Ryan Shank documents a week at Phone Wagon, his early-stage startup, as the team scrambles to finish sales decks, design branded shirts, and redesign the logo with designer Pam before Techstars starts. Co-founders Mike and Kane race deadlines from a West Village apartment while onboarding new sales lead John.
Chapters
All right, let me tell you something. Devin the Famous Joke Man here. I'm in the Village and I could not survive without Phone Wagon. I'm telling you right now, if you're uptown, if you're downtown, if you're midtown, if you're SoHo, you're NoHo, you're Boho, if you're just a ho, you gotta get Phone Wagon. What's up guys, it's Ryan from Phone Wagon. We're at day 3, day 3 of the vlog. Here in the apartment, we are creating t-shirt designs. We got Mike creating t-shirt designs. Kane, Kane, Kane was, by the way, let me just tell you guys a quick story so that everyone can follow along. Kane, he's day 3 in New York City. Told him to come over in the morning. He extended it, said he's gonna, you know, has brunch with one of his YouTube friends. He's gonna be here at like, you know, maybe I'm thinking noon. It's like 5 o'clock right now. Kane comes in sweating. Me and Mike, we are working on some sales decks right now because we have a bunch of customers that need sales decks. A deck is a presentation in like business lingo. Also creating t-shirts 'cause Techstars starts on next Monday. 8 days, so we have to get this lady our t-shirt designs so that she can create t-shirts for us. I'm sure we missed the deadline, so we're probably gonna have to pay her some astronomical rate, which we're then gonna negotiate down already. So if you're watching this, Pam from Pam's Designs, don't hate us, love us. We love you. And we're trying to figure out what we want on the t-shirts because our logo is like not that good. Mike's putting that special sauce on that right now. We actually talked to a customer earlier today that signed up, creating a lot of the documentation for everyone to start on Monday. And by everyone, I mean just us plus one more. Come along for the ride. Welcome to the vlog, day 3. Turn on it. The climax tease. Alright, but look how long it is. I guess we talked about it a little bit. Yeah. As soon as people start going over, like that needs to be like, I think in the notifications. In the notifications in the product? Yeah, in the product. Like something that lets them know you're going over. We'll put a nice soft blue, but like everything is blue. Everything is soft blue right now, so we wanted to make it more unique. Guys, we're vlogging. We should put a sign on the door. "Don't touch my gas." Wait, so can you tell the vlog how you enjoyed your stay? Sorry, I'm like schwitzing like a pig. No, no, no, we get edited out of the work. It was wonderful. It was clean. Clean. And great location. Yeah, an amazing location. Great apartment. You can get holes. The holes is the hardest part. They're gonna be like, "Who? Why was that woman melting?" Since we're in like C-stage startup phase, you know, kind of have to rent my place out rooms by the night to people. Even just if it's like a phone with just wheels without this, it would kind of work. Not like this, but I'm just saying like a custom graphic with maybe just— See, and these shirts are American Apparel, but these are the double blend, not the tri blend, so they fit weird. They're like really tight. Everything from scratch basically. Do you want to go handheld or— yeah, that's heavy, bro. I am also bothering all of my friends and making them like and subscribe to the vlog, that sort of thing. But going through this process with Mike over here, starting to realize how bad the current logo is for our company. I was gonna say for the website, but it's everywhere and it's really, really bad. There was 7 different colors in it. Colors were horrible. It looked like a wagon from like 1947. Not that there's anything wrong with the 1947 wagons, just isn't the wagon that we're going for. We're not looking for a '47 wagon, we're looking for more of like a '17 to like '19, 2017, 2019 wagon. We had an outdated wagon. You never want an outdated wagon, guys, just life advice. You always want like an up-to-date, hip wagon if you wanna be a Wagoneer. If you wanna be a Pioneer and a Wagoneer, you want that fire wagon. I just told someone to subscribe to my vlog and they just go, "Sorry, who is this?" You know, you know? You can like stand right here. You want the same one? Yeah, yeah, that was good. Oh my God, I'm about to hit it deep, deep, baby. I didn't get a joke from a black guy in the building. In the village on July 4th weekend during the Trump administration, you don't feel complete. Now luckily I'm incognigro, I'm gonna hook you up. I just remembered that I have my laundry getting delivered to my apartment in like 30 minutes, so hopefully if they come, I can either tell them to just come in the door, then I have a key on my doorknob or we're gonna have to go back to the apartment and let them in. But hopefully, one, hopefully we're just done here by the time we go back. And then two, if they are gonna be here, then I can just tell them to come in. Alright, so Mike just went home, had an awesome day. We, sorry, got a lot of sun going on right now. We actually got a lot done. We're really just preparing for Wednesday for the start of everyone and also so that he can just start working on a bunch of stuff. We have a ton of things that we need to do and we also I'm gonna be working really closely with John, who's starting on Monday, or on Wednesday in sales, so we did a lot of cool stuff. He just went back. Kane and I were grabbing some food at the Butcher's Daughter in SoHo right now, and yeah, I mean, then we're gonna go back and hit it. We're gonna do some edits for the vlog, and we have a bunch of stuff that we need to get done later tonight, so that's what's going on. Down the street, going back to the West Village so that we can, one, finish the edits for the vlog from yesterday, 'cause we're just vlogging every day, And then the other thing— Jesus Christ, I'm trying to vlog. One, you should always have a number in your head of what you want to hit, but then you should obviously put a timeline to it so that then there's a clear path. So that there's a clear path to get there, right? So it's like, hey, I want to hit this number by sometime. That's not good enough. You got to say— oh, look at my hair just blowing in the wind. You want to say, I want to hit this number by, you know, within the next 3 years. Then how are you going to get there in the next 3 years? I wanna get it right, 'cause I was at Starbucks, so. Kane, when he first moved here, picked out the apartment that he wanted to get. I don't know how to zoom this camera. I think that's like not even, dude, this is the nice building right here. It's called Greenwich Lane right here on Greenwich Ave. Look, check out this view. Why would nobody buy the bottom space if it's the nice one? Because it's like under construction 'cause it's so new and nice. Look, down 7th Ave, New York City right here, West Village, 7th Ave and like 11th Street, Greenwich Ave's right here. Guys, we're back at the apartment. Check this out. This is why I love New York. You come back, your laundry is just sitting right outside, folded, ready for you. So you just start using it. And that is why I like apps, I like innovation, I like technology, and I don't like doing laundry.
