In this ongoing series, we share advice, tips, and insights from real entrepreneurs who battle daily business struggles. (The answers have been edited and summarized for clarity.)
Brian Park, CEO of Hanko
Contents
- 1 Who are you and what is your company?
- 2 What inspired you to start this company?
- 3 What was your biggest business challenge and how did you overcome it?
- 4 What advice would you give entrepreneurs looking for financing?
- 5 What does the word ‘businesskinda.com’ mean to you?
- 6 What is something many aspiring entrepreneurs think they need that they actually don’t need?
Who are you and what is your company?
My name is Brian Park and I am the co-founder and CEO of Strict, a digital platform that connects adults 55+ with people and activities in their communities. We both host group activities and support member-led activities such as pickleball, coffee meetings, art workshops, table tennis, skydiving and almost everything in between. Our goal is to build Hank into the perfect tech solution for this generation to create and maintain the social connections we know help us all live longer, healthier lives.
What inspired you to start this company?
Hank’s genesis came from a sort of amalgamation between two different areas of my life: the professional and the personal.
By the time I started thinking about Hank, I’d been working in the tech industry for over ten years, where a general rule of thumb is to “design for yourself,” meaning someone under 40. There’s a deep-rooted misconception in technology that older generations don’t understand or want new technology, so we rarely design solutions with older people in mind.
The personal part of my aha moment came around the time my parents became empty nesters. While my brother and I were out of the house, I watched my parents struggle to find new social circles and activities. That vision began to blend with my experience in the tech industry, and together the two began to shape Hank. My mother and father eventually found social connections through church and alumni organizations, but it was a long and disjointed process for them. Seeing that my parents were struggling as they entered this new phase of life, I just drove home to see me and my co-founder Andrew (we’ve been best friends since sixth grade!) how necessary social connections and new activities were for our parents’ happiness, that was the nugget that Hank started with.
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What was your biggest business challenge and how did you overcome it?
In my experience, one of the biggest challenges we face as entrepreneurs is staying focused on — and staying true to — your vision.
Our first version of Hank was actually a very different business: we were essentially trying to bring assisted living, such as high-quality transportation and meal delivery, to the individual homes of older adults. We quickly discovered that building that particular business would require a real shift from our original vision of community building and social connection.
The challenge was that our early version of Hank would probably have been a viable, albeit shorter ceiling, company – we saw early wins! But we just knew it wouldn’t really deliver what we wanted to do for ourselves or the over-55s. So we essentially went back to copper tacks: we paused everything for about two months as we talked to our consumers, whiteboarded new models, and rebuilt the brand and product with our team.
Those months were both very exciting and also very difficult – it was difficult for us and our team to put the early signs of growth and short-term viability behind us and start from scratch. But we’d do it again in a heartbeat – it drove us to build a company we’re immensely proud of and better positioned to provide value to our Hank community.
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What advice would you give entrepreneurs looking for financing?
There are three things I always think about when I go to a raise of any size: being organized, running it as a process, and telling a story.
The first two are really just about the performance. Some budding entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that financing will magically appear if your idea is good enough, when in reality there is a structure and timeline for deals and investor relationships, and you need to be aware of those details. to make an increase go smoothly.
The third – telling a story and getting investors to step into your vision – is the most important. You want investors who really understand where you want to go, which means you must understand and be able to articulate where you want to go. Spend time gaining clarity on your vision and use that as the anchor for your story. Financing is only a small part of what you should be pursuing: You also want investors to be partners who align with your vision, so they can advise you on how to get there and help you think about what it takes to achieve the next milestone of growth.
What does the word ‘businesskinda.com’ mean to you?
Perseverance and consistency above all else.
For every moment of entrepreneurial glory—a great launch, a great product, a category-defining idea—there are a million others that are stressful, difficult, and unpredictable. The best entrepreneurs are the ones who come back every day, whether business is thriving or you’re still struggling with product-market fit, and who bring guts and tenacity to learn and improve and find a way to solve problems .
It’s also worth noting that those same qualities are critical to have in your team as a whole; it will not be enough for the founder or founders to operate that way. I’ve found this to be especially true in the early stages, where there’s a lot of turning around and figuring out what to do across the business.
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What is something many aspiring entrepreneurs think they need that they actually don’t need?
I think it’s common for budding founders to feel like they need all the answers before getting started, so they’ll put off product work or fundraising talks or other critical activities until they get it all “right.”
But one of the principles Andrew and I live by as founders is the idea of ​​taking small steps instead of none. We relaunched the new Hank site in the MVP phase after spending just a handful of weeks coming up with the offerings and redesigning the site. Since then, we’ve built it up piece by piece, week by week, based on feedback from our customers. It’s so important to go out and talk to customers and iterate your product instead of trying to silo develop it until it’s perfect. Over there is not perfect, and the sooner the founders feel comfortable with that, you will act faster, your team will feel stronger and you will end up with a better product.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.