Made By Two is a design firm established by Kermit and Azadeh Westergaard, who caught our attention with their interdisciplinary approach to design, from interior design to inventing their own products. We were so impressed with the body of work they had created in such a short amount of time, all while raising a baby boy together, that we just had to know — how did they make this amazing business venture a reality? Kermit and Azadeh chatted with us, and it was a love fest: they expounded on about falling in love with each other, falling in love with eclectic design projects, and falling in love with Harvest to keep them on track of their time and expenses.

Tell us about how you guys met, and what sparked your first creative collaboration?
We met at Cafe Moto, a jewel-box of a restaurant under the subway tracks in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s a charmed world in there, like the set of Amélie or Brazil, or like a dream, everyone packed into this little triangle of a restaurant, a flamenco guitarist by the front door, the rumble of the M train rattling your wine glass. We were on a blind date and we talked for hours and hours. Somewhere in there, we realized that perhaps it was fated—’Azadeh’ is Persian for ‘free woman’, ‘Kermit’, Gaelic for ‘free man’.

Our first collaboration was our wedding invitation. Azadeh’s background is in graphic design & illustration, Kermit’s is in industrial design, and while we couldn’t approach things more differently (Azadeh: meticulous, elegant, whimsical; Kermit: chaotic, complex, kinetic), we managed to tune into a shared vision that produced something that was so clearly both of us, and yet better than the sum of the parts.

Renovating and redesigning your house together landed you guys in the pages of the New York Times – what did you do to catch their eye?
After we got married, we purchased a lovely, long neglected row house on a charming, historic, brick paved street off of the L train, literally one stop past the hubbub of Williamsburg. After nine months designing, contracting, and rebuilding the house, we moved into what felt like our farmhouse in the city. Before the move, we had been holed up in a post-war studio in the East Village with a hundred pound, slightly psychotic, rottweiler-doberman mix (Kermit’s contribution to the marriage), so moving into our freshly renovated 1908 brick house, with a front porch, sun-drenched garden and wood burning stove, simply felt too good to be true … we probably needed the Times article just to make sure it was all real (a friend of a friend, now a dear friend and a former client, recommended our place to the writer).

What does a typical day entail for you?
The best part of working for yourself in a small company is that there just isn’t such thing as a typical day: there are simply too many hats to wear, from project diplomat to contract drafting, from bidding to bookkeeping. A highlight for Azadeh is the research side of the process — honing in on the aesthetic vision in collaboration with the client, and then sourcing, scouting and antiquing until that vision materializes; for Kermit, there’s great satisfaction in the collaborative side of working with contractors and craftsman to nail down the twelve thousand details that you might never notice, but together really make the project. For both of us, the best days are simply design days, when we manage to carve out the kind of time it takes to fully get lost in a project, without distraction. Remarkably rare days, but always a favorite.

What project has Made By Two worked on that you are most proud of?
Last year, we designed a restaurant in the East Village called Northern Spy Food Co., and that project can’t help but stand out for us, since the great majority of our client work has been residential. The restaurant has done very well to date — it’s received a positive write-up in the New York Times and was selected by Time Out New York as the “Best New Neighborhood Restaurant” in the city. It was an exciting project, and we particularly loved the adventures and characters we met sourcing all of the found objects and reclaimed materials integrated into the design—the lumber yard leftovers (turned wall paneling), the vintage chicken coop brought back from farm country (re-purposed as retail cubbies), or the old bowling lanes we uncovered in a magnificent 1800’s gas company headquarters turned salvage yard (cut down into restaurant tables and countertops). There’s also something wonderful about being able to revisit a space that you’ve designed—as opposed to the residential projects which we rarely see again once completed.

You seem to have your hands in design and branding, product patents, photography, illustration, and residential and retail renovation. What types of projects do you see yourselves working on in 5 years?
In five years, we’d like to have a small boutique hotel in our neighborhood with a roof-top restaurant and a café with a roaring fireplace. We’ll run our design offices out of the hotel, and will take on a very limited number of eclectic design projects with clients we admire — preserving a good amount of time for writing and producing design books & children’s books; developing new products; and traveling to India and Turkey with Felix in tow on sourcing expeditions. Yes, that’s it: one third of our time welcoming people into our world, one third working with people in theirs, and one third fully in our own…

Why do you track time, and how do you guys use Harvest?
Amidst the learning curve of running a new business and managing our projects (and of course, our three year old son!), the back end of the business is inevitably a juggling act. Harvest has offered us a way to really stay on top of our time and expenses — whether for a client being billed hourly, or simply to have a sense of the time we’re putting into our larger projects, where we get a percentage of the build-out. When we started our business, a friend of ours said that tracking your time is the single most important step in understanding how your business works, and we’ve really come around to believe those words are gospel. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that you actually want Harvest to be part of your daily ritual — we’re absolutely in love with the gorgeous interface and seamless iPhone integration.

What advice do you have for people starting new ventures in the current economic climate?
There is always space for the exception. Always. As Woody Allen says, ‘eighty percent of success is showing up’. The other twenty percent just comes out of doing what you love. So our advice: show up, and do what you love. Oh yes, and start a business right after you’ve had a child and quit your day job. You’ll show up … and then some.

