How to Mix Love and Business

The following entry originally appeared on Under30CEO and is re-posted with permission below on our blog.

It was the summer of 2011, and the Tanglewood Concert in the Berkshires was top of the “must do” plan to impress my then girlfriend, Melissa.

But with no hotel rooms of any decency available within 50 miles of Lennox, MA, we decided to roadtrip it to Philadelphia instead.

As I lamented to Melissa about not being able to find a room in the Berkshires, we formed the idea for a person-to-person secondary marketplace focused on buying and selling hotel reservations. Today, this is the more robust and diversified UnBuyThat.

Smash cut to present, and Melissa and I are now married and remain co-founders of UBT. I’m the CEO and she is the Chief Strategy Officer.

Each day we work on our marriage and growing the business, neither of which is simple, but both of which are quite exhilarating.

With Melissa still working full-time in finance, and with me solely on the business, there are stresses and strains, especially when I want to talk UBT and she’s tired from her day job.

The way we make our co-preneurial relationship work is with a few simple rules developed through trial and error:

1) Business is business.

Don’t let your personal feelings make it impossible to delegate or criticize your partner.

2) Set time apart for the relationship.

Even if just a few hours a day, you sometimes just need to be a couple.

3) Trust each other.

Have faith as business partners and as a married couple that you will do the right thing.

4) Complimentary skills.

Make sure that you’re not stepping on each others’ toes, and have your own spheres of influence and expertise.

5) Relationship with the team.

Talk early on with your team about how being married doesn’t mean you are the same person. You have two minds and two voices.

6) Shared goals.

Make sure you are on the same page with your personal runway and finances, family goals, and business goals.

7) Have fun.

You’re married to an awesome person and starting an amazing business. Recognize that it will be stressful, but know that this is utterly unique and should be viewed as good times.

At the end of the day, our conversations with investors have been made stronger as they see the strength of our marriage. It can be a huge benefit to your company no matter the space.  But be forewarned that unmarried couples are viewed a bit more warily by investors until the wedding ring is on the finger.  Also know that being a “copreneur” puts you in pretty good company. Here are a few other examples of married teams that built great businesses:
Caterina Fake & Stewart Butterfield – Founded Flickr in 2004 (sold to Yahoo for $35m in 2005)
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Michael & Xochi Birch – Founded Bebo in 2005 (Sold to AOL for $850m in 2008)
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Kevin & Julia Hartz – Founded Eventbrite in 2006 (raised $80m+)
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Joseph & Estee Lauder – Founded Estee Lauder in 1946 (public)
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Donna Karan & Stephen Weiss – Founded DKNY in 1989 (Sold to LVMH in 2001 $645m)
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Leonard Bosack & Sandra Lerner — Founded Cisco in 1984 (public)
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Kate & Andy Spade — Founded Kate Spade New York in 1993 (sold to Liz Claiborne)
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In sum, love each other and love your business and you’ll find success in both!

 Neil St. Clair is CEO & Founder of UnBuyThat, a person-to-person marketplace for experiences.

UnBuyThat Has (Beta) Launched!

Welcome to UnBuyThat! The peer-to-peer reservation and experience marketplace. I am extraordinarily excited to announce our beta launch. You can learn more about our origins and the team behind UnBuyThat in the video and the text below. As always, you can contact me atneil@unbuythat.com.

The idea for our company came about in June 2011. I had been trying to impress my then girlfriend, now wife and UnBuyThat co-founder, Melissa, with a trip to the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Trying to book a last-minute hotel room during a peak travel season was a big mistake. I was unable to find any sort of lodging within 50 miles. 

Instead of heading north to the mountains from Manhattan, we opted south, planning a weekend getaway to Philadelphia.

As most summer weekends in the northeast go, we found ourselves stuck in traffic on our way to the City of Brotherly Love. Along the way, Melissa and I revisited our frustrations from 48 hours ago. All of our lives are so fast-paced and unpredictable. Who books reservations weeks and months in advance anymore? There must have been somebody having the opposite problem as us. Surely somebody with a reservation in the Berkshires had a last-minute change of plans. Why wasn't there a way for us to find that person? Most of all, wasn't this a lose/lose/lose situation for everyone involved? We were unhappy about not finding a reservation in the Berkshires. The guy with the reservation was unhappy about having to pay his cancellation fee, and the hotel was upset because the cost of the cancellation fee wouldn't cover the cost of the room. Surely, it was better for the hotel to have butts in the beds.

It wasn't just hotel reservations, either. The conversation kept coming back to the idea of a destination on the web where people could exchange last-minute reservations. We hadn't heard of such a site, so during our 70-mile 3-and-a-half hour car ride, we resolved to make one, and the idea for UnBuyThat was born.

The original idea was to focus solely on hotel reservations, but the more we dug, the more we realized there was a whole world of prepaid services and reservations that were going unused. Very quickly our ambition grew, and we decided to try being a totally comprehensive marketplace.

At our launch, UnBuyThat has nine different categories of experiences and reservations from which a buyer can choose. They range from hotel and restaurant reservations to Daily Deal coupons and gift cards. Users can even list their own personal skills on the site for hire.

All of our listings are curated and all transactions are backed by the UBT Guarantee. We're trying to take the unknown out of peer-to-peer transactions to make you feel a little safer when you use our site.  We'll do whatever we can to make the transaction a little easier. We'll even take care of the transfer after the deal is done through our Concierge Transfer Service option. 

As we grow, we hope to become a comprehensive repository for all of life’s experiences. Our ambitions are high but so are your expectations. In the weeks, months and years ahead, we aim to grow to meet and excel those expectations. 

We are incredibly excited to announce our launch and to be adding another foothold in the space known as 'collaborative consumption'. We truly believe that sharing, trading and transactions taking place among neighbors and friends is the new way forward. We’re very happy to be a part of it.

If you have any questions about our site, you can contact me directly at Neil@unbuythat.com. I'll usually respond within a few minutes, unless it's the dead of night. Then, a response may take a few hours.

Looking forward to seeing you on UnBuyThat,

Neil St. Clair, CEO & Founder