Founder Focus | Jason Bolt, Revant

 

Welcome back to a new feature in our Founder Focus series. Our goal here is to chat with the amazing minds we have built relationships with over the last decade and share some insights with you. We hope you glean some valuable information from our friends who have built amazing companies.

Today, we’re featuring an interview with Jason Bolt, founder of Revant Optics, client of Scott Davidson, here at White Summers.

Jason has honed in on building the right team and looking at ways to innovate the eyewear industry in a sustainable way. He took an unconventional route, starting out with a global idea and building on it with a clear direction. Get to know him through this interview below.


SAMANTHA:

Talk a little bit about Revant Optics and how that all started.

JASON:

I founded Revant in 2010. It’s hard to believe, over 10 years ago now, down in my apartment in Eugene, Oregon, while I was going to school for a post-baccalaureate pre-med program. Honestly, I was just trying to figure out how to make money paying out-of-state tuition. I always had an entrepreneurial bug. One of the things that I had started doing was selling unlocked iPhones on eBay. I would buy iPhones from people on Craigslist, and then I would use the SIM card to unlock them so they could be used internationally. I would sell them to customers all over the world, because, at the time, Apple wasn’t offering iPhones outside of the U.S. or North America. I learned how to sell on eBay. 

 I had the thought, “I wish I could find a product that I didn’t have to source from people off of Craigslist” because that’s always a little bit sketchy, to be honest. I have some good stories there. But I was passionate about it, and I could use eBay as a platform to sell because I knew eBay really well. Through that process and looking at different products and doing research, I came to the idea of lenses and eyewear. I was big into mountain biking and had a lot of Oakleys. They always get scratched or if you have a prescription, it expires typically every two years. The mindset is that if the lens is scratched or the prescription expires, I have to get a whole new pair of sunglasses. For me, I was like “I don’t want to spend $200 on frames. Why can’t I just swap out my lenses?” I was frequently damaging lenses because I was throwing them into my bag and my keys would scratch them or I’d occasionally crash on my mountain bike. That was always super frustrating needing to spend more money on those, so I started doing some research on where lenses were made. I went to the website Alibaba.com, this crazy sourcing website where you can find anything in the world. You can source anything from water bottles to desks and more. I searched for sunglasses and found several factories, mainly in Asia, that all made eyewear. I emailed them asking if they would make lenses for existing frames, so if I sent them frames, would they make lenses to fit perfectly in those frames? I convinced a few to do that, and they sent me samples. I ended up with about two hundred sample pairs of lenses, and I first took them to my optician and asked “are these going to make people go cross-eyed? Are they good quality?” After she said they were good quality, I photographed them, went to a jewelry store down in Eugene and bought a bunch of small boxes and printed out labels with my logo on them, and put them all up on eBay on a Friday. 

 I had planned a road trip down to Tahoe with a friend of mine. We got about halfway there, and I looked at my account and all two hundred pairs had sold. I was like “sorry buddy, we have to turn around and go back up. We have to ship these out.” eBay is all about customer feedback and the most important aspect of that is getting them the product they ordered quickly. It worked out well for him. He came back and helped me package up the product and ship it out. I ended up buying us some flights down there with some of the profit I made off the samples. 

That was really the genesis, seeing there was a clear need for the product. I wasn’t the only one that was frustrated by having to buy new frames instead of just new lenses. From there, it just grew organically. There was a lot of interest, a lot of great feedback on the lenses once people received them. They said they don’t just have Oakley frames but also have others. Our customer typically has six-to-eight pairs of frames. They’re very active and outdoorsy and they consider eyewear to be an essential part of their life, not just an accessory. Through that core group of customers saying they’d like more and then spreading the word with their friends, I grew rapidly with zero marketing budget. I didn’t spend anything on marketing, just product development, getting that product up, and then really focusing on delivering customer service for the first two years.

 SAMANTHA:

Wow, so you posted them on a Friday, and then by Saturday, they were sold out?

 JASON:

Yes. My first reaction was that I was 26 and, man, I had more money in my eBay account than I had in my bank account. It was huge. It was great. My follow-up to that was, “well, clearly there’s a lot of demand here.” So, I had really found this product niche that I had been looking for. I can source this, and people want it and there’s a sustainability point. You’re empowering people to reuse the products they already have rather than buy new products. That was another compelling element to me, as well. Not just saving money but also saving waste. We’ve carried that through into the brand in its current form.

