Insight
Naficy: Lack of online transparency let 1990s VCs abuse term sheets
“It's a term sheet is, unfortunately, not binding. It's a indication of interest that's really a buildup of good faith, and so you could do it and get away with it, absolutely, and it happened a lot in, you know, in the late nineties when you didn't have online…”
Opinion
Naficy: Competitor acquired supplier to force a buyout of Minted
“So I went in for the meeting, and after a little bit of chatter he said, we'd like to buy you. We'd like to buy your business. And I realized in that moment that that whole thing had been constructed to basically force us to sell our business.”
What-if
Naficy: Male founders receive more VC credit for past entrepreneurial success
“I think that if I were a man, I would probably Have gotten a little bit more credit for what I'd previously delivered. I think the personal reputation effect of what had happened with E would have magnified.”
Opinion
Naficy: Silicon Valley investors don't understand design or its importance
“When I say Silicon Valley doesn't have design confidence, I mean the investors in Silicon Valley don't really understand design and why it's important.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Naficy: Competitor acquired Minted's key printer two weeks before holiday peak
“The first week of October, my cell phone rings at about five o'clock. It's the CEO of a much, much larger competitor. And they basically say, we want you to hear the news from us. We have bought this printing company of yours that, that you use You know, this …”
Insight
Naficy: Luck and passion probably outweigh raw skills
“And I would say that's luck and passion probably outweigh the raw skills.”
Insight
Naficy: Entrepreneurs must discount claims that people won't buy items online
“Yeah, so I mean, if you hear that as an entrepreneur, you've got to discount that massively, because trust me, it's been everything, all of those things have been set.”
Assertion Contradicted
Naficy: Literally no one was selling cosmetics online in 1998
“Nobody was selling cosmetics online. Nobody. Can you believe? Literally no one.”
Insight
Naficy: Stationery retail is inherently viral with strong unit economics
“So the idea was focused around stationery retail, and it had fantastic economics associated with it, good margins, it was an inherently viral product, because your name is on the back of the card, your company name, but the shopping experience offline was pret…”
Disclosure
Naficy: Initially aimed to build Minted without venture capital
“On the other hand, I was a little bit, honestly, a little bit risk-averse, and I thought that I did not want to raise venture capital again because I Had had some bumpy experiences in the first go round. So I thought I need to find a business model to apply th…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Naficy: Minted launched holiday cards against investor advice and oversold
“We actually decided to move into the holiday cards business against the advice of all of our investors who probably rightly said you should focus on what you started, which was wedding. We decided to ignore the advice, launch into holiday cards, and we were, w…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Naficy: Minted reaches low hundreds of millions in sales and is profitable
“Yes, so we are in the low hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, and we are EBITDA, we're cash flow positive.”
Insight
Naficy: Frequent movers and third-culture kids remain perpetual outsider observers
“If you're like me, and you're, you move around a lot, and you're of mixed cultures, you're never really going to feel like you belong to one place or one culture, right? You're always going to feel a little bit like the outsider who's traveling through time an…”
Insight
Naficy: Banking analyst roles serve as the ultimate work ethic training ground
“I can't say that I love being a financial analyst. That, it is sort of like loving boot camp. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but you end up working very, very long hours but I will say it's a great training ground as to what work ethic really means, …”
Assertion Supported
Naficy: Eve.com generated $10M in sales during its first year
“I mean, we did ten million dollars in sales in our first”
Assertion Supported
Naficy: Eve.com closed its sale two weeks before the dot-com crash
“We closed it in April, 2000, Two weeks later, the market started crashing.”
Disclosure
Naficy: Raised a $2.5 million angel funding round to start Minted
“I was actually able to raise a pretty big angel around of two and a half million dollars, which is big for an angel around.”
Assertion Contradicted
Naficy: Minted had to build custom online stationery rendering software
“The key challenge was how to render the customization of your stationery online. That was, and that was, that wasn't something we could buy off the shelf from anyone, so we had to build it ourselves.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Naficy: Minted had zero sales in its first 30 days post-launch
“Here, there was not one thing sold in the first 30 days, not one sale.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Naficy: Early traffic exclusively bought small crowdsourced designs over established brands
“And then when they did come, what they were buying were the, it was a tiny little crowdsource selection that I mentioned to you that was my little personal secret hobby passion.”
Disclosure
Naficy: Minted was down to low six figures in cash in 2008
“And we have, you know, a couple 100,000 dollars left in the bank.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Naficy: Alex Rosen was the only investor interested in Minted's Series A
“This one brave investor from IDG, now Ridge Ventures, Alex Rosen, decided to take a chance on me. And that's it. That's the only reason. And nobody else was interested.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Naficy: Minted went 100% crowdsourced after brand stationery failed to sell
“The only thing that sold was the crowdsourced product, and not what we spent the entire year launching, which was all the stationary brands. We actually made a hard cut over, and by Christmas of that year, we went 100% crowdsourcing.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Naficy: Began selling bonds on Goldman Sachs trading floor at age 20
“So I was 20, and I was eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the office, and I was actually selling, I had a desk on the bond trading floor, and I was selling bonds as well as doing, working with clients. So before I could actually drink, I was selling bonds.…”
