When Daniel Dubois cold-called graphic designer Tom Pedriks, he had no network or technical understanding to build his startup – just an idea he wanted to pitch. Dubois told Pedriks about his idea for a platform for sharing outdoor gear, a concept that would later become ShareShed Inc.
“I had so much passion,” said Dubois, 24, remembering hundreds of similar phone calls he’d made that were mostly met with the click of the receiver. Pedriks, however, stayed on the line and agreed to become Dubois’ first mentor.
“He introduced me to the industry, and I couldn’t wait to dive into it head first,” said Dubois, now ShareShed’s CEO.
With a lack of contacts under his belt, Dubois, who was a Capilano University student at the time, recruited friends and classmates to attempt to gain traction for ShareShed. For Dubois, meeting Pedriks meant it was time to “put in the work.” But his peers lacked the same mindset. After many attempts at trying to get things off the ground, Dubois noticed several performance issues were keeping ShareShed from moving forward.
“It was a mistake to try to include everyone in the beginning,” Dubois said. “I thought I needed people as passionate as me, but some people were passionate about the wrong things, and others were not passionate enough to take action.”
Realizing there was a problem of “misaligned values,” the CEO made the difficult decision to shake up the team and let go several members.
“They are still people I see and talk to,” Dubois said. “But we no longer work in a business capacity, which should have never happened, to be honest. I wasn’t using my passion for filtering the right people into the team, and I should have.”
Dubois said he’s avoided many entrepreneurial blunders such as taking too long to get started or failing to test the assumptions of his startup. But the importance of choosing the right people for a new business is one lesson Dubois aims to share. As a mentor for Spare Rides and Basecamp Card Co. through Axe’s Find Your Magic program, the CEO said this will be one of the first lessons he will share.
“The people you have on board the ‘bus’ that is your company – it’s the most important aspect of making your idea a reality,” Dubois concluded.
On paying it forward
“[The charitable organization] The Next Big Thing was created because [founders Ryan Holmes and Meredith Powell] looked at young entrepreneurs and said, ‘If only we knew before what we know now.’ Well, I need to tell upcoming entrepreneurs what I know now.”•
