Three startups trying to make it in the toughest business district in the world, Wall Street.
They're not your everyday tech startups, they're in design, finance and event management, risking
everything for their shot at the tunnel.
My story begins by having an American father, a Costa Rican mother, studied international
finance.
I worked at a hedge fund that came to an unfortunately premature conclusion with the crisis in 2008
and here in the summer of 2014, co-founded GoCashless.
So GoCashless, we're building an app called Thanks, focused on giving and getting tips.
The idea, quite simply, is that we're carrying less cash nowadays.
If you have cash on you, the ATM probably gave you $20 bills or higher.
Are you going to ask for $18 back?
It's awkward, it takes the shine off of being generous.
So we can solve that with an app that's optimized for gratuities.
So you pull out your mobile phone, you select the amount you want to give and then you enter
the thanks idea of the person associated with that account that you're giving to, which
is going to be short and really easy to remember, like A123.
We are interior designers based in New York City.
We were both educated in design history, so we bring that into our work and our design
practice.
Aside from that, we're really good friends, both dedicated yoga practitioners.
That's true.
I think there's this idea out there that if you're a startup, if you're a small business,
then you must be a tech business.
And what we're doing is really quite traditional.
We have kind of based our business and what a traditional interior design firm would be.
And that business hasn't changed that much in the last, you know, 50 years.
We are in the business of operations and logistics, consulting and execution, largely for event
production and experiential marketing, otherwise known as I Got a Guy.
So now you got 40 and 41 are moved down into the area where 42 was, and 31 comes across
the floor and sits where 40 and 41 are now, but snugged up next to 37.
I'm not afraid to let my opinion be known.
That was a good answer.
Experiential marketing can mean a variety of things.
You set up a free concert that was brought to you by this sponsor.
You set up a pop-up shop that's a temporary store selling one product or one product line.
We're working with companies that shut down Park Avenue from the Brooklyn Bridge to 72nd
Street.
Those things require a lot of manpower.
And, you know, when you're working within the confines in New York City and you need
to, you know, shut down Park Avenue from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. in the afternoon on a Saturday,
you're going to need a lot of manpower to get that done.
This is the kitchen showroom, one of the kitchen showrooms that Mimi's considering.
So contemporary cabinets, traditional cabinets, transitional cabinets.
I grew up around furniture.
My grandfather was an upholsterer.
My other grandfather had a metal foundry and made patio furniture.
So it really was something that I just had an impulse for.
When I graduated from NYU, I happened to be hired as the assistant to a creative director
at an interior decoration magazine.
And that was the moment where I was, you know, a light bulb went off and I was like, there's
something about this that I really love.
The great thing about being an interior designer is that you don't have to put up a great financial
stake to start your business.
We had like a small loan from our families.
Basically all we needed to do was invest in a website and start to generate images.
And we were able to have a face to a business.
Our business model is quite simple.
It'll be completely free to give and receive on the platform.
The way we will make money is actually by the sum of all the deposits that are in the
account.
If every user on the system has $20 associated with it, hopefully God willing this works,
we will be able to make interest on the sum of all those deposits.
We need a bank partner.
Our lawyers have told us that our business model could be interpreted as that of a money
transmitter.
Our launch has been delayed by the fact that we do not yet have this bank partner.
Finding the right point of contact within a bank is very difficult.
Finding a decision maker, having them consider what our needs are, it's a little bit like
finding a needle in a haystack.
It's a key challenge to resolve once I unlock that challenge, then I can hire, I can focus
on all the other components to building a community.
We have the most resources in New York.
I got the most guys in New York, you know, I've collected the most dots to connect.
Our roles in the company are very overlapping as with all entrepreneurs often wear many
hats.
My role is to make sure that we are functioning as a company in the most efficient way possible.
My task list is endless every day, but I'm the one that wrote that task list.
It's ballsy, daring, there's something about it that's more thrilling to me than working
for somebody else.
If you can make yourself comfortable with being uncomfortable, you will excel in your
everyday interactions.
You have to just get up and go.
I couldn't turn this over to you and have you understand it, I have to interpret it for
you.
I was just saying that I want to put eyes on it, but at the same time, I don't understand
what they're saying.
Yeah, well, yeah.
We've landed our two biggest projects yet last year, one of which is not located in
New York City.
So we'll be traveling for it, it's in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
The other project is in Brooklyn Heights, which has a complete gut renovation of a brownstone.
I was expecting this to feel much smaller.
I mean, I know we'll have like cabinetry till about here, the wet bar.
What are we doing on this wall?
It's the mural underneath it, so they originally had this mural.
So then they applied walking on top of it.
As much advertising as you really do, the only, not the only, but the main reason why
you get hired is because someone heard from a friend of theirs or relatives that you're
a pleasure to work with.
You have to be easy to get along with.
The biggest challenge for us this year is making sure these large projects that we've
landed actually turn out really well.
Getting these photographed and getting these on our website are going to take our portfolio
to the next level.
So we need to be extraordinarily careful about every choice we make because ultimately, even
though it's someone else's home, it's also kind of the future of our business.
Challenges.
Challenges, not problems.
And we actually like to identify these things and call them situations because a situation
is easily handled.
A problem.
People are scared of problems.
Can you just check out that email list?
This?
No, no, there.
Jack.
Here?
Yeah.
My son is due this year and it's going to be a challenge managing that guy and the other
guys that I got at the same time.
As they say, if you make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.
I think it's the best place in the world to test the Thanks app.
There are more parking garages, more hotels, more bell hops and taxis and I think New York
offers us tremendous credibility and competitive advantages assuming we survive.
On the next episode of Wall Street Startups, Groundworks get a special delivery with a
big lesson on responsibility.
The designers get a proposal that will change one of their lives forever and it's make
or break for Eric.
If a bank doesn't step in, it'll be thanks but no thanks to his big dream.
