flickr: rpongsaj

There isn’t a whole lot of mystery as to what should go into a basic investor pitch, yet the entrepreneurs I coach have a habit of getting in their own way.  I’m not sure if it’s because I deal mainly with early stage, high-tech start-ups and scientists/engineers love details, or whether people just want to do a good job and think that more information is better.

It’s not (generally).

What most entrepreneurs don’t know (or forget), is they are the thousandth+  person to pitch that particular investor / funder / reviewer.  They’ve heard and seen it all before.  Overselling and under-informing, not to mention presentation errors, go a long way to explain why those Blackberry’s start getting checked.

If you’re pitching as part of a competitive funding process, then if you’re not the first presentation of the day, you’re fighting information overload (not to mention post-lunch hypoglycemic-induced fatigue!).

So what are the basics?While great presentations are few and far between, simply providing the basic information that funders and review committees want to see, in an easy to understand format, will set you apart from your peers.  That information generally looks like:

• What is your business / technology?
• What problem are you solving for what market?
• How do you make money?
• How experienced is your management team?
• What is your current status and what are your next steps?

Believe me, if you can simply convey that information in 15 minutes or so in an understandable and easily digestible presentation, you are way ahead of much of your competition.  This of course doesn’t mean you will get funded, but at least you won’t get denied for lack of understanding.

I’m lucky to work as part of a regional, entrepreneurial support ecosystem and almost all my peers convey roughly the same message.  However, I recently heard about a pitch metaphor one of my colleagues uses and I think it can be really helpful in understanding the process of going through a presentation.  I’m not sure if he calls it anything, but I call it the Pitch Staircase.

How the Staircase works

Everyone knows how a staircase works, you take one step at a time and pretty soon you’ve arrived at your destination.  The Pitch Staircase isn’t special because it’s different, it’s special because of who you are walking the staircase with: a frail, helpless individual who needs lots of help getting down the stairs (e.g. the investor).

Imagine you’re standing on the top of the staircase with your 90 year old investor grandma.  To get grandma down the stairs, you’ll walk her to the top of the stairs, then take some time to make sure she’s got solid footing before taking a step.  Once she’s ready, you’d then carefully guide her down to the next step, and again take some time to make sure she’s stable before moving on.  Repeat this process, and pretty soon grandma has made it down the stairs with your help.

Using this metaphor for your pitches can help focus your presentation and keep you on track.  Imagine the person you are pitching to as grandma, and your presentation as the staircase.  You want to guide the investor through your presentation in a logical manner, not rushing into a new topic until you’ve got them on solid footing where they currently are.

What do the steps look like?

As mentioned above, most early stage coaches you talk to will tell you pretty much the same story as to what goes into a pitch, much like I outlined above.  As presented to me by my colleague, the “steps” he takes grandma down during a pitch are:

• Problem
• Solution
• Market
• Team
• Process

A little different flavor than mine and I like it.  Very basic buckets of information that are all important.  I also like the sequence as it builds a logical story, also a very effective approach to early stage pitches.

Bonus – 5 quick, practical tips for effective pitches

I recently stumbled across the Instigator Blog.  Written by a former entrepreneur who exited and now is a founding partner at an early stage accelerator, I love the blog for it’s practical, real world take on entrepreneurship, pitching, marketing and all those other fun things that go with early stage start-ups.  Ben’s five tips on pitching investors boil down to this:

1. Tell you story quick
2. Change the pace throughout
3. Sexy slides work
4. Don’t over-emphasize the product
5. End strong

While all of these are good tips, #3 and 5 stick out for me in particular.  Sexy slides definitely work on many levels.  I read a while back about a psychological “test” that started with an examination of your car trunk.  The premise was your trunk represented your brain and a messy, uncared for trunk indicated the same tendencies within your human nature.  A stretch perhaps, but a professional, yes – sexy presentation always reflects well on the presenter.

Likewise with ending strong.  Too many entrepreneurs end their presentation with boring financials, or next steps milestones.  Fight that urge.  End on a strong note with something that is going to help those funders remember YOU out of the 15 other entrepreneurs they saw that day.   I really like Ben’s suggestion on how to do this – that’s a teaser to get you to actually click over to his post and read through all five tips.  If you’re an entrepreneur getting ready to pitch or in the midst of constant pitching, it’s some great advice.

Good Luck!

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The Pitch Staircase

Flickr: ghewgill

Lists of entrepreneurial qualities abound on the web.  Heck, I even ran a couple surveys when I first started this blog.   After a couple years of working with entrepreneurs and start-ups, I’ve come to the conclusion that while entrepreneurs in aggregate do exhibit many similar personal qualities, the success of their start-up is a different issue altogether and tied to a much more subtle and extensive set of factors.

That observation combined with my natural orientation to practical, real-world information, and I’ve personally grown very tired of talking about entrepreneurial qualities.  I’ve met plenty of passionate, committed, tireless, social, driven, etc., etc., etc. entrepreneurs whose start-up didn’t succeed.  I’ve also met a handful of very successful entrepreneurs.  While it is true that they exhibit quite a lot of the qualities generally subscribed to entrepreneurs, I personally think that success requires much broader support than simply the personal qualities of the entrepreneur.  (Not to mention that any tight cohort most likely exhibits similar qualities.  That’s why they are a cohort.  Let’s not confuse shared experience with success.  While most squirrels in my neighborhood are brown, simply being a brown animal doesn’t make you a squirrel.)

So my personal “scorecard” for initial evaluation or entrepreneurs includes both personal factors and opportunity factors.  I typically look at four factors in each category.  What follows is a quick overview of my though process in an initial meeting with an entrepreneur.

