This year, EVC is experimenting with a new initiative focused on highlighting Ross' resident founders to help aspiring entrepreneurs learn from their experiences, and encourage them to start new businesses.
We'll be starting with our EVC Co-President, Steffan Bankier MBA '19, but if you would like to be features in future spotlights, please email bankier@umich.edu with the following:
- A Profile Picture
- Explanation of your experience (3-5 sentences)
- 5 Most impactful learnings
- Who should reach out (i.e who can learn most from you?)
EVC Spotlight: Steffan Bankier
EVC Co-President
Food + Hospitality Tech Entrepreneur
Startup Experience:
After working in brand strategy for Johnnie Walker and Miller Coors in New York City, Steffan quit his job to launch a direct-to-consumer boxed wine business, selling into Whole Foods, and Fresh Direct. Frustrated by the complex supply chain and regulations of the wine industry, Steffan eventually shut down his business to gain experience in the higher growth software industry, leading the early Sales teams for a SaaS platform, which would go on to raise $25M+ with Expedia. During his experience, he realized how much he missed the food industry, and decided to leave his job in hospitality tech to launch a consultancy focused on helping food entrepreneurs launch their businesses. Ultimately, he decided to come to Ross to strengthen his self-taught startup education with a more formal business foundation, meet like-minded peers, and transition into a job at a VC or tech company. This summer, he'll be interning at BCG Digital Ventures in Manhattan Beach.
Key Learnings:
- Establish a board of customers. Especially in the beginning, your first customers are more important than your advisors, your investors and maybe even your employees. Set up a board of your earliest, most passionate, most influential customers and meet with them regularly to get feedback, improve your offering, and develop early ambassadors. It will pay off hugely.
- Use a framework to plan and audit your week. I found it helpful to develop a routine every Sunday night where I list my week's major tasks, place them into 4 quadrants based on urgency & importance (bottom left is low urgency & low importance, top right is high urgency & high importance), and prioritize by the most urgent and important, and work my way around the quadrants. I also do this every morning, and check myself at the end of the day. Do whatever works for you, but plan ahead, focus on one major task a day, and constantly self audit how you spend your time.
- If you're launching a food or beverage business, consider these 3 core questions. When it comes to F&B products, there are three questions your consumer will be thinking. "How does it taste?", "How does it make me feel?," "How will it make me look?" If you can nail at least two of those, you're good.
- Become a disciple of Pareto. As a founder, being busy does not mean being productive. You become obsessed with finding the precious levers that make the most impact on your business-20% of your time will yield 80% of your results. Investors don't care how much time you spent working on the model, if you don't have any customers. Customers don't care how much research you did for your business plan if your product doesn't fulfill a need. Input of time does not equal output of results.
- Your startup is dead and fighting for survival-not the other way around. There comes a time in every founder's life when you become used to that knot in your stomach and forget it's there. You wake up, notice a new white hair, pick it out, and go to work. Every day, you are fighting to survive. You have nothing to lose-there is only upside. This secret makes you dangerous, and extremely resilient. You develop an ability to stubbornly push towards a goal-whether big or small. That's all you need to be doing.
Email Steffan if you are…
- Considering launching a food, beverage or hospitality business.
- Interested in CPG, tech, or startup recruiting (especially in NYC).
- Looking for help with customer research, go-to-market strategy, sales or marketing.
- Unsure where to start or struggling to be productive
- Curious to learn more about EVC