A Ship-Shape Startup

I am the co-founder and director of community, trust, safety, and communications for uShip, a large online marketplace for shipping and moving services, based in Austin, Tex. Members include service providers (such as truckers) and shippers (consumers or businesses that need to ship things).

At uShip, I wear many different hats, which is not uncommon for a startup. I oversee all community building activities in the uShip marketplace, including developing user content and all trust and safety issues. That includes making sure people are playing by marketplace rules. Finally, I keep tabs on corporate communications and PR strategy.

I graduated from the MBA program at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. My co-founder and I stayed in Austin after business school because it's a great city in which to launch a company. There's tons of intellectual capital and it's lower-cost than the Bay Area. In addition, Austin offers an amazing quality of life.

Here is an outline of a typical day in my life:

7:15 a.m. -- The alarm clock goes off…not yet…snooze.

8:15 a.m. -- I hop into my car and battle traffic on my five-minute ride to the office. On my way, I stop off at Starbucks and grab The New York Times.

8:30 a.m. -- As usual, the developers are in before me. Since the coffee hasn't quite done its job, I avoid conversation by shooting them a nod and heading over to my desk.

9:00 a.m. -- I start every day by responding to e-mails from our members and answering discussion board questions on the "Ask Mickey" forum. This may be time-consuming, but it's important. As the head of community, I try to answer every e-mail within 24 hours of receiving it.

10:00 a.m. -- I head into our weekly management meeting, where we go over our current financial position, hiring, business development, and strategic issues. The majority of the meeting centers on human resources. We have quickly learned that this is one of the more difficult areas for a startup.

11:15 a.m. -- I finish up my e-mails and make a to-do list for the day. Then I return phone calls. The first one is to our PR firm: A reporter wants to do a story on uShip, but he needs to talk to a member who used us to ship a car from somewhere in the Bay Area.

11:30 a.m. -- Finding a good member to talk to a reporter would normally take up much of my day. Luckily, I have an ace intern who does all the research, so I just make a few calls in the afternoon.

Noon -- If things aren't too crazy, I try to grab lunch offsite with as much of the team as possible. We are a tight group, and it's always good to spend some time out of the office.

1:00 p.m. -- The annual eBay Live event in Las Vegas is approaching, and I am managing the entire process. This is an event where 10,000-plus eBay users, employees, and other companies convene to talk about business development and what users want and need.

We have a creative/strategy meeting to take our booth and theme to a new level. We still haven't decided on a design, the budget, or who is going to attend.

2:15 p.m. -- I put together a group of our highest-volume members to talk via conference call and discuss a new product launch.

3:00 p.m. -- We are working on a uShip-branded insurance product. I call the underwriter in California to review the policy. No changes need to be made, so we move forward with technology integration.

3:30 p.m. -- I sit down with our product strategy manager and senior developer to talk about a project. Everyone is on the same page, and I am confident that this will move forward.

4:00 p.m. -- Cherry Slurpee time -- the high-sugar diet that I am pioneering is kicking into gear.

4:30 p.m. -- The team gathers for an impromptu discussion about what members said about the new product. This 45-minute brainstorm is where we get our best ideas. Informal meetings get everyone in the office involved.

5:30 p.m. -- I make calls with my intern for the Bay Area story. We call six people and get two responses. One has a compelling story that should work for this reporter.

6:30 p.m. -- See what I've crossed off my list. Go back to answering e-mails and forum posts.

7:00 p.m. -- We discuss a possible offer we want to make to a potential employee. After weighing the pros and cons, we decide this person is not the right fit. Finding great people is tougher than we thought.

7:30 p.m. -- I have to call our PR firm back in California, then head to my monthly dinner with one of our team members. This dinner is a chance for us to get out of the office and talk freely about issues and concerns.

10:00 p.m. -- Home at last. I fire up my computer and finish up any work that needs to be done. I watch a few hours of TV and fall asleep.

Before we started uShip, none of us expected the challenges that fundraising and staffing would present. When you believe in something as much as we do, you can't understand how anyone else could say "no," but you end up hearing it more often than "yes."

Finding the right employees is a major responsibility (see BW Online, 3/31/06, "Great Employees Make a Great Business"). Not everyone wants to work for a startup, even one funded by Benchmark Capital. Finding great people has been slower than expected, but we've built an exceptional team.

If I could go back to do my MBA again, I wouldn't change a thing. McCombs has a terrific entrepreneurship program with outstanding professors. Entrepreneurship and strategy classes put you in real business situations where you make real decisions with real outcomes (see BW Online, 10/25/05, "Teaching the Startup Mentality").

But I honestly should have paid more attention to marketing. I needed an MBA to start my own company, but I am not sure everyone does. Starting a business is as much about passion for your idea as it is about your business sense. I had a political background, so I needed an MBA to get me thinking about business.

The best way to get your foot in the door at my company is to e-mail me and impress us. Because we are a small company, we are more focused on dynamic people who can bring a lot to the table.