Thursday, November 15, 2012

Jon Wroblewski of Wyman Talks about His Group



Jon Wroblewski of Wyman Talks about His Group


Where are you from originally?

Cedar Park, TX.  North Austin.


What university did you go to?

Texas A&M University - Thanks & Gig Em.


What brought you to Austin?

Took a job doing sales for Dell Inc. in Round Rock.


What is your group’s mission?

Our mission is to be the one of the largest self-sustaining philanthropy funds for the entertainment industry & small-to-medium sized businesses.   


What need does it fulfill?

We help startups & investors develop projects & ideas by providing a platform for development, launch & into the next phases of growth.


What exactly does it bring to startups? 

Well all of our services are focused on providing our clients with core business components in order to create a long-term structure for organic growth.  Think of us as a hybrid think tank, business services firm, digital agency & production house all rolled into one. 
A place where entrepreneurs & creative people can come together to learn and grow, with the capability to build nearly anything, allowing us to work on projects that other companies simply don’t have the infrastructure to support.


What type of startup would benefit from your group?

All of them. Every startup can benefit from our services because we provide services that are essential to properly structuring a company.  With the recent explosion of digital data, growing mobile utilization & on-going changes being made to specific investment vehicles, business owners are having to make adjustments to keep up with current trends. 
This is where our multi-service approach helps because we can take a startup idea and help with everything from start to finish.  Providing services like financial advisory, group benefits, funding, media production, web development, digital asset management, SEO, graphic design & application development, just to a name a few.  
So by combining all of our services to create an end-to-end solution helps cut down on cost & complexity for our customers.


What was the most challenging aspect of starting up the initiative?

Honestly I feel that our biggest challenge was first validating our end-to-end model, it’s not everyday you have a company wanting to provide 7 specific services at a high level & bring them all together. 
Once our model was validated our focus turned to continuing to educate clients, investors & employees on the film industry.  A film is nothing more than a business but it just so happens to be a very different business.  So it’s important to always be reading up on trends, laws & making sure you don’t get left behind. 


What advice do you have for entrepreneurs?

In beginning it’s a lot of trial & error, start failing early & often so you can get past that stage as quickly as possible.
Be proactive & talk to as many other business owners as you can about their experience, it can help you avoid mistakes & its great networking.


What Austin-based resource have you found to be the most helpful and why?

Capitol Wealth Strategies, a locally owned financial advisory firm.  As a business owner it’s overwhelming to try & structure buy/sell agreements, investments, insurance, group benefits & retirement plans on your own.
CWS focuses on working with business owners on all of these things & where able to educate me on what’s available to me as an owner of a company as oppose to just being an individual.  Like funding my retirement into a supplemental executive retirement plan as oppose to a IRA or 401(k) for tax advantages.   It’s working with resources like CWS & the Texas Entrepreneur Networks that can really take your company to the next level just by providing a little guidance/education.     

We're organizing a funding forum for film deals to be held January 10, 2013.  Please go to the Texas Entrepreneurs Network website to learn more.