Jumpstart Episode 3: Marcus Whitney

Marcus Whitney is founder and CTO of Moontoast
Moontoast creates direct to fans sales channels inside of social
recently featured in Billboard Magazine
social shopping inside of Facebook
started by throwing parties and selling tee shirts
knowing how to be an entrepreneur and being one are two different things
learning from Emma
find Marcus Whitney on Twitter.

Marcus’ 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know

Find mentors. Build your network with people who have been where you want to go.
Don’t spend tons of money until you have nailed your product market fit.
Stay healthy. Make it as important as your big meetings.

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Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am you host Dave Delaney. My guest today is Marcus Whitney; co-founder and CTO at Moontoast. Hi Marcus, welcome to Jumpstart.

Marcus: Hey Dave, thanks for having me.

Dave: Thanks for coming on man. Tell us a little about Moontoast. What is it that you guys do?

Marcus: So at Moontoast, we are monetizing social. We create a direct-to-fans sales channel where we enable [Inaudible – 00:0:34] based brands, and we call those musicians, specialty retailers, authors, celebrities, and athletes. We give them a direct- to-fans sales channel inside of social. It helps them increase fans engagement and loyalty, drive incremental revenues directly from those fans at the point of impression, and then ultimately gives them more insights through analytics on what’s working and what’s not.

Dave: Can they choose the source from where their stuff’s purchased from or is it strictly through iTunes or how does that work?

Marcus: So Moontoast is a full e-commerce suite. We rarely use the word e-commerce but I do use it whenever I need to explain that we give you all the functionality you need to upload manager inventory and sell direct. We do digital delivery, so any type of digital file whether it’s mp3, video, e-book; we can deliver that to your customer on your behalf. And if it’s physical goods, we will capture all the orders and integrate with your home system if you’re big enough or just give you a CSB exports for you to pass on to your [Inaudible – 00:01:36].

Dave: That’s great. That’s really great. Are you using – are you doing much stuff with Facebook credits yet?

Marcus: Not yet, but we certainly plan to.

Dave: Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people are looking at that. That’s cool. So, last month you were featured on the cover of Billboard Magazine – a little music publication some people might be familiar with. (Laugh)

Marcus: Yeah.

Dave: It’s a huge accomplishment. How has that helped the business?

Marcus: You know, anytime you can get on a little known publication like Billboard is helpful.

Dave: (Laugh) Right.

Marcus: It’s been really good. It definitely got the company on a lot of people’s radar. And it was pretty well written article from my perspective in terms of capturing – you know, the essence of what we’re doing here.

Dave: Uh-hm

Marcus: The paradigm shift that we’re trying to – you know, usher in and also enable people to take advantage of is really the aggregation of engaged fans – engaged high value fans in social networks. And you know when we say that, we are talking primarily – today about Facebook and Twitter – but you now over time that may change. But what it takes to put up a band page and start to aggregate those fans in a way where you can message them directly. And then because of the way those social networks work and newsfeeds and profiles and things like that, and use that to push messages that actually have commerce opportunities that – you know, how light game mechanics build into them is very very different opportunity – very different than when we build up my email list and when we drive traffic to my .com and SEO and all that stuff. And this is – it’s happening extremely quickly. So what we do is we package all that up and we create – you know, a nice, easy turn-key tool to take advantage of it.

Dave: That’s great. I mean, I think you spoke about speedy it is but also how dead simple it is now to make a purchase rather than like as you said, going through your email, clicking through your email, going to the site, finding where to purchase, clicking through the purchase, and then going through that process as well – I mean, it seems like you guys are really streamlining it.

Marcus: Yeah, and the other benefit of it is it’s truly a social shopping experience because when you keep the entire cart inside of Facebook, the cool things is you’re still on Facebook. So you’re going to go right back to doing what you were doing prior to the shopping experience which is sharing.

Dave: Right.

Marcus: So immediately after, what we see is something almost akin to QVC where – you know, someone makes a purchase and the next action they take is they click like and they go to the comments and they share with everyone what they just bought. And that’s really really good, if they just bought a ninety dollar package.

