John Funk is both a Principal and the Chief Product Scout at Evergreen Innovation Partners . John also is President and co-founder of TrashCo Inc.  and founder and President of Long Tail Pet Products (makers of the DogPause Healthy Dog Bowl).

John has been involved with new product development, innovation, licensing and entrepreneurship for over 15 years. John raised over $40m in capital across the 6 companies he launched over the past 15 years, and 3 companies had successful exits via IPO or M&A transactions (over $500m in value creation for shareholders). The other 3 companies are still pending outcomes…

In prior lives, John has worked for Bell Atlantic and the law firm of Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. John Funk has been a guest lecturer on marketing and Open Innovation at Harvard, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Kellogg School of Management.

John received his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, graduated cum laude from Northwestern School of Law (concentration in IP law), and received his Bachelor of Arts from Northwestern University. John tries to read over 100 books a year and keep up with his family on the ski slopes, tennis court and golf course. He rides a road bike over Vail Pass every summer just to see if he can.

John’s name appears on various issued and pending patents, he’s on the Board of Greenhouse Scholars as well as Mopion Inc (makers of Sand-Off ), and he is diligently working on deciding what he wants to be when he grows up.

What are you working on right now?

Exploring how to use technology and Open Innovation to both source new product ideas and how to leverage that into new successful businesses. The world of atoms is different from the world of electrons, but there are some fascinating ways to cross-pollinate the two.

110% of my time is spent on Flings bins, a major disruptive innovation in the very sleepy category of trash & recycling bags and bins.

Another 10% of my time is spent on Evergreen Innovation Partners, where we just announced a really innovative partnership with Clorox.

And then I spend the nights and weekends working on a really useful pet product for dogs that eat too fast. This is a labor of love where an inventor came up with something that really is better than anything else out there today in the market. But how do you spread the word? How do you raise awareness for a physical good online? Some fascinating opportunities and questions…

3 Trends that excite you?

1: Faster clock speeds. My business partner, Dave Bayless, did a fascinating presentation on how the reality of business “clock speeds” means you have to run faster and faster just to stay in place. Check it out.  The net effect of this is incredibly powerful for those that can create new products, new ideas, and do it for others… Faster…

2) Open Innovation. The smartest and most successful companies of the 21st century will figure out how to leverage folks outside their organization. It stuns me how powerful this trend is.

3) Email. I started my first company around email. I remain convinced (and excited) that a simple email to a stranger can open door, start a conversation, and deepen a relationship with a 3rd party. And, at the same time, it can be so misunderstood and under-leveraged. Those who understand how to use email have a huge competitive advantage.

How do you bring ideas to life?

Iterate, iterate, iterate… I have a huge believer in trial and error. I believe you can generally test and learn much faster than you expect, and I also believe you’ll end up with the right answer faster (primarily because a feedback loop is more powerful and open to serendipity). Too often I see people stuck in analysis-paralysis, and then they take forever and still get it wrong. By running experiments, by trying things, by talking to potential customers and LISTENING, I think I can bring ideas to life faster and more effectively.

What is one mistake that you’ve made that our readers can learn from?

I tend to over-estimate capacity. While I still commit that mistake even today, I commit it less. You need to learn how to let go of things and how to say “no”. If you can’t regulate your capacity, you end up burning out because you’re over-stressed and over-worked. Same thing happens if you don’t regulate capacity from your staff — if you overtask them, or push them too far, they will get over-stressed and over-worked… You tend to lose the important in the urgent, and you find that you’re living too much of a tactical existence instead of clicking up a layer and looking at the big picture.

What is one book and one tool (i.e., piece of software) that helps you bring ideas to life?

Read Atlas Shrugged. It doesn’t get any better, or any clearer, than that.

Use a whiteboard. It’s the only collaborative tool I can use in real-time that can keep up with the conversation and ensure everyone in the room has a shared understanding. Don’t get me wrong – I love computers, web 2.0, email, jotforms, social media, etc. But nothing is worse than being in a meeting and watching someone trying to illustrate a point via some digital tool. It’s just not fast enough yet…

What is one idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

Data-driven retail – re-defining “profitability”. Most retailers make decisions based on gross profit margin on a unit basis. In-store staff is generally minimum wage, and buyers are low-level staff members. Slow-moving product clogs up the shelf, and things need to go “onsale” in order to move, which makes the going-in profit margin question a joke. There is now enough data available on inventory turns to start to calculate profit dollars per linear foot and to use market research to anchor new product decisions (vs. “gut” and brokers). Amazon has made a name for itself with the “long tail” – brick and mortar retail needs to counter-punch by being smarter about what to stock and how to lay out the shelf. And it needs to bring the best new products into store vs. just re-stocking same-old, same-old.