What’s the secret to keeping your clients happy?
Three secrets in our book: listen, collaborate, and don’t advertise. Designing someone’s home (or business for that matter) is an intimate process. It’s about who they are, but it’s also about who they want to be and how they want to live. Our job is to work with them to figure that out. We’re not delivering a design, we’re unearthing how they are meant to live in the space, and we’re bringing our aesthetic and sensibility to that process. Since we don’t advertise, it’s not just that we want them to be happy, we need them to be happy. If every job eventually leads to three new jobs, we’ll be alright.

Speaking of secrets, what’s the secret behind running a business together while raising a family?
Working creatively with the person you love is like spreading mascarpone and honey on a waffle — it’s totally decadent to put two of life’s greatest sweets on one fork, but if you can do it, why not? OK, there are plenty of reasons why not: starting a new business is completely all-consuming, starting a family is a total juggling act, and starting a business and a family with the same person is, well, kind of insane. The secret is probably balance: taking down time, taking time to yourselves, taking time as a family, and most importantly, taking time as a couple. We’re not there yet, we’re still in the trenches; but we’re both determined, by some circuitous path, to get to that place where we need to be … and at least occasionally, to pick up a Masala tea along the way.

We welcome Made By Two to our growing roster of Harvest New Founders, and are excited to support them as they they make the world a more efficient, personalized, and beautiful place.

What was the inspiration for starting your company?

Animation has the ability to connect emotionally with an audience, and we’d like to think we do that in our work. We draw from a broad range of experience, from Greg’s background in feature film visual FX (Lord of the Rings, King Kong) and Ivan’s fine arts obsession with low-res pixel art, indie video games and comics. We feel that there is a lot of emphasis on the attainment of realism in the current animation landscape, but it can really limit the creative potential inherent in animation. The strength of animation is that you can do ANYTHING.

What is the animation/interactive scene like in Melbourne, and Australia as a whole?

Melbourne has a strong interactive scene. IGDA (International Game Developers Association) meets monthly to discuss all sorts of things related to the industry. It’s a chance for professionals and students to talk about work, side projects, jobs, software, etc. We were really inspired by the IGDA events and we find ourselves wishing for something similar for the animation industry. There is a lot of talent down here, but we think a lot of people are protective of their craft or simply too busy to devote any time to the community side of things. We’re starting a new collective of the brightest people in animation and cartooning and we’re looking to produce some content that will put Melbourne, and Australia, on the map as being at the forefront of animation.

What is it about the 1920′s style animation that you like so much, and how are you making it applicable in a contemporary world?

The style is so physical. We see a lot of stuff these days that is really stiff, and we prefer the elasticity and rubberyness of the 1920’s animation. The art direction and character designs were really funny and appealed to all ages – and are still appealing to people today. There are all sorts of ways to apply this approach, such as advertising, television and film, but the most exciting application, for us at least, is interactive. The visuals are what sell the product in the first place. We’re big fans of people like Nintendo, that recognise the importance of appealing imagery and compliment it with novel game play.

What projects have you been able to realize with Rubber House that you are proud to call your own?

We recently completed a short film called The Big Winner (watch the video above!). It garnered a lot of attention online from some prominent animation blogs as well as getting quite the following on Vimeo. In terms of commercial work, we did the art direction and animation on a promotional web game for the Telstra V8 Super Car tournament in Sydney. Visually, it’s quite different from most of our other work, as it references early computer game graphics or “pixel art.” We had quick turn around on the project, but it was super fun to produce.

What powers the engine behind Rubber House?

We use Adobe Flash to produce our animation. We like to do as much hand drawn animation as possible. Flash has a bit of a bad name due to the software’s automated shortcuts being misused. The insult that something looks a “Flashy” is well deserved, but it’s not so much the software, rather, how it’s used. Flash is neat because we can use it for video and interactive production. In terms of online resources, we constantly refer to Cartoon Brew. It’s the best site for animation past and present. We also have a growing library of animation and art books within arm reach.

Do you have any advice for other seedling small businesses, of early strategies in running your own firm, that have been fruitful for you?

Our model is to use our commercial work to fund our own creative projects such as short films, mobile and online content which we work on during our down time. It’s these auxiliary projects that ultimately get us more of the sort of paid work that we want to do. So the two strands compliment each other nicely.

Why do you track time, and how do you guys use Harvest?

Time tracking is really convenient for working on-and-off on projects. The way we work often involves juggling multiple tasks between the two of us, and sometimes it is only necessary to work a few minutes here and there. So to save us jotting down a start time and stop time on paper and then trying to add everything up at end of the day, we just select the project online and hit the timer. It’s quicker for us and probably more accurate for the client. Furthermore, even when clients and invoices are not involved, creating animation involves many processes and is notoriously hard to make realistic quotes.  So it is handy to track the time spent on each process and take notes, and at the end of a personal project we can gauge the total time spent on the animation, for accurate future quoting.

What’s next on the horizon for Rubber House?

We’re currently developing an arcade style iPhone game that employs the touch screen and inbuilt gyroscope that make mobile gaming so exciting. The Apple store offers indie developers like ourselves an easy means of distribution, so not only can we reach our target audience easily, but we can also potentially profit from it. The project is hush hush at the moment, but we can say it will feature our signature crazy cartoony look. We also just got the green light from Film Victoria to develop a point-and-click adventure game for the iPhone and iPad. It’s an original story and we’ll be controlling all aspects of the production. Interactive content is great because it can stimulate an audience for a longer duration than a short film, and players can feel completely immersed in the world we create.

