Taylor Mingos

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• Do you do any email marketing? Best approach?

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    Email marketing has played a big role for us in terms of activating and building relationships with our existing users. We use MailChimp as our ESP and we’re huge advocates of split testing. We’re also very careful about not burning our list by emailing users too frequently, and we rely heavily on the unsubscribe rates to monitor this.

• How did you get so much great press around Shoeboxed? Do you have any PR tips?

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    We’ve never outsourced PR for Shoeboxed. We’ve always had someone in-house doing PR for us, building relationships with journalists and bloggers, and I think that has been key in helping us generate a lot of great press. I think that a lot of times, start-ups feel like they need to spend a lot on a PR agency in order to get good press, but that’s definitely not the case.

• I'm a student right now with a few business ideas, but I have no idea how I'll manage starting a business AND being in school. Do you have any tips?

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    After I decided to go forward with my idea for Shoeboxed, one of the first things I did was to put together a team. Having the ability to delegate various tasks and share the workload with a team made all the difference. Being a student entrepreneur is really tough, so if you think you won’t have time to juggle starting a business while you’re still in school, you might consider working at another start-up until graduation. Working at another start-up is a great way to build skills and connections that will help you make your business a success. I’d also recommend acquiring a taste for coffee and Red bull!

• How did you go about partnering with huge services like Salesforce? What's the best way to approach a big company like that when you're a small startup?

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    Building partnerships with big services is all about building relationships and doing your homework. In the beginning, before we would approach a company about a partnership, we would try to speak with their customers first and perhaps even build something onto their API so that we’d have something tangible to show them. It’s also important to be persistent and confident when approaching large companies. Partnerships with large companies don’t happen overnight!

• What are the biggest lessons you've learned in growing your business?

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    I’ve learned that finding the right team is key to making your business a success! I’ve also learned to move quickly (don’t wait until tomorrow to do something that could be done today) and to expect the unexpected.

• How has offering a free trial affected your conversions? Do you recommend it?

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    Offering a free trial lowers a lot of hurtles in the registration process, but our decision to do a trial was almost purely based on data, split tests and other research. I would like to mention though that if you have an affiliate program like we do, it’s a good idea to do credit-card-backed trials to prevent fraud.

• How did you decide on your pricing structure? What plan do you find people gravitate to?

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    Our pricing is all data-driven. We’ve done pricing tests over the years and relied a lot on feedback from our users. At the very beginning, we also did adwords ads with various pricing structures and we looked at the CTR to see what resonated best with people.

• What advice do you have for someone who has an idea and is deciding whether or not to do it?

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    If you have an idea, don’t be afraid to take the plunge! Just go for it! I would also recommend working at another start-up. I worked at a start-up before I founded Shoeboxed, and that helped me develop important skills, knowledge and connections.

• How did you get the word out about Shoeboxed in the beginning?

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    We focused a lot on PR in the beginning because it allowed us to get the word out without having to spend on paid placements/advertisements.

• Saw that you were featured in the WSJ. How important a role has media been to the success of your startup?

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    It’s played a large role! Focusing on PR and getting good press is a cost-effective way to get the word out to investors, potential users and other stakeholders if you have limited funds.