Personal factors

There’s an old cliche in the investment community that they would rather invest in “an A team with a B product, then a B team with an A product.”  This speaks to the importance of the people involved in any start-up, and truly I tend to judge the entrepreneur before I judge the idea.  Following are the four factors that weigh heavily in my evaluation of the personal side of the entrepreneurship equation.

Passion and Commitment

Just about every article you read on entrepreneurial qualities talks about passion and commitment being critical for success and I couldn’t agree more.  Building a successful business is hard enough with passion fueling complete focus and commitment to keep going when the going gets tough.  Whenever I meet a new entrepreneur I’m constantly looking for signals that tell me their force is strong.   Things like working evenings and weekends on their startup while they work a full time job speak to passion; and investing personal money or not being dismayed by a couple failures tells me a lot about their commitment.

“Inner Circle” support

The first few years of a startup tend to require almost exclusive focus and commitment.  This can be very hard on family and friends.  Many an entrepreneur I’ve talked to has spoken of past divorces due to their focus on the business.  Work/life balance is hard enough when you’re an early stage entrepreneur.  If you try to do it without having a real-world conversation with your spouse, family and close friends, you’re asking for trouble.  I will specifically ask questions of entrepreneurs in this area – not only have they had the conversation, but is their family behind them.  Having the most important people in your life in full support of the crazy ride you’re embarking on can be a tremendous help.  Just remember, it IS possible to be successful and stay married.

Realism

I’m also on the lookout in those first meetings to get a sense of the entrepreneur’s sense of reality when it comes to starting a new business.  Are they aware of their risks and chance of success?  Have they overestimated the potential of the business?  Have they underestimated their capital and resource needs?  An entrepreneur with a clear head and sense of the risks, and rewards, of their start-up shows me they’ve done their homework.  The entrepreneur’s realistic approach helps shield them from disappointment and provides a sound basis for business planning.

Ownership

Finally, on my scorecard, it’s highly important that the entrepreneur demonstrates ownership for their own success.  Too often I have entrepreneurs in my office that think it’s my job to find them money or get them started.  Any entrepreneur who demonstrates in any way a mindset that their success is dependent on the actions of other presents a huge red flag and is a topic I will immediately address.  If I challenge an entrepreneur on this topic and they become defensive or angry, and I don’t believe they can be coached out of their beliefs, I wish them well and send them on their way.  In my corner of the world there are all kinds of support resources for entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes to tap into, but your start-up’s success is no one’s responsibility but your own.

Opportunity factors

Even an A team needs something to sell, and when I say “opportunity” I mean the product, service or concept the entrepreneur has at the core of the start-up.   Opportunity factors, for me at least, get weighted differently than personal factors.  First – as I said above, the personal factors are always important and almost always where I started asking questions first.  Second – the nature of the opportunity impacts how deep I need to dive and how critical it is to success; the discussion is much different if I’m talking to someone opening a pizza shop versus a medical device start-up.  The questions below speak primarily to the bulk of my current clients: high-growth potential start-ups in the technology space.

Something that’s real

I talk to lots of technologists with plenty of exciting ideas.  However, there is a big difference between an idea and showing that idea works.  Whether it’s a prototype, or a pilot, or lab research, the entrepreneur that can prove, even if it’s on a small scale, that the technology works is light years ahead of anyone with simply an idea or research.  Of course, the challenges don’t end there and the next hurdle is to show the technology can scale into commercialization, but if you are technology start-up and you have a meeting with a potential investor, be prepared to answer this simple question: “Does the technology work?”

Market need, and a way to get there

We all have our personal cliches and one of mine is “not every good idea is a great business.”  A crucial part of any evaluation I have with an entrepreneur is understanding why someone will take a dollar out of their wallet and give it to the entrepreneur for their product/service.  This is critical and I can’t count the number of entrepreneurs that either aren’t focused on sales or underestimate the effort involved in selling.  You simply must be able to tell me (and more importantly your future customers) why they should buy your product.  The more compelling the argument, the better.

The “way to get there” is equally important and speaks to how the entrepreneur intends to get the word out.  Almost as hard as getting a customer to take a dollar out of their wallet, is getting the opportunity to try to convince them to take that dollar out.  So I look for what the entrepreneur’s plan is to get in front of potential customers.

Team that can deliver

Team, team, team – I can’t say it enough.  Once I’m done evaluating the founding entrepreneur(s), the other team element is to look at their support team.  The basic service team (legal, financial, etc) is not so important in my mind as their advisory board, if they have put one in place.  Most people think of the value of an advisory board as the coaching and mentoring they can provide and certainly that is invaluable, but more so to first time entrepreneurs.  The real value in my eyes though of the advisory board (or “real” Board, if they are that far along) are the technical and sales contacts they can provide.  To an investor, this lowers risk by providing not only high-level introductions, but an accompanying “instant credibility” that helps make those early sales more likely.

That said – I don’t want to overplay the board of advisor, nor understate the founders.  The people running the company on a day to day basis still have the greatest impact on it’s chances for success and a high level of scrutiny is given to that person or team.  I’ve had many a “tough love” conversation challenging an entrepreneur to convince me they have what it takes to start, run and grow a company.

Profitability

You would be amazed at the number of pitches I hear where the entrepreneur doesn’t tell me how they are going to make money.  Not how much money, or how big the company will be in five years – simply no information on where revenue comes from.  Sometimes these are presentations to reviews committees I sit on for 5 – 6 figure loan/grant funds.  So before I go any further, entrepreneurs please get out your checklists and add “Tell them how my company makes money” to your pitch list.

When you do tell me how you are going to make money, I’m looking for a well-reasoned approach that fits your market and your sector.  If you are proposing a revenue model new to the market, then walk me through why you are passionate about the new approach and convince me that your customers will positively respond.

