Small Business Success Story
Running your own business, I think, is one of the coolest experience you can have. You know, I'm 30 years old today and I've been running TerraCycle for nine years. I started when I was 21 years old. Today, I'm sitting on a nice global business. We operate in 22 countries with about 110 employees, collect hundreds of unique types of waste. Everything from chewing gum to used cigarette butts, to dirty diapers and chip bags, and have found that every type of garbage give if it's collected can be either we used Upcycle or Recycle. The way we got into is basically dealing with garbage was my friends and I, we'll wanna see growing better part. We found that feeding worm poop to the pot plants would make them grow really well. We basically started the fertilizer company became quite successful. And then, questioned, you know, what was the special about our business was it that we were take organic waste getting it works or was it that we were sorting garbage. Our essence is solving garbage. When I first started TerraCycle, I was 21 years old. As my friend and I in our dorm rooms, and we had a really hard time raising money. We actually tried, and totally failed, and no on the finance.
So, at the very beginning. Because we did need some capital, we decided to enter business plan contest. And this business plan contest, you can just google them. There's... hundreds of them, all over the US, and in fact all over the world. The great thing about the business plan contest is you can win, anywhere from five to ten, to twenty thousand dollars, but there's even contest that go up to half a million, million dollars. And even if you don't win, you know, 'Cause we didn't win the first, you know, few. What was really cool is you'll learn a lot about how you sell, about how to present, what was wrong in the best feedback to you, listen to everyone telling you why your idea sucks. Because just hearing good feedback doesn't progress you, hearing bad feedback or constructive feedback does. Because then you can learn and change.
And so, we started basically financing ourselves by winning business plan contest. We won seven in a row, raised a hundred thousand dollars, and was able to get the business going. And as we did that we also refine our business so much, so that by the time we were finished the business plan contest circuit. We were now able to raise money. One of the things to know is that if you're the small business, don't go to venture capitalist. Venture capitalist sucks in every capacity. They do give you lots of money, but they also give you really aggressive terms. And these aggressive terms may sound good when everything is rosy, but it's not always rosy. And that's when you get fired and get hurt by these terms you accepted. The place to go to get money is rich individuals called Angel inventors, and actually angel investor invests typically in the US economy and startups twice as much as venture capitalists. So, there is tremendous money out there.
Finding angel investors is not as difficult as it seems. You don't need to be wealthy to do it. The best way to find angel investors is go to website 'TheFunded.com' , is a great resource. But also google an other search engines. Now, if you do go out and raise money, I have two strong piece of advice.
'Get a good lawyer. Get a good account. Make sure you incorporate it properly. Make sure you have good legal support.'
Fundamentally, business is about change, and if I do not pass any words of wisdom as a young thirty-year-old CEO is that 'Don't think that what worked yesterday will work tomorrow. The more flexible you are and how fast our economy moves, the more successful you will be.'
So, today we moved millions of pounds of garbage. Every month, we truly phenomenal amount of things that were never recyclable through two thousand unique products, through selling raw materials and licensing, and it works like a charm. We went from losing in 2008, almost five million dollars to two years later being profitable.