We welcome Rubber House to our growing roster of Harvest New Founders, and are excited to support them as they push the boundaries of animation, interactive play, and Flash!

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.

What’s your connection to comedy?

I started comedy in Virginia Beach in 1998, moved to NYC in June 2001 and landed a spot on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend in January 2005 (which feels like eons ago, and I think it was hosted by Jack Paar).  I moved here knowing literally two people (non-comedians, or civilians as we call them) and only interacted with people in the comedy world. I created Astoria Basketball League, a basketball league composed entirely of comedians (although we are considering of changing it to Ankle Brace Association since I’ve moved to Williamsburg and we are all aging). In March 2008, my buddy and I started to produce our monthly show SACAPUNTAS!. In January 2009, I started to produce IN THE TANK, a podcast interviewing successful comedians with my friends and comedians Jon Fisch and Dan Shaki, both of whom have been nominated for an ECNY Award (Excellence in Comedy). Each category had about 400 nominations and we are in the top five for Best Variety Show and Best Podcast.

What was the inspiration for starting your company?

In September of 2008, I quit my day job, I sublet my apartment, obtained a work permit for the UK, bought a ticket to London and was planning to leave the country to start a new life. Unfortunately, my plans dissolved the day before the death of Lehman Brothers (or as I like to call it, the beginning of the “New Great Depression”). I could have easily slipped back into my old life, but I decided to take it as a sign. I left to campaign for Obama in my home state of Florida, and came back to NYC re-invigorated with passion for the USA. I decided to start freelancing my design and development skills, which led to the creation of SuperMango Media, which helps fellow comedians with websites and branding.

What’s FastTrac, and how did it help you launch your business?

I would have never heard of the program if it wasn’t for Cheni Yerushalmi, the managing partner of Sunshine Suites. In April of 2009, I hosted an event he was co-producing BootUp NYC at Webster Hall. He appreciated what I did for him and said,  “If there ever is anything he could do for me, just ask.” So a few months later, I did. He sat down with me for an hour and we came up with a game plan, and he enrolled me in FastTrac. If that wasn’t enough, he also gave me a few months of office space to help create a stronger foundation. I attended the class, tuned my business plan and met 30 different individuals in my situation. I still retain a strong relationship with several of my classmates, and we created a Google group to constantly feed each other information and crowdsource questions about our business.  I have also maintained my ties to the facilitators at Fast Trac, and attend events there.

Do you have advice for other seedling small businesses that has been fruitful for you?

• Spend less time on your business plan and financial planning and execute your idea. By doing so, you will generate the revenue you are seeking without being in debt.
• Don’t be married to any particular software platform/language, as they can all change. If you don’t have a technical background, find a CTO/co-founder that knows one language well, and has the same passion for the idea, and build it in that language.

Here are a few resources I’ve found helpful:

• Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (Awesome)
• Why Most Contractors’ Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (Catered to my business)
• Rework (Loved it)
• The 4-Hour Workweek (With the understanding the author had $40,000/month coming in)
• The Definitive Drucker (Broader business topics but great concepts)
• And for my contracts, I found all the Nolo products helpful.

Had you managed a team before? If not, was there any transition between being a freelancer to running the show?

Prior to SuperMango Media, I had never managed freelancers, though I did have experience with large teams. For seven years, I was a project manager at LaGuardia Airport, and handled up 90 employees — it was ordered chaos everyday. We had blackouts, blizzards, fires, gypsy cab hustlers…you name it, our staff had to handle it. That’s where I learned how to manage people. Obviously, it was slightly different when I started working with designers and developers.

Do you calculate rates by the project, or by the hour, or a mix of the two?

Initially, we would take jobs on as flat rate but learned quickly 2 or 3 underestimated jobs can bring the ship down. Once we figured that out, we only take jobs on as an hourly rate.  However, we strive to stay within the original estimation or the budgetary constraints of the client.  Since we specialize in such a niche market, our estimations (we like to call them promises) are solid because all the clients relatively ask for the same thing. With each new job, we can analyze and record how long each step takes.

Why do you track time, and how do you guys use Harvest?

There are so many things that I love about Harvest. One is the retainer invoice feature.  The majority of our projects are set up with the following payment structure: 35% deposit, 35% upon client approval of design and 30% upon completion. I’ve used other invoicing services and I had to come up with creative solutions to do this. With Harvest, I can simply set up a retainer for each client and apply it to the correct project. Also the ability to assign a contractor to a job and have him submit his timesheet internally has reduced my headaches a thousand-fold.

One example of how we use Harvest is in our process for developing a website. Each site is a multi-step process, which we are constantly streamlining. The basic steps are planning (information architecture, wireframing, sitemap), design (sketch, revisions, final), development (front and back end), content entry, testing, troubleshooting and going live. After the client fills out a form and schedules a meeting/call, we send an estimate through Harvest based on the information they provide.

Tell us what SuperMango Media has on deck next?

• Gearing up for The 7th Annual ECNY Awards
• Completing migration of our FreshBook account to our awesome new Harvest account
• Preparing for the next installment of our monthly show SACAPUNTAS!
• Taking on a Ruby on Rails for a secret product targeted towards our market

We welcome SuperMango Media to our talented group of Harvest New Founders, and are happy to support their focus on comedy and code!