Why did you go to law school?

I found law school to be incredibly useful in terms of teaching me how to think. As the pace of business continues to accelerate, being able to think clearly and to focus on what’s important will separate winners from losers. I see many people losing sight of the key issues and getting distracted with “noise” – that’s a recipe for disaster. Law school doesn’t have to be just about the law; it’s about how to synthesize data and how to issue spot.

How do you find time to read 100 books a year?

I read to give my brain some “off-time” – generally 30-60 minutes before bed and anytime I’m on an airplane. I also read a ton on vacations. I’ve been blessed to be a very fast reader (a page or two a minute), which helps. I love NYT bestsellers and am biased towards thrillers and mysteries.

I’ve got a blog I periodically update here:
http://evergreenip.typepad.com/funky_reading/

Connect:

john.funk@gmail.com

Suzanne Akin is a freelance graphic designer that has a thing for starting companies.

Her pride and joy is her personal clothing line, www.akinz.com which is geared towards the snowboarding and wakeboarding communities of which she herself is a member. She says that this is the closest she has ever come to using her degree in Fashion Design and hopes that it can one day become her job. The clothing line’s motto, “Find your wings” is about finding that one thing that moves you, the one thing that makes you push your limits and reach for the sky. Because, after all, life is too short to settle for the ordinary. Akinz has recently been expanding into new product lines such as hoodies and soon to come sunglasses and hopes to be set up for greatness in the Winter 10/11 season.

Morningbird Collective is her newest venture, which is a collective creative space to host all things worthy in the world of 2 designers. Not only does it promise to provide you updates on ideas and products in the world of fashion, art, design, music, and modern culture that gets us excited; but it will be providing a place for artists and unknown brands to sell their stuff. Check out the site at www.morningbirdcollective.com and buy a couple things to support the artists currently featured or send Suzanne and Bumpas a note.

What are you working on right now?

I am trying to push Akinz into the wholesale market… into shops and online stores instead of just being a direct retailer. To do that, it takes a lot of preparation and investment and I’m just trying to work out the kinks with a couple smaller shops before I do my first trade show in August.

3 Trends that excite you?

1. Shift in focus towards smaller, more independent brands. It used to be about being “established” and now a lot of people are getting more excited about the little guys. Hopefully this will help me get my foot in the door with a bunch of shops and fans.

2. Conversing with the consumer instead of talking at them. Since I’m a small company and have never taken out a business loan, most of my advertising has been very personal, free, and involves either the internet or word of mouth. Therefore, I’m already at the conversing stage without having to shift my “advertising ideology.”

3. Trend towards ‘communities’ instead of marketing groups. We just relocated to Fort Collins, CO and being further from the mountains, there isn’t an established snowboarding community here. However, there are snowboarders… just need to round them up! I just started a meetup group called FoCo Riders Faction to help consolidate the local community that Akinz will sponsor.

How do you bring ideas to life?

Act on them. It’s a simple sentence, but true… we talked about Morningbird Collective for a few months before we actually started working towards the site design. Then once we started working on the site, people got excited and it just all came together. Of course, I’m a graphic designer and my boyfriend is a web developer, so that definitely helps things in the marketing department.

What’s the next step for Akinz?

I have a couple shops that are interested in picking up the line during the summertime and I’m hopefuly exhibiting at the Action Sports Retailer trade show in California this August.

What fuels the passion behind your businesses?

I love to snowboard, wakeboard, rock climb, hike, just about anything outside. Both of my businesses were created in the hopes that I can run a business connected to the ourdoors and the arts.

Connect

Personal: @smallakin
http://www.suzanneakin.com

Akinz: @akinzboardwear
http://www.akinz.com

Morningbird Collective: @morningbirdhype
http://www.morningbirdcollective.com

In August 2007, Shannon “Shay” Johnson began shayboarder.com a blog that answered to the majority of snowboarders, male or female. With fresh daily content 365 days a year, shayboarder.com has pushed the passion of snowboarding across the world with interviews, articles, trip reports and consistent product reviews.

