Founding Companies as Princeton Freshmen

Hello magnificent readers,

Welcome to the first publication of PIE! For our very first article we are honored to feature Eno Reyes ’21 and Kevin Zheng ’21, who both co-founded companies their freshman year. Freaking freshman year. That’s pretty crazy. Eno’s company, 23cubed, is a digital marketing agency focused on SEO and brand management, and Kevin’s Everest Capital is an algorithmic trading platform for cryptocurrencies.

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What sparked your idea for your companies?

Eno: It initially started as a shell company to cover up some of the freelance Web Development work I was doing. I would create websites for friends, family, and basically whoever wanted one. It was never meant to be an actual business, more of a home for my existing freelance work. After a while, however, I realized that I was only providing a small portion of the effort needed to truly market a business. I did some research into SEO, PPC, and Reputation Management and realized there was a massive untapped potential for existing and new clients. From there the idea behind 23cubed was born.

Kevin: I became good friends with my co-founder Hunter on OA. We were both interested in tech and entrepreneurship, so when HackPrinceton came along we decided to team up and build something. Crypto was hot at the time so we decided to attempt building an algorithmic trading platform for predicting short-term profit opportunities. As we worked on it, we realized that the tech behind it was far more feasible than we had originally thought, so we called a friend from NYC, who drove down to HackPrinceton and helped build our front-end. We made sure we had a kickass presentation and ended up placing top 6 in the competition. Afterwards, one of the judges approached us and told us that he thought our product had enormous potential. And that’s how Everest Capital was born.

Did you receive help along the way when starting the company and in its initial stages? If so, from who?

Eno: I talked to and partnered with one of my roommates because I knew I couldn’t expand the business alone. I wanted somebody that I trusted that would be able to work independently, as well as with me. In addition, I had a lot of support from the guys at MVP, as well as parents and friends. Through my own personal experience, as well as through working with so many other small businesses, I realized that nobody starts a business alone. It’s a massive group effort to get a business started — so making sure to pick people that you will be able to work with is massively important.

Kevin: Obviously my co-founders were huge, but in terms of outside help we had a lot of people who were willing to give us advice because we were students and the crypto space was very hot when we first started building Everest. A famous politician’s relative actually emailed us to ask if there was a way we could collaborate. We talked to a lot of alumni and professors who were all receptive and gave us great advice. The power of the Princeton network far exceeded my expectations for sure.

What was the most difficult obstacle to overcome?

Eno: The biggest obstacle for us was definitely acquiring those early customers. When you have a new service business, you have no way of verifying your legitimacy or proving yourself until you get those first few clients. For us, that meant accepting projects significantly below market value, and reaching out to as many people as possible. We’ve reached out to over 8,000 different business owners in the last two months to give an idea of the scale at which we are still trying to acquire customers. We were lucky enough to get an early believer, a small business that went all in with us (a risky decision that I don’t know I would have made at the time) and our ability to deliver consistently positive results for them provided us with a stream of income and referrals that jump-started our business.

Kevin: There were a number of things. First of all, our team is geographically diverse (one of our founders goes to Rice), which makes communication difficult at times. Secondly, it probably goes without saying that balancing school and running a company is extremely hard because all our competitors are run by adults who are doing this full-time, whereas we can’t dedicate all our time to building the business.

What about working on your startup gives you the greatest satisfaction?

Eno: Receiving praise and approval from clients will always be by far the most satisfying parts about running a digital marketing agency. We always try our hardest to provide good work, but there is an uncertainty that looms whenever you are providing services for another business. I am still active in the web development projects, and I really enjoy building beautiful websites that I can be proud of, so when a client approves it’s truly a great feeling.

Kevin: Everything is just so much fun. Product design, business developing, strategic thinking; you just learn so much about how the real-world works. All work you’re doing when you’re a founder is something that is uniquely yours. Why work on someone else’s dream when you can be working on your own?

Additional Questions With Eno

Where do you see your company going in the next few years?

My goal with 23cubed is to see the extent to which I can take an idea and scale it. We are working to build in a recurring revenue stream and optimize internal processes as best as possible so that the business can be poised for tremendous growth. Scaling is tough because if you do it too quickly or too slowly, the business could fail. We’ve got a strong handle over the services we provide so the key over the next couple of months is to optimize our outbound and inbound marketing channels so we can build up a customer base and basically stress test our ability to grow.

If you could start another company, what would you do differently?

I would definitely spend less money incorporating (do it yourself, most states will let you incorporate for <$100 and some research), document every process that I repeated more than two times, and spend more time researching internal tools. It took us a long time to narrow down the tools we use internally and it’s still an ongoing process, yet they are almost certainly the most important parts of our business. Without Asana, GSuite, Hubspot, etc. we would be a total organizational mess.

Who is your favorite entrepreneur?

My favorite entrepreneur is probably either Jack Dorsey or Katrina Lake. Jack Dorsey has an insane ability that I admire to compartmentalize and switch mindsets between his work with Twitter and Square. Katrina Lake founded Stitch Fix which is in and of itself a good idea, but her execution absolutely blew away the competition in the space. Her early focus on algorithms and data science gave Stitch Fix an advantage over companies like Trunk Club that didn’t utilize technology to its full extent. I admire her drive and continued innovation in a space that at first glance wasn’t intuitively “a technical space.”

Additional Questions With Kevin

What advice would you give to students who want to start a company but don’t know how to begin?

First off you have to recognize that being at Princeton means you’re surrounded by so many smart students, so you have a great selection of partners to choose from. No one builds a business alone. Secondly, recognize that your company doesn’t necessarily need to make money because if it fails, you just keep on going to school. There is virtually no risk. Once you’ve got a team and an idea, it is critical that you test the market to ensure there’s actually a need for your product. This can be building an MVP or just running your idea by your target customers. Lastly, have the courage to reach out to people to ask for help. You’ll find that people are much friendlier than you think.

How would you recommend students reach out to people they want help from?

There’s no science behind it, just do it. Alumni are usually pretty open because I think they see a lot of their younger selves in us. Professors are very responsive as well. And if your idea is captivating enough, cold emailing people works great too. We were able to set up meetings with executives of big-name hedge funds. Don’t be afraid to talk to people, shoot for the moon, and just hit send.