The

Entrepreneurial

Code

Lessons from an

Ivy League Entrepreneur

Chapter Ten

By the end of the summer, Johnny and his partners launched their direct mail campaign for the Bullfrog Card.  They rented a P.O. box near campus, so students could send their sign-up forms.  Because Abe was first to finish his summer internship, he headed back to campus early to begin preparing for the new semester.  One of Abe’s duties was to collect the mail everyday from the P.O. box and report back the contents to the group.  Receiving no mail was a sure sign that the company was a bust, so Johnny called Abe twice a day demanding updates on how many customers they had. 

The company’s new office was tiny.  It was a small rectangular room of approximately 300 square feet located on the first floor of an old building in the heart of campus.  Black wrought iron bars protected a set of casement windows that hung on the far wall across from the door.  The office came furnished, which meant it included a large wooden desk, some shelving on the back wall, and a few wooden chairs.  That day, the room was a complete mess, filled to the brim with empty boxes, equipment, and wires.  An engineer from CMC was busy setting up the system and there was barely a place for anyone to stand.  When Johnny arrived and looked around for the first time, he was filled with a deep emotion.  At 21 years old, the tiny office was the first tangible proof that he owned a business.  It gave him a great sense of pride to know that he ACTUALLY had an office!  He ACTUALLY owned equipment!

Unfortunately, Johnny didn’t really own any equipment because they leased it from the manufacturer.  The financing agreement required everyone to personally guarantee the payments on the $120,000 worth of equipment.  After Abe showed the “personal guarantee” to his girlfriend’s father, he suggested they include their corporate titles and company name with their signatures.  That was meant to imply that they were signing as officers of the company and not as individuals, so the company would be liable, not them. 

No one in the group had any concept of how long it would take to pay back $120,000.  At the time, Johnny estimated he could knock off his share within his first year in the workforce.  He had no clue about the grim realities of income taxes and the cost of living.  Besides, they were all way too excited about their business to worry about such details.

Once the four of them arrived on campus, they made daily pilgrimages to the post office together.  Sometimes, the mail clerk would come back with several large stacks of envelopes.  Those were good days.  They would dance back to their office, and Abe would open each envelope and announce the contents. 

“This one is a sophomore and he is signing up for the $325!”  A loud cheer would emanate from the room, followed by a round of high fives.  They would all quiet down and wait with anticipation for Abe to open up the next envelope.  “This one is a junior for $995!”  Maverock and Johnny would hear that and practically be dancing on the chairs.  Whenever a $100 check would come in, they were all a little disappointed, but they comforted themselves with a collective pat on the back that they got that person in the door at least. 

They became so obsessed with checking the mail that they checked it three times a day, just in case the postal clerk made a mistake and forgot a few straggler envelopes.  The partners became indignant if the postal clerk handed over 19 new envelopes when there were really 20 envelopes.  Sure, they would have gotten the extra envelope the next day, but they felt they NEEDED to know how many customers they had at that moment.  In those early weeks, they lived and died by every trip to the post office.  

As the start of the new semester approached, Abe and Joe worked closely with the CMC engineer to set up the network, while Maverock and Johnny organized their on-campus promotions.  Johnny’s friend, who was studying graphic design, designed the look of the Bullfrog Card from a photograph of the Philadelphia skyline.  They made enormous canvas banners to hang in the windows of restaurants and in front of their offices.  These banners had the image of the card emblazoned, and the logo “Bullfrog Card” in huge letters. 

Similar signs were hung around campus and in the store windows of merchants that accepted the card.  They also designed flyers that we distributed under every student’s door.  They printed lots of full-color glossy brochures that sat in point-of-sale display holders at every merchant’s register.  Stickers proclaiming, “Bullfrog Card accepted here,” were placed on every merchant’s door.  They even printed menu books to distribute to students that contained the menus of Bullfrog Card vendors, and a map of where each restaurant was located on campus. 

As students, Johnny, Maverock, Abe, and Joe were able to recruit a large team of friends to help them.  They planned to cover the campus like ants on an ice cream stick.  They borrowed tables and chairs from the fraternities, made Bullfrog Card shirts for everyone, and had enough manpower to recruit students all over campus.  It felt like they were planning a war.

Copyright  2005 by Chris Cononico
All rights reserved. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.