With over a million visitors since August 2007, Shannon has continued her passion for snowboarding by writing to the average snowboarder. She continues to be the photographer, writer, editor, reviewer and the snowboarder behind the blog, spending over 100 days each season on snow.

To pay the bills, Shannon works at Steamboat Ski Resort in Steamboat Springs, Colorado as web content specialist and is the voice behind the social media for the mountain. In her spare time she’s on the mountain scouting lines, thinking of ideas and spending time with her dog Capita.

What are you working on right now?

I’m currently in the process of the busy time for shayboarder.com, it’s right before the SIA Tradeshow begins when I’m scheduling the last appointments and making lists for what my readers would like me to check out at the tradeshow. SIA is the snowsports industry tradeshow where all the next season’s gear is introduced, it’s the most popular subject on my blog and where I get the majority of my content. I always ask my readers what they are interested in, so I fulfill their requests since they are the ones behind my blog being popular.

As soon as SIA hits next week, I’ll be attending all 4 days of the tradeshow and going from appointment to appointment to see each companies 10-11 line of snowboard gear. After the tradeshow I spend 2 days at the on-snow portion to try out and test the upcoming 10-11 gear. I spend most of my season reviewing snowboard products so these two days are very important for the blog.

3 Trends that excite you?

Reverse Camber/Rocker: The snowboarding industry took a dive along with the economy and one of the biggest saviors is that companies had just introduced reverse camber/rocker to snowboards. We had lived with camber for so long that this new technology helped revive the industry and snowboarders were able to try something new. The end result is making snowboarding more fun, easier to learn on and a reason to buy new gear at a time when it’s difficult for everyone to spend money on gear.

Media Revival: Print media isn’t dead but they definitely needed a kick in the butt to recognize that blogs can overpower them when it comes to online content. I love magazines and really respect them for their hard and quality work. Unfortunately, by the time something makes it to print, it’s outdated and not realistic to all snowboarders out there. I think for the snowboard industry having online sites that can be current and up-to-date on events is very important. Finally, seeing that media overall should look at who is listening and make sure to bring content to those readers. Not everyone will be pro, but every snowboarder should know how to adjust bindings or wax their snowboard. It’s been great to watch snowboard media step up their game and work together to get online content for snowboarding in the right direction (whether it’s from blogs or mainstream media).

Sharing Passion: It’s such a simple idea that we all snowboard because we love it but it shouldn’t end at that. We should all share that passion for snowboarding to bring others in and help educate snowboarders on our way of life. I really commend pro-snowboarders who reach out to their fans and get them stoked on snowboarding. Snowboarding is about being part of something, sharing this passion and enjoying the ride. We should try our best to help others so they can too.

How do you bring ideas to life?

Anytime I have an idea whether it’s mine or a reader’s idea, I write it down and think about it when I’m driving. If I need help with it, I’ll ask around to get the right people involved and then make the connection, ask and follow through.

Last year I had someone mention there was no video on how to change a BOA lace on a snowboard boot. I immediately got in touch with BOA Technologies based out of Denver, CO and asked about coming to tour the company and video one of their employees changing the lace. They agreed and the visit was scheduled. I spent 2 hours at their office, meeting staff, taking photos and recording how to change a lace. The end result is a video on YouTube that shows people how to do this if it ever breaks on you.

How do you balance a full-time job with your blog?

I consider myself to have two full-time jobs, my day job that pays the bills and my blog job that I work in the early mornings/late evenings. I’m very careful at balancing them and keeping them separate so I don’t cross lines with either. I am careful not to blog at work so that it doesn’t interfere with my day job and I spend my late nights working on new articles or reviews for the next day. I try to be as organized as possible in blogging so that I’m always ahead on what I want to write about in the future. I am lucky to have a flexible job that allows for travel and time off, that I then use towards my blog job to make necessary trips to snowboard events/destinations or just fun!

Snowboarding is a male dominated industry, but you write to both men & women. Why did you not choose to focus on women’s snowboarding?

