GreenGoose: A True Story of Living the Entrepreneurial Dream
By Mike Grandinetti, TCN Mentor (see Mike’s bio at the end of the article)
Based on this post via BostInnovation.com
For GreenGoose, the journey from Oregon to Providence to Cambridge, and finally to last week’s Launch Conference in San Francisco, has been intense and rewarding. This is the classic entrepreneurial story of how hard work, frugality, determination to see your vision realized and confronting your fears combine to produce a successful outcome. For GreenGoose’s founder, having the support of a group of mentors and advisors along the way gave him the courage and confidence to keep moving forward despite moments of self-doubt.
Brian Krejcarek has been building physical things for as long as he can remember, and until this week, his most noteworthy creation was a cabin that he built in the woods near his home. Based on the overwhelmingly positive reaction that he has engendered amongst some of the US’ most prestigious and prolific angel investors, founders and entrepreneurs this past week, this is no longer the case. As of Thursday night, it is clear that GreenGoose now easily qualifies as Brian’s most impressive achievement to date.
Brian came to the Northeast to advance his idea, looking for a program to provide him with mentoring and capital. Ultimately, he was connected to Betaspring, a mentor driven accelerator program for technology and design engineers which is based in Providence, Rhode Island and is a member of the TechStars Network.
Brian showed up in Providence in his trademark green crewneck sweater and a rough sketch of his vision of making a fun game platform for doing things in the real world. His approach was to use very low cost wireless sensors embedded in stickers that could be placed on toys, water bottles, tooth brushes, dental floss, cereal boxes, skate boards and bicycles. The product serves young kids and families but is also relevant to “big kids” and can be played on the web, Facebook, Twitter, and on mobile devices.
Upon successful completion of the Betaspring program, Brian moved to Cambridge and started working out of the Cambridge Innovation Center. It was there that he quickly caught the attention of Bill Warner, Founder of Avid Technology and Wildfire and a prolific angel investor. Bill has been on a mission to mobilize the Boston angel community and was instrumental in bringing TechStars and the Open Angel Forum to Boston.
Bill is a system designer, and when he passed by Brian’s working area he noticed that Brian was not staring into a laptop but an oscilloscope – an instrument that was far more common during the historic minicomputer era in New England than in today’s mobile app and web 3.0 world. Bill sat down with Brian, and the young entrepreneur educated the master on low cost sensor and accelerometer design. Within an hour Bill was hooked and became Brian’s first investor. Given Bill’s increasing national visibility as an evangelist for angel investing, he was invited by Jason Calacanis as one of just two Boston area investors to join the Grand Jury at Launch in February 2011.
Bill started encouraging Brian to accelerate his product development so that he could be ready in time for the Launch event. Owen and the Betaspring team provided their own push, yet Brian was far from confident that he could pull it off. By all accounts, Brian has spent the past several months working around the clock to make the Launch deadline. According to Nick Tomarello, another Launch company stage presenter and Bill Warner protégé, Brian is often at the CIC working until 5AM.
When I met Brian at the event, I was struck by several things. First, his personality: he is quiet and unassuming with a boyish enthusiasm. Brian is also maniacally focused on placing every discretionary dollar into the product. His green soft cover briefcase was badly scuffed and the handle was held together by duct tape. He told me that his grandmother gave him $50 so that he could buy a new briefcase. Of course, the cash was immediately spent on the business (sorry, Grandma). His baggy green sweater – the same one he showed up with in Providence - now had dark elbow patches.
Brian was not slated to present on stage – he had been relegated to the Launch Pad (or “the Demo Pit”). A push from Bill Warner and other members of the jury gave Brian the opportunity to find his way onto the stage and to forever change the trajectory of his young company.
When he took the stage late in the day the jury had already sat through over twenty presentations. It would have been understandable if they had lost some of their mental energy and focus. Then, something remarkable happened. As Brian described GreenGoose, he absolutely captivated the audience – and the jury – with his pitch and his demo.
Brian simulated the motion of brushing his teeth, where a tiny sensor with an abundance of battery power, translates the motion of the toothbrush into a message that is wirelessly transmitted to the base station and publishes a record of the completed activity online. He then proceeded to demo other activities, like taking vitamins and drinking water, with a similar result.
The implications of the demo were clear – GreenGoose enables people to get lifestyle points for each activity they undertake in pursuit of a healthy goal. The company’s tagline is “Play Real Life Even Better.” We have all read about the Internet of Things for a while now – and IBM’s Smart Planet ubiquitous campaign has made the concept mainstream. GreenGoose is an elegantly simple and highly practical early realization of the idea. The audience got it and boisterously vocalized their support. The jury’s reaction was immediate.
It was a particularly compelling demo considering so many of the other companies were in the social / mobile / geo-location space. In this case, Brian had real technology under the hood. GreenGoose is pushing the boundaries of deploying low cost sensors and accelerometers (the sensors are approximately 45 cents each with the product now in pre-production in China).
A humbled Calacanis was asked how he could have missed this one. Jason quickly took the offensive to compensate for his rare miss (the Conference was extraordinary), and began exhorting the jury to commit on stage to investing in GreenGoose. Within a few minutes, Shervin Pishevar, Founder of WebOS and currently CEO of SGN and an angel investor in Plancast, Gowalla and Aardvark (acquired by Google) and Jay Levy had each committed $50K to the company. This is simply something that you do not see happen in Boston. The audience went wild.
In a short period of time, VentureBeat picked up the story, but erroneously reported that GreenGoose had raised $100 million dollars on stage.
Brian spent much of the next day in meetings with various investors at the conference. Bill Warner was at his side for many of these meetings. The GreenGoose demo station was visibly, but quite understandably vacant.
As the conference was wrapping up, the Grand Jury handed out a Series of Awards. GreenGoose won the well-deserved award for Best Overall Company to Emerge from the Launchpad.
During the wrap-up, Bill announced that he expected GreenGoose to close on additional $400K in investment by end of day, bringing GreenGoose’s raise to a half million dollars. For Brian, it was an incredible validation of his venture and a huge push forward. Maybe now he can finally replace his beat up briefcase before his grandmother figures out what he really did with the money.
Mike Grandinetti is a serial entrepreneur and is currently the Managing Director of Southboro Capital. He is an active mentor in Tech Stars, the Founders Institute, TCN, SeedCamp Europe and IBM SmartCamp. He is an active mentor and judge in the MassChallenge and served for many years as a judge in the MIT $100K Competition. He recently served as a mentor at the Launch Conference in San Francisco.
