Alyssa Rapp
Business Name: Bottlenotes, Inc.
Website URL: http://www.bottlenotes.com/
E-mail: alyssa.rapp@bottlenotes.com
Year Founded : 2006
Number of Employees: 8
What does your company do? Bottlenotes is the leading interactive media company in the U.S. wine and craft beer industries. We educate and entertain our audience via email newsletters, interactive events, and social media; we provide wine reviews and buying advice on the best wine fridges for large wine collections via these same platforms as well.
Was there a specific turning point when you realized your business was moving to the next level? When my cofounder and I decided to pivot our business model from e-commerce to a media company in the winter of 2009, we were making a huge bet about our growth and survival. Three years later, when we had had doubled revenue as a media company and struck a strategic partnership with Conde Nast Publications, we knew we were moving to the next level.
What processes or procedures have you implemented that have helped grow your company?
1) Extremely hard-working, vision-driven team members;
2) Great strategic partners
3) Loyal and thoughtful advisers and board members
What is most rewarding about running your business? Seeing the delight in a consumer who fell more in love with wine or craft beer because of us, who felt like we helped to “demystify” the world of wine and wine accessories, and make it a little more approachable for him/her- and when helping advertisers reach these audience members.
What challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them? We’ve faced innumerable challenges as a young company- from undercapitalization, regulatory shift mid-game, the worst economic climate in 90 years, et al. How we overcame them so far is hard work and true grit. And thanks to loyal team members, customers, clients, and investors.
If you were starting over today, what would you do differently? Higher slower, fire faster, raise more money, and bring on an in-house software developers from the get-go.
What advice do you have for other business owners? No matter how many great ideas a company has, if you don’t have enough resources to both create and market new products, your efforts will end up being diffuse. So better to make fewer bets and bet big on them. It’s a higher risk strategy, but a higher potential reward one as well.
Please list any favorite books, tools or resources (software, website, etc.) you would recommend for others: At Bottlenotes, we swear by Sailthru as our email service provider and Clearslide for deploying our sales presentations.