 SAMANTHA:

So, it started with lenses specifically to Oakleys and then branched from there based on people’s needs?

JASON:

Yes, Oakley was really the first company to bring the idea of performance eyewear to life. So, earlier on when they started in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s they were laughed at as a brand. People said, “nobody is going to want sunglasses for sports, that’s ridiculous–it’s all fashion and lifestyle.” Of course, they had the last laugh. They grew to like a $2 billion valuation and sold to one of the bigger companies. That customer base wants the best and don’t want to sacrifice quality, at all, but are willing to spend more for a product that they know performs better and lasts longer. They’re a passionate customer base. They make up the biggest percentage of our revenue. Now we serve hundreds of different brands. We branched out into some other categories but with the core really being a focus on quality. Making sure we offer lenses that are better than what you get from the brands themselves.

 SAMANTHA:

How was your relationship with those brands that you were swapping lenses for?

 JASON:

It’s funny. We don’t have a formal relationship with any of them. We’ve hired a lot of people that used to work at those companies. There’s just no formal relationship. They’re really focused on the traditional business model rather than our category which is new frames. What drives revenue is continuing to make old frames and styles obsolete. Sort of, this planned obsolescence model. We’ve come in and said that that’s wasteful. We’re changing the paradigm of the industry. One of our goals is to say, “If you have a frame, you love you should be able to wear it for life.” A lot of the frames we provide lenses for are over 20-30 years old. I love that as a story. Traditional brands haven’t really adapted to the idea that longevity is really important to consumers and the environment. It’s a mindset shift for them that I don’t know they’re going to be capable of. So, it’s not that we’re adversarial by any means. We wouldn’t exist without those frames being in the market and those brands existing in our current form. But we don’t really fit into their business model at this point. I work with a lot of the people that used to work with those brands, and they say they would get lenses from us and try to figure out how to respond. There was never any coherent strategy for how to respond or act to our model. These are some people that work at Oakley and a few other brands that were very high-up executives. It’s kind of fun for me. We’re just this scrappy startup with grand ambitions that they’re aware of but don’t know how to react to. Long-term I really hope we get to partner with them. That’s one of my goals is that we’re going to lead by example. Planned obsolescence is antiquated, and in fact, it’s damaging. Long-term I think it’s the responsibility of businesses to address the issue of waste in meaningful ways. The number one way you can address that is by acknowledging that the reuse of products that are already in the market is the most sustainable approach and then building solutions to enable customers to do that in a way that is easy and that is cool. It’s hard to do that, but that’s the future.

 SAMANTHA:

Back in the day, people used to fix things that were broken, but now, generationally, we don’t know how to fix things. Like you said, we don’t have a solution for fixing certain things. It’s nice to have access to solutions rather than just throwing them away.

 JASON:

The other side of that is that companies are actively working against making that possible. You work at a law firm and there’s a lot of interesting things happening legally right now, specifically with Apple, and all these companies that cropped up over the years to repair iPhones. iFix is now suing for the right to repair. They’re saying companies are actively designing products so we can’t replace the batteries or it’s cost-prohibitive to replace the screen. I get it from a capitalist standpoint. They want to sell you as much as they can. They don’t want to sell you the charging base, you have to buy that now. They’re changing up the cables all the time. But I think we need to change the narrative to say that that’s imperative. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to do that anymore. If you care about the environment, how are we structuring policies and laws with the environment in mind? You have to step onto the playing field. If you’re saying “do whatever you want to make as much money as you are” it’s going to result in products being made so that you can’t repair them. So, there’s sort of this dual effort where we need to say, “no, the ability to repair products has to be reborn.” You have to change business models and companies have to embrace the idea that it’s cool to repair. To your point, you used to be able to and that was admired. People would be like, “you’re good at fixing things.”

 SAMANTHA:

That’s such a different thing to do–fix it instead of replacing the whole thing.

 JASON:

The fear there is that you’re not going to be able to make money. That’s not cool or I can’t sell it for as much. I think that’s a false narrative. I think there is plenty of opportunity to sell more services and design products that are more sustainable like all of our lenses now. We built a custom program with Piedmont Plastics, a national plastics recycler, and we now upcycle 100% of the waste that we generate in the manufacturing process. Again, telling that story that it’s possible and you can actually make money off that waste. It’s actually a revenue stream. The next step is to bring customers into that and brands to say that your customers are going to demand this. We’re the solution. I don’t see it being always us and them. I see it being more like we’re a solution to known problems that they may not have thought of or addressed and we start to partner that way.

