The Startup Breakfast Club organised by Entrepreneur Traction today (November 27) hosted 2oceansvibe founder Will Mellor, also know as Seth Rotherham, while nine startups pitched their businesses to an audience of industry players.
Each month, startups have the opportunity to apply to be featured as the hottest new businesses at the monthly networking breakfast.
This month, featured startups included the likes of Morpheus Commerce, HipCloset, RedFish, Shopping Feeder and AppSolution, while the main speaker was 2oceansvibe founder Mellor.
Mellor told the audience 2oceansvibe – which has 500,000 unique hits per month on its website and has also spawned a radio station, was running smoothly by itself and he now had time to focus on creating more businesses.
“2oceansvibe is at a stage where it is running nicely. It’s not taking itself seriously,” he said. “We never said we were serious journalists but there are people that take it seriously which is nice. Now I’m starting to look at more things.”
Among Mellor’s new projects are cane furniture e-store Cane Furniture Cape Town, local neighbourhood social network Our Hood and GetJets.com, which offers the empty legs of chartered flights at discount prices.
“There was a friend’s dad that once said to me: “Have 10 things going and make sure three work.” You can actually juggle a lot of stuff if it is run in the right way,” Mellor said.
He also told the audience of some of the lessons he had learnt since starting his own business, especially with regard to partners. Mellor said he had come close to letting parts of 2oceansvibe go at different points but had realised his mistake before it was too late.
“If you’re starting something, the urge is to take on a partner just to keep you company. Very often you can do things on your own. Don’t take on partners because you’re lonely,” he said.
He also said online entrepreneurs should not rush to quit their jobs, and also avoid getting entangled in unnecessary admin at an early stage.
“If you’ve got a job and you’ve got something that you’re trying out, don’t leave your job. With the internet you can juggle your time,” Mellor said.
“There’s so much you can do without doing all the admin. There’s no need to get VAT registered yet. Don’t get yourself wound up in admin if you don’t need to.”
