The Qube Exchange

Over the past few weeks, my business partner and I have been working near 24 hours day after day in getting propertyqube ready for launch this month. We have tweaked, refined and adjusted pretty much every component over and over and over again. I must say that we have been nurturing propertyqube for only two months now and it has been the most fun we’ve had in our careers. My partner and I have learned so much about each other, our capabilities, what our breaking points are and what each of us excels in. To put it in a couple of words….amazing experience. If we didn’t have three years of the Microsoft culture in our blood, we strongly believe we would have been in a much different position than we are now.

So what have we learned over the past few months?

1) If you are an entrepreneur with no technical expertise, you better hire self motivated and experienced engineers. We lucked out in our search.

2) Consumers rule every little thing you do. You must think of the consumer at every point in the process. Just because you like an offering or a piece of functionality, doesn’t mean your consumers will.

3) Recruit a really good board to help guide you through launch. We learn an incredible amount in just the short conversations we have with our board. If you have never launched a business, this becomes the most critical component.

4) Stop and sit back. My partner and I got in the habit of working, sleeping, working, sleeping and no enjoyment at all. This will break you after a while…no matter how much you don’t think it will. Take a half a day or entire day off. Sit back…watch a movie…call your friends to remind them you are still alive…talk about anything other than your business. This is the most important lesson we learned.

5) Don’t ever dismiss anything for the sake of trying to convince yourself that your product is better. Have the guts to talk through everything and anything. The more you talk about the bad, the better prepared you will be when launch time comes around. Be able to juggle several thoughts and issues and then use those thoughts to form the best and worst case scenario.

So with that, we want to announce that we have filled our board seats! We have been searching for a board with experience aligned with certain competencies and we are happy to say we have accomplished that. Our board will consist of two individuals along with my business partner and I. We want to thank our board for giving us the time and commitment. Here is a brief bio for each of our members.

Michael Chinnici. CEO and Founder of Icon Digital Imaging, CEO and Founder of Chinnici Direct (Advertising agency), CEO and Founder of Brave New Media (Interactive Agency), Co-founder of M2 Design Group. Most recently, CEO and Founder of Scuderia O2, a Hybrid Ad Agency for the Next Generation.

John Higgins. Partner at Huron Capital Partners. Responsible for sourcing, evaluating, executing and managing investments made by the firm. His experience includes guiding privately-held middle market businesses through sale, buyout, recapitalization, strategic alliance, and debt and equity financing transactions in North America and Europe.