Life For an Entrepreneur After Excel Ventures
- Nathan Resnick, Excel Ventures 2016
I’ve been a “real” entrepreneur since the age of 19.
My mom would say I started before that, flipping Livestrong-like bracelets that I bought in bulk for a profit to my classmates.
I consider the term “real” to mean I actually had to file taxes for my company.
At 19, I invented the first leather watch strap without holes. I started knowing nothing about business.
Starting that company had its ups and downs, yet it taught me what it takes to bring an idea to life. It grew to just over six figures in the first year and as a college entrepreneur, we sure did have a lot of “food and leisure” expenses on our income statement.
When I was graduating college in 2016, I heard of the Birthright Excel Ventures program. On my first glance, I decided to apply.
I was getting Founder’s Fatigue from this first company and knew I wanted a change. Spending 10 weeks immersed in the heart of Israel while working alongside ten rockstar Americans and ten badass Israelis sounded like a blast.
I left America exactly one week after graduation with an open mind and excitement towards the future.
Birthright Excel Ventures
I was in the first class of the Birthright Excel Ventures program. Just like a startup, it had its ups and downs.
Somedays the workshops rocked while other days the programming seemed to take us back a step.
The program was a real boot camp for entrepreneurs looking to bring their ideas to life.
I went in with the concept for Sourcify, where we’d be able to help companies manufacture more efficiently.
What started as an idea turned into a real business with paying customers in under two weeks.
The first product we officially sourced was casters (wheels that go on the bottom of furniture).
The program introduced us to top entrepreneurs and investors across the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Israel. Meeting these incredibly successful people was insightful and informational.
The program was topped off with an amazing demo day. Each one of the teams got to pitch in front of the whole Birthright Israel community. The response was great and people really got to see what the whole Excel Ventures program had been working on.
After Excel Ventures
I didn’t have a job and always dreamed of traveling endlessly.
I spent a week bumming at my cousin’s house in Shoham, right outside Tel Aviv. I weighed my options. I could continue into the grind of a startup, go back to America and find a corporate job, or buy a one-way ticket somewhere in the world.
I ended up hopping on a plane to Athens, not knowing what I’d really do. I’d heard the Greek islands were breathtaking, yet this was my first real time traveling solo for an extended period of time and I didn’t really have an end in sight.
Athens honestly wasn’t as nice as I had expected. Though the city had some of the world’s best history, going to museums was not how I was planning to spend my days.
I was out of Athens in two days and on a boat to Andros, a smaller island close to the west coast of Greece.
Andros was this hidden gem I’d stumbled across that only had one hostel. The Lemon Tree hostel turned out to be incredible, with an actual lemon tree in the front yard steps away from the beach.
Andros turned into Naxos, Paros, Santorini, Mykonos and by the end of my time in Greece, I’d spent almost a month hopping across the islands. The only reason I left was to meet up with a friend in Italy.
I continued to explore Europe for three months until I got tired. Traveling is incredible and whoever hasn’t traveled solo before is missing out. By the fourth month, I was ready to start something new.
I flew back to Tel Aviv, got my bigger suitcase and then caught a flight into the Birthright Israel Excel conference in Manhattan.
This was all last year, yet a lot has changed since then.
What’s Going on Now
When I got home in Maryland in the middle of November, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. All my friends had corporate jobs so I started to apply for a few.
At the time, I was reading Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss’ new book. It’s basically a package of takeaways from the world’s thought leaders and celebrities. One point stuck with me, ask yourself what your 60-year-old self would tell yourself right now.
Most people look at the present to the past (what would you tell your 20-year-old self?). This point made me look at the future to the present. What would my 60-year-old self say right now?
I realized if I didn’t go all in on Sourcify I would regret it later in life.
Sourcify Growth
I started strategizing from my parents’ home in Maryland.
I attended local startup events, yet soon realized most people on the east coast didn’t have the entrepreneurial bug of the west coast.
I had to get back west.
I moved back to San Diego where I have a strong entrepreneurial network.
I got into San Diego’s best incubator, Evonexus.
And I started to build Sourcify.
In the less than two months that Sourcify has been in San Diego, below are some of our highlights:
· We’ve helped hundreds of companies bring new products to life. Everything from hats to bunk beds.
· We’ve become the official manufacturing partnership of X-Cart, launching to 35,000 ecommerce stores.
· We’ve grown to a team of six.
· We’ve raised some money.
The most exciting part for me is bringing new products to life.
As a former ecommerce entrepreneur myself who used to live in China, I love the feeling of turning ideas into actual products.
What we’ve accomplished crosses paths with what I’ve been able to do personally in the last two months:
· Become a top writer on Quora with over 1 million views, 500,000 in the last month alone.
· Get published in media outlets like Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, The Next Web, and more.
· Speak at tradeshows across the country like ASD Marketweek, a 40,000-person retail focused show.
· Write for some of the top ecommerce blogs including Shopify, BigCommerce, and A Better Lemonade stand.
· Host a bi-monthly ecommerce event here in San Diego with an average of 50 attendees.
· Help people actually bring their ideas to life.
Growing Sourcify feels like I’ve gone in a full circle. I remember being 19, Googling “how to start a company.”
We now work with people starting their own companies or companies looking to cut costs.
What we’ve grown into stemmed from my experience in Birthright Excel Ventures.
If you’re considering the program, do it.
Nathan Resnick is the CEO of Sourcify, a platform that is on a mission to make manufacturing easy. In the past seven years he has brought dozens of products to market, ran a few ecommerce companies (sold one), been a part of projects on Kickstarter raising a total of over $1mil, and been featured in media outlets like the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and more. He participated in Birthright Israel Excel Ventures in 2016.
