Aman Advani is Co-Founder and President of Ministry of Supply, a menswear company focused on creating a new category of clothing, Performance Professional, through a collaboration between experienced engineers and seasoned fashion experts. Aman comes from Atlanta, GA, where he studied Industrial Engineering at Georgia Tech before pursuing a career in Operational Strategy consulting at Deloitte and attending MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Follow him at @ministryofsupply.
Who is your hero?
Tony Horton — have you ever done P90x? I know that’s a total “bro” answer, but he’s a pretty bright guy. He’s a great motivator, speaker and his energy is contagious. Plus, he’s hilarious. I’d love to be the business version of Tony one day.
What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?
It’s not about convincing non-believers, it’s about finding believers. Sounds cheesy, I know — but it’s great advice. I heard it in reference to investors, but I find it fits pretty well in thinking about team members, partners and even customers.
What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?
Skipping a step in the production process. On our first bulk run, we skipped doing a size run with a new manufacturer, trusting that our tech pack would transfer properly. We lost a lot of dress shirts in the process. If we had just taken an extra week for the test run we would have saved a lot of money. We learned quickly to go over the top on testing; taking our design and development methodology (iterative and exhaustive) to production as well. The lesson for others here is to mitigate risk through iterative and exhaustive testing — a discipline we learned the hard way.
What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?
Emails! I love to clear my inbox; nothing better than a clean inbox to start your day. That way, you can be sure no one is waiting on you to complete their work, and you can proceed with your personal agenda guilt free.
What’s your best financial/cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?
Don’t assume there’s only one funding path. For that matter, don’t assume you need funding at all. We came in with the assumption that we’d start off with a small angel round, move to a big-name VC for A and B rounds, then exit. To date, we’ve used a host of tools for different purposes: angels, family funds, pre-sales through crowdfunding and bank lines for working capital.
Think about how much money you actually need to get to your next goal (say, profitability), then find the right partners to get you there. And as last note — realize that different partners have different agendas, and that those matter. For instance, our bank wants a small percentage back with no risk, while our seed investors want a high multiple but recognize the risk of their decision and are comfortable with it.
Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?
Talk to a customer today. I find that unless we constantly remind ourselves to do that, its easy to forget this part and become insulated, marching to a vision that your customers may not be interested in. Talk to a customer every single day!
What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?
Ultimately, we’re excited to start a movement into a new category of apparel: Performance Professional. I’m desperate to see our potential customer base meet our product and make it their go-to garment. So, I think success will be when I see our goods “in the wild” somewhat regularly — that is, randomly seeing people that we have no connection to enjoying our products. That’ll be an incredible day.
