Behind Harvard’s ‘Fastest Growing Startup’

EASIEST TIME FOR A B-SCHOOL STARTUP BUT HARDEST TIME TO EARN A SEED ROUND?

According to Rispoli, there are “two forces” currently at play that make it “interesting” for incoming MBA students at this specific moment in time. “First, it has never been easier to launch a business,” Rispoli believes, adding that business schools have never made it easier for MBAs to start a business while in school. “If you have an idea and the conviction and passion to go forth with the idea, there is a lot of help,” he says. Indeed, Rispoli has tapped deeply into Harvard’s offerings. He was worked in the university’s Innovation Lab, where him and his team earned “VIP Team” status. Campus Doorman has also claimed awards from Harvard College and Harvard Law, and was named a finalist in the 2016 Veteran Business Battle.

As someone with an economics and military background, Rispoli also benefitted simply from first semester HBS courses. “Coming in from the Marines, I didn’t know much about marketing or strategy,” he admits, noting the first semester courses serve as a great “baseline” for any areas students are not as familiar with.

The “second force” Rispoli sees happening now isn’t as positive. “The second force at play that people don’t talk about too much is the funding cycle has changed to be against the entrepreneur,” Rispoli says. “It’s become more difficult on the financing route.” According to Rispoli, seed rounds are being held to Series A funding round requirements. He believes the hesitancy is stemming from a combination of funds wanting to see how they are comparing to the market in earlier investing rounds and an uncertainty in the market after the recent U.S. presidential election.

“I think the biggest takeaway we got was people are very nervous,” Rispoli says of his experience. “And we just don’t have the time to spend to raise money. Because anytime you spend trying to raise money, you can’t spend building a business.”

100% DAY-OVER-DAY GROWTH

Whether it was a strategic move or they were forced into it, the trio behind Campus Doorman decided to bootstrap and take small loans from friends and families. After all, there was one very big initial challenge. “Could you get someone to pay $2,500 without ever seeing the furniture or talking to a person,” Rispoli points out. That answer came immediately. Within their first week, Rispoli and his team oversaw delivery of about 80,000 pounds of furniture and more than $10,000 in revenue a day. “If you try to compare that to other startups, most are still trying to push something out onto a website at that point,” Rispoli notes.

Rispoli says interest in Campus Doorman grew so quickly, they had to turn away about $40,000 in potential revenue to catchup with the orders they already had. “Students usually wait till the last second (to make moving arrangements),” Rispoli says. “Some of those last weeks (before school started) in August, we were growing at about 100% per day.”

While other hot startups rely on venture capital dollars to scale, the early profitability has allowed Campus Doorman to close on a small business loan. “You don’t hear of very many startups doing that because usually they aren’t bankable because they don’t have a good profitability ratio,” Rispoli says. But the early success already has Rispoli and team looking at expanding to campuses in New York City, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area. “We welcome anyone who wants to start in the MBA market at their school,” Rispoli says.

WESTWARD EXPANSION

It’s tough to find an argument for the venture slowing. Each year, hundreds of thousands of grad students look for new housing around the U.S. Rispoli says many “blue chip companies” have contacted him to include their furniture and furnishings — something Rispoli says they are ready for. “We are going to be able to just open the door, coordinate and supervise them,” he notes.

They also already have plans for combining orders for cross-country moves.

“That’s how movers make money — they aggregate the orders,” Rispoli says. During the week before publishing, Rispoli says they’ve created a way to aggregate orders for large groups of students moving to the same metropolitan areas. For example, Harvard MBAs moving to the Bay Area. “People have already signed up for that,” Rispoli says.

While the rest of the startup world seems to be focusing on tech and mobile apps, Rispoli says their success has come down to business basics and fundamentals.

“At the end of the day, we feel that operations is the true differentiator for a lot of companies,” he says. “Can you deliver on what you promise on a tight deadline? Can you do it effectively and not mess it up? That is an incredibly complex challenge and a differentiator for us.”

DON’T MISS: INSIDE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL’S STARTUP MACHINE or THE MBA AND THE STARTUP: A WORTHY AND VIABLE PATH OR A MARCH TO AN APPROACHING BUBBLE?