Urinary Tract Health: You-T

We recently celebrated the 10^th anniversary of Woodstock ’99. Remember, that disastrously-planned festival after which the planners held up their hands and exclaimed “Water? Toilets? Shade? Oops! We forgot . . . “ (I think some of those people later got jobs in Army logistics by the way). Well, (in my best grandpa voice), I actually went to Woodstock ’99. And survived. Survived the mayhem. The mosh pits. The madness. Actually, I ended up spending about twice as much time on buses than at the actual concert. I was doing summer Army training at Fort Bragg in NC, and decided on a whim to “hop” on a bus and join my friends at Woodstock over the weekend. 18 hours after that “hop,” I sprinted off the Greyhound in Rome, NY having attracted every 400 lb gentleman who did not appreciate the importance of personal hygiene to sit right next to me on the various buses throughout our 6 state tour. After rocking out to Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and Korn, I dragged myself back onto the Greyhound to return to NC, wishing that I could invent a teleporter. This time I was fortunate to sit next to a friendly fellow with “H-A-T-E” tattooed across his fingers.

When I finally emerged from that bus in NC, I kissed the ground and thanked the higher power for keeping me alive and made an important promise. I vowed never to ride a bus for longer than 3 hours again in my life. Never. I’ll take trains, water taxis, rent cars, hitchhike, bike, jog whatever it takes to avoid the horror of 18 hours on a bus without AC after someone relieves himself and then decides to share the details of his upcoming arraignment.

Well, I broke my promise last week. I had to travel to visited several vendors and manufacturers. And, as a start-up redefining the term “bootstrap,” I had no choice but to take the bus. $30 round trip. I dreaded the experience for weeks. I could only imagine whom I was going to attract. The 400 pounder or the hate metal enthusiast? Or maybe someone new awaited me? Soon I learned that, in the past 10 years, some enterprising entrepreneurs have redefined bus travel. AC. Comfortable seats. Wi-Fi! A driver who enforced the rules. And I was sitting next to a diminutive and smiling 100 lb. woman. Things were looking up.

My positive experience on the Bolt Bus made me optimistic about entrepreneurship in a downturn. We all know that there is not much capital available except for super-experienced entrepreneurs. But what Tina and I lack in experience we make up for in passion and grit. We are committed to improving women’s health. Changing the rules of urinary health. Providing women with an optimized solution.

So how does a downturn benefit us? We believe in YouTea! We are willing to sacrifice for YouTea! We don’t vacillate. We don’t take our football and go home at the first sign of adversity. We’ve had people (all dudes) tell us that they don’t “get” YouTea! “Why would women want an alternative?” they ask. We dust ourselves off and move on to the next one. We don’t seek the comfort of a big company to save us from adversity. It would be easy to say “well, it’s just impossible to start a company in this environment. We’re going to work at Microsoft.” And others will do that. Take their good ideas and bury them. Exit the marketplace. But we will wait out the storm, optimizing our product, gaining customer input to make sure YouTea! fills customer needs, and building buzz around our women’s health solution.

At the end of the day, we will be a better company and a better management team for being resilient during tough times. 10 years from now it will have been obvious – “Of course YouTea! was a good idea! They reinvented women’s health! Why didn’t I think of that?” Just like I got off the Bolt Bus the other day and said “Reinventing the bus ride? Why didn’t I think of that!?” It seems obvious to me now that a comfortable bus ride was in fact possible – it only took a few enterprising and passionate entrepreneurs to make it happen.