BeachMint co-founder learns to concentration on a singular start-up
The gig: Diego Berdakin is a boss and co-founder of BeachMint, a Santa Monica start-up that operates e-commerce websites with products designed by celebrities. So far, BeachMint has launched dual online shops: JewelMint.com, that sells valuables designed by singer Kate Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter; and StyleMint.com, that sells wardrobe designed by actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Two some-more online stores are set to launch before a finish of a year, Berdakin said. The company, that has about 85 employees, was founded in Jul 2010 by Berdakin and MySpace co-founder Josh Berman and has lifted some-more than $23 million in funding.
Serial start-up guy: Just 26 years old, Berdakin is already a maestro entrepreneur. While study domestic scholarship during Northwestern University, he started several tiny online companies, including iEscrow.com, that rubbed online escrow payments between people in opposite states. After graduation Berdakin returned to Los Angeles to found a now-defunct record incubator called MD Capital that hatched some-more than 10 start-ups. He also worked for a time during Slingshot Labs, an online business incubator owned by News Corp. that close down in 2010.
OK with failure: Many of those early ventures tanked, though it wasn’t for naught. All that networking with other record entrepreneurs put him in a position to accommodate his BeachMint partner, Berman. Besides, Berdakin said, disaster is a good teacher. “Every mistake we can make, I’ve made,” Berdakin said. “Every reticent association we can consider of, I’ve attempted to start. Every wrong sinecure we can make, I’ve finished that, too. But it was all unequivocally extraordinary since if we failed, it was OK. we was only a child and if something didn’t work out, I’d only try again with lessons from a mistakes I’ve made. Not being fearful to fail, that comes from my parents.”
Parental guidance: Indeed, Berdakin credits his newcomer parents, quite his mother, Susana, for sourroundings him on a trail to apropos a “serial entrepreneur.” She and his father, Daniel, both locals of Argentina, met as students during USC. The integrate stressed a significance of carrying a clever work ethic to him and his dual brothers. But Berdakin pronounced his folks also combined an sourroundings in that he felt gentle holding risks and didn’t fear creation mistakes.
Inseparable from his mechanism as an adolescent, Berdakin pronounced his relatives encouraged him to do something useful with his interest. So his mom took him to UCLA and got him enrolled in a C/C++ programming class. Berdakin was only 13 during a time. “My mom was a one who unequivocally got me started on my veteran growth by walking me to UCLA,” he said. “She’s a one who put me in a arena I’m on now.”
Friends and focus: Berdakin pronounced using incubators and start-ups always left him stretched thin. He pronounced his coach and crony Berman has helped him learn to concentration on a singular company. Berdakin pronounced BeachMint’s opposite sites capacitate him to have a palm in mixed projects, though ones that are all headed in a same instruction and have a same goals.
“I’m exponentially some-more profitable to BeachMint since I’m putting all my appetite and tellurian collateral into this one thing,” he said. “It’s only as fun and sparkling as anything I’ve finished in a past. we only never gave myself a possibility to work on one plan until BeachMint. And unequivocally we wouldn’t have launched BeachMint and maybe not have schooled that doctrine if it wasn’t for Josh.”
Life’s a beach: Berdakin’s life revolves especially around work these days, and his amicable life is an prolongation of that. “A lot of my giveaway time goes toward hosting amicable events or attending amicable events with other entrepreneurs, people who do what we do,” he said. “There’s a flourishing tech stage here in Santa Monica, that we’ve affectionately nicknamed Silicon Beach.” He also recently purchased a condo in Malibu’s Carbon Beach area. “I consider we possess a smallest thing on a nicest widen of land out here, though it’s really most been a relaxing getaway for me,” he said.
nathan.olivarezgiles@latimes.com