Exactly the reason above, snowboarding is a male dominated industry and ignoring the majority of snowboarders didn’t make sense to me. I ride both men’s and women’s products, sometimes I prefer men’s boards and sometimes I prefer women’s gear. Since my own focus is across the board, I wanted to write about that on the blog. The end result is I can reach out to both audiences without ignoring one over the other. To be respected as a woman in the snowboard industry is something of value to me as well and more women should be in the industry.

Snowboarding is a winter sport but your blog has content 365 days a year. Why did you decide to write year round about snowboarding and what do you write about in the summer?

My mind is always focused on snowboarding since it’s such a passion of mine. I wish I could live winter-to-winter but until that happens I just pretend to. In the summer I focus on interviews and make the switch to my Industry Profile Series which is posted twice a week for the entire summer, June to September. I interview over thirty people who have their hand in the snowboard industry and find out how they got their start, their jobs, experience, stories and dive deeper into that. I’m really interested in the people behind the scenes so when it came time to figure out something to fill content for the summer months, the interviews were something I wanted to do. I also continue to write about snowboard products and I do snowboard in the summer at the 10,000 peaks in Colorado and a trip to Mt. Hood.

How do you feel about the FTC ruling on bloggers review disclosures?

I think it’s a great idea and that all bloggers should have no problem doing it. I have reviewed over 100 products this year and I have no problem with a sentence that says where I got the product, whether it was given to me, I bought it or I borrowed it at a demo day. It’s important for people to know so they can use that information with your review. I ride the majority of products at demo days but I also get a handful sent me to me to review and I want to be as fair as possible that just because it’s sent to me doesn’t mean it gets a good review. It’s important because people look online for reviews and when I want a review of a product, it’s information I want to know.

What are your thoughts on the battle between brick and mortar stores vs. online retailers?

It’s a tough time in snowboarding to see local shops closing their doors and online retailers having no problems with keeping their doors open. I’ve purchased from both in the last year, supporting both but I also am not made of money so sometimes I have to buy my product from an online shop but it’s always one of three that I support. Most of the online stores I support have a brick and mortar store but realistically there are snowboarders who want the best deal and don’t care where they get it. It’s a tough time for both and I think having your hands in both is the safest way to get through it.

Are you seeing a change in companies attitude toward the sport especially due to the commercialization (x-treme factor), all the money that is in it and the rift seemingly starting between the commercial vs. traditional (lifestyle driven) snowboard cultures?

Last month I was at the Dew Tour/Totino’s Open in Breckenridge which is very much commercialized. All the major companies supporting the contest were there with booths but you know what, it made people come out to the snow and watch, hopefully they tried to ski or snowboard that day. Snowboarders are well educated and choose what companies to support, we all have loyal brands that we follow and it’ll continue to be that way. If commercial companies are willing to help pay for our contests and athletes to keep doing what they love, I think it helps us in the long run.

Is it good to have all this commercial attention put on the sport? (i.e.- inclusion in the Olympics?)

It can be good and bad, people that don’t understand or snowboard are now becoming involved in snowboarding that might not have snowboarders best interest in their minds.

The recent injury of Kevin Pearce is an example of commercial attention, Kevin is an amazing athlete and was seriously injured doing something he loves. When mainstream media got into it, one media outlet called snowboarding dangerous and attention-seeking which totally isn’t what snowboarding is and shines bad light on something we all live for. Snowboarding has been continuously progressing in tricks, a trick you did 10 years ago wouldn’t even put you in the competition and athletes are stepping up their game for competitions. Injuries are a part of our sport, of any sport out there and those negative comments could turn people away from something they might fall in love with. It’s unfortunate to see the negativity come our way and not the passion that we are all supporting Kevin in his recovery.

What do you do outside of snowboarding?

In my downtime that doesn’t involve snowboarding, I spend most of that time with family, friends or my dog. I enjoy hiking in the summer and most of my summer-off time is just relaxing, concerts and hanging out.

Where do you see yourself in the future?

I’m trying to figure this out myself, what next? Where does a snowboard blogger go, do they continue to blog or do they move onto other ventures? I’m currently at the point where I’m amazed at the journey this blog has taken me on and that my hard work will hopefully pay off so I can work in a job that allows me to snowboard and be part of the industry. For right now I’m happy sharing my snowboarding passion with various snowboarders around the world.

Email: shayboarder {at} gmail.com
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