022: Beef Jerky Subscription?!? How Dana Severson created a Business from Home…

Background on Dana Severson:

Dana Severson is Founder of StickinaBox.co, Co-founder of StartupsAnonymous.com, and Director of Marketing at Promoter.io. He is an AngelPad alum, a weekly contributor to Inc.com, and the former CEO of Wahooly.

On top of all this, Dana was born with a large forehead and natural ability to develop absurd ideas. He was immediately drawn to the advertising industry at a very early age. Growing up, he’d often get caught sipping a three-finger apple juice (disguised as cognac), smoking candy cigarettes, dressed like his favorite superhero, David Ogilvy. Dana has found therapy by writing on a regular basis for Fastcompany.com, Adage.com, MN Business, and TCBmag.com.

His Specialties Include: Advertising, idea-generation, branding, buzz-generation, spotting clearance racks at clothing stores, abstract writing, and mowing diagonal lines in his yard.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[0:50] He started his career in advertising, which directed the path of his career in terms of marketing.
[1:28] 6 yrs ago, he had a company called Wahooly that gives social networkers an investment stake in return for promoting a new business.
[2:10] A year later he sold and merge the company to a Social Marketing App called Loot.
[4:25] He founded StartupsAnonymous.com where founders/investors share whatever they want while remaining anonymous.
[6:36] He published weekly series in Pando under the title Startups Anonymous.
[7:30] He also started Stick in a Box, a beef jerky subscription company with an attitude.
[8:01] In his 2 and a half years doing the business, he had never once doubled or put the same product in a box on any given month.
[10:20] While doing Wahooly, he got a partnership with Klout.
[11:55] Stick in a Box started when he was in a trade show in Chicago and came across a booth that’s giving samples of delicious jerky.
[12:31] It was so delicious that when he got home he wanted to order online but cannot do since it was only distributed through local stores.
[13:50] He got an idea about subscription after listening to a podcast.
[14:11] He spent a hundred dollars in total to get the entire site running.
[14:54] Instead of trying to learn stuff about subscription, he recruited other subscription box founders in a facebook group.
[15:55] In the first couple of months of the business, he was solely relying to samples sent by beef jerky makers.
[19:42] He had only 30 subscribers in his first month and it grew into 500 subscribers.
[22:11] 6 months ago, he started an idea of referencing Stick in a Box as Ashley Madison for vegans.
[31:07] “I want to be exclusively in marketing.”
[31:40] He spent 3 months talking to companies and looking at different products and ended up working in Promoter.io
[37:20] “The biggest thing for me is I always been just actually moving forward with something.”