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.

What sparked your first creative collaboration?
Our first creative collaboration was actually putting together a fun short film for our studio with our former design firm, for an internal contest. We made a Napoleon Dynamite themed short film that ended up winning the grand prize. We realized very quickly that having fun, being organized and truly working as a team produces the best and most satisfying work for everyone involved. After numerous collaborations, we eventually branched out on our own with what is now Cadence.

Part of your mission is to bring ideas of “Treating others the way you want to be treated” and “Leading a balanced life” to the forefront. How are you able to focus on these ideals in a hectic business environment?
Leading a balanced life: We take our work very seriously, but we are also just as serious about making sure our personal lives are in check. Each week we integrate personal life to-do lists with business to-do lists. By looking at what has to be accomplished side by side each week, we can better schedule both parts of life to ensure work isn’t getting put in the back seat and neither is our personal life — and allows us to have friends and family around to share in our joys of success!

Treating others the way you want to be treated: We listen, and we put tons of effort into communication – how schedules will work, how deliverables will be produced and what expectations have to be met. We also like when things are lighthearted and fun, so we treat others that way. You can be professional, talented, polite, fun, and reliable – we’ve proven that these qualities can co-exist.

What project has Cadence worked on that has surprised you the most?
The one that sticks out the most is a project located in the Abacos Islands of The Bahamas. We spent two full days trekking the project site by foot, clearing trails with a machete to learn first hand what the island’s terrain was, as well as its opportunities and constraints. We also quickly learned that for this project to really reach its full potential, we must evolve from the traditional practices of our Landscape Architecture backgrounds. We’re proud at how many different hats that we are able to wear in order to execute a project well, and our experience over the years allows us to speak about sustainability, investment opportunities and challenges, and even construction methods.

What has been the most unexpected thing you’ve learned in your first year of business?
Garnering the will power to not put all of our eggs in one basket. You know you shouldn’t, its cliché, and people warn you about it. Yet, its one of the tougher parts of running a small new business. Teaching yourself to not spend all of your time on one task or one end goal is what truly elevates you from being a designer who is busy to a designer who is seeking to be an entrepreneur. You must spread your focus across multiple platforms and diversify your potential for different lines of income to make it in this economic climate.

Who are your top 3 influences?

• Blake Mycoskie of Toms. Why not incorporate good? It shouldn’t be the by-product, it should be part of the original business plan. One for One, so simple.
• Ian McHarg, author of Design with Nature. He pioneered the concept of ecological planning and was asking important questions about responsible development, long before green was cool.
• Liz Lambert of Hotel San Jose. She’s a hotelier and serial entrepreneur who has done things her own way. Couple that with a creative thought process – her results are the epitome of cool hotels.

Why do you track time, and how do you guys use Harvest?
With Harvest, we can always make sure that we are spending our time in the right places. We have targets that we set for billable verses non-billable tasks every month, and the reports feature makes analyzing those percentages very simple. We find that the desktop widget and iPhone app make it that much more accurate when we’re on the go. We like that we have the option to add our sub-consultants, as it keeps everyone on the team on the same page, and cognizant of how the project is moving forward from a numbers standpoint, and helps ensure that our projects stay within a predetermined budget.

What advice do you have for people starting new ventures in the current economic climate?

• Buckle your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.
• Have a solid game plan in place.
• Possess the ability to be flexible during times where nothing is a sure thing.
• Remain patient and positive.
• Provide your clients with great service.
• Give them insight into what they can expect – transparency goes a long way.

We welcome Cadence to our expanding roster of Harvest New Founders, and are happy to support their new endeavor focused on quality, transparency, balance, and fun.

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.

What exactly do you guys do, and what’s the history of Beowulf Farm?
Beowulf Farm is an Equestrian Training Centre in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia Canada.  We import, breed and train Elite Hanoverian mares and Hanoverian geldings, and train students in dressage, show jumping and hunter/jumper disciplines. There are about 35 horses at Beowulf at any given time, from new foals to schoolmasters.  We have five full time and three part-time staff, plus the owners.

How do you use Harvest to manage your time and invoicing?
Harvest has been a Godsend for us. Trainers can use Harvest to input their lesson charges directly from the iPhone at the end of a lesson, input a trailering charge for taking a horse to a horse show, and input “extra” charges for supplemental feedings, special stall care, holding the horse for the vet charges. It takes the “remembering” out of the billing process because trainers and staff can enter the charges real time as they occur, rather than trying to remember the charges at the end of the month. We customize the expense fields (horse trailering, horse show fees, special feeds), track time and expenses, and print our invoices out in an efficient and easy-to-understand way!

When people think of “farm”, they don’t think “iPhone app” – what other ideas or technology have you adapted to farm life?
Technology is an increasing tool in horse farms, like any other farming or business enterprise. Cell phones, video cameras to monitor horse birthing, portable digital ultrasound machines used by our vets to inspect for injuries—all these technologies are making a difference in the way we do business.  We use Facebook as an adjunct to our rider communities’ own Facebook pages, so that people can stay updated about events at the farm, news of upcoming shows, barn policies and the like. We have played with Twitter a bit, but are concerned about the time needed to keep it constantly fresh and updated.