Dave: Yeah, no doubt.

Marcus: You know and that comments goes out to their wall and goes out to the newsfeed, and potential one in ten of their hundred friends are going to see that. So you just get all this top off the [Inaudible – 00:04:31] activity, you get all this – you know, good will, and it’s a really great transparent way to communicate with your customers.

Dave: Yeah, it’s really smart. So let’s back up a little bit. At what point in your career – you know, early on, did you kind of discover your entrepreneurial – the entrepreneurial bug had bitten you?

Marcus: Well, I mean in terms of the entrepreneurial bug, I think – you know, I’ve had it for a very very very long time. And – you know, I was selling t-shirts and throwing parties in high school and college. And – you know, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Wanting to be one and knowing how to be one effectively are two completely different things. And – you know, I think the biggest thing that really pushed me out there was the time that I spent at EMMA because I was able to be so close to the founders.

Dave: Uh-huh.

Marcus: And – you know, they were – I think knew it more than I did but they were, by example, great mentors for me.

Dave: Yeah.

Marcus: And while I didn’t learn everything, I certainly had enough to feel comfortable to go out there on my own. So I think I pretty much attribute it back to the time I spent at EMMA.

Dave: And I like to end these interviews with that you would offer any entrepreneur. Normally in my mind it’s entrepreneurs are – you know, would-be entrepreneurs who are starting out. But I mean it could be people – you know, these tips could be taken by anybody. So do you have maybe three tips off the top of your head that you might be able to share?

Marcus: Yeah, yeah. I think the first one is find some mentors. I think that there’s just no replacement for the experience that other people have and – why would you want to go through all the trials and tribulations that they have gone through when you can just – you know, learn from them on the front end?

Dave: Right.

Marcus: So mentorship is huge in my book. And – you know, I spend a lot of time trying to build up my network with people who have been where I want to go so that the road there won’t be as hard for me.

Dave: Right.

Marcus: So that would be one. Two would be: don’t start spending a whole lot of money until you really had a product market fit. This is mostly for innovative entrepreneurs who are trying to solve some larger problem; doesn’t necessarily have to be though technology. It could be through an innovative business model. But if what you’re bringing to market maybe – hasn’t necessarily been done before, make sure that you keep your cash burn very very low until you’ve nailed that product market fit, and then you can start to kind of build up the team and start to spend more cash to capture the opportunity. And then the third is I’d say is stay healthy. Being an entrepreneur really means working long hours and really means having your brain firing and also there’s – as often as possible to win out the market. And so – eating well and working out, and building that into your schedule; and making that as important as your big meeting and even your family time – I think is a huge thing for entrepreneurs to maintain – you know, a bright smile, a good attitude when stuff goes really really bad, and ultimately being able to endure everything that comes with being a founder of a start-off.

Dave: That’s a really good tip actually. Yeah, because working out and taking the time for yourself is key. Your start-off’s not going to do too great if you’re not around.

Marcus: Not at all.

Dave: Right. Right. (Laugh) That’s great man. Well, thanks so much for taking the time with me today for doing this

Marcus: Oh, my pleasure Dave. Thank you so much for being the host. I think this is a fantastic show. And hopefully entrepreneurs will find it very valuable – I know I already have on the episodes I’ve heard.

Dave: Thanks man! And where – just lastly, where can people find you?

Marcus: So I’m pretty much on every single social network; Marcus Whitney – so sorry for any other Marcus Whitneys out there.

Dave: (Laugh)

Marcus: And then Moontoast is pretty much any social network. Moontoast MOONTOAST.

Dave: Great. Well, thanks Marcus. We’ll talk to you again soon.

Marcus: Thanks Dave. Take care.

Dave: Bye.

Posted on April 3, 2011

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Categories: Blog, Podcast
Tags: Billboard Magazine, Emma, Jumpstart podcast, Marcus Whitney, Moontoast