Minneapolis startup founder talks about building his business from the ground up and his participation in Project Skyway
Note: the following profile on Alex Reilly of CribFrog was written by Miranda Taylor, a senior at the University of Minnesota majoring in public relations.
“Good ideas are a dime a dozen,” says Cribfrog founder Alex Reilly. “It’s all about how you execute.”
Building a business around a social networking platform that enables communication between apartments or condos and their tenants, this 24-year-old entrepreneur and St. Cloud State graduate is trying to make it in Minneapolis’ prevalent technology startup scene.
He has no small task ahead of him. Today’s entrepreneurs are facing tough economic conditions, combined with a dwindling number of investors willing to risk their funds on a business proposition that may not work out.
To overcome the hardships of the marketplace, Reilly applied to Project Skyway’s technology startup acceleration program last April. The program promised to offer him mentoring, industry know-how, opportunities to meet investors and, most importantly, opportunities to forge connections with influential people in the Minneapolis tech-business scene.
Being accepted into the program, Reilly says, has been one of his biggest achievements to date, “It’s a pretty prestigious place to be.”
Despite having to give up much of the time he used to devote to socializing, deer hunting and ice fishing on Rush Lake to complete Project Skyway’s rigorous application process, entrepreneurial boot camp weekend and endless idea-pitching, Reilly notes that the work is well worth it. “Reward will come when it’s ready,” he says.
Accepted into the accelerator alongside his two former business partners, Reilly originally intended to pursue VanquishAP, a real estate management company. However, just three days into Project Skyway, VanquishAP broke up disagreeing over where their company was headed and Reilly was left wondering what to do next.
“I was given a very cool opportunity by [Project Skyway founders] Cem and Casey to move forward in Project Skyway. I could build anything,” says Reilly.
With only two-and-a-half months left in the program to do it, Reilly decided, “I wanted to move forward.”
“Since 2005, I’ve lived in nine different places; six were multi-tenant apartments … I’ve thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could get to know who my neighbors are, if I could get to know if there’s anyone around here that I want to meet?” says Reilly.
Using “crib”, the pop culture word for a person’s place of residence, and the current tech-business trend toward animal names, “Cribfrog” was born.
When deciding if the idea for the Facebook-like platform of Cribfrog was feasible, Reilly asked apartment and condo dwellers time and time again, “Would you use it?”
His hairstylist, for one, provided an answer Reilly says he has heard repeatedly.
“I recently moved into a new apartment building,” she said. Then, she echoed the concern that makes Reilly believe there is a demand for a website like Cribfrog, “I wish I knew more people there.”
Reilly thinks Cribfrog has the potential to create community where it is hard to find or simply does not exist today. Starting with places like the Calhoun Beach Club apartments, Reilly will promote Cribfrog’s potential to help apartment and condo residents find other residents from their building that they might not meet otherwise. Cribfrog also has the added benefit of eliminating two-year long email threads between landlords and their tenants, and of keeping some of the bad press that buildings receive on a private platform, between the tenant and the landlord alone.
“I wanted to be a self-made guy young,” Reilly says.
From his first business venture as a 16-year-old plowing snow from neighborhood driveways in his hometown of Stanchfield, Minn. to today, Reilly has always felt an entrepreneurial spark.
He has co-founded a lake dock installation and removal company, worked as a social media marketing consultant for the Minnesota Small Business Development Center and served as a VMware administrator through his employment at ING Direct in St. Cloud.
All of this led him to where he sits today as one of the five companies expected to launch as Project Skyway’s first cycle draws to a close.
“[Project Skyway] has connected me to opinion leaders and gurus in the Minnesota technology ecosystem and I’ve learned a lot from them,” Reilly says. “It’s been awesome.”
A pilot of Cribfrog is expected to launch at the end of November. To learn more about Cribfrog, please visit: cribfrog.com
Cribfrog recently participated in Project Skyay’s inaugural Demo Day on Wednesday, Oct. 26 along with the four other Project Skyway companies. A recording of Demo Day is available here at Tech{dot}MN.