Part I: Update on the winners from LAUNCH Mid-Valley’s Startup Bootcamp — where are they now?
Where are they now?
Recently, I have spent some time reflecting on the year. In the last weekend of February 2020, LAUNCH Mid-Valley, in conjunction with Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, the City of McMinnville, and McMinnville Economic Development Partnership, held a Startup Bootcamp designed for entrepreneurs who had viable business ideas, a desire to build a business plan, and the goal of launching a company. I met so many wonderful Mid-Valley entrepreneurs, consultants, and community leaders. I wish I could name them all, but for brevity’s sake, I will update you on one of the winners of the Bootcamp Pitch Fest, the pitch deck competition that concluded the weekend (more general thoughts & takeaways from the weekend will be in Part II).
Haley Queen and Brian Carver, both residents of McMinnville and active members of the town’s entrepreneurial community of small business owners, along with the help of a friend Brandon Davis, began to build what is now called Sustainable Rituals LLC. Sustainable Rituals offers a bulk refill station for household cleaning supplies, a curated set of local eco-friendly goods, and serves as a creative botanical shop selling a beautiful selection of indoor and outdoor plants. They are a business with a mission: to help community members learn and lead more environmentally conscious lives. The consulting firm I work for, Brennan Martin Pugh & Associates, donated consulting hours to all three Pitch Fest Finalists. Sustainable Rituals placed second and had built such positive momentum over the weekend, it propelled them forward to where they are today. A process that I had the pleasure to witness.
Over the span of the next 12 weeks or so, between normal day jobs, commitments as newly elected non-profit board members, daily musts as new homeowners, I got to witness three young, Oregon entrepreneurs build a sustainable business model that, at the time, I was confident would turn into a successful, profitable, and socially impactful company that serves the McMinnville community. And it sure did: Sustainable Rituals LLC recently won the Startup of the Year Award, granted by McMinnville Economic Development Partnership.
Together, the team built an operating agreement, a basic marketing strategy campaign, and a business plan. We also created a recruitment plan for a pro-bono advisory board, Pro-forma financials, and secured early integral partnerships. We used a trusted framework called the Business Model Canvas, a conceptual system developed by a group of brilliant designers, entrepreneurs, and business professors who comprise a company called Strategyzer. This became the shared language we learned at the Bootcamp and we continued to use the model as we worked to build out the business. I got to hear the team identify and conceptually analyze various parts of their value proposition to see which ideas fit best in the model, and which did not. It was amazing to see the team take concepts from the Bootcamp and make them their own, as we transitioned from the ideation stage to officially incorporating the business.
An important element of the continual, successful evolution of Sustainable Rituals has recently stood out to me. What the entrepreneurs behind this business did successfully is what researchers in entrepreneurship call effectuation. Entrepreneurial effectuation (as defined by Dr. Saras Sarasvathy, Dr. Robert Wiltbank et. al.) is a thinking-framework that they have observed by analyzing the actions of many successful entrepreneurs, one that describes the process of making the best decisions and taking proactive actions. There are five principles that make up effectuation (you can read more about them here):
- Bird-in-hand Principle: start with your means (this includes what you know, who you are, whom you know, and it includes what you are passionate about).
- Affordable Loss Principle: focus on the downside risk (understand what you can afford to lose and choose goals where there is upside even when downside ends up happening).
- Lemonade Principle: leverage contingencies (use “bad news” and surprises as potential cues to create new markets or pivot in an existing market).
- Patchwork Quilt Principle: form partnerships (self-select stakeholders early on to reduce uncertainty and that can help co-create positions in the market).
- Pilot-in-the-plane Principle: controlling vs predicting (focus on what you can control, and realize the future can be made, not just found or predicted).
Sustainable Rituals’ original business plan focused mainly on the bulk refill station for household cleaning supplies and selling eco-friendly goods. However, after a few months, it became apparent that selling plants was the biggest revenue generator. So, Haley and the company pivoted to growing that side of the business. She successfully enacted the Lemonade Principle and turned a contingency into a massive win. Additionally, Haley successfully pursued early partnerships with community organizations like ZeroWaste McMinnville, an organization determined to completely divert plastic waste from the city landfill, a great example of the Patchwork Quilt Principle. Sustainable Ritual’s mission aligns with ZeroWaste in educating and empowering community members to live environmentally conscious lives. In that sense, Haley is also succeeding in putting the Pilot-in-the-plane Principle into action. Together, both organizations are creating pathways to a future with less plastic consumables, replacing the need to constantly buy new bottles of detergent, hand soap, and shampoos.
The work I did with Sustainable Rituals was effective because each of us was able to carry the momentum gained together from the Bootcamp. We were able to come to a shared understanding of the social and emotional aspects of their new startup’s vision, not just the ins and outs of building a business. I am excited to see how Sustainable Rituals continues to develop and how they will help shape the sustainable future of their community!
