lot less cool and not Canadian), letting the various PlansForUs players reach their highest use regardless of what instrument/role they choose to play.

Finally, The National was the opening act and they were awesome. It is no wonder that they sold out 5 consecutive nights at the Bowery Ballroom. I think that I am going to have to get a couple tickets for that show.

Thanks to Brad for getting these tickets and inviting me along. It was an amazing show, definitely among the tops that I have seen.

Now back to business.