Hand in hand with how you make money is how much of you get to keep as profit, so a basic understanding of your financials and operational costs is part of this analysis.  Investors will probably be categorizing your business model and I admit I’m no different (high-value; commodity; up-sell potential, etc.).  This leads into what most folks call “scalability”, or now that you have a handful of customers and you’re hopefully making money, how do you make a lot of money?  So for profitability, you need to tell me two things: first, how you make money then second, how you intend to make a lot of money.

Your thoughts?

So that’s my scorecard, what do you think?  It’s not intended to be anything other than an initial vetting tool as obviously deeper information is needed to truly judge the potential of any start-up.  However, as a tool to evaluate early stage entrepreneurs and their businesses it has served me well and I can tell you that many of these areas are also important to my peers.

Entrepreneurs – how do you fare against this scorecard?

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My entrepreneurial scorecard

• On-time delivery
• Project management expertise
• Local presence
• Senior staff

I remember thinking these sounded more like must-haves as opposed to key differentiators.  The thing is if you’re going to start talking about key differentiators, aspects of your business that  set you apart from your competitors, they really should be different.

So was born the seeds of my “so what” question.  I’ve since turned the question into a facilitated process I run entrepreneurs and personal clients through.  It can be helpful in a variety of ways, but I find it’s best suited to helping companies get to the bottom of what is really special about their company/product/service.

The basis of the game

It’s a “game” I play with entrepreneurs or anyone really who is working hard to represent the true value essence of their business.   Every time they portray an aspect of their business as “strategic” or “game-changing”, I ask them: “So What?”.  I usually get this look that conveys something along the lines of “What are you, crazy?  So what?  Isn’t it obvious?”.  We then have a chat about the difference in perspectives between business owners and their customers and how too few business owners judge the value of their products through the eyes of their customers.

My service is available online through a SaaS (software as a service) model.

So what?  So are a thousand other companies.

Sometimes I have to explain the game, sometimes they catch on quickly.  The point here is to both weed out talking points in your pitch that aren’t truly strategic while getting to the root of what is strategic in others.  The goal of course is to move your message “up”, making it more strategic, while simultaneously connecting deeper with the value you are truly offering your customers.  You know you have a winner when you can connect your strategic value to a customer’s emotional driver.

My product offers features not currently available in this space.

So what?  Maybe no one wants those features.

So you can see the game might sound a bit blunt, and to be honest it can be.  My experience though is that almost all the entrepreneurs and personal clients I’ve worked with that truly are committed to succeeding, take no offense.  In fact, they see the game as quite the opposite and generally embrace challenges to their business model as an opportunity to either reinforce their value proposition or identify an area that needs improvement.

I only work with non-profits.

So what!?

Turning the game into a process

So this idea had been rummaging around in my head for a while how to turn my little game into a process, and several months ago I got the opportunity.  An entrepreneur I’ve been working with had an important funding presentation upcoming.  She had a good product, but one that suffered from an image problem – the potential of the opportunity was getting lost in aspects of a business model that came off sounding small.  She also suffered a bit from having a technical background.  I find technicians to have no shortage of big ideas, but sometimes they can struggle conveying them conceptually without retreating to the comfort of details.  And, stereotyping here, technicians are horrible marketers.

So, in a coaching session, using a large whiteboard, I drew five columns with room for headings and asked her to name up to five key/strategic differentiators of her product.  Those things that truly set her apart, would ultimately make her a success and were essential elements of her value proposition to customers.  She came up with five key differentiators and we boarded those as headings for the columns.

Why up to five?  This is just my number, one that “feels” about right.  I say that if you have more than five key differentiators then you have way too many to start with.  Likewise, I would say that you should try to start this exercise with at least three differentiators as I’ve found the process may lead you in directions you hadn’t anticipated.

Working the board

So, after the starting 3-5 key differentiators are on the board as column headings, I work one column at a time.  There’s no magic here and I generally work left to right unless there is some over-riding reason to attack a particular column first.  For each column, I start by re-stating the key differentiator, then asking:

So What?

From there, you whenever a answer is offered to that question, I follow up with another “So what?”.

Obviously, it’s not quite that easy and there is much more to facilitating a strategy session than asking a simple question.  It helps to have a background in facilitation and knowledge of the entrepreneur’s industry.  In my days as a consultant, I ran many facilitated sessions and went through a variety of training sessions on how to facilitate. All that training really helps these sessions as many times you need to draw the entrepreneur’s thoughts out and help them answer that So What question.

It’s also important to be able to “work the board” as more and more information gets posted in more and more columns.  What I often see arise out of these sessions is interesting linkages between thoughts in columns and new messages arising out of other comments.  Staying aware enough to recognize when these new pathways of discussion present themselves can help take the session in important new directions.

So when do you know you’ve answered the So What question?  I really don’t have a good answer.  With very few exceptions, you just get to a point when the subject of the session answers the question and you just know that what they said is important enough, strategic enough to qualify as a So What.  I know that sounds kind of soft, but I can say that most of the time my client’s have agreed with me.  I think it helps to have a seasoned facilitator who is both brutally honest about what is strategic or not, and also has a fair amount of business perspective to bring to the session.

Frankly, the other option is the column is simply crossed out.  Sometimes after extended conversation, it just becomes obvious that the differentiator really isn’t all that special, and the discussion isn’t leading in the direction of a replacement.  Crossing out a column is an opportunity to hone your message and focus in on those differentiators that truly are special.

