Lessons from Wes Wagner, a student entrepreneur and startup freelancer

Wes Wagner is a senior at IU (’18) studying Entrepreneurship and International Business in the Kelley School of Business. I have had the privilege of working with Wes as a fellow Shoemaker Scholar since its founding at IU, and he has been a great example to me of organization, consistency, and support. In addition to building the StartupIU newsletter, he has supported several startups in the last few years — and launched one of his own.

I asked Wes to share his story with me — and you — and he graciously agreed.

Give us your “Twitter bio” or elevator pitch.

I’m a startup and Spanish enthusiast, digital marketer, future-of-work fanatic, and student. I currently work at Cheddar, a billing software startup, where I focus on managing the company’s written marketing content and web analytics.

What entrepreneurial or innovative business or project are you currently working on?

I work at a local technology startup called Cheddar. Cheddar is a business-to-business billing software startup that cuts the time it takes to build a billing system into a software product by as much as 90%.

At Cheddar, I work on our content and growth analytics. On the content side of things, I write blog posts, website copy, and social media. On the growth analytics side, I manage all of the company’s website and software tracking with tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

Working at Cheddar has been a lot of fun so far. I joined in September as the company’s 5th employee and we’re working on hiring our 9th employee. At the end of 2017, we also closed our seed round of financing. Things are moving quickly!

How did you get into entrepreneurship? What were some of your entrepreneurial highlights since then?

I think elementary school brought out my first entrepreneurial tendencies — I pursued a lot of small paid gigs from cleaning up my neighbors’ yards to answering questions online.

However, I got my feet wet with technology startups my freshman year of college when I joined a friend’s startup to help with digital marketing. They couldn’t pay me much, but I thought it was so cool to be able to join a technology startup. After I joined, I did everything I could to learn about digital marketing — I took online classes, read books, and followed relevant blogs.

That experience gave me enough relevant digital marketing expertise to start freelancing online, secure jobs with venture capital firms and other small startups, and start (and shut down) my first startup.

What has been the most useful entrepreneurial resource or experience at the University?

In general, I think universities do a great job of bringing smart people together who are going through the same stage of life as you.

That said, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be a part of the Shoemaker Scholars and connect with faculty like Travis Brown. They both genuinely have my best interest at heart, and they often push be in my thinking and entrepreneurial pursuits outside the classroom.

What has been the most useful entrepreneurial resource or experience outside of the University?

I participated in the B-Start pre-accelerator program last year and learned a lot. I was paired up with a mentor, Mike Trotzke, and over several months I turned my idea into a business with some traction. I eventually decided to turn the startup into a smaller side-project, but I loved working and learning with Mike so much that I joined his company, Cheddar.

What is was your favorite failure or learning experience?

B-start was my favorite learning experience by far. I highly recommend participating for any students that want to turn an idea into a reality with the help of active, seasoned entrepreneurs.

What is the best advice you’ve received as an entrepreneur?

Mike Trotzke drilled the idea of customer validation and testing market demand into my head.

Instead of collecting market research through surveys, Mike pushed me to think of the smallest possible real-world test I could perform — testing how many clicks I could receive on an online advertisement, seeing how many emails I could collect on a landing page, etc. — to validate the demand for my startup.

His advice has saved me a lot of time and money.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurial students?

As far as tactical advice, I would pass on Mike’s advice and encourage other students to think beyond building a minimum viable product.

Instead, I would ask them to think about the best test they could perform to validate their idea without using a survey. Think about it — having 10 people click “buy now” on a website is a lot more convincing than having 10 people answer a survey saying “I may buy X.”

I’d also encourage students with less real-world experience to get involved in a startup or business and not ask for payment. Experiential learning can be incredibly valuable in the long term.

Where can people find you in-person? Online?

In-person and on-campus, I’m usually in Hodge Hall or the Shoemaker Innovation Center. If I’m off-campus, you can find me at every local startup event like Startup Mic Nite.

Online, you can find me on Twitter and Medium.

Thank you for sharing, Wes!

This post is a part of StartupIU Entrepreneur Spotlight, a series of Medium posts written by the Shoemaker Scholars to feature entrepreneurial and innovative students and alumni.