 SAMANTHA:

I see the trend of moving to more sustainable solutions for things. It seems like the younger generation is getting more and more appealed to that concept.

 JASON:

Yes! Thank you. To that point, I’ll mention one other stat I just read, because a lot of companies know it’s important but they’re not willing to pay for it. There’s a bridge to that future in anything, whether it’s a new technology or a new concept. I think, it was over 80% of Gen Z says that the number one issue right now is environmentalism and sustainability. Over 80% of those up-and-coming customers are saying that businesses need to have an active plan to address that. They need to take a social stance. It’s no longer a theory, right? If you aren’t on it now, you’re behind. It’s fun to be on the front edge of that in our industry.

 SAMANTHA:

Can you talk about some of the lessons you’ve learned and some of the mistakes you've made that you’ve had to learn from as learning points for other people who are considering starting a business like you did?

 JASON:

There are so many. Mac did a good job in his interview with you, calling out some of those important lessons. I mean, I think the biggest one for me, and this may be a little non-traditional, but the most important thing that I’ve found in my entrepreneurial journey is investing in and protecting, first and foremost, my mental well-being. One of the best-kept secrets that’s also the worst-kept secret is that the job of an entrepreneur evolves constantly. Especially if you’re growing. It’s a lot of pressure to not only evolve the way you approach your role and your expertise and mindset but to also continue to set the vision for the team you’re hiring. Hire good people. Maintain optimism when things aren’t going right. It’s not something that you can really understand before you get in it, much like having kids. People can describe it and you can see Shark Tank and Elon Musk. He, right now, is sort of the pinnacle of entrepreneurial ventures. It looks amazing but, on a personal level, having healthy practices for your mental, physical, and spiritual health will carry you into this journey. That’s ongoing for me. I learned that five years ago, we were super unhealthy in the approach to mental, physical, and spiritual health. 

 I’ve got the right people around me. You don’t have to do it alone. In fact, you’re not going to be as successful if you don’t open up to the people in terms of getting feedback in areas you may be weaker. I was weaker on the wellness side of things. Showing any sort of weakness or admitting that is not the job of an entrepreneur or a leader in an organization. What I’ve found is that increasing that vulnerability and that idea that we all go through this and the more we share and the more we normalize the more we can mitigate a lot of those pitfalls along the way that are often self-induced. You’re like “things are going horrible. The business is going to collapse tomorrow, and no one likes me as the CEO.” Every single entrepreneur has those thoughts without fail and if you don’t then you’re a sociopath. There are a lot of entrepreneurial sociopaths but that’s not what I define as success. 

 Again, I think defining success upfront and saying that success for me may be different from you or any other entrepreneur is paramount. Define success. What I mean by success is not “I want to be a millionaire, billionaire, go public.” That’s part of it but that’s an outcome, and I’ve started to understand that the concept for me was really thinking through in each area of my life “what do I want that to look like in three, five, ten years or when I’m retired?” That’s part of the role of an entrepreneur and a leader is to say what I want this business and my teammates to look like for an amount of time. For me, it was wanting a healthy and lasting marriage. I didn’t sacrifice that for another $10 million. I want to have friends that are helping. It was more about community and keeping and maintaining and growing a strong community. I don’t have investors so I can say this publicly, I was willing to give up some capital gain to really invest in that area of life that I appreciate more than my bank account. Structuring a company that way to say part of this world is to create a healthy, engaging, and inspiring place to work. That may mean that we’re not cutthroat in the way we treat people on a climb to the top but that is because we define success differently than some other companies. That dictates who we take money from if we even take money from people. The people that we hire. That becomes values and principles.

 SAMANTHA:

What are some of the practices that you have created in your life to maintain mental well-being?

