A Day In The Life Sample
By Romney Evans
Entrepreneurship Is a Good Fit
Babson MBA Romney Evans describes a typical day at his startup Web site where customers each can select jeans based on their own measurements
As co-founder and CEO of True Apparel Company and its online jeans store, truejeans.com, I am responsible for the success and well-being of the entire business. True Jeans is an online jeans store that sells a wide variety of existing brand-name jeans, such as Lucky Brand Jeans (LIZ), Chip & Pepper, Blue Cult, and Wrangler 47 (VFC). Through a partnership with Montreal-based firm My Virtual Model, True Apparel customers will be able to go online, input their measurements, and have our software tell them which brands and styles of jeans best fit their unique body shape and measurements (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/12/06, "Sewing Up the iPod Market").
As CEO, it's fun to be able to touch all aspects of the company, but my direct responsibilities include technology development, corporate finance, and marketing. Fortunately, I also have a really talented business partner to share the load with. My partner, the co-founder and COO, Jessica Arredondo, who is a fellow Babson MBA, is directly responsible for the product side, accounting, and marketing. Having a partner in an early-stage business who has a complementary skill set is a huge benefit.
This past May, 2006, I graduated from Babson's Olin Graduate School of Business in Massachusetts. My biggest fear of getting my MBA was that I might be part of the commodity MBAs flooding into the job market year after year. I decided to get my MBA at Babson because the school lives and breathes entrepreneurship.
| |  |
| Romney Evans
Co-founder / CEO
True Apparel Company, truejeans.com
Babson MBA '06 |
I brought my business idea to the program, and was able to cultivate and refine the idea into a high-potential growth opportunity while at B-school. Therefore, I didn't take a typical MBA job after graduation (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/31/05,
"Entrepreneurs: Cream of the Young Crop").
Here is an example of a pretty typical day:
8:00 a.m.—I leave my house in Watertown, Mass., and head for Woburn where True Jeans was able to get a year of free office space after being finalists in the Babson Business Plan Competition in 2006. It's a 30-minute commute, which is longer than I prefer, but you can't beat free office space.
8:30 a.m—I arrive at the office, review my calendar, and respond to any e-mails that have come in through the night.
9:00 a.m.—Conference call with Web developers in Slovenia. A team of 8 to 12 highly skilled programmers has spent the past six months working on our new Web store. We review our 100-plus page specifications for the site and update with improvements and corrections.
10:00 a.m.—Conference call with our designer in Switzerland. We review all our graphic interfaces for our new Web site. In a world where everybody is outsourcing overseas for the best pricing, people always ask me, "Of all places, why in the world are you outsourcing to Switzerland?" Once you visit our new online jeans store this fall, you'll know why (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/18/06,
"The Bootstrap Report")...
See Full Version 
360i
Printer-Friendly Version
