Babson Business–Surreal-Media
Name of Business: Surreal-Media; www.Surreal-Media.com ENTER MINDS
Mission: To provide–
-Web-based product development.
-Custom creative Web media solutions for small, medium, and enterprise level companies.
-Unique and expressive visual design and motion with high impact value.
-Web hosting and related Web services.
Year Began: 2003
Initial Investment: $0
Broke Even: Day one.
Where: Registered in Australia
Founders:
Maxim Blagov; maxim@surreal-media.com
Monte Punjabi; monte@surreal-media.com; Babson Ugrad student
Employees: 4 employees ( 1 Japan, 1 US, 1 UK, 1 Canadian)
Past Life/Business: Monte Punjabi—”I had no formal business training/knowledge, or any work experience. The selling skills were a direct influence from my father and observing him sell to his clients.”
How the Idea Began: “Maxim and I met on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and joined together to form a business focused on marketing to the e-sports gaming market while still providing services to the corporate industry sector. Maxim provided the design expertise while I was in charge of business development and marketing of our products.”
Initial Preparation to Germinate Idea: Several gaming teams showed great interest in our custom solutions—thus we decided to lower the cost from a custom site (several thousands) to as low as $9.95 for a template product we resold. A perfect custom alternative.
Favorite Thing about the Business: Ability to ever-expand
Worst Thing about the Business: Keeping track of ever-expansion
Biggest Challenge: “Fanatical organization and communications. As this company is completely online based in multiple time zones with employees scattered around the world, my partner and I need to be in constant communication and utilize the right online tools to manage the “virtual office”.”
Lesson Learned: “Every small mistake was a hard lesson learned…I've learned a lot!”