“ One of the most important, and accurate pieces of advice anyone every told me was, “90% of success is showing up, and suiting up”. When I first heard this 30 years ago, I smirked and replied, “Wait! You mean all I have to do is bless any person or occasion with my own presence, and whatever I want to happen, will happen?” I would later come to learn that I did not quite understand the concept, perhaps because I wanted to focus only on the “showing up” part. “Suiting up” is equally essential. That is, being prepared and ready. I thought “suited” meant, in uniform, or perhaps even, literally, wearing a business suit. However, if one expands the word to mean that you are “well-suited” for a specific encounter, it could mean that you are well-briefed, able-bodied, locked and loaded to benefit from any encounter or occasion. Suiting up in a well-suited way allows you to carry a certain confidence, which increases the success-rate of any “showing ups” , perhaps to even 90%.

This article is a report of just such an encounter by Daniel Senyard, the Founder and CEO of Shep, in which I am proudly one of the Seed Round investors . Daniel is successful because he knows how to show up AND suit up. “ -Ray Brimble

• Content written by Daniel Senyard on March 30, 2018

• Image credit: https://sheptravel.com/2018/03/30/shep-startup-pitch-reddit-sxsw/

The Role of Just Showing Up

This is the story of how luck, networking, preparation and being at the right place at the right time got me onstage at SXSW with no notice, to pitch Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit and co-founder of Hipmunk.

After graduating from Austin’s Capital Factory accelerator earlier this year, Shep, my travel tech startup was in need of our first office. The team had grown to more seven people, and while coffee shops had sufficed for product meetings when there were only four of us, we’d started getting dirty looks when we began putting tables together and colonizing entire corners. We looked at dedicated offices, office shares, and co-working spaces like WeWork. When it came down to it, at this phase Capital Factory was the right choice for our company.

We’d already raised our seed round with Capital Factory with several of their partners as major investors, so we decided that, as a startup in Austin, we had to be where the press, investors, and partners were most likely to show up. Past visitors to Capital Factory have included Barack Obama, Apple CEO, Tim Cooke, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, and many more. We knew that we might be able to get a space for less, but the community, education, and flow of people through the space optimizes our startup for serendipity.

Fast forward to this year’s SXSW and I was meeting with team members on the 5th floor when I received a text telling me that Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit and co-founder of travel startup Hipmunk, was downstairs and he had just said that creating a travel tech startup is the most difficult thing he’s ever done. “The CEO of Reddit is talking right now and saying that doing a travel startup is the hardest thing hes [e]ver done. You should tweet at him.” said the first text. “Baer just told him about Shep,” came the next one, referencing Josh Baer, the founder of Capital Factory, who was conducting the interview downstairs.

So, being in the right place (or at least four floors above) at the right time, I rushed downstairs and made eye contact with Josh before taking a seat in the back of the room. I planned to wait until after the talk and fight the crowd to introduce myself as the person Josh had mentioned and hand Steve a business card. SXSW had other plans for me.

“So, we only have about three more minutes, and because SXSW is all about doing things on the fly and taking opportunity as it finds you, I’m going to ask Daniel Senyard from Shep, who’s just joined us, to come up and pitch Steve for 90 seconds,” said Josh from the stage before getting up and giving me his seat. I proceeded to tell Steve how Shep allows smaller businesses to set up and track travel policies and team spending on travel websites like Orbitz, Expedia, and Southwest through a free browser extension. My hands were shaking, but I got it all out in about the right amount of time, and he immediately responded by saying, “I love the Premise.” Phew…