Outcomes

So obviously, the main outcome is the more targeted strategic differentiators for the client.  As I’ve mentioned though, all kinds of other linkages and information can arise out of a So What session.  In particular, I have found the following to be quite common:

• Central themes – in a session with the Marketing Director of a regional park system that has several extraordinary spaces available for rent, we uncovered two central themes aligned with two different target markets.  The information spoke to potentially two separate marketing campaigns for the spaces.
• Emotional drivers – any time you can connect your brand with emotional drivers you have the potential to create especially strong ties with your customer.  Working with an entrepreneur offering an online service targeted at college students, we uncovered emotional drivers of laziness and fear; two very strong emotional drivers in support of their brand.
• New directions – sometimes, like the session I most recently ran for a consultant focusing on C-level services, between columns crossed out and answers to repeated So What question, we find the general theme of the company’s strategic differentiators heading in a completely new direction, or uncovering new themes.  In this particular session, a theme rose out of several columns and ultimately became an important new direction for the consultant to market their services.

How do you approach defining your key, strategic product differentiators to your clients?  How would you answer the So What question for each one?  Are you sure your differentiators are important to your clients and not simply what you think is important?  Feeling uncomfortable answering any of those questions?  Let’s run a session together…

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So what?

I manage an incubator for high-growth technology companies.  As a good portion of my funding comes ultimately from public sources, it’s important for me to be able to show the success of my program – what my funders might call “leverage”.  So while I do some satisfaction surveying here and there, the majority of the surveys I perform with my customers (the entrepreneurs in my incubator) is geared toward capturing information to help prove the success of my program and the leverage on the public dollars entrusted in my program.  I, along with my sister incubators across the State of Ohio, use something called Table 3.  Table 3 captures a myriad of relevant growth statistics on our tenants, but for many the stats on revenue, investment and job creation are important metrics on how much leverage an incubation program has created with their funding.  (If you’re interested, I recently published my 2009 year-end statistics.)

All this is to say – “I know me some surveying” – and have used a number of offline and online tools over the years.  When the National Business Incubation Association announced a strategic partnership with chide.it, offering a free account for their FluidSurveys product, I was eager to sign up.  I was happy with my current provider (PollDaddy), but it’s hard to argue with a free basic account, which is what FluidSurveys was offering any incubation program through the partnership with NBIA.  That said – so called “free” programs sometimes aren’t worth it, so I did a little homework before signing up.

I’m happy to say that not only is the free account chide.it offered to us incubators was really free, it was also a fully functional account, limited only by the absence of some advanced features that I don’t use.  The best part is chide.it has agreed to renew our incubator’s free account every year.  Thanks chide.it!

The person in charge of the partnership between chide.it and NBIA is Rich Fialkoff.  Rich was included in all the introductory E-mails NBIA sent out and responded promptly to all the questions I had about the tool and the partnership.  Given that Rich is responsible for the U.S. introduction of chide.it products, this responsiveness was even more impressive.  After getting to know a bit more about chide.it (somewhat of a start-up themselves) and Rich (created and led several start-up business within larger companies and founded a consultancy focused on software startups), I asked Rich if he’d be willing to participate in my 10 Questions With… series.

If you run an incubator and you’re a member of NBIA, be sure to check out FluidSurveys – not only is it free through the NBIA partner program, but it’s a great tool and just makes it so darn easy to create a survey.  (If you’re not a member of NBIA, then you really should be.  It’s a great organization with extremely helpful members and two very useful conference every year.)  Chide.it is offering it’s second product, MyReviewRoom, at a discount to NBIA members.  MyReviewRoom helps teams facilitate application acceptance, evaluation and decision making.  I have an application process for the incubator that would be greatly facilitated by this product and I’m looking forward to the demo Rich has promised me.

So, on with the interview…DCO: Tell us about your company.  What was the genesis of your business?

Rich: We had some novel concepts on leveraging web collaboration in a way that would provide significantly differentiated feedback and evaluation services.  As we deployed some pilot projects, it reinforced our understanding of the gap emanating from the typical online solutions for surveys and review processes.  Frankly, being late to the party is not so bad when you have the benefit of validating the market, and hearing from customers on their experiences and what they need to do a better job while reducing their time/costs.

DCO: Describe the moment when you knew you were an entrepreneur?  What defined that moment and how did it feel?

Rich: As our products evolved this summer into the latest releases of  FluidSurveys and MyReviewRoom we realized that from a capability, usability and technology perspective we had amazing features, broke the mould on ease-of-use, and leveraged self-configuration to allow customers to do things for themselves that previously required an IT shop or expensive tools.  But, once you see this enormous potential, it turns up the contrast on success, and you are grabbed by the inevitable feeling of entrepreneurship.

As our websites for our tools evolved along with the tools, we saw users signing up from all over the world.  While we felt encouraged, we knew that we had to rely on every bit of our experience to transition this product set into a business.  Personally, it was exhilarating to draw on my many years of experience, including systems development, product management, business development, customer support, communications, and alliance and contract management.

DCO: What marketplace issue are you solving and for whom?

Rich: Our two products each address the market in different way.  ReviewRoom is without a peer in the market, in terms of capability and price point—it enables organizations to process online applications, receive document/video submissions on their website, review/comment them, and make decisions.  Since it’s totally customer-configurable and priced so affordably, it’s perfect for many applications that today are done manually—through emails, spreadsheets, etc.   FluidSurveys, on the other hand, enters a crowded survey market but simply, outperforms the rest.  Our customers are in all market segments from individuals, to small and large business to government agencies and all rave about our ease of use and capability.

DCO: How do you define success?  At what point do you consider yourself successful?

Rich: When this business is self-sustaining and allows me to take more freedoms in extending the business and how I spend my time. For now, I’ll continue to measure success based on customer satisfaction, revenue and growing our own staff in the US.

DCO: What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?

Rich: You really need to be balanced in your work on all aspects of the business.  For example, while we’re competing in the internet online space, we also differentiate ourselves by keeping it a “people” business.  We talk to our customers and are responsive in our support.  Similarly, you need to be balanced in how you engage the customer– we’re socially connected and easily contacted through Twitter & Facebook, and have many video tutorials on our own YouTube and Vimeo Channels.

