If their name means anything at all than Memphis startup WorkForPie should have several walk in freezers worth of pie because they’ve been working really hard… for pie. WorkForPie was a member of the first class at Memphis’ accelerator SeedHatchery. They were also the first startup out of SeedHatchery to raise significant follow on funding.
After graduating from SeedHatchery co-founders Cliff McKinney and Brad Montgomery were able to attract a $300,000 investment round from Solidus in Nashville and a>m ventures.
They’ve been doing a number of things right and have a tireless work ethic. Montgomery and McKinney are also passionate about Memphis and the startup ecosystem brewing there. McKinney and Montgomery are very vocal about what they think matters, especially when you’re growing a startup outside Silicon Valley or New York City.
All of this leads to the reason why they are the first startup from Memphis Tennessee that will appear in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco next week.
We got a chance to catch up with WorkForPie and talk about TechCrunch Disrupt, brewing startups outside the confines of the valley and product, product, product. Check out our short interview below:
I think whether we have a real edge remains to be seen. We’ve raised money, which is a huge milestone, but it’s not the only indicator of success. That said, I think we work really hard, we never gave up even when we were in “the trough of sorrow,” the team works really well together, and we have a pretty good habit of making our own luck. Sometimes luck is about putting yourself in situations where lucky things can happen, and we try to do that and put ourselves out there as often as possible. It’s amazing the number of lucky things that have happened to us because we’ve been in some unexpected place and/or made some unexpected connection.Oh and we’re pretty good at shipping crappy stuff. That’s a little counterintuitive, but I think a lot of startups think that things have to be perfect before they’re released into the wild. It’s kind of an ego thing. We’re much more firmly planted in the “minimum viable thing” camp. We ship it ugly and oftentimes buggy, but we learn from those mistakes because our incredibly patient users tell us exactly what we need to fix and what can make Work for Pie better.
I think a lot of valley startups are consumer facing and are in the “grow the user base and figure out revenue later” camp. I’m not so sure that flies very well outside of the valley and maybe a couple other places. We struggled with raising money at first because a) we didn’t have revenue and b) we didn’t have a clear path to get there. I think VCs outside of the valley are looking for those things. They’re more likely to fund a business making $2,000/month than they are to fund a business with a ton of users and potential revenue that’s much higher.
My advice really is to bootstrap as long as you can, get to the point where you’re making revenue–even if it’s just a little–and then try to raise money. You’ll get better valuations and much more interest that way. And if you’re a first time entrepreneur, and in some cases even if you’re not, don’t anticipate valuations like you read about in TechCrunch. They don’t happen too often here.
TechCrunch Disrupt is all about disrupting the traditional way of doing things, and we really think that our new service is going to change the way software developers discover great companies. And it’s going to disrupt a lot of traditional businesses in the process. In a lot of ways we’re trying to kill the traditional job board. So the Disrupt event is completely appropriate. It’s really a perfect storm for us. With the hackathon there’ll be lots of potential new users, and the event itself attracts a lot of companies that are in our target market. Plus it doesn’t hurt that there are a few investors there too. We’re not the kind of startup that’s going to do tons of these big events. We’ll go to hackathons and regional software conferences, but this will probably be the biggest event for us, maybe ever. So, if we’re going to pick one big event to attend, it may as well be the biggest.
Well it’s really the coming out party for our new service, so we hope to get a lot of buzz, a lot of great feedback, and a lot of new clients. We’re also going to show a lot of people that Memphis is up and coming. We realize that we’re representing our city out there, and we’re extremely proud and honored to be doing so. We certainly hope to help put Memphis and Tennessee on the map a bit.
Sure! We’re building a platform for company discovery.
Job boards are doing it wrong. They give job seekers two or three paragraphs of boilerplate and then ask them to make a significant decision based on that. By contrast, our platform is made up of highly visual, information rich company profiles that make it easy for a job seeker to learn about the team, the company culture, the technology, and even what a day or week in the life looks like.Job boards, recruiters, and most of the other alternatives favor size, not quality. The little guys with the little budgets just get buried. But big does not always equal awesome. Work for Pie is focused on amazing places to work, no matter the size. Every company gets one profile, and that profile says A LOT about what the company stands for, so there’s no advantage for a big company with an unlimited budget, unless they also happen to be a great place to work.And Work for Pie is about recruiting, yes, but we think it’s more than that. It’s not dropping $400, posting a job for one month, and getting as many resumes as you can. It’s about putting your company out there, saying “this is what we do, and this is what we’re about,” and building relationships with developers and other companies that can lead to new hires, new partnerships, and greater visibility.
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