About Speaker:

Brandon Waselnuk is Co-founder and CEO at Tattoo Hero (@Tattoo_Hero) previously Investment Lead at IBM for Business Intelligence and Predictive Analytics. He builds stuff, loves coffee, startups and meeting great people.

Earlier this week we sat down with him for a short Q&A…

CM: This month’s theme is ink, what does ink have to do with your start-up? 

BW: I once asked a tattoo artist what they use to make tattoos so permanent, I forget exactly what they said but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with ink…

CM: What kind of business is tattoo hero? 

BW: Tattoo Hero is a software as a service business at its core. We’re also building the community around tattooing with our website that helps people find the best tattoo artist for them.

CM: Where did the idea for Tattoo Hero come from? 

BW: My co-founder Steve Tannahill came up with the idea at a Startup Weekend Ottawa event when he got tired of all his friends asking him where he got his tattoos done and who to go see. He figured “man, there’s got to be a better way…” cue the dramatic music and montage.

CM: If you could do anything you wanted right now, what would it be? 

BW: Take every person who’s helped me build this business on a trip to Berlin for a weekend of partying and sight seeing as a way of saying thanks - even though that wouldn’t be enough to thank them all properly.

CM: Where do you find your best creative inspiration? 

BW: In one-on-one conversations, sharing ideas with someone I really respect and trust - so that I can get all my terrible ideas out and on paper and then get down to the good stuff. It’s always helped me to have someone to bounce my ideas off of and build up from there.

CM: Okay, this is mostly for my own curiosity. Do you have any tattoos? If you do, did you get it/them before starting Tattoo Hero? 

BW: Yes I do on my left shoulder, I got it after starting Tattoo Hero as the company helped me find a really awesome artist to do the piece I wanted, it’s pretty detailed.

CM: Creative Mornings is all about community. How has living and working in Ottawa impacted your career?

BW: Immensely. On the living side - I’d literally be dead if it wasn’t for the charities and support programs that exist in our city, I’ve spoken on this before in a video for the United Way. Having a life in Ottawa is also pretty great I think, there’s a lot of remarkable people here doing cool things, it’s unfortunate we get a bad rap for being a government town (or the town that fun forgot) I believe there’s lots going on in the city, you just have to spend some time finding what you love and getting into those groups. For work, there’s a huge amount of support here - tons of great mentors and people that have ‘done it’ before who are ready and willing to help out young companies and founders. To the people who reached down the ladder to give me a hand up - I’ll never be able to express how much that means to me, other than to pay it forward.

CM: What are your thoughts on lower back tattoos (the so called “tramp stamp” jeez I hate that term)? 

BW: I think the term needs to die a horrific death. Just like calling a woman in a leadership position ‘bossy’ instead of ‘driven’ compared against male executives (you’re fucking right I believe in gender equality)! A lower back tattoo is a place for a tattoo that a person likes - there’s no further meaning behind it. And I’d encourage you to check out the great opinion piece written by Amber on the Tattoo Hero Blog here’s an excerpt: “From sternum/under-boob tattoos being called the new “tramp stamp”, to sweeping (and grossly inaccurate) statements that “tattooed women are broken”, it seems that negatively portraying tattooed women has become an unfortunate trend.”

CM: You go boy!

CM: Lastly… If you were stranded on a deserted island, who would you want to be stranded with? 

BW: Louie CK - cause then I’d most likely die of laughter and that’d be an awesome way to go. At worst we’d become best friends and that’d just be super cool.