💰 Issue #119: Building A Multi-Million Dollar Franchise
Claremont entrepreneur Nick Friedman talks about his journey from starting a small moving and junk removal business in college at Pomona to building a multi-million dollar franchise.
💬 Welcome to issue #119 of StoryHouse Review
Good morning & happy Thursday!
This week, Claremont entrepreneur Nick Friedman talks about his journey from starting a small moving and junk removal business in college to building a multi-million dollar franchise, a crash course in franchising, and how he turned down a deal from the Sharks on Shark Tank. It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇
~ Josh, Miles, Matthew, Pat
👤 Community Spotlight: Nick Friedman
Claremont grad Nick Friedman (PO ‘04) is the co-founder of College Hunks Hauling Junk, which now has over 200 franchises nationwide and makes over $300M in annual sales. He started the business in college at Pomona with his childhood best friend, now business partner, Omar Soliman. Nick was also named one of the Top 30 Entrepreneurs in America Under 30 by INC Magazine, and he appeared on the same list as Mark Zuckerberg as one of the 30 Most Influential CEOs Under 30 by Under30CEO.com. Nick was a Kauffman Foundation Empact 100 Honoree, listed as one of the Top 35 Entrepreneurs Under 35 on Bisnow.com, and is a two-time Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Finalist.
Nick was recently on the Passive Income Pilots podcast, sharing his journey from starting a small moving and junk removal business in college to building a multi-million dollar franchise. He also shares how he turned down a deal from the Sharks on Shark Tank’s pilot episode and the lessons he’s learned along the way.
Shark Tank Pilot Episode: Nick Friedman’s College Hunks Hauling Junk
So eventually, the Sharks offered you a lot of money, and you turned it down.
Robert Herjavec ultimately offered us probably a pretty fair offer. He wanted 50% of this College Foxes idea and 10% of our College Hunks business, which at the time had like 5 or 6 franchisees—probably a reasonable offer. Today, that offer would have been worth a hundred times the value of that had we taken the offer. It would have been worth a hundred times what he offered us back then, so I’m glad we didn’t.
Have you gone and talked to them again?
I’ve run across some of the different Sharks over different events and entrepreneurship summits and things of that nature. I always remind them that they missed out on a good opportunity. But actually, one of my visions is to become a Shark on the show, perhaps as a guest Shark, somebody who came on as a contestant in the first episode and now is on the shark side. Because one of the comments that Mr. Wonderful made in the episode is, “You’ll never get to this side of the table doing a deal like that,” based on what we were asking. So I would love to go head-to-head with him, competing for an investment opportunity.
You took your idea in college and turned it into a franchise and a multi-million dollar company. What does that transition look like from self-employed to owner? What does that next step look like? Did you always see this as a huge company idea, or was it like you just started with a couple of trucks and took it from there?
It’s kind of all of the above. It’s an evolutionary process. When we first started out, we were doing all the work ourselves. We’re driving the trucks, we’re answering the phones, we’re hauling the furniture. We did have aspirations of becoming a bigger business because I do remember when we went and bought a 1-800 number to make ourselves look like a national brand and put it on the back of the truck, but it was still routed to our cell phone. So if people would complain about the driving, I’d be in the driver’s seat apologizing and saying, “Oh yeah, we’ll fire those guys when they get back to the office. Thanks for reporting that to us. We’ll make sure they’re safer on the road”.
But we actually started to burn out a little bit, doing everything in the business like you just described. It was one of our mentors who said to us, “Hey look, if you’re ever gonna have another truck, let alone another location, you gotta start learning how to work ON the business and not just IN the business. You gotta start creating systems and processes for you to then bring other people and plug them in.”
It was actually the airline industry analogy that he gave me, saying every time a pilot gets ready to fly the plane, he/she goes through their checklist. This analogy he gave me made so much sense, so the first thing we started doing in our business was making checklists of how we did everything–how we wore the uniform, how we drove the trucks, how we greeted the client, how we answered the phone (hopefully, not while driving). The idea was that eventually we would be able to plug people in to do those different aspects of the business. It was sort of an iterative evolutionary process.