DCO: To what do you most attribute your success?

Rich: Through my career I have had the opportunity to create and manage start-ups within large companies such as Bell Labs/Bellcore, Ameritech and Telcordia Technologies.  I have managed all aspects of successful software businesses and that experience is invaluable today.

DCO: What motivates you?

Rich: I’m motivated by a strong desire to do the best I can, and to have as many customers as possible using and loving our services.  If we can do that, all the other advantages of success will naturally follow.

DCO: What are three pieces of advice you would give to others considering becoming an entrepreneur?

Rich:

1. Validate the market and understand how you are going to differentiate yourself
2. Make sure you have a solid product that excites customers and provides them with high value
3. Recognize that you are rarely ever done—you must continually evolve your products and your approach and that this takes time

DCO: What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?

Rich: It’s the freedom to explore approaches to the market and determine which paths will be the most effective.  And to do this within a business that is still small and responsive while you have some control of all the levers of the business.

DCO: How did you come up with the name for your business?

Rich: I can’t take credit for the name chide.it, although I did like it from the beginning.  Since we’re about empowering feedback, the name seemed to reinforce the ability “to chide”.   But, we do get some curious responses—my personal favorite is when we’re asked if we’re an Italian company because of the “.it” extension on our www.chide.it URL…we’re not.

Thanks for the great interview Rich.  Best of luck to you and chide.it!

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10 Questions With… Rich Fialkoff of Chide.it

I especially liked a quick little article in the recent December 2009 issue entitled House Rules: Ten gentle suggestions for keeping the domestic seas tranquil.  Written by Meg Hirshfeld, writer and wife of Gary Hirshberg (who just happens to be CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt), the article lays out a list of simple suggestions Meg and Gary developed together for “entrepreneurs who aspire to a happy marriage and thriving family life.”

I’ll bullet the list here, but I highly suggest you click over to the article for Meg and Gary’s more complete thoughts for each suggestion.  It’s a quick read.

1. You are not the boss at home.
2. Set the bar low.  But set it somewhere.  (As in, make time for time together.  As Meg so aptly puts it “Being together reminds you that you enjoy being together.  And that reminds both of you why this enormous undertaking is worthwhile.”
3. Please, turn off the Blackberry.
4. When a big business decision looms, give your spouse a seat at the table.
5. Enter your spouse’s universe from time to time.
6. Make her communications a priority.
7. Don’t squeeze her in.
8. Treat your spouse like she’s your most important client.
9. Acknowledge her role.
10. Take frequent inventory.

My thoughts

I’ve been doing a lot of research over the last year on the topic of interpersonal relationships: why certain people gravitate together, the dynamics of relationship stages, and the difficulties in developing and maintaining long-term, constructive, meaningful relationships.  This focused research has taken place on top of my normal business reading, both books and magazines.

What’s surprised me a bit is not just how much both bodies of work have in common, but how applicable each is to the other.  While Meg’s list above is written from the context of keeping your marriage happy when one spouse is a workaholic entrepreneur, the suggestions are just as applicable for any couple.  Likewise, all the material I’ve been reading about interpersonal relationships contain a wealth of actionable thoughts on developing and maintaining authentic relationships based on respect and trust at work.  Something I think we can all agree is often in short supply.

Perhaps my thoughts are colored by the stage of life I’m at.  Being later in my career with much more responsibility than I had in earlier jobs, the line between my business and personal life has blurred quite a bit over the years.  But while it’s a fair question to ask, I would suggest that the answer really doesn’t matter.  If we can strengthen, even deepen, our relationships at work and at home, who cares what aisle of the bookstore helped us?

Comments are open

What do you think?  Do you agree that relationships, whether at work or at home, follow similar “rules”?  Is there a relationship lesson you’ve learned professionally that you applied in your personal life, or vice versa?  What suggestions would you offer entrepreneurs to keep a happy marriage and a thriving family life?

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How to be successful AND stay married

After holding a number of senior management positions at a handful of companies, it was a natural evolution for Laura to start her own company and use her expertise to help small- and medium-sized companies on complex business process and technology issues.  While I was aware of Laura’s technical and business expertise, I wasn’t aware that she had the entrepreneurial fires burning.  So in looking for my next 10 Questions With… interviewee, I didn’t have very far to go.

So, on with the interview…

DCO: Tell us about your company.  What was the genesis of your business?

Laura: OPT Solutions provides strategic technology counsel to CEOs at small and mid-sized organizations. We help companies achieve their business goals by optimizing business processes and technology. On a retained or project basis, OPT’s CIOs evaluated technology, manage staff and vendors, guide software selections and provide ongoing advisory services.

I started OPT Solutions after realizing that many small and even mid-sized companies lack experienced IT management on staff.  While I made a nice career of restructuring and turning around failing IT departments, I really wanted to get involved with small and mid-sized companies before they had a crisis.

DCO: Describe the moment when you knew you were an entrepreneur?  What defined that moment and how did it feel?

Laura: I certainly wasn’t sure when I started out. I enjoyed getting involved in all the different facets of the business, though. I’ve always liked learning new things. I knew I was an entrepreneur when I realized I wanted to stick with the business even with the down economy.

DCO: What marketplace issue are you solving and for whom?

Laura: I am helping small and mid-sized organizations that don’t have a CIO on staff that need strategic expertise either ongoing, or on a project basis. I find services businesses tend to use my services earlier, with a ballpark revenue range being $15M to $200M. Manufacturing-related businesses tend to use my services around the $50M to 500M range. That said, I’ve had clients outside those ranges as well.

DCO: How do you define success?  At what point do you consider yourself successful?

