By Kalani Dantley
From an early age, Donald Boone naturally had a hustler’s spirit.
Whether it was selling his mom’s leftover chicken and dumplings at school, or bagging up popular candy unavailable in the school vending machines to sell to his classmates, he would “scrappily” get it done.
When reflecting on his past, Boone can confidently say that was entrepreneurship. He just didn’t know it at the time.
Years removed from his school day endeavors, the Maryland native went on to found BoxedUp — a content creation equipment rental company to help people take their digital creations to the next level while on a budget.
Boone, who was engaged in technology and engineering at a young age, was on the executive track when he decided he wanted to lean more into entrepreneurial endeavors.
“I looked more and more to make an impact on my community and on the people that I know and love,” Boone said. “And one of the biggest ways I found to do that was through entrepreneurship.”
Being an Executive and Entrepreneur
Boone studied mechanical engineering at North Carolina A&T, thinking he’d one day become an oil and gas executive. Things were going well for Boone, and he spent more than eight years at ExxonMobil before realizing his need to truly make more of an impact.
Boone then transitioned to Amazon, where he’s been able to learn more about how companies innovate and how they bring different values to customers.
“I figured if I can learn from the best and I can do the best, then maybe I can branch out and do it on my own,” said Boone, who since 2017 has helped with Amazon’s enterprise solutions and business development.
Working for a business built to solve people’s problems encouraged Boone to think about his own problems. That, in turn, fostered his desire to found BoxedUp.
“I had the ingenuity and customer obsession at a very early age,” Boone said. “I didn’t have the strategy, structure or proper way to go about it and Amazon has really provided that for me.”
“Doing the work I do now gave me the confidence to go off into that launching point,” he added.
What BoxedUp Provides and Adjusting to COVID
Boone describes BoxedUp as the “AirBnb of equipment rental” and created it so people can have a cost-effective way to use content creation equipment.
The company rents out drones, cameras and other tools of the trade that can be used during vacations or for projects. Customers can go to the company’s website, choose their equipment and the dates they need it, and BoxedUp will ship it to their door.
Rentals come with a prepaid shipping label that customers can use to send the equipment back to BoxedUp when they’re finished.
Boone said he got the idea for BoxedUp when he was living with his mom. He wanted to do something nice for her and decided to completely rebuild her unfinished basement. In doing so, he spent a lot of money on tools, parts and products that he wouldn’t need after the project’s completion.
When thinking about the money spent and wishing he could have rented all those items, the lightbulb went off.
At first, Boone said BoxedUp was very much a travel and leisure rental company. When people went on vacation, they would come to BoxedUp to rent a drone to take some vacation pictures, or take a camera or GoPro.
But when travel slowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so did his revenue and income.
In that moment, Boone started to think what he could do despite the current situation. He had to adjust and settled in on packaging virtual kits to provide to speakers, customers and enterprise organizations to transform in-person events to virtual events.
“Like so many other businesses, we’ve had to reinvent ourselves,” Boone said. “And it’s worked out extremely well and has certainly helped us grow.
“COVID has definitely been a forcing mechanism in pushing us into places that we were uncomfortable and hesitant to go into. But now, we’ve been forced to find new ways to solve solutions and, in a lot of ways, it’s been helpful,” he added.
Boone went on to discuss the importance of content creation for different businesses, especially during these times when people can’t rely on in-person experiences and want more economically feasible solutions.
“You don’t want to go out and break the bank buying all of this expensive equipment,” Boone said. “BoxedUp enables you to create that and have the same high-level look and feel for your brand without overspending.”
Get Back Up and Try Again
BoxedUp wasn’t Boone’s first attempt at starting a business, and he humbly admitted that his first business failed.
In 2015, Boone launched Oleo — an application built to enhance the everyday dining experience and transform the way people eat. The app would allow for restaurants to provide high-quality pictures of their food, and for customers to view dishes and share experiences within their network. But he soon learned some mistakes he made along the way.
He pitched investors too early.
Mistake.
He spent six months on the app before pitching it to customers.
Mistake.
He built too much product too soon and for too much money.
Mistake.
Boone thought he’d produced a great, transformational product. But it didn’t seem to resonate with customers. He soon realized they didn’t want it or need it. It wasn’t solving a problem.
“What I did, like I see a lot of younger entrepreneurs do, was get too enthralled in the idea of a new, fancy thing and I didn’t really take the time to think about what problem I was solving for customers,” Boone said. “So as much as you obsess over the shiny, new object as the solution, you should be obsessing over your customers, your potential customers and their problems.”
From this experience, Boone learned that he should have been talking to customers far earlier, which likely would have put him on a completely different trajectory.
He would have done something they liked. He would have enabled his business to grow into the organization he envisioned.
Instead, he simply ran out of money due to the incapability to adapt to their needs.
Boone learned from his mistakes when he launched BoxedUp, and is being heavily rewarded by using these mishaps to help shape him into a better entrepreneur.
Advice to Entrepreneurs Growing Their Business
Boone has gone from executive positions to a current corporate Amazon position, while simultaneously failing in his first business to succeeding in his second business.
Let’s just say he has plenty of advice for aspiring business owners.
Boone stresses the importance of not being so protective of ideas. He thinks people tend to work on their ideas in private and wait to try and make them perfect before releasing them into the world.
“While it’s important to ensure that you’re confident when taking your idea and new products and releasing it to customers, you also miss that opportunity to get valuable feedback from customers and people on what you’re building,” Boone said. “So I think the fastest way to scale is to move extremely quickly and to have a bias for action.”
One of Boone’s favorite quotes is from entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author Reid Hoffman:
“If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release, then you waited too long to put it out.”
Boone has learned to launch his products quickly to get customer feedback.
“Get some of the harsh realities of where things aren’t perfect and your customers will ultimately tell you where your business needs to grow,” Boone said.
BoxedUp was launched in less than 100 days. Boone didn’t know exactly what would work, but he knew he wouldn’t find out until he put it out there.
“Go out on a limb,” Boone said. “It will make you extremely uncomfortable but your business will be better for it.”
