April 26th, 2011

LA Startup Personality: Paige Craig of BetterWorks

Posted by: Travis | 8 Comments »

Paige Craig is a marine, an “adrenaline fueled angel” and now the CEO & Cofounder of BetterWorks - an Los Angeles based company focused on “Making Work Rewarding.” In 1992, Paige was given early selection to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Three years later, Paige left West Point and enlisted in the Marine Corps where he served in various intelligence roles both domestic and abroad. In 2003, he drove into Baghdad, Iraq with $10,000 hidden in a camera bag and founded Iraqex, which would later become The Lincoln Group. In 2007, Paige “retired,” traveled the world and headed to SoCal to change the face of the Los Angeles tech startup scene as the ”Adrenaline Fueled Angel.”

Paige stepped out of the daily management of The Lincoln Group  in early 2007 and, since April of 2009, has pursue his passion for entrepreneurship and technology by providing early-stage seed investment to over 40 companies. I was lucky to meet Paige through some mutual friends and I got a chance to ask him a few questions.

What was the idea behind BetterWorks?

It started with a very broad idea: “how can we help companies optimize their biggest asset – their employees.” We found that companies reward & recognize their employees in very different ways and the ones that do it well are incredibly successful (and fun places to work!). Some companies are great at it but many more don’t know how, don’t have the time or they think here’s no easy, cost effective solution. We realized we could systematically productize the best practices out there and deliver an online solution that would work for any size company. Recognizing that these companies are often short on time and budgets we focus on making our solution fast (minutes to set up & maintain), easy (great design), and affordable (keep our pricing dirt cheap and aim for scale). Now, after 3 months working with Alpha customers, we have an initial product out there that let’s companies deliver real time rewards such as company lunches, gym memberships, yoga, laundry services and much more. We roll out major features every week now so you’ll always find something new to reward your employees with.

Describe the first 6 months of BetterWorks in 6 sentences.

In November the three of us (George, Zao and I) formed the company and put together a small angel round. In mid December, we hired six employees and brain stormed with alpha clients. In January, we were coding 24/7 while the sales team racked up some early wins and learned how to sell the product. In February, we released an early product and tested like crazy while sales continued to ramp. In March, we released our product to paying customers and they helped us work out the bugs. Now in April we’re releasing major features on a weekly basis, focusing on customer engagement on the platform and our sales & marketing teams are fully coordinated using referrals and online campaigns to drive businesses and vendors to sign up and try us out.

What mistakes did BetterWorks make early on and how did you learn from them?

We try to make mistakes every day! We have a culture of “learn by doing”; we don’t sit around trying to analyze the best pitch, or the best campaign or release a perfect product. We focus on doing and we let our customers tell us if we’re wrong. We released our first product less then two months after coding and we had a ton of things to fix. Our sales team has gone through a couple dozen different pitches, marketing materials, targets, etc. At our stage we want our team to try everything and learn quickly. Features, methods, and processes that show signs of success are reinforced and things that don’t work are killed quickly.

What are 3 trends in startups that excite you?

• Agility: I see young teams adjusting their product & business models very quickly. These teams aren’t invested in expensive hardware or software and theyre paying attention to customer feedback early and often.
• Business Services: I see more startups building solutions for small & medium businesses. This is a huge market (6 Million+ SMBs out there) ready for innovation.
• Female leadership: Not enough yet but I’ve personally seen a rise in the number of women founding and working at early stage startups.

What are 3 trends in startups that bore you?

• The “serial parallel entrepreneur”: they have two or more companies/ideas they’re working on. Make a decision and focus!
• The “big idea no code founder”: these folks sometimes have great ideas but they plan to outsource their code development…i won’t even waste you’re time telling you how stupid this is.
• Daily Deals for [insert plural noun]

As an angel investor, what’s the number one thing you look for in companies you invest in?

A two to three person complimentary team with passion and talent.

Being an investor in the tech world, why did you choose to live in Los Angeles?

Lifestyle, access to creative talent and getting in to a hot tech scene before anyone knew it would be hot.

What advantages do you think Los Angeles offers startup entrepreneurs?

Silicon Beach is amazing! Other than an amazing lifestyle (and yes, happiness and quality of life does matter!), Los Angeles is a city rich with creative resources and two generations of technical leadership who are now engaging, supporting and investing in the latest wave of innovation. We have every major industry represented here and tons of capital. If you need celebrity involvement, writers, producers, or access to media & entertainment resources this city has it all. The downside is that LA is so big it’s hard to know who to work with and where to go when you first get here. Many of us have decided to focus on Silicon beach (basically Santa Monica, venice and areas west of the 405).

What are some other Los Angeles startups that excite you and why?

I could spend all day and a dozen rounds of tequila telling you about all the amazing startups here like docstoc, beachmint, namesake, goodreads, mingle, dealquad and many more. They’ve been mentioned before so I’ll throw a few new ones out:

• ClientRadius and ThinkNear (Techstars company that just left NYC for LA!). They’re focused on SMBs and local.
• ScanDigital – Anderson has growth this company on the back of a very smart Groupon campaign and grown nationally and has amazing revenues with no VC investment
• Eric Jackson of Caplinked is helping founders & startups manage their funding, interests,etc
• Lee Essner – InheritedHealth – passionate, successful dude with a great concept helping people reduce their health risks
• Neighborgoods – Micki Krimmel has an amazing product and if I wasn’t heads down on BetterWorks I’d invest in her.
• Profounder – Jessica & Dana are crowdsourcing funding for brick & mortar companies.
• G2maps/cloudtrigger – great geospatial and analytical solution for sales teams.
• Scopely – stealth game company with killer founding team that will be making a big splash.
• DocRun – Jen Reuting is a sharp, passionate founder going after a big space
• Hamet Watt is back in the biz making a big play in the wellness category.
• Movieclips, GiantMedia, Mingly, and so many more.

I have to stop now because I can’t do justice to all the great companies growing in Los Angeles.

What big thing (that you can share) are you working on next?

We’re releasing a “real time recognition” feature for BetterWorks. Imagine if you could get away from annual reviews and quarterly reviews and instead get real time feedback on your performance from anyone inside or outside the company. We’re releasing a universal performance measure that reinforces good behavior in the workforce and rewards employees in real time.

How can people connect with you?

Patron, chilled, no training wheels please.

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