 JASON:

There’s a few. A lot of water is key. It’s funny how important that is and how people don’t know to take it seriously. I protect my time when I need to work out. Whether I’m on a mountain bike or skiing, I will take a day off to do that if I haven’t done it in a long time. I started running every other day–running a 5K with my neighbor during the pandemic. That’s become my escape. For me, too, thinking about where my supplemental deficiencies are? Vitamin D and a few others that I know I take religiously. That creates change in a positive direction. On the work side of things, I’ve done a lot of work in terms of figuring out where I have the highest and best value. That gets back to my point that growth is required at each stage of the business. Being a founder is very different than being a CEO. Knowing that the founding is all about survival and being scrappy. The CEO role is really about alignment and building the right team and having the vision further out. All that comes from understanding what your strengths are. Figuring out what you love to do and how you do more of that. How do I hire people that are better in these other areas that I’m not as good at? That’s been awesome. I’ve hired a whole new leadership team over the last 18 months. I’ve really built a team that’s complimentary to my strengths and I’m complimentary to theirs. We kind of live in “flow” where we’re doing the work we enjoy most often and that we sort of look around corners for each other so we’re able to build a very high degree of trust. That was a big component of setting up everyone on the team for being as mentally strong as they can. Knowing they can rely on their teammates, leaving time for those physical recharge moments. We’re doing a lot of that in the post-COVID world. We’re acknowledging people do burnout. You’re looking at screens a lot. There's been a lot of mental and emotional stress over the last couple of years. Being in tune with what those things are that affect people personally, including myself, and then building in practices to mitigate some of those stressors or address them in some way. You have to talk about those things and figure out what you’re doing to address them. That’s how you come up with better ways of living.

 SAMANTHA:

What would you say are some of the first couple of steps you took to legitimize your business?

 JASON:

On the legal side, I had the articles of incorporation and talked to an attorney to figure out exactly what I needed to do because I had no idea. It’s been long enough now that I can no longer be held accountable for selling product and having income without reporting it properly. At the very beginning, I didn’t have a formed LLC and I didn’t have separate bank accounts. I was selling product on eBay and buying more product in Asia and that was my business. Then I found out you need to make sure the state gets their cut, and the federal government gets theirs. That was really beneficial for me and luckily, I was connected with some people, both an accountant and an attorney who were willing to give free advice. That was big, especially for a beginning entrepreneur, to get structural advice on what you need. SBA (Small Business Association) is another great resource. They have templates to help you organize. I met with an SBA advisor. I told them this is the business that I’m running, and they told me that’s great, but you need to start to get some of this in place but don’t document that until you get the right structure in place. First and foremost, make sure you can do all this before you start making money. Leaning on experts was helpful. When you’re trying to get a loan when you’re younger you can get free advice. I had some good stories. I flew over to Asia and literally brought duffel bags of lenses back. You can bring like 500 to 1,000 pairs in duffel bags. The value of that is huge, but, of course, you’re not going through the proper channels. I had no idea. I learned as I went, and I probably would’ve learned faster had I asked the right questions. That’s part of the advice I would give. Don’t go too long not having the right structure because you run some risks there.

 SAMANTHA:

When did you first realize you needed to do some of that structuring?

 JASON:

When I was going through customs in New York and customs pulled me into a room and said they were going to confiscate and destroy all my product. They really laid into me quite a bit, New York style. I truly didn’t know you couldn’t do this. That was really a kick in the teeth. I lost all that value and the time that I spent over there, so I had to figure it out. That was the first moment where I knew I had to do a bit more research. The other was from an IP (intellectual property) standpoint. I worked with an attorney so I could create basically an exact replica of a lens in a frame and sell that and use the name of the brand and the frame in my ads on eBay. Luckily, there’s a carveout for replacement parts where you can use descriptive words in the form of a brand and model. That’s a well-worn path and the best example I can think of is rims or tires for cars because you need to be able to describe the car. That or an iPhone case or cell phone case is the same thing. That was another point where I knew I could confidently invest more time and energy in this business because we’re not going to get shut down.

 SAMANTHA:

What makes you stand out from some of your competitors?

 JASON:

First and foremost, our focus on building quality products and experiences. Our goal is to bring better vision through premium products and services. Having a clear mission to say “this is where we’re headed” sets the tone for everything we do. There’s obviously sustainability components and other things that go into that. I know that’s led us to a stronger brand positioning in terms of how much higher quality our product is, and we can demonstrate that. We have the equipment to show if you buy from this competitor, you’re going to get an inferior product and that’s going to lead to literal headaches and potentially vision issues. A focus on sustainability, too. We’re not just stopping at saying we make replacement lenses, we’re sustainable. We’re trying to move the entire industry in the direction of a circular economy. There’s ten times more plastic on earth than humans use on a given day. So, how do we build a business that capitalizes on that opportunity in our industry? None of our competitors are thinking in that way. And then a hyperfocus on customer experience. Our guiding principle is creating the best customer experience. That’s every facet of the company. It’s customer service interactions down to how we manage our money on the cash side. That all has to point to creating a better customer experience in some way. That leads to innovative approaches to products, services, return policies, and exchanges. I’d say those three things are the main differentiators for us at this point.