Eventually, we got to hire people that could also bring value. If they saw a broken system or broken process, we gave them the empowerment to fix it. There was a lot of tripping and falling over ourselves in those early days. Hiring the wrong people, not giving them enough direction or instruction, or promoting somebody past his/her point of competencies. It was an evolutionary process, but we did always have this long-term ambition of being a national brand.
Then we sort of started following into this small step of creating systems and bringing in people to help develop those systems along the way. That is what ultimately allowed us to franchise the brand, scale the service, and scale the culture.
Now we’ve got 250-plus franchisees around the country, so as I said, it’s a 20-year overnight success. I think a lot of entrepreneurs get caught up in that burnout cycle, or they don’t have the patience to allow the process to evolve and understand that it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not like you’re going from being “IN” the business to all of a sudden “ON” the business full-time. It’s sort of a mindset, an intentionality, and then a process of making it happen.
- Nick Friedman
Listen to the full episode below to learn more about the challenges and successes Nick faced while building his business. 👇
🤝 Claremont Introductions: Sunil Rajaraman & Hamlet
Hamlet, founded by serial Claremont entrepreneur Sunil Rajaraman (CMC ‘01), recently announced their partnership with the City of Palo Alto, CA, to improve government transparency using AI. They are starting by summarizing Palo Alto City Council and Utility Advisory Commission meetings so residents can get information straight from the source (rather than on social media or other sources). The company offers cutting-edge tools that extract valuable insights from this wealth of public data, enabling communities and partners to engage with the issues that matter most to them. Instead of sifting through endless meeting recordings, detailed plans, and numerous records, Hamlet’s technology is streamlining the process of transforming public data into actionable insights.
”If you're a city manager, we can help with transparency and community engagement, and we're building other products that will make your life easier. Please reach out! And if you're just curious and want to know more about what we're up to, shoot me an email.” - Sunil Rajaraman
💼 Who’s Hiring?: Marble Health & Whoosh
Daniel Ross (PO ‘11) and Jake Sussman are the co-founders of the mental health startup Marble Health. Having emerged from stealth and with their recent $5M seed round, Marble is on a mission to massively increase access to timely, preventative care for all kids early in their mental health journey. They are backed by top institutions, such as StoryHouse, Khosla, Town Hall, and IA Ventures. Dan and Jake are looking for early employees to join their founding team:
Claremont entrepreneur Colin Read (CMC ‘06) is the co-founder and CEO of vertical SaaS company Whoosh, Inc. They’re a modern hospitality tech company focused on streamlining club operations and improving the member experience. Whoosh recently raised a $10M Series A round led by AlleyCorp, bringing their total capital raised to $16M+. They’re looking for a Customer Success Specialist and a Product Manager to join their team:
Check out the other ~5,000 open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 1,000+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 40+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!
If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention StoryHouse Review. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s must-watch 📺
In a conversation with INTJ Fund, Emily Dorsey (HMC '18) discussed AI and her experience at Y Combinator. Emily is the co-founder and CTO of Pyq, a technology startup that makes it easier for companies and developers to build customized, task-specific, and reliable AI models. The resulting models are more accurate, faster, and cheaper than off-the-shelf solutions. Currently, Pyq has been focusing on verticals with a lot of data but not a ton of AI expertise, such as legal, financial, and healthcare.
This week’s Claremont financing 💸
Congratulations to unicorn founders Jake Sussman and Daniel Ross (PO ‘11) on coming out of stealth and announcing their recent $5M seed round for their new mental health startup, Marble Health. With the rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts surging among U.S. teens, Marble is on a mission to provide access to personalized therapy to help teens in their mental health journey. StoryHouse is excited to be an investor in this round, along with Khosla Ventures, Town Hall Ventures, and IA Ventures.
