entrepreneurship portfolio
varchive
Position: Chief Executive Officer
Timeframe: Ongoing
Location: Boston, MA (USA)

Founding and running the startup company Varchivehas proved to be one of my most valuable experiences to date. Varchive is an analogue to digital video archiving service, with the mission of providing households and institutions in the Needham/Wellesley area and the rest of the United States with professional, friendly and efficient digital archiving services for old analogue media at competitive prices. Varchive has provided a platform for me to expand and mature my entrepreneurial skill set and to take a number of risks and test a number of different strategies, whose outcomes have provided me with important lessons that can be applied to future entrepreneurial ventures.


As CEO of the company, I was responsible for overseeing the general operation of the business, coordinating team efforts, exploring new market opportunities, communicating with customers, providing support for the company’s officers and helping resolve any major issues relating to our operations. As a result of my past experiences, I was also in charge of preparing marketing and advertising materials that were presented to the general public.


The skills I have developed and the network I have established through running Varchive are invaluable and, collectively, these have helped to further my confidence in starting and running entrepreneurial ventures. One example of such a skill is the understanding of how to market a service to a specifically defined target market. We initially attempted to define our market after conducting market research and questioning a number of potential customers in the local communities that we planned to serve. Due to time constraints, however, we were more successful in adopting an ongoing market research strategy that allowed us to adapt our marketing model after speaking to customers who had already made use of our service and after observing general customer trends during the first month of service. This form of continual market research, along with the employment of an adaptive marketing model is a skill I will continue to use in future businesses.


Once the target market had been better defined, we set about to market and advertise our service specifically to that market, an action that greatly enhanced my communication skills. We made sure, as part of our marketing model, to maintain a very personal contact with our customers, which also allowed for continual feedback and assessment of customer satisfaction. The feedback from customers also helped us decide how we were going to differentiate our product in a market that is served by a relatively large number of small scale companies, along with a few larger scale companies. These differentiation and marketing strategies have proved to be extremely successful, allowing the company to achieve a profit within the first two weeks of operation.


All of the skills mentioned are still evolving and developing, and each day of operation teaches us something new about how to run the business most effectively and efficiently. Varchive was initially run as an educational project through the Olin College Foundations of Business and Entrepreneurship program and is currently in the process of being registered as a general partnership in Massachusetts. I am currently also acting as an advisor and technology officer for a registered Austrian startup company that is planning to run a similar business in Europe.