 SAMANTA:

What would you say has been one of your greatest professional accomplishments?

 JASON:

I was just telling my team this last week. We had a leadership team off-site and the team that I’ve built right now was a really challenging undertaking from start to finish. Obviously, I’ve been hiring people at a consistent pace right now but I’m happy with my ability to recognize that I need to build a team with a higher level of experience and not only come up with the structure but also get the team members in place. That’s one of my greatest recent accomplishments. I was really proud of winning the Entrepreneurial Achievement Award in 2019. That was a recognition of a lot of hard work and that obviously wasn’t just me. It was the team, as well. Just a personally cool moment. I had family there and was surrounded by the Oregon entrepreneurial community I had worked with for so long. I’m really proud of what we’ve built here. That was a cool moment of celebration.

 SAMANTHA:

How did you come up with Revant as the name for your company?

 JASON:

Great question. The original name was Visionary Lenses. I thought it was genius. We had a double entendre. As the business grew, I realized we may not just want to do lenses eventually and thought it was cheesy after a while. We actually contracted with a creative director. At the time, we had six employees and went through a branding exercise. We had a whiteboard and said, “what is relevant and what do we do?” We were creating a new business model. We wanted to revolutionize the industry. We want to be sustainable. We put a bunch of words up and started matching them together. The idea of innovation and revitalizing and the idea of reuse. The creative director loved it. It’s an interesting name and it’s strong. Then, they did their creative director thing and went and looked at the social media handles and the URL and it was all available. That one won out. That was our exercise, and it was something that could apply to many categories, so we stuck with it.

 SAMANTHA:

What are some things that you are moving towards in the future with the company that you’re really excited about and are willing to share?

 JASON:

This year has really been about going through a phase of upgrading all our systems, our products, really getting ready from an operations perspective to scale. In this next phase, it’s really a growth-oriented phase and scaling exercise. To do that, you have a lot of discussions around “if we were to 2X or 3X the company, what would break?” That became what we worked on over the last 18 months. Like I said earlier, all our lens material is now higher quality than anything you get from our competitors. It’s all 100% recyclable through our recycling program. We’re going to launch a program so we can make lenses for pretty much any frame by the end of the year. That’s the goal. Currently, you have to find your frame on our site and pick it and we’ll ship you the lens and you do the installation. In the future, we’ll have a program where we can do the installation for you and make lenses for, again, pretty much any frame. We have some really cool partnership opportunities that we’re working on right now. Some big brands not just in the eyewear space but in the tech space that are getting into optics, lenses, VR, and AR. I can’t disclose names but we’re in talks now with some really cool partnership opportunities where we’re essentially the developer of new lens technologies. Then, we enable brands, retailers, offer their customers the widest selection of lenses, tints, or prescriptions delivered efficiently in a direct-to-consumer model. Some really cool partnerships and collaborations coming down the line.

 SAMANTHA:

Where would you say you draw most inspiration for what you do with your company?

JASON:

Recently there’s been a number of different ways I’ve come up with ideas for what to do next. I read a lot. And not just in our industry. The vision industry – I get a lot of updates on how it’s progressing and what technology is coming online to create better experiences for customers online. Pre-COVID I used to attend a lot of tradeshows like Outdoor Retailer and others to get a sense for how other companies are moving in e-commerce. Not just what the vision industry is doing because I find the vision industry is a lot further behind in e-commerce than other companies. For instance, the company Hims and Hers. They just had a valuation over $1 billion, I believe. Their whole service model is being the modernized version of healthcare for people, and it’s packaged up in an educational and approachable way. Things that are traditionally taboo to talk about. You don’t want to go into your CVS to pick up these products but now you can do it online from the privacy of your own home. They’re doing online consultations with medical professionals so you can get prescriptions written and those products delivered. Staying on top of what’s happening in e-commerce and how companies are using new technology to solve problems and bridging the gap between the physical and digital world. I’m on a few boards so being involved with other companies, too. Frequently talking to other entrepreneurs about what they’re doing has always been a source of inspiration for me. Those are probably the main sources.

 SAMANTHA:

What are some of your go-to reading materials?