Claremont grad Colin Read (CMC ‘06) and his hospitality technology company closed a $10.3M Series A funding round involving a handful of venture capital firms and professional athletes. Former NFL receiver Larry Fitzgerald Jr., a future Hall of Famer, is among a group of notable investors that also includes former pro tennis player Andy Roddick and professional golfers Kurt Kitayama and Alison Lee. Colin is the co-founder and CEO of Whoosh – a modernized digital platform for club management and golf operations.
This week’s top listen 🎧
Sparrow Pharmaceuticals founder and CSO David Katz (PO ‘84) was a guest on the latest episode of Raising Biotech. He talked about how it’s never too late to start your own company, as he founded Sparrow when he “should” have been retiring. In 2020, David was able to raise a $50M Series A round to help fight the long-standing problem of patients suffering from steroid excess.
Serial Claremont entrepreneur Laszlo Bock (PO ‘93) joined UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss the key leadership skills needed in today’s fast-moving world. Laszlo is Google’s former SVP of People Operations and the co-founder of HR-Tech company Humu (acq. by Perceptyx) and synthetic data platform Gretel.
Everything else you need to know💡
Groundlight AI, co-founded by Claremont grads Leo Dirac (HMC) and Avi Geiger (HMC), recently announced its new AI hardware, the Groundlight Hub. Their natural language interface and human escalation technology enable AI computer vision to work reliably for new applications on day one. The Groundlight Hub helps facilities automate their work and reduce unplanned downtime, eliminating the need for employees to walk around with clipboards and check for things like blocked fire extinguishers, doors left open, or other operational concerns. Groundlight is backed by industry-leading firms, such as Madrona, Greycroft, Founders Co-op, Flying Fish, AscendVC, EssenceVC, and StoryHouse Ventures.
Earlier this month, precision medicine company Alumis filed for an IPO to raise money for Phase III trials of a potential rival product to Bristol Myers Squibb’s Sotyktu and Takeda’s TAK-279. Alumis, previously co-founded by Claremont alum June Lee (PO ‘85), raised a $259M Series C round last March and is now targeting a valuation of up to $1B in its initial public offering in the U.S.
Claremont grad Devon Stork (HMC ‘15) recently announced his new biotech startup, Pioneer Labs, which is on a mission to engineer microbes for Mars. Pioneer Labs is a non-profit startup supported by funding from Astera Institute and Align to Innovate. They’re creating hardy microbes that can pave the way to greener planets by remediating soil, upcycling waste streams, and making harsh areas more friendly to life.
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🍽️ BTL Snacks:
🤖 AI-Driven Customer Service Is Gaining Steam….. In this recent Forbes article, serial Claremont entrepreneur and AI expert Sunil Rajaraman (CMC ‘01) shared his insights on how AI customer service differs from chatbots and why companies should consider implementing this soon. Sunil is the founder of Hamlet, a startup that offers cutting-edge tools that extract valuable insights from public data, enabling communities to engage with the issues that matter most to them.
💲 A Startup’s Story From Zero To $400M….. BBC recently featured Ninedot Energy in an article on how the green tech company went from a small team in 2018 to raising hundreds of millions in direct investment by 2024. Ninedot’s co-founders believe this level of rapid scale was possible due to New York City's standing as a nexus of global VC investment, a thriving tech community, and America’s largest consumer base. Claremont grad David Arfin (CGU ‘86) is the co-founder and CEO of the company.
🧥 A New Blend Of Fashion And Wellness….. A recent study from the American Psychological Association demonstrated that more than 80% of Americans have reported feelings of stress within a two-week span. This climate sent Claremont graduate John Hur (KGI ‘18), entrepreneur and founder of Life Cocoon, searching for a new source of relaxation. John and Life Cocoon were recently featured by Digital Journal for their aromatherapy ‘on the go’ product. Their Bliss Hoodie is the first hoodie infused with essential oils and equipped with an aromatherapy hood.
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