WiT Regatta’s New Startup Port and Format Invaluable

Startups can be fraught with ups and downs like a churning wave, offering the pinnacle of highs when business is great…and then you get a message to hop on a mandatory all-hands call. The company’s funding fell through. The doors are closing. Today.

An unexpected moment that happens more than you might think. According to failory.com, about 90% of startups fail.

But you can’t ride the wave of success or fall off your board if you never try. That’s what WiT Regatta’s 2019 new Startup Port session, Launch It Broken, Fix It Live, was all about.

The epitome of that, Eggs + Rice, a graphic design firm that takes complex concepts and turns them into beautiful art for Fortune 100 tech companies, manifested while CEO Brittney Roach Cline was at another agency.

“When a client asked me to start my own firm by the end of day, I thought this is crazy but I’m going for it,” she shared. “I had to hire a lawyer, sever from my old firm, get advisors, hire employees, set up insurance and on and on and on—all in 24 hours,” she related.

Nearly a year-and-a-half later, Roach Cline said her agency remains broken but worth it. “Sometimes I think it’s so far from right it’s not even funny, but it’s been a huge learning experience. You realize can do so much more than you think you can with very little.”

One of the consequences of the rushed launch was brand and identity took a back seat. “That’s unheard of in this business,” exclaimed Roach Cline. “I mean who does that? Nobody launches a design firm without its brand and identity in place.”

It wasn’t until recently that she turned her attention to such matters. Founded with just five employees, the firm scales up to nearly 30 team members for large projects. After having just finished hundreds of projects within a two-week span for one of her clients, Roach Cline saw the post-downtime as an opportunity. She’d been going back to basics, leveraging her network, building her brand and drafting her new marketing strategy.

“At my assistant’s urging I checked out the WiT Regatta’s Startup Port, and the more I read about it, the more I realized this class was created exactly for people like me,” said the avid surfer.

And the Regatta didn’t disappoint. “It’s not at all what I thought it would be. Oftentimes you go to these conferences and you hear speakers and see presentations,” shared the University of Washington Fine Arts alum. “The interactive work sessions have been very helpful and an important part of the conference. You get instant feedback and learn—it’s really, energizing and makes you want to keep going to the next one and the next one. You think I’m so tired, but oh if I go, I’ll meet four more people who have similar issues or maybe even a potential client. It’s really good to get out of your own little box.”

Messaging her learnings to her team between sessions, Roach Cline said she’d made some contacts throughout the week and had reached out to them already as well to capitalize on #relationshipsarethetruecurrency. But it was the group 1:1s she found most beneficial. “It’s one thing to talk to each other, it’s another to do something and this conference really facilitates that.”

As the Launch It Broken, Fix It Live session embarked, Roach Cline and her fellow participants hung on every word as the impressive guest panel (Janet Attar, Customer Success Manager, AppEsteem, Michael Marvick, Co-Founder & CTO, CoffeeBreak, Priya Vaidyanathan, CEO/Founder, SnapCurry, Betsy Ludwig Abdallah, Executive Director, Women’s Entrepreneurship, Northeastern University, Julie Pham, PhD, VP, Washington Technology Industry Association, Stevi Deter, Senior SDE, Providence St. Joseph Health) imparted a treasure trove of advice:

• If you have an idea talk about it and get constant feedback.
• Feel the fear but do it anyway and if you keep taking risks your startup or product will grow over time, but it’s okay to start small and test and learn.
• Remember huge companies such as Amazon are out there launching it broken and fixing it on the fly all the time.
• Before the launch establish a cadre of advisors—as many as possible—network and think about the long game, nurture relationships and don’t be afraid to reach out to peers at your same level or really far ahead of you.
• Your net worth is only as valuable as the people you know, so always ask for the names of three people to reach out to, then send a follow-up so the request is at the top of the inbox…provide a blurb about what you’re looking for. Make it easy for the contact to forward it on.
• Never have a cofounder you haven’t had a conflict or battle with, know how they fight to see if they’re a good fit. Find the person who fills in blanks you don’t.
• Understand why you’re launching.
• Once you launch, ask for feedback and ensure your constituents know you’re listening
• Love the problem you’re working but know that 100% of what you start with won’t be what you end up with.
• If you’re not embarrassed by version one of launch, then you launched too late.
• Sometimes variables are beyond your control, but think about what you’ll learn from that.
• Trust yourself, if something’s not right or what you want to do, pivot.
• Shoot for the moon but remember to have a good time. If you’re not having fun, it’s not worth it.

Then it was on to the breakouts where Roach Cline found herself in a strange situation—she was the veteran offering advice to her circle of trust. Everyone else in the group seemed to be in a pre-launch ideation phase. “It was so surprising and humbling they were looking to me for the answers. Then I thought, ‘hey wait I’m the one who’s supposed to be getting advice,’ but I knew exactly where they were coming from. I knew exactly what they were talking about and tried to encourage them.”

But her watershed moment came earlier in the week during the Storytelling for Business and Career session. “We had to tell a work story or personal story because it’s how you engage people, it’s part of your brand, your company, and your personal brand. That happens to be part of what we do as a design firm. We tell a story.”

When Roach Cline’s turn came, she decided to share how her firm’s name evolved.

“It all started with a first date,” she began. At the time her now husband, Marty, was a struggling artist, putting himself through the best art school in the country and could only afford to have her over for Eggs + Rice on their initial date. Impressed by his perseverance, integrity and passion for art, those tenets are now the cornerstone of her agency.

“The reaction I received was amazing,” explained Roach Cline. “I could tell everyone was really engaged, receptive and enthusiastic. They were so moved by it, they asked question after question. I just had this moment where I was like, ‘You know, I’ve got this. I’ve got my story.’ It was empowering. I saw how stories can make an impact.”

She attributes a lot of her success to the circle of people she surrounded herself with. “Just as the guest speakers said, having a group of advisors is so key.” The most important two were a lawyer and family friend who pointed out the pool of contacts she should talk to. The other was the one man who had been her advisor her whole life, her father, Darby Roach. He’d owned his own firms and brought a significant depth of experience to the table to help guide her in the new venture.

“Eggs and Rice wouldn’t exist without him,” she said referring to her dad, an artist, author and college instructor. “It’s been wonderful. It’s always best to get as many people as possible who you trust to view or take on a situation. They don’t control you or the business. We don’t see eye to eye on everything. But you trust them.”

Later that afternoon following the Launch It Broken offering, Roach Cline shared in passing she’d received a member notice Wednesday, April 24, that a Seattle wellness startup, Arivale, was laying off employees and would no longer be able to provide services.

A former Arivale source, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed after months of searching, their funding quest had come to an end and the startup, which was founded in 2015, officially closed that Wednesday.

“It was a shock,” texted the former Arivale employee who had been working from home the day of the announced closure. Employees had until just 2:30 p.m. to retrieve their personal items.

Roach Cline expressed surprise at learning the company of 120 staff and 5,000 members had folded, as member communication wasn’t clear. But having experienced a similar situation earlier this year when her own agency lost its largest 2019 retainer, Roach Cline said she understood what Arivale was going through and felt lucky Eggs + Rice remains afloat.

“You just have to know you’re going to fail, you’re going to cry, you’re going to get your feelings hurt and it’s going to suck, but that’s okay. That’s the beauty of it,” said the design firm CEO of riding the wave of startup life.

As guest speaker Ludwig Abdallah espoused the certainty of a famous Wayne Gretzky quote, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

So, launch it. Fail fast. Learn. Pivot. Who knows? You might just catch the right wave and beat the odds.

Photo courtesy of WiT Regatta.