The global potential of digital space excites Eric Edelstein as does the potential for a smallish team of just 20 people in Cape Town to take an idea and transform it into a worldwide business.
Edelstein is one of the brains behind Springleap, a crowdsourcing play that enables creative people and designers to make money through community commerce. The t-shirt company is well established and you can now found Springleap t-shirts in cool local stores, and their reach is increasing to more and more offshore markets.
On the back of lessons learned from the success of Springleap, Edelstein and his business partner Eran Eyal recently launched Evly, a venture that combines social networking with crowdsourcing. Evly promises users that they can set up a crowdsourcing effort in just seven clicks. Evly also promises to be a big global player. ITWeb speaks to Edelstein on success, failure, criticism, lessons learned and how he intends to conquer the world.
ITWeb: What have you learned along the way?
Edelstein: It's all about implementation! How you implement correctly is the continual challenge. From a young age I've been entrepreneurial, having a stand at a craft market selling books and comics when I was 10, and trading shares on the stock market when I was 13. My BCom in Finance gave me a solid foundation, and after a few years in the Internet space, in 2001, I did my honours in Electronic Commerce. But the real learning has been hands-on involvement. A passion for all areas of online marketing, and a desire to bring together a great team, and then motivate, inspire, mentor, and lead them to achieve greatness. Due to my analytic nature, I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about procedures and systems. And I can't stop thinking about the vision of the company - how we're going to move forward, how we're going to do bigger deals, how we're going to raise our next round of funding. Also, communicate constantly, with shareholders, with your team, and with all other stakeholders.
ITWeb: Why start-ups? Why not reap the rewards of a corner office?
Edelstein: There's raw energy in a start-up. Sure at times it is chaotic, haphazard, and unstructured, but there's a sense of energy, as everyone strives to turn a concept into a business. Who needs an office? Armed with my laptop, I can work at any desk in our office, or a coffee shop in a foreign country. Perhaps a few rooms in our office for when people need some peace and quiet. Most importantly, I like wearing shorts and a t-shirt to the office! I'd really enjoy showing you pictures of the looks on people's faces when they arrive at our office in a suit and tie, and I step out wearing a springleap 'T' with a pair of shorts!
ITWeb: What makes an entrepreneur?
Edelstein: When you fall down, you get back up. Your life becomes a focus to turn a concept or idea into a real, sustainable business.
ITWeb: Why are entrepreneurs important?
Edelstein: They push for new concepts to be brought to life, many of which wouldn't see the light of day if not for these risk takers. Entrepreneurs generate jobs. And then some of these people they hire, go on to launch further businesses using the knowledge they learned and the wealth they earned, working for a successful start-up. At least half-a-dozen people who used to work at the businesses I've been involved in have gone on to start their own successful businesses. (Also interesting is that many marriages resulted from people meeting at our start-ups, so perhaps we should consider starting a dating agency!)
ITWeb: How has social networking changed things for entrepreneurs?
Edelstein: Nearly everyone in the world is now within reach, if you learn how to get to them. There are new opportunities everywhere you look. And there are new ways to get your business noticed, to recruit the right people, and to increase your sales.
ITWeb: How does it change the rules of customer management?
Edelstein: The world is becoming more and more transparent, so live, eat, and breathe the values in your company, as your customers will quickly notice if you're not living up to your promises. In our new digital age, everyone has a voice, so constantly remember that. It brings a sad smile to my face when I still hear people remark that they don't want a company forum or blog, as they don't want their customers to have a platform for expressing their views, in case they are negative. Don't they realise that if they don't provide the means, the customers will find an alternative place to air and discuss their viewpoints! The people have power. Now, as Spiderman taught us, they just need to remember that with great power comes great responsibility.
ITWeb: Why did you decide to create Evly?
Edelstein: My days as an online marketing manager for one of the world's largest online casino groups reinforced my thinking of building global. From raising Angel Investment for a start-up that launched in the UK, just before the Internet bubble burst in 2000, to co-founding global Internet plays such as search engine agency Clicks2Customers.com, affiliate network TrafficSynergy.com, and Web site builder, Yola.com, the vision has always been to create global brands. With Evly, we have the opportunity to create one of the largest global Internet brands with our model. It's a daunting task, as it's a massive project, and has been created to date on a shoestring budget, but I'm sure many of the global Internet brands we marvel at today, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Zappos and many more, had similar challenges, issues and concerns that we are faced with today.
ITWeb: You're accused of launching Evly too soon. What's your response to the haters?
Nearly everyone in the world is now within reach, if you learn how to get to them.
Eric Edelstein, co-founder, Evly
Edelstein: I made a conscious decision to launch very early, and at the current time I feel I made the right decision. A concept only takes on a life when people outside of its immediate circle start using it. I would have liked to have had more of the bugs ironed out when we launched, and for simplifying even further the experience when people build crowdsourcing challenges on Evly, but we decided that we were launching on 22 November, and we worked flat out to meet this goal. Many projects launch months if not years late. With Evly, we launched early, with many known issues, many of which were resolved within days of launching. Since launching two weeks ago, the feedback from people around the world helping us test every aspect of the site, has been invaluable. BusinessInsider has a brilliant article, which says that if you are not embarrassed by your site when you launch, you've launched too late. I'm very proud of what we have achieved in a very short space of time, and definitely not embarrassed, so with hindsight, perhaps we should have launched even earlier. The reason we launched early is to get constructive criticism, and in a very short space of time, it's been invaluable. It's just a pity that the feedback has sometimes been accompanied by nastiness, which I don't believe is necessary.
ITWeb: Are there angel investors in South Africa - how do you find them?
Edelstein: Are there wealthy people in South Africa? Are they prepared to put some of their wealth into entrepreneurs? The answer to both these questions is a resounding yes. But as the Angel Investment market in South Africa is a lot less organised than internationally, finding the right angel investor for your business is like finding a needle in a haystack. People always express surprise when they learn how much effort and time we spend on finding and then communicating with potential angels and VCs.
ITWeb: How did you secure the R4 million investment for Evly?
Edelstein: Raising funding is all about finding a match between money and value add skills on the one side, believing in the idea and the team on the other side. The funding we raised was for launching a prototype and gaining market traction. We need significantly more investment to turn the prototype into a profitable global business, and are currently in discussions with various venture capitalists and other investors around the world.
ITWeb: What's the best advice anyone's ever given you?
Edelstein: Think big, but don't ignore the small stuff.
ITWeb: Have you ever failed? What did you learn from failure?
Edelstein: I've failed a number of times. I try to take in lessons from both my successes and failures. Often I speak to people, and assume they have specific knowledge, and then I realise that I've acquired this knowledge through the journey. And the journey hasn't been all fun and games - when you look back, you often only remember the highlights and forget the hard times, but it's the lessons learned from the journey that gives you the experience to be able to handle the situation better the next time it presents itself. I keep hearing about the fact that in the US, failure is not frowned upon, as people realise that failure gives experience, which hopefully results in success the next time round. And I keep hearing that in South Africa, failure is seen in a negative light. From an investment point of view in South Africa, there are very few start-ups here that have created large global success. In the US, early stage investors get a huge return in the start-ups that make it really big, and this compensates for the fact that most don't make it.
ITWeb: What has success taught you?
Edelstein: That creating a success is nearly always 99% hard work meeting 1% luck.
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