Today we launch the final iteration of a project I have been working on since January of this year: SteelCast.
SteelCast will likely be lumped by most people into the myriad of incubators and accelerators that have arisen with the growth of private equity investment in web-based startups. However, SteelCast is neither.
The core value of SteelCast adheres to is this:
- Ideas are worthless.
- Implementation is priceless.
This is not to say that every amazing startup didn’t begin with an equally impressive idea. However, every amazing startup did excel at implementation where thousands of startups stayed as nothing more than worthy ideas.
SteelCast breeds its own ideas, implements them, then builds a team around the working implementation, nurturing the company to independence.
Our process is pretty simple:
We unearth a concept that we feel could disrupt a market and add value to consumers.
- We create a working implementation of this concept, and prove the model.
- Once proven, we find a CEO that fits our criteria.
- We work with this leader to build a team, product, and monetization strategy.
- We help grow the company to a point where it needs to become independent and remain a bootstrapped profitable startup, or seek private equity to grow into a larger entity to meet a market need.
One key point to take from this process is the fact that we are looking to build profitable companies. SteelCast is not interested in breeding the next major homerun in web startups. Of course we would love to do so, but at the end of the day, what the investors and team that make up SteelCast knows is building profitable self-funded companies. We believe profits are bubble proof. Values can fluctuate with the market, but profits secure a company through market volatility.
This is not to say we are against private equity, in fact we know that many of our projects will need the kind of growth that only a round of funding can give them. Instead, we aren’t focused solely on incubating until funding.
This also isn’t to say that one day we won’t invest in someone else’s ideas. However, SteelCast will always stay true in all of its investments in looking for portfolio companies that share our core values:
- Passion
- Market Disruption
- User Experience
- Solid Monetization
Our company structure is also unique. Essentially, we are a company comprised of subsidiaries. This allows us to cautiously grow our teams, utilizing talent from the SteelCast parent company to fill vital spaces in the individual organizations until we find the exact right fit. For this reason our CTO Tony Wang also works as CTO for FunLink and PerformNow, and our CMO Jordan Kasteler is currently busy building the marketing plan for our newest startup PerformNow.
This unique structure allows us to not only grow the right team for the right startup, but also make sure we transfer our unique values to each team we build.
This project is the most personally rewarding I have undertaken to date, and I think everyone will see why as we launch these startups and products associated with each.
Along with working on each of our companies, I also plan on regularly blogging here along with our in-house blogger Courtney Bishop. We are excited about building a transparent view into how our startups are being built, tips and tricks we learn along the way, and our insight into what others are doing. We are not planning on being a news outlet, or even the final word on all things startup related. Rather we want to share the views of a team that is living and breathing startups everyday.
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Feel free to contact me at dsnyder@steelcast.com. You can also check us out on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter and Tumblr to come along as we Refine the Art of Startups.