Laura: First, I think I’m successful now. I was thrilled to have had a successful year in 2008, which was my first full-time year in business. I was told by several people to not expect a profit until at least 12 months.  My long term view of success is having offices in multiple locations. I’m very excited about the potential for growing the business, particularly as we come out of this recession.  I will consider myself successful when I’m focused on working “on the business” rather than “in the business”. I can see myself taking consulting assignments only when I find them really interesting.

DCO: What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?

Laura: I think you have to like doing a lot of different things. You have to be willing to get into details, yet at the same time know when you aren’t the expert and need outside help. Based on companies I’ve worked with, I think it will be equally important to be able – and willing – to delegate responsibilities as the organization grows.

DCO: What are three pieces of advice you would give to others considering becoming an entrepreneur?

Laura: First, find something that uses your experience. The credibility is so valuable. My clients know that I’ve been managing IT departments for 13 years, and have been in IT for over 22. Plus, my experience (and that of other CIOs working for OPT) means I can really add value quickly.

Second, don’t do it half way. If your brain isn’t fully committed, that will come through when you are talking with people. Your identity needs to be your business if you want to succeed.

Finally, get help and outsource what you don’t have expertise in. It’s interesting to hear consultants who want their clients to get outside help (the consultant) but won’t do the same for themselves!

DCO: What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?

Laura: My favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur is being able to build a company – and corporate culture – based on my values and what I feel is important.

DCO: What kind of support do you look for and where do you find it?

Laura: I started out early with a business coach, which was extraordinarily helpful in framing my message and focusing my business. I am now involved in peer-to-peer advisory groups – it’s fantastic to know people that have run into some of the same questions I’m wrestling with. I also credit my spouse and family with being very supportive. It’s so important to have positive people around you!

DCO: Do you have an exit strategy?

Laura: In my case, I originally thought the business would get dissolved on my exit, as I was a sole entrepreneur. When I updated my strategy to include growing into multiple offices, I found myself excited to be able to provide “managing” consultant opportunities for staff that work for me, managing particular regions. At the same time, by having this structure, I will be able to step back from the business as I get closer to retirement and work in it on a part-time basis or sell it when I no longer want to be involved.

DCO: How did you come up with the name for your business?

Laura: OPT stands for Optimizing Process and Technology. I’ve always felt process was as important as technology, and optimizing both is critical to the success of a business. My dad came up with “Solutions” after I described the business idea to him.

Thanks for the great interview Laura!  Best of luck to you and OPT Solutions.

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10 Question With… OPT Solutions

Next steps are for the consultant to put together both functional specifications (for development costing), and wireframes (for user interface design and review).  The ultimate deliverable for this phase is a cost to develop the application – basically so I know if I can afford to do it or not!

Plans at this point are to develop for both the iPhone and the Blackberry out of the gate.  This is still open for discussion as all the phone platforms have their own development language, so every platform you develop on adds cost to the project.  As it stands right now, there is no code translator or utilities to facilitate cross-platform development.

Also up in the air is the business model.  Add tons of value to the application from the start and charge for it, or offer a “lite” version for free to drive adoption, then charge for advanced features?  There is quite a discussion going on between the consultant and myself on this issue – we are definitely split on the topic.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

The first cut of documentation is promised for next Friday.  I’m really excited to finally be moving forward!!

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Progress

So following are Guy’s 10 questions along with my comments, where appropriate.

1. How much money do you have in the bank? This is a simple question. You just want a number. If you’re told that “investors are ready to put in more” or “we have a line of credit,” beware because a promise of money isn’t the same as money. Ask yourself this question: If I promised money to a company and it’s about to crash and burn, would I put the money in it anyway?

This is an important question that I would re-phrase as “How long can you afford to live with zero income?”  The question isn’t quite that simple as different startups are are different places in their lifecycle.  If they are early stage, then you probably won’t be offered a salary; later stage companies may.

2. What is your net outflow per month? What you’d like to do is take the answer to question 1 and divide it by the answer to question 2. This will tell you how long before your company runs out of money and dies. If the answer to the question centers around “We will achieve revenue soon so our net will improve and give us more runway,” it means the company is in trouble because no product ever ships on time nor achieves the company’s “conservative forecast.”

This simply speaks to basic due diligence, as does several of the following questions.  The overall basic question you are trying to ask is simply what do you think the probability of the startup succeeding is?  More importantly perhaps, how much can you increase that probability by joining the company?

3. What is the post-money valuation of your last round? “Post-money valuation” is the value of the company after the last round of money was put in (again, lines of credit and promises don’t count). If the company doesn’t have either seven digit annual revenue or tens of millions of page views per month and post-money valuation is greater than $10 million, it usually means that raising another round will be difficult because previous expectations were set too high. If it cannot raise another round, it will die.

4. What can you do that your competitors cannot? This is good to know because it speaks to the defensibility and value of the company. Life is challenging for a company that has undistinguished products and services. This doesn’t mean the company will fail, but it has to be “special” in some way soon.

5. What can your competitors do that you cannot? This is how you can determine if the company management is optimistic (good), delusional (sometimes good, often necessary), or just plain pathological liars (always bad). The actual capabilities are not as important as much as the moral character of the answerer, so listen carefully.

Here, I disagree.  While the “moral character of the answerer” is important – I do not think it is more important than the actual answer.  DO you have something your competitors do not?  If you don’t, then regardless of the startups moral character, you will have an uphill battle growing the company.  On the other hand, if you can verify that the startup has some sort of “secret sauce” no one else does, then you may be looking at an excellent opportunity.

6. Who are your investors? Hopefully, there are one or two well-known venture capitalists. However, a perfectly acceptable—and perhaps even better—answer is that there are no investors other than the founders, and the plan is to bootstrap the company as long as possible. These days revenue is the best source of capital.

