From UT to YC: The Value of Feedback and the UT Austin Entrepreneur Ecosystem
This guest blog post was written by Will Mitchell, CEO and Co-founder of Contract Simply and UT McCombs MBA 2015

When I applied to business school, I looked for top rated programs with an emphasis on entrepreneurship. Only a few cities in the US (Silicon Valley, New York, and Austin) can boast world-class education and a thriving startup environment. Some could make an argument for Boston, but because of the New England Patriots I feel like that city already gets enough attention.
With UT-McCombs as a clear option, I dove into the startup ecosystem before classes even started — going to the startup crawl at Capital Factory and attending speaking events at the AT&T center, all while figuring out the MBA landscape and trying to start a company of my own.
The most important thing you need when starting a new company is…
When starting a company, the most important thing you need is feedback. As evidenced by a plethora of startup blogs and books, understanding the problems of your stakeholders and what motivates them to act will tell you infinitely more than a well-built product that you perfected after hours and hours at a computer or in a lab.
Feedback can come in a couple of forms: website traffic, email responses, social media engagement, but never will you get more feedback than when you sit down face to face and just keep pushing for criticisms. If it gets uncomfortable — either for you or the person giving feedback — you know you’re digging deep for valuable insights. Good feedback can be blunt, brutal, and challenge you.
I remember vividly Matt Chasen, co-founder of UShip and a UT alum, sitting down with me and telling me just to build a landing page and see if I could get people to click a button. That simple. Can you get people to click a button? If I had truly listened to this advice I probably could have saved a lot of money.
Take advantage of UT resources — you won’t always have access
The beauty about being at a University is that events within the community have been designed to help you get feedback: pitch competitions, 3DS, classes, and the deep infrastructure that UT and the Herb Kelleher Center have put together to support students’ pursuits and dreams. For me, two organizations proved especially lasting in their influence on my journey as an entrepreneur: Venture Fellows and the Austin Technology Incubator.
Venture Fellows has a vast network of alumni that have started venture funds as well as companies. Furthermore, I was able to sit down with industry leading venture capitalists and get candid feedback on my idea. Leveraging these investors’ and Jim Nolan’s vast network was integral to getting on the right track for not only fundraising, but understanding the key concerns to focus on when building a successful company or at least trying to.
Even if you can build it, maybe you shouldn’t
The Austin Technology Incubator provided a different kind of feedback, emphasizing the important aspects of execution and feasibility that can be a big part of a “go or no go” decision when starting a company. To put another way, even if you can build it, sometimes maybe you shouldn’t. Either the market is not big enough or the pain is not visceral enough, some great ideas simply don’t have market viability for a plethora of reasons - many of which are not based on whether it is a good idea. Bart Bohn helped hammer this point home.
Strong key relationships are better than an array of loose ones
Through these programs and countless “coffee” meetings with folks willing to chat with me, the University with its giant network opened its arms and gave me all the feedback that a budding entrepreneur can want. Through these efforts, I developed strong relationships with three key members of the community: Jim Nolan, Bart Bohn, and Luis Martins (Director of the Herb Kelleher Center). All of which have been great mentors and connectors as I continue on my path to being an entrepreneur. While I gathered a vast array of feedback initially, I eventually focused on creating strong ties with a few key members of the community believing that a small number of key relationships were more valuable than a lot of loose ones.
The network you build at UT is a long-term investment that pays more dividends than you might think
When it comes down to it, everyone will give you different feedback and point you in different directions. It’s your job to come to a consensus as to the best direction and move forward despite naysayers.
That said, despite all the feedback and “go, no-go” decisions, I stayed on the same path for over three years, through school and after. Not adjusting fully until the feedback was strong enough in a plethora of directions to warrant a radical reassessment of the direction I had chosen for the company. Thus, we pivoted in January.
Because of that feedback, we have garnered more investment, revenue, traction, and resources in the last six months than we did in the prior 3 years. Punctuated by an acceptance to Y-Combinator in April that culminated in a demo day on August 21st. Perhaps I should have listened to more of the feedback sooner.
As Y-Combinator has vastly expanded the network for Contract Simply, the same key aspects from my time at UT still apply:
- Collect as much feedback as possible.
- Focus on aligning yourself with key community members.
- Sort through all the noise to come up with a clear direction.
At the end of the day, people do business with people. No matter what you are building, people will use it, people will invest in it, and people will help you grow it. Spend your time at UT connecting with people and you will find that those investments pay more dividends than you would think.
Learn more about Contract Simply here.
What are you waiting for? Get plugged in to the UT and Austin Startup Ecosystem.
