Launching a Business: A Case Study

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Zazu, referred to by its creators as “the smartest damn alarm clock," is an application for smart phones. It is the brainchild of four young entrepreneurs, all under the age of 25, who despite busy schedules and school obligations have taken on the daunting task of launching a company. If the name sounds familiar, it's because it happens to be the same name as the famous bird from "The Lion King," who serves as King Mufasa's assistant. Associating their product with a friendly and relatable character was important in branding the company.

 
The core Zazu team* currently consists of Aaron Gerry, Punit Shah and Marc Held. Shah is what some may call a serial entrepreneur. This is his third startup. His other two companies - Boston Book Works and CoopRatings.com - were both learning experiences, helping him to perfect his skills as an entrepreneur. While he no longer works on either venture, CoopRatings.com, a service where students can rate their co-op experiences, is still up and running. Held, Zazu’s Chief Technology Officer, won the National Cyber Defense Award this past year and teaches an Android development class at Northeastern University--as a sophomore.
 
It all began at Startup Weekend at the Microsoft N.E.R.D. center, in Boston, six months ago. Startup Weekend is a 54-hour networking event during which entrepreneurs and aspiring innovators come together to network and incubate business ideas. The event provides attendees with mentors and an environment where they are safe to run with their ideas. For many young professionals looking to get involved in a startup, or get their venture going, events such as this one are a great opportunity to network with people who have similar visions and passions.
 
Attending the event turned out to be a great jumping-off point for the Zazu team team, which originally included Praful Mathur, a senior at Northeastern University. Inspired by Shah’s idea to create a smart phone personal assistant, the four got to work and presented the company, originally named iZaazu. Their presentation scored third place, and they earned their first seed investment of $16.
 
“What we learned from that, is that if you put your minds to it, if you just sit down with a good group of people, you can really get a lot of work done,” said Gerry, the team’s resident “buyologist” and marketing guy. “It’s about having a cohesive vision, knowing where you want to be and being able to execute on making it happen.”
 
But going back to the real world was a challenge for Gerry and his team, which has since grown to include Pat Feger as art director and Taso Petridis, the company's creative director. Zazu was not their only obligation. They had classes to attend, school work to complete, and all participated in clubs and other activities. The guys were nearly never together.
 
“We learned that communication is extremely important in a startup. It was frustrating because we were never in the same room - we were always running around doing our own things,” Gerry said.
 
If you’re not able to meet physically, it’s crucial to stay connected in some way or another or you risk falling out of step with the group's vision.
 
“That’s when we started scrumming - every day you write down what you’ve accomplished the prior day and what you plan on doing that day,” he said. “It helped us really get up to speed with each other; you can ask more directed questions. It was a big turning point in the company in terms of increasing efficiency.” 
 
Another huge step the Zazu team took towards their milestone of maintaining regular meetings and communication was finding office space--something they found through a friend, who knew a friend, who knew a friend…
 
“Network, network, network,” Gerry said. “That’s how we got office space. Which goes along with events. They are so important because you meet so many people with the same general interests - you never know where that conversation is going to go, but good things are going to happen.”
 
Being involved in a startup company, however, isn’t always smooth sailing. It takes a lot of time and energy, and often requires prioritizing work over a social life.
 
“Do I miss out on stuff? Yeah, it’s inevitable. I’m not going make every party that I want to go to or see everyone as much as I’d like to, but it’s a balance,” Gerry admits. "But working for yourself and being in a startup is incredible because the amount of effort and work you put in, you immediately see the results of. You do it because you love it; it’s not hard if you’re working on something you’re very passionate about."
 
After all the hard work, the scrumming and hammering out of the finest of details, comes testing and getting your product out there. This means exposing "your baby" to possible criticism.
 
Zazu just recently released their prototype for beta testing to about 50 people.
 
“We were a little nervous about releasing it - it’s like a baby leaving the nest,” Gerry said. “But at the same time we were so excited. We can test it all we want amongst ourselves but we want that critical feedback, we want people grilling us and saying this sucks or this is awesome or this is an idea I have.”
 
With two versions coming out--a free version and a paid-for pro version--the application gives its users the information they like to have to start their day. Rather than that abrupt and sometimes terrifying ringing alarm clock, a voice (hand-picked by the user) awakens sleepyheads by reading from popular RSS feeds, the weather, news stories, email and calendar events (for the paying customers).
 
"We're getting a lot of great feedback - people really care and are taking interest in Zazu," Gerry said. "It's great to listen to feedback from people, but it's important to stay true to your heart and don’t try to please everybody. You can’t build a product for everyone; you need to make sure that you’re always following through on your grand vision and have direction."
 
Which is exactly what the Zazu team plans to do. They’re hoping to release the alarm clock application to the Android market by early July* and to be on multiple platforms by the end of the summer, primarily the iPhone.
 
So what has been the secret behind Zazu's success so far--and the advice the team would pass on to other budding entrepreneurs?
 
“Simple: find what you’re passionate about and get it done, just go for it,” Gerry said.  “Now is the time to do it--when you don’t have a lot of commitments you can experiment, you can try new things. Once you have the confidence and the belief in yourself that you can actually accomplish it, the world is your oyster.”
 
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly included Praful Mathur as a member of the current Zazu team; the team hopes to release the application for the Android in early July, not the end of June as originally stated.
 
**Disclosure: Megan Linebarger is a classmate and acquaintance of members of the Zazu team. She is a communications officer for Northeastern University's IDEA program, and is writing a bi-weekly column on young entrepreneurship.
 
Read more from Megan Linebarger on business incubators on college campuses.