What have you been able to realize through Beowulf Farm, that you’re particularly proud of?
We have hosted horse shows at the farm and other competitions, but I think the most memorable moments revolve around the birth of new foals—the drama, the excitement, the awe that arises when mother gives birth and a healthy, beautiful foal emerges.

What are 5 things that Beowulf Farms has consumed lately?
1. Hay: 35 tons of hay every three months.
2. Water: We use enough water every day to float a boat, which works out to 10,000 gallons of water a month!
3. Carrots: By the bag—and I mean, a potato sack size of a bag.
4. Beet pulp: Who knew? Horses love beet pulp!
5. Fence posts: Some of our horses seem to like them for breakfast, lunch or dinner!

Are there any misconceptions about horse riding that you want to clear up for people?
One misconception I would clear up about horses is that anyone can just hop on a ride—proper training, a good, reliable and appropriate horse, the necessary equipment (like using the mandatory helmet for all beginners) are all critical.  Given the right environment—good horse, good trainer—horse riding is a real joy.

We welcome Beowulf Farms to our expanding roster of Harvest New Founders, and are happy to support this small business keep their staff on track, both in the field and on their finances.

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.

Here’s some of  the startling and diverse street sports they’ve been introducing the world to:

What was the inspiration for starting Streets United?
The idea of Streets United was literally conceived in a London pub over beers. The more official story is that Daniel Wood and Courtney Orange, both with backgrounds in athlete management, worked on a few projects together and then invited two good friends, DJ Lee Johnson (aka LDouble) and marketing expert Anders Wennesland, to start the business. We basically decided that each of our individual experiences and talents would be better utilized collectively.

We were frustrated at how little support is given to community projects, and at how traditional sports programmes are.  We wanted to bring the corporate world closer to their communities through street sports and art, and provide an open meeting ground where both professional and aspiring athletes can come together to promote their talents.

You have a strong mission statement, with core values of respect, responsibility for self development, and sustainability – how have you put these values into action?
We work tirelessly to inspire brands and agencies to invest in their local communities. This approach allows our growing network of suppliers and youth workers to achieve more sustainable results and to spend the bulk of their time where it should be: on the front line, working with the young people.

We believe that we cannot do everything ourselves, so we constantly seek to inspire artists to collaborate and take on responsibility for their own development. This is after all how they got to become a top athlete or artist in the first place – through self-determination, not through relying on a coach. We work with inspirational people and encourage them to always push themselves, so we can give them the best opportunities and builds trust in everyone’s work.

You offer workshops in beatboxing, breakdancing, power rising, street and freestyle soccer, graffiti, and BMX flat landing, to name a few – how does one attend one of these workshops?
We would normally create these with a sponsor, for a specific event. Typically any brand sponsoring a live event, like the Olympics, for example, will be looking for activities to engage their audience, and that is where we come in. It ranges from schools, brands, organisations in all industry sectors, housing associations, local councils and much more: it is very mobile and can happen anywhere.  Last year we introduced a whole host of ‘alternative sports’ to over 30 countries, and this year we’re poised to build even further.

What is the weirdest street sport that you’ve discovered, that everyone should know exists?
Extreme Pogo Stick freestyling & Yoyo Freestyling.

Why do you track time, and how do you guys use Harvest?
It is a huge convenience to have an online CRM system that helps coordinate and standardized project management and financial administration for the Streets United Directors, and Harvest is also a great tool for giving freedom and responsibilities to our growing network of Junior Consultants around the globe. Our ambition is to give young people the opportunity to manage their own local projects and learn to take handle business administration. Mainly we are looking to professionalize any individual athlete or group involved in progressive sports, by giving them all the tools necessary to succeed in the business.

What makes Streets United run?
The four main directors of Streets United work remotely from England, Spain, and Greece. We target a world stage and thanks to the blessings of modern technology, we can choose to live and work where we want.  Skype is an essential tool to keep regular and effective communication between the partners of Streets United. We also use Dropbox to store and access all documents online and Harvest for CRM and financial administration. Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Streetsutd.com and our blog, are all essential to our networking. We also have a social network site strictly for professional athletes through ning.com.

Did you really perform alongside the SugarHill Gang?
Great times! Yes, it was an amazing charity event where we had a group of artists performing along side the legends. We’ve had shows in front of and alongside a number of famous people , like Christiano Ronaldo, Rio Ferdinand, Girls Aloud, Madonna, and, on the weekend of the World Cup Final, the football legend Pele.

What’s the Aston prison workshop?
On March 17th, 2010, Streets United entered HMP & YOI Ashfield to engage and inspire young people. In partnership with the 2nd Chance Project, young people were signposted into activities both inside and outside of custody with a view of reducing re-offending. A crew made up of football and basketball freestylers, MC’s and DJ’s engaged over 100 young people throughout the day providing a range of displays and opportunities for young people to learn new skills and develop interests, and showcase what they learned at the end of the day. This project provided a bench mark in the Streets United mission of creating opportunities for young people through street sports.

We are so happy to welcome Streets United to our growing family of Harvest New Founders, and are happy to support this inspired company showing youths across the globe how to get out there and get active.

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.

