Today is day 369 of our startup journey. Nice.
By Colin McIntosh, CEO & forgetter of birthdays
A year came, a year went, and we forgot to post about it. That's how busy we are: we forgot our own birthday.
On Friday, S&G hit a milestone that too few startups reach: one year in business! Born from humble origins, we wanted to take a moment to look back and celebrate 12-ish milestones in 12-ish months:
1) October 2017: Incorporating and trademarking a pun. We were originally going to call our company "The Sheets & Giggles," but Justin Timberlake literally appeared from the shadows and told us to drop the "The." We owe him big time.2) November 2017: Logo calligraphy begins. We wanted something classic, yet modern. Serious, yet flippant. Memorable, yet subtle. Synonym, yet antonym.
3) December 2017: We launch a bare bones website filled with half-baked puns and limited imagery that would eventually be... improved? Eh.
4) January 2018: We realize we need to make a product and should probably get on that. We release our first blog post with the intention of writing one per week. Ha.
5) February 2018: We begin planning our Indiegogo crowdfund with 10 weeks of preparation before May 1. We do our first photoshoot and launch our first Facebook ads that lead to a landing page designed to capture emails. People are interested and freely give us their emails. We are astounded.
6) March 2018: We meet and interview manufacturers, deciding on the most sustainably managed, socially conscious manufacturer with the know-how to produce eucalyptus lyocell.
7) April 2018: Only 4 weeks to go before launch. We've collected over 10,000 emails from interested folks by now, and we're cautiously optimistic about our May 1 Indiegogo.
8) May 2018: We launch with the biggest Indiegogo crowdfund ever for our category.
9) June 2018: We travel to India to inspect our factories in person, meet manufacturing team members we haven't yet, and make sure production is on schedule. Spoiler: it's an awesome trip, India is warm in the summer, and the food is just ridiculously good.
10) July 2018: We transition from taking preorders on Indiegogo to taking them on SheetsGiggles.com, which requires redesigning and launching a much more robust website than we originally had.
11) August 2018: Finalized last-minute product changes that push our delivery timeline back a couple weeks. Had to make sure everything was absolutely perfect!
12) September 2018: S&G wins Denver Startup Week 2018! Take that, cryptocurrency and AI startups (seriously though every other competitor was great).
13) October 2018: Precisely 31 days late thanks to Customs delays, S&G begins shipping our 6,000+ preorders on Oct. 1 as fast as we can, and early reviews are looking strong.
Thank you all so much for coming on this journey with us. It started in the bedroom, it'll end in the bedroom, and where it goes in between is anyone's guess. One day, when I appear unhinged on a podcast with Joe Rogan and ruin my reputation, we'll all look back on blog posts like this and say, "Oh yeah, we should have definitely seen this coming."