Today we’d like to introduce you to Eva Chan.
Hi Eva, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a Canadian-born Chinese that moved to California six years ago. In 2017, I left my company with 3 other co-founders and started Launch Pop to have more purpose in life, become happier and have control of the environment I wanted to be surrounded by.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My co-founder and I never started Launch Pop with a mindset to sell the company or IPO or some buzzword attached to how most define success. We just wanted freedom. Freedom to move as fast or slow as we like. Freedom to constantly redefine our mission and what is truly important to us and at the same time adds tremendous value to others ie. founders.
Some of the challenges and opportunities:
1.) Cash: You’re constantly juggling between needing cash to survive and cash to expand and grow. We debated raising a round, applying for debt and in the end with many offers on the table, we decided we couldn’t go against our values of freedom. Instead of wasting time making up projections to curate a high valuation for ourselves, we said, let’s be real, how much do we really need to just get ahead. Relative to how much we were asking for from VC, 30K was in reality all we needed in the end which was borrowed from our family. We were able to finally hire amazing talent to help my co-founder and I stay focused on sales while the team produced quality work. This pivotal moment changed the trajectory of Launch Pop immediately.
2.) Culture: In our past lives, culture was manufactured by the “fun” injected in weekly team events like taco Tuesday or happy hour. The best was the foosball table that no one ever touched. However, that experience still left me feeling how sterile and fake it all was. The feeling of not being able to speak up, having to show up to the office even if all your work was done, being scared to take time off… having these feelings were the very definition of what I think defined the culture in a company. When we started Launch Pop, we wanted to make sure team members were only showing up because they needed to. Otherwise, feel comfortable getting your nails done in the afternoon or taking half a day off to catch up with a friend over lunch. We wanted to also ensure that Launch Pop was serving the team more than the other way around. The environment we curated for ourselves to be happy was very important. For example, we created rules of engagement for when we work together with a founder. Kindness is always the #1 rule to approaching everything. If that was missing, we had a zero-tolerance policy for it. All of these tiny decisions created a culture of growth, ownership, fun, and meaningful work.
This was all made possible because we defined our values and had the freedom to continuously exercise it. Not to say this is always the case for companies, however an investor can pressure you to make decisions that don’t always favor your company for the long run. It’s sometimes a debate on culture vs ensuring the metrics look pretty for your board meetings.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Launch Pop is a venture studio working with ambitious founders to build eCommerce brands and dominate their category. Notable companies built from our research, design and growth include:
1) More Labs/ Morning Recovery (morelabs.com) $8M Series A
2) Rael (getrael.com) $17.5M Series A led by Soft Bank, BAM and Toni Ko (NYX Cosmetics)
3) GEM (dailygem.co) $750K Seed
4) Topicals (mytopicals.com) $2.6M
NEW BRANDS WHO HAVE RAISED ANGEL OR SEED:
If you’re launching a new brand, starting a new line, don’t wait until you’ve invested $$ into your product. Work with us to understand who in the digital world is interested in your offering. We’ll build you a beta group so you can get data on what format, and ingredients matter to them and at the same time, begin building a trust and education. This way, at launch you have people waiting to get their hands on your product and you have a brand that is backed by research and data.
AWESOME BRAND WHO HAVE RAISED SERIES A:
But your website is a mess, don’t put more marketing dollars into it until you’ve tightened up your brand story and optimized your website.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.launchpop.com
Image Credits
Joel Kim Marina Lin
