Kit Hickey is the co-founder of Ministry of Supply, an e-commerce company which is inventing the future of men’s business apparel. The company has been featured in TechCrunch, Inc., Forbes and Elle Magazine. In addition, Kit is a lover of mountain sports and has half an MBA from MIT. Follow her @kit_hickey.
Who is your hero?
Yvon Chouinard
What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?
The best piece of business advice came from Paul English, founder of Kayak. He told me, “Iterate the product as quick as you possibly can.”At Kayak, they have their developers answer the customer service phone. That way, if there was a bug in the site, the developer would want to fix it ASAP so that he wouldn’t have to take a lot of calls about it. An iterative design process is in our DNA, so, I took this advice to heart.
What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?
During the first hour, I catch up on overnight emails and think about my strategic and tactical goals for both the day and the week. Every Monday, our team starts the morning off at a great coffee shop, working together at an oversized table. This encourages us to use the “right side of our brain” as we talk about creative solutions to our business problems, and enables us to start the week of in a more social setting than the office.
Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?
Give feedback (positive and negative) to your team.
What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?
My definition of success is making our customers happy! If a customer is happy, we’ve done something right. If a lot of customers are happy, we’re tapping a market where there is need for our product. As such, we constantly track how happy customers are and engage them in the design process.