What was the inspiration for starting your company?
Once we got Cold Coffee Media off the ground to give local businesses (and beyond) the most gorgeous and intuitive web presence available, we said “Man, I wish there was a hub for all the cool things going on in our home town of La Grande.  A place where people could find out where the live music is, where the good bike trails are, what movies are playing, who’s teaching a workshop or organizing an event, or sharing their thoughts: and have it be all local, by the people/for the people”.  So we created lagrandelife.com to be the local social networking hub we wanted to use ourselves.

In what ways are you employing social media, and what kinds of results/impact are you seeing?
The motto of the site is “What’s Happening.”  We have a street team of folks who tweet on location, giving viewers on the website real time updates.  People have browsed to lagrandelife.com and seen the Twitter feed at the top of the homepage saying “Open Mic at Ten Depot right now… Mike just finished a Pixies cover”.  They hop in the car, and in ten minutes they’re joining the crowd.

In terms of generating revenue, the idea is to have the site be sponsorship-based, not ad-driven.  For example, rather than ask a local chef to buy an ad on the homepage, we’d rather help him produce a weekly cooking vlog and feature it on the site.  It becomes a “destination commercial” that people navigate to and watch on purpose because it’s entertaining and has good information – rather than traditional ads or commercials that you trip over on the way to what you’re really looking for.

What does a typical day entail for you?
The two of us like to brainstorm on the balcony over coffee (First things first, you know).  Then it’s a race to moderate blog posts and comments, funnel info into the calendars, and post our own vlogs, before the phones start ringing and emails start dinging.  From there, it’s onto client work.  We have a vicious passion for making gorgeous websites for other people, so by lunchtime we’re trying to wrap up work on lagrandelife.com and move on to helping others with their web presence.

Creativity + hard work + and coffee (in that order) is our magic formula.  That’s where the name Cold Coffee Media comes from actually.  We have an ancient microwave that our coffee cups visit dozens of times a day — We figure if the coffee keeps getting cold, we must be working hard.

Why do you track time, and how do you guys use Harvest?
We do a lot of billable client work, so tracking time on those projects is essential, but we’re also finding that tracking our non-billable hours is valuable in helping us see how we’re doing.  We do a lot of things because we love to or because we believe in the people/thing at hand which is good for karma, but for the sake of the business, there’s a delicate balance to be minded.  By tracking all of our time we can look back over the day/week/month and evaluate our productivity, and then make a conscious effort to improve that ratio.  We are also looking towards the future of managing contributors, interns, and subcontractors, as  La Grande Life grows.  We do love using the Estimate and Invoicing features of Harvest, which has streamlined our flow and cut out the use of multiple apps to get these jobs done.

How do you see La Grande Life further developing and expanding?
It’s interesting what an economic low-point does to a community.  You start to see the Roommate Effect (we like to make up our own scientific terms).  By banding together and sharing resources, we’ve all got more to work with.  Ten people on a shoestring budget can tie those strings together and make one big rope.  So what do you have to offer?  Well, I play guitar so maybe I can attract some people into your coffee shop and you can help me sell some records.  That’s how we see the town growing, and lagrandelife.com is a reflection of that mentality.  It’s a resource for all of us, that increases our value.  The amount of visitors to the site is equivalent to almost half the population of La Grande… so we’re halfway there!

In the spirit of our new Hobby series, are there any hobbies you’d like to share with us, when you’re not working on La Grande Life and Cold Coffee Media?
MIKE:  I collect old typewriters, and write with them.  We use so much technology at work (which I love) that it feels like I’m working if I sit down at a computer to work on my screenplay, or write song lyrics.  So I can’t help myself anytime I come across an old manual typewriter.  There’s something about how organic and quick it is for your finger to slam the ink onto the paper.

CHRIS:  Disc Golf. It’s the most glorious of sports.  The people who are attracted to the game are very fun and chill folks, and what other sport allows you to drink beer and walk around at a casual pace while practicing your craft?  (Well, regular golf, I suppose, but you can wear flip-flops on the disc golf course?)

We’re happy to welcome La Grande Life in joining our Harvest New Founders family, and are excited to watch as they continue to grow their rural community involvement beyond the web, into actual, real-time events.

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.

What was the inspiration for starting your company?
During the Great Depression, the WPA (Works Projects Administration) employed millions, repairing roads, building parks, and other public works. It reached out directly to people who needed it most, creating projects outside the U.S. Government’s usual remit. Now, the WPA-2010 aims to bring back small-scale, community-driven neighborhood recovery and action. We will provide employment and skill development for people to work in their own neighborhoods, to focus on projects chosen by their own community.  We even have a WPA-2010 Kickstarter project, to raise funds for these projects, and skill and employment programs.

Where are you located, and which communities are you speaking to?
We have secured office and workspace in the rural hamlet of Wassaic, New York, and Jamaica, Queens, and are finalists for a commission to open an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We want to use these WPA offices as pilots, to extend to other communities throughout the country, so we are currently seeking input and funding from other citizens to do so.  Funding is entirely through donations: from office and work space, construction equipment, a pavement press, time-tracking software from Harvest, silkscreen equipment, and organization of a series of community action workshops to spearhead this citizen-run WPA initiative.

The new office in Wassaic, New York.

What kinds of small-scale initiatives would fall within your scope?
Although we will not begin to implement ideas until we have run through a full Participatory Action Research / Participatory Community Appraisal with our host neighborhoods, we have already begun to collect a number of ideas. These have ranged from installing a D.I.Y. stop sign, to clearing an overgrown park so it matches an old etching of that park from the 1940′s, to hiring 1000 butoh dancers to block traffic, or sculpting glowing jellyfish to hang from lamp-posts.