Here, Guy shows his history of working with IT startups, as they are relatively easy to bootstrap.  Many other startups are much harder unless the founders have plenty of capital of their own.  I’d look not only at the investors, but the startup’s funding strategy and roadmap.  These may be what they are bringing you on to develop, but if they don’t even have an idea of what they need and when, then that may be a red flag.

7. Who is on your board of directors? If there are outside investors, they are likely to be on the board. That’s cool. But you should beware of boards that are only the founders and their family and friends. You need at least one “adult” on board who can be the hardass bull shiitake detector.

Also try to evaluate the personality fit between you and the Board.  A Board with members that are highly networked in your target industry are extremely valuable.  I’d also try to evaluate how motivated and engaged the Board is.  Do they view themselves as merely “advisors”, or are they motivated to help create the startup’s success?

8. Has anyone in the engineering team actually shipped a product? You may think I’m kidding. I’m not. Shipping a product is very different from being a programmer. A company only gets paid for products that ship—not for trying hard to ship.

And shipping your first product, especially if a customer paid for it is a huge step in the eyes of investors.

9. Assume that you have $0 for marketing, how would you market the product? Any bozo can market a product with a million dollars. What you want is a team that can (a) make a great product that markets itself and (b) catalyze people to believe in the product enough to market it for you. If the answer you get is, “When we’re ready to ship, we’ll raise more money to market it,” you should run for the door.

10. What keeps you awake at night? This is an excellent question to figure out what the major challenges are for the company. If the answer is, “Nothing, we’re on the brink of worldwide domination,” look for the door again. If the answer is, “Scaling fast enough for our anticipated demand,” try not to laugh. The right answer is, “We’re a startup. I worry about everything: money, sales, engineering, support, and recruiting. I hope you will join the team and relieve me of some of this burden.”

So there’s some really good questions to ask yourself should you be approached by a startup.  I ultimately decided not to join this particular startup.  They are not without their challenges, but I think they have enormous potential.  They recently attracted their first investor who put in six figures and they do currently have product in the marketplace.  I continue to coach them and it will be fun to see how they grow and how big their success is.

Why didn’t I join them?  This is a great lead-in to the question I will add to the list:

11. Are you the right person for the startup? All of Guy’s questions are focused on evaluating the startup, but none really ask if you are the right person at the right time for them.  Startups need different skills and achievements at different times in their development.  Make sure you are a fit for them.

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Joining a startup?

After working through bringing him up to speed on what I was thinking about, I got a lot of encouragement from his feedback:

• Even though he is a social media “expert” and would therefore be outside my target market, he still saw value in my app and said he would use it
• Uncovered a couple more essential value propositions that will be helpful in marketing the app
• He led me in a completely new direction, challenging me to think about even more value I could potentially build on the “back-end” of the app
• Agreed to introduce me to another recognized expert in the field for even more brainstorming

Based on this feedback, I am even more excited to move forward.  I do want to have a couple more conversations with my core, identified market just to make sure I’m on track, but I’m feeling like I really have something here.

So if you are a business professional who uses, or is getting ready to use, social networking platforms for relationship building and personal branding AND would be willing to give me some feedback on a smartphone application that might be able to help you, please contact me or leave a comment.  I’d love to talk to you.

CB (yes I’m looking West) I will be calling soon!

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Encouragement

After that event, I saw Rob quite often and finally took the time to get to know him a little better.  Rob is one half of Felber & Felber Marketing (the handsome half I’m sure he would say).  Having got to know Rob, and hear him speak a couple times now, I have come to understand what many in the region already knew – Rob and his company are a great resource to entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes as they look to promote their company.

We often tell entrepreneurs that one of the benefits we offer as part of our coaching services is connecting them to “entrepreneurially-friendly” service providers.  Rob made it easy for me to put him in that category.  And it just so happens that Rob himself is both entrepreneurial, and friendly.  You couldn’t ask for a better combination.

So, on with the interview…

DCO: Tell us about your company.  What was the genesis of your business?

We started Felber & Felber Marketing initially as a production company helping other agencies with print production, promotional materials and the sourcing of promotional products and packaging. There was a specific moment when I was discussing a new $50,000 project with an agency and I said …”wait, before we discuss this one, how did the client do on the last one?” All the agency could say was that the client did not complain. There was no discussion or even tracking of goals. It was at that point we “became one (an agency, that is),” focusing on measurable marketing strategies. Through the years we added copy development, graphic design, public relations and social media services, all with the a focus on a measurable result for our clients.

DCO: Describe the moment when you knew you were an entrepreneur? What defined that moment and how did it feel?

The moment you realize you are an entrepreneur, for me, came at several moments. The first is when you realize you cannot work for someone else and really enjoy the freedom that comes with making your own schedule and not having to report to anyone. The other “moment of truth” is a phrase I often use when someone says how great it must be to own your own business. I often reply that you are not an entrepreneur (or true business owner) unless you have “sweated making payroll” and have people depending on you.

These moments in time, while often exhilarating (like closing a big deal) can often be filled with fear, such as when signing a long term lease, adding staff or buying equipment.

DCO: What marketplace issue are you solving and for whom?

Felber & Felber Marketing helps business to business manufacturers tell their story to the right person, at the right time so our clients make more money. We utilize publicity, printed communication and social media to help our clients effectively communicate to prospects and the media that cover their industry.

DCO: How do you define success?  At what point do you consider yourself successful?

While success and the definition changes often, I have come to realize that success is a journey. It is not about one particular client or their cover story in a lead publication, but about our continual growth as an agency, the development of our people and the client friendships we develop along the way.  While judgment by peers and family often defines one’s success, my view is and will remain the simple fact: Do I enjoy what I am doing, am I good at it and are people willing to compensate me for it.