 JASON:

We started a book club. Right now, we’re reading “The Brand Story.” That one has been really inspiring for me. It’s about putting customers at the heart of your brand story. Each leadership member gets to pick a book for us each month. That one is super inspiring because it really honed in on the concept of putting the customers at the center of the company. A lot of people talk about it, but it provides not only rationale for doing it but also a framework for how to do it in a better way. “Leaders Eat Last” was another really inspiring one I read recently by Simon Sinek. He’s a very well-known author and TedTalk speaker. That book helped to articulate the idea that the way you develop policies and company structures has a heavy influence on how valued team members feel. It even broke down how value is not just an intangible term, it comes from chemical reactions of the body. Serotonin, dopamine, and other hormones are released when something good or bad happens or there’s a good or bad thought. You either create stress or you create a feeling of belonging and love and connection. I kind of understood it in the music festival scene, but I had never thought about how to directly apply it to policies and structure, and compensation at a company. That’s a fascinating concept. That, to me, was a paradigm shift. Every time we approach things like the employee handbook for instance and updating that, we think “how does that create moments of serotonin release? Can we do that?” Extreme Ownership was another influential book. And it centers around the military. Specifically, the Marines and Navy Seals where the most tenured team member is at the back of the line every time and the newest team members are at the front and how that communicates, non-verbally, your value. In those little moments, if you think through them ahead of time, they have a very big impact on your team and leadership. They realize we’re here to serve this group and to empower them to do this work. Beyond that, how do we structure things, so they feel better and more connected? That was a cool and impressive read.

 SAMANTHA:

Do you have any good book recommendations for new entrepreneurs?

 JASON:

One book that we’ve used for the last five years, and I read very early on but decided to roll it out at the company here was “Traction: Get A Grip On Your Business.” Very early when we had twelve employees, I thought we were wasting so much time on not having an aligning document in the ongoing process for determining priorities. There’s got to be something. There’s all these big company resources and enterprise platforms to prioritize and share ideas. This, to me, was a cool resource and it centers around “Entrepreneurial Operating System.” You have the vision first and have that vision laid out in a one-page document. Then you get traction by prioritizing what your team works on based on that vision for the future. That, to me, was a really big turning point for the company and alignment. Any entrepreneur should read it, even if you think you’re just one person and you don’t need to prioritize your work in this way. Even just getting that framework together can be helpful.

 SAMANTHA:

Something you mentioned at the very beginning was that you’ve always had a very entrepreneurial way of doing things. Can you speak to that? What do you think it is that drives your entrepreneurial way of thinking?

 JASON:

I get a rush or a buzz when I’m creating or thinking about connecting dots. How can this be done differently? Thinking about the future of things. As I progress in the business, I tend to think bigger and bigger. Using the example, I gave earlier; a lot of people need iPhones in different areas of the world and there’s a chip you can put in the SIM card that will unlock it for those people. That’s really cool and I knew I could make money off it. That idea of creating your own value definitely came from my mom. She says if you’ve got an opportunity to do something or start something interesting, do it. She was doing that when I was growing up. All these different business ventures and not all of them were successful but that ingrained in me that you don’t always have to go the traditional route. It just didn’t fit for me. I’m not a linear thinker. It’s more connecting dots and building something new. That’s where I derive a lot of energy. Probably the dopamine and hormones that pop up. The last part of it would be that momentum gathered as I started to build a team and see those ideas come to life faster and in a more effective way than even, I had dreamed of before they existed. That becomes a part of it, too. Now I understand the concept of a team with a high level of trust, a lot of experience working together to create new things. I wouldn’t want to do anything else at this point.

 SAMANTHA:

Is there anything else you want to put out there?

 JASON:

The last thing I would recommend is just thinking about your audience. Hopefully, people are considering becoming entrepreneurs or are already early-stage entrepreneurs. There’s never been a better time to test ideas. With the number of people that are searching online for products or services with how COVID has catalyzed the need for innovative products or services that not only fill that demand but also thinking about how we solve some of the bigger issues that we’re dealing with as a species. If you have an idea for a solution: go for it, test it, be smart about it. Right now, you have such a massive opportunity. I think it’s a rare moment in time where my kid is going to come up and everything is going to be digital and virtual. We’re building a bridge to that. We, as a generation right now, are building new businesses and get to determine what that looks like. Technology has democratized access to customers. Get in there and get to testing and building. Don’t hold back. You’re going to regret it looking back even five years from now. Go for it.


Original Post:
By
White Summers

 
Samantha Gee