How do you choose which projects to pursue? Are they nominated by the community?
As you can see, we get a pretty crazy range of projects, and we hold fast to the rule that it is not our responsibility to judge. Our role is to facilitate our community-members’ achievement of their goals. We use the process of PRA (Participatory Rapid (or Rural) Appraisal) to pull ideas out of a diverse community, and then help them decide which attributes will help them determine the specific projects to pursue. These PRA techniques include collaborative mapping of their past, present, and future neighborhood, comparative Venn diagrams of a community’s major groups, and a series of ranking and priority exercises to help choose the projects they want to complete.

These are all processes members of our team have put into action in the developing world, and we are currently piloting as project management techniques in the USA. These techniques are particularly useful in situations where you are trying to draw out people not generally involved in projects, and where several competing groups are vying for seniority.

The core team is Carmen Montoya, John Ewing, and Christopher Robbins, shown here while working on a related project in Wales in 2009.

What does a typical day entail for you?
Lately, I really have no typical day. This work involves so many different elements, and most of them hinge on building trust with people from different communities. For instance, let’s look at last week:

• Monday I presented to the Urban Studies department of Barnard College, Columbia University, on Urban Interventions by Public Artists (including myself).
• Tuesday I spent most of the day silkscreening WPA logos onto construction vests and equipment.
• Wednesday was an administrative day, calling contacts in Jamaica to establish partnerships, and writing grant applications for the project.
• Thursday I taught my course at the Rhode Island School of Design on “Guerilla Public Art: Socially Mediated Interventions.”
• Friday I spent in Wassaic, meeting with a variety of local stakeholders, eating borscht, and collecting slag with some new acquaintances from the riverbank.

Why do you track time, and how do you guys use Harvest?
With a schedule as flexible as mine, we have to be aware of how our time is being spent. My responsibilities include marketing, fund-raising, project management, training, networking, and hands-on construction and fabrication. Tracking my time with Harvest lets me keep track of how my time is being used, so I can be sure I am utilizing it efficiently, and allows me to decide where I should delegate, where I should trim, and what is counter-productive.

What are your hopes for the present and future of WPA-2010?
The Wassaic Office opens May 1. The Jamaica Office opens July 1. My hopes are to create a forum where people with very different views can discuss the future of their local community together, and to give a voice to people who are either too share or simply not interested in public works or civic engagement. WPA-2010 is a kind of real-life community street-theater: it will bring neighbors together, dressed as the WPA, doing the work of the WPA, fixing up our country with their own ideas and elbow grease. Part of this idea is quite audacious: we are pretending to be a government agency, so that the government will take notice, and hopefully, take over.

We’re excited to welcome WPA-2010 to our stable of Harvest New Founders, and are happy to support them in their goal of getting people involved in the destiny of their own neighborhoods.  If you would like to help their efforts, you can donate through their WPA-2010 Kickstarter fundraising campaign!

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.

What exactly is pinstriping, and how did you find out about it?
Pinstriping is the art of laying down a thin straight line with a brush, on the surface of a vehicle.  The craft can be traced all the way back to the chariots of ancient Egypt, but also horse carriages in the western world often had pinstriping (called, at the time, coach lining).  What is commonly considered pinstriping today is the art form that surfaced in the 1930’s-1940’s hot rod culture, where cars were decorated with patterns of thin lines.  When I discovered it was done with a brush, and it didn’t look like you needed that much equipment to learn, I had to find out how to get started.

What was the inspiration for starting your business?
The software company I worked for got hit hard by the financial crisis and had to let people go, which for me was the kick in the butt I needed to start my own automotive graphics business.  Though I loved drawing motorcycles and freaky monsters since I was a kid, I was told that there wasn’t any future in that. Apparently it had to take me some 15+ years to gather the guts to prove “them” wrong.

Was it a big switch to go from a corporate environment to working on peoples’ cars in a garage?
It is two completely different worlds: I’m happy as a clam and wish I did it years ago.  The only thing I miss sometimes is having colleagues.  As I’m currently the only professional pinstriper in Denmark, it does get a bit lonely.  But I’m in contact with colleagues around the world almost daily, and meet with plenty of people at shows during the summer.

You recently got invited to join the Arctic Pinheads, who are they?
Arctic Pinheads was originally a group of Finnish pinstripers who arranged meetings for stripers and Kustom Kulture artists at large.  The official annual meetings is Stripe-O-Rama at the Hot Rod Rock Show, Tampere, and the annual American Cars Show in Helsinki.  They welcome all artists with a common interest in Kustom Kulture arts.

What’s the process, before the client drives off with their newly pinstriped motorcycle?
Usually people call or email me about an idea for a project and ask for a price, and I ask them question to narrow down what they want.  When a price is agreed upon, on larger projects I often draw up a design and combine it with a photo of the object to show the customer, to make sure the customer and I are on the same page.  On smaller projects and at shows, I draw it up directly on the object with a Stabilo pencil and have the client approve it.  Then I do my thing, leave it to dry and customer picks up their stuff.  I also create designs for helmets, t-shirts, and posters related to the Kustom Kulture scene.

