Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Mac Mahon.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
The story of Expert DOJO started approximately six years ago with an idea that the 96% failure rate within early-stage entrepreneurs was not acceptable. We wanted to see if we could find the reasons why so many technology entrepreneurs were failing. What we did as a result was open up a space on the top of the Santa Monica shopping mall and turn it into a breeding ground for early-stage startups.
We brought in 100 companies over a one year period and studied every single company coming through to understand the reasons why they were failing. We provided them with no services but gave them a place to work and collaborate instead. So naturally, there were no expectations other than coming to a conclusion at the end.
After our year of research, we concluded companies were failing for multiple reasons. The biggest reason of all was these early stage startups were losing their ability of storytelling. America has forever been the nation of storytelling where phenomenal brands are built by small companies looking to expand throughout the world. We further discovered that:
1) In the last 20 years, the lean startup methodology has destroyed this philosophy and we believe that this is very much tied into our current decline as an entrepreneurial nation.
2) Entrepreneurs were too needy regarding investment. It seemed like the first words out of every entrepreneur’s mouth was to find investors to put money into their company rather than building something with strength and fortitude that they can bring forward.
3) Entrepreneurs were not taught throughout their traditional schooling how to build the right types of foundations so that their company could actually be successful.
4) Entrepreneurs were not taught how to growth hack properly to build their companies with anything other than Facebook ads.
We decided that we would resolve these problems at Expert DOJO and set up a Venture Studio to deal with all 4 of these issues. Our Venture Studio rapidly became a set of individual investments that we made into companies which turned into Expert DOJO becoming the accelerator it is today.
Our focus as the largest accelerator by deal number anywhere in Southern California or anywhere in the Southern half of America is to find the greatest international founders in the world. We bring these international founders to America by using our bridge into Los Angeles, teaching them all of the areas that we know are really important to them. As we guided these founders throughout our program, we’ve helped them scale at a much quicker speed than what they could have done alone.
Although we are young, we already have 70 investments in our portfolio and are growing rapidly with a hundred investments expected in the year 2021. Expert DOJO’s objective is not just to be the biggest accelerator in the world in terms of having the most amount of unicorns. But instead, our main success metric is for having the highest success rate with startups.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Building an accelerator is like building a startup in many ways. We needed to have a phenomenal team and make sure that our own skill gaps were filled in. We needed to make sure that we had sufficient investment to become the great accelerator that we knew we could become and make sure that people knew we existed. Like all startups, these keys to success seemingly insurmountable obstacles which get broken down because we chip away at them every single day. Now looking back after six years, it seems like they were easy to overcome but I still remember the difficulties we had on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis trying to wonder if we’ll make it through the following day. Like all other startups that persevere and succeed, we did too.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Expert DOJO – what should we know?
We are an accelerator that invests $100,000 into early-stage companies. We then look to potentially follow on with an investment of up to a million dollars assuming that the company is growing at the right rate. Within the accelerator, we believe our secret sauce isn’t the investment we make into companies or the fact that we introduce these companies to thousands of follow-on investors. Our real secret is the programs and support networks that we put together. These help build brands, both personal and business, and also strong business growth within companies by supporting them for a 3-year period. There is no other accelerator that we know of that will provide this level of service to companies that they invest in. We do it because we believe companies deserve the right to be successful regardless of how much time that’s going to take to actually do that.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
The ability to listen and learn. There are many great entrepreneurs, many great Venture Capitalists, and many great mentors around the United States who have been working in this space for an awfully long time. We have learned from all of these people and brought them into our camp to help us become stronger. We believe the program that we offer is the culmination of the greatest minds who have built the greatest unicorns. Our goal here at Expert DOJO is to make that available to everybody.
Contact Info:
- Address: 395 Santa Monica Place Unit 308 Santa Monica, CA 90401
- Website: https://expertdojo.com/
- Phone: 3107459580
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/expertdojo/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ExpertDOJO
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Expert_Dojo
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianmacmahon2/
Image Credit:
Expert DOJO
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