Why do you track time, and how do you use Harvest?
Because of the experience I have as graphic designer, I’m pretty good at estimating how much time a job demands, and people usually want a fixed quote.  Time tracking with Harvest is important for me to keep track of the actual time I spend on a project, to make sure my estimates stick.  Harvest also helps me stay focused on the project I’m working on, because when I’m on a customers time, I can’t let myself be sidetracked without stopping the clock.

How do people hear about you, if you’re the only one doing this kind of work in Denmark?
Most people don’t yet know that there’s a guy doing pinstriping professionally in Denmark, but I have met a handful of Danish guys who just started pinstriping as a hobby, so it’s catching on.  I get most of my work through networking and word of mouth, and a small but steady stream of people who contact me after visiting my website.  I spread the word by meeting people in the custom scene and  working on as many motorcycle and car shows as possible all summer.

Which magazines have your designs been featured in?
So far I’ve had my work shown in Pinstriping and Kustom Graphics Magazine (UK), Nordic Tattoo Mag (Scandinavia), and I was also in the latest issue of Kinkats (German), with more to come!  I’ve also had some blog features, like the one at Kustomrama.

What do you like most about running your own business? And what’s the hardest thing?
The best thing is the freedom.  I can work day and night, or not at all, if I like.  I can go to car shows all over the world whenever I’m invited (no vacation schedule needed!).  The hardest thing is not having any colleagues on a daily basis.  I have plenty of friends I can call if I need to discuss things, but I can miss, you know, shits and giggles at lunch break, and stuff like that.

In what ways do you envision growing your business?
My vision is to get into all kinds of vehicle decoration, specialized towards custom vehicles of all types, and I’m taking courses in making vinyl signs and foil wrapping cars this spring.  I have some pretty wild ideas where I’ll combine foil and traditional handmade work, I can’t wait to get started on it!

We’re excited to welcome J. Bram Kustom Graphics to our elite group of Harvest New Founders, and are happy to support this one man pinstriping machine, and his quest to make the world a more beautiful place, one detail at a time.

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.

How did you guys come together as Design Vetica?

We have all either worked as freelance web designers/developers, or have built websites on our own, and we’ve all been tinkering with the web since we were around 12- and 13-years-old. We’ve been involved in web design about 2 years before we started the company, and most of the projects we received were referrals from friends. William and I started talking about building a company for web design and media production in a shared IT class, and we pulled in Alex as he had worked on previous projects with William. In February of 2009, Design Vetica was born.

What’s it like to run a business with a team that is all in high school?

Working with a team that is still attending high school definitely has its pros and cons. Our most challenging aspect of being young entrepreneurs is that we are STILL in high school!  This means we have many obligations: we have to juggle school work and getting good marks, while keeping up with deadlines from multiple projects with clients. Recently, we had to decline potential clients during final exams, to keep up with the combined workload. Being a young entrepreneur also has its benefits, as many companies are looking for young talent, on the cutting edge of the industry. The experience we have gained is invaluable, and we often feel it’s the best course we ever took in high school!

Have you found that the Vancouver community has embraced supporting a company with such a young team?

The Vancouver community has been very supportive. For example, when we rented our office, the owner of space, Minna Van, gave us a discount because we started our business while in high school, and she has also helped us network with many other influential people. People like Jon Chui, curator of the Startup Digest for Vancouver, and Brian Wong, founder of Follow Formation, also inspired us with their ideas and have made themselves available to us as mentors.

What does a typical day entail for you?

In the early morning, we get up, put on our backpacks, and go to school. We occasionally receive clients emails and calls during classes. After school, we come back home to work on Design Vetica. Most of our client meetings are scheduled on weekends. Every two weeks, we also have a company meet-up, where we attend fun events together, like watching a movie or iceskating at Robson Square Ice Rink.   Sometimes, we feel like we live two different lives.

What programs and resources keep Design Vetica up and running?

We use the usual suspects, like Basecamp, and Google apps, but we still prefer to do the initial draft of any design work in our Moleskine and dotGrid notebooks. Nothing beats pen and paper!

What do you like most about running your own business? And what’s the hardest thing?

Everybody loves to run their own show, and we established this agency because we love what we do. Meeting new people, going to conferences, and working with clients every week really makes the experience enjoyable. The hardest thing right now is managing our money. Without any accounting background, we had trouble finding anything to track the status of our invoices, and manage our income. But with the help of Harvest, we hope to improve our finance management.

How do you use Harvest?

Coming from the stone ages, we actually never tracked time, as all of our projects have a fixed price. We would manually invoice and have to stay on top of the status of each invoice. Our accounting is very rudimentary, but with the help of Harvest, we hope to streamline this part of our business. Not only will we save time to do more creative stuff, but also we can finally rest assure that it’s done properly.

How do you see Design Vetica growing over the next 5 years?

Our goal has always been to establish a premium design agency, and we will be looking to expand and grow, with a new motion graphics team, and the development of web applications.  We are all considering going into either computer science or business for university, but whether we are all at the same school or working as a distributed team, we will definitely be working together in the future.

We’re proud to welcome Design Vetica to our ever growing stable of Harvest New Founders, and are happy to support this group of high school students establish their business at such a young age.

To help companies get on their feet, The Harvest New Founders Program gives one year’s subscription of Harvest time tracking service to a new company each month. Think you might be a good fit for our New Founders Program? Learn more and apply.