DCO: What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?

To be a successful entrepreneur is not waiting until some defined moment in time to give back to your community, your industry or networking colleagues. I get a charge out of helping people connect, especially for business (of course without remuneration….that would just taint the process in my mind). Give with no strings attached.

DCO: Entrepreneurs are almost always starved for capital.  How have you funded your business so far, and where do you go from here?

While we have become increasingly aware of funding sources such as venture and angel funding, our firm has never taken that route. One of the mottos I live by (and infuse into my teaching) is that “nothing happens until someone sells something.” That being said, we have bootstrapped our way to growth by selling our services and not building debt.

DCO: How has being an entrepreneur affected your family/social life?

Family, work and social are integrated into everything I (we) do. Whether it is volunteering on a charity committee, speaking to a professional organization or attending a social gathering, we are always networking. By being aware of others needs, whether personal, business or both, our lives become enriched. Famous salesperson Zig Ziglar states that “if you help people get what they want, you will get what you want.” So, by enriching our lives with people from multiple venues we build a personal community that pays dividend spiritually, economically and physically.

DCO: Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?

I have always been a fan of the irreverent yet fun and success path the people of Southwest Airlines have forged. They keep it real, respect each other and are profitable. They seem to really know how to take care of each other and their families.  (Rob suggests reading the book Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success.

DCO: What kind of support do you look for and where do you find it?

The support I look for the most is business networking support. I find this support through countless networking groups both in person and online. I often look for groups that are NOT filled with my peers, but rather industries and people that are completely different from mine. They folks however have the ability to connect me to CEO’s and VP of marketing in manufacturing companies.

DCO: What stops you from giving up when you get frustrated?

Running a business, just like working in one, can be filled with frustrations and disappointments. I often try to stay grounded by realizing there are tons of people that do not have a choice in what they do, where they live or for that matter how they live. Also, having multiple experiences helps you react to new and not-so-new challenges that come with the daily life of a CEO.

Thanks for taking the time to spend some time with me Rob.  Here’s wishing you continued success in the future.

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10 Questions with… Rob Felber

His view on work, and life, is that you don’t have to live your life the way people expect you to and if you don’t decide what you want to get out of life, someone else will do it for you.

Chris’ writings on personal responsibility and excellence are some of the best I’ve read and reflect the nature and spirit of the topic I try to impart on this site.  In a recent post talking about personal responsibility and “showing up”, Chris had this to say:

To be truly awesome, you have to go above and beyond the efforts of those around you, look for alternative solutions, and refuse to back down from the truth. There’s a whole article about it for those who are curious.

But it all starts with showing up. Or, as a friend of mine puts it:

“I’m sorry you feel bad about not meeting your goals– what I would suggest is that you begin meeting your goals, in order to feel better.”

Insight such as this is difficult for some people to accept. Just imagine the excuses you’d hear:

But that’s not fair! But I tried to do it and something else came up! But some things are out of our control!

You can probably think of other excuses – in fact, you’ve probably heard them many times over. Thankfully, for those of us who do take responsibility, there’s good news on two levels. The first good news is that we automatically stand out. In a world of buck-passers, those who decide to take responsibility are unusual. Yay. You get the yellow jersey by default. (You still have to win the race, but no one is surprised when you do.)

But on a deeper level, the bright side of taking responsibility is that you can own your own success. Sure, other people helped you get there, but you were the one who actually crossed the finish line. You showed up. You did it. If you have to own the struggle and failure, integral parts of any goal worth pursuing, surely you can also own some of the success.

Remember this: many people can help you achieve success, but no one else is RESPONSIBLE for your success.

I can’t speak for you, but for me this is pure inspirational genius.

I was reminded of this post last night.  I was attending a meeting of a local angel investor group.  There was an entrepreneur making a presentation in support of an investment decision by the group.  I love watching these presentations – I pick up so many ideas on what does and doesn’t work in a pitch presentation; especially in situations like these when it’s an actual, real-live pitch with money at stake!

The presenter was doing a good job; clearly he had done this before.  But then I noticed he was doing one of the no-no’s we coach our entrepreneurs about: he was constantly looking back at his slides.  He hadn’t fallen into the trap of reading the slides, but he was looking at them quite a bit.

Normally this is a very bad thing.  In this case, the presentation ended up being very well done.  The difference?  The entrepreneur took responsibility for his presentation’s success.  He was confident.  He was credible.  He was prepared.  And it was very apparent he was passionate and believed knew he was going to be successful.  To Chris’ point above, that kind of attitude stands out, mostly because it is too often seen.  For the fifteen minutes he was presenting, he owned that room.

The entrepreneur was approved for funding.  One could say it was because of a good product and sound business model.  One could say it was because of a positive report out of the due diligence team.  I would say while those were supporting factors, his funding was approved because he took responsibility for his success.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or someone simply interested in your own personal excellence – take responsibility for your success. 

Own your room.

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Own your room

What a rush!  Why have I waited so long to jump off the cliff?

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Ah, so THAT’s what it feels like

So with this post, I’d like to briefly recap the survey results and share my observations of how I interpret them and how they may or may not have changed my thinking on my first entrepreneurial outing.

Demographics

Everyone taking the survey indicated they were a “business professional”.  This was more of a check question – I really didn’t anticipate any skateboarders or surfer dudes coming across the survey, but you never know.  As far as the age distribution it was a good sampling with the most popular age group responding being 41-50 at 38%.

Overall, I was very happy with the range of people responding.

Social Networks

As expected given who was taking the survey, the top social networks used were LinkedIn (43%), Facebook (27%) and twitter (20%). I did have 5 responses (4%) of “Other”.  Turns out there are some business professionals out there using Ning!

As to what everyone uses their social networks for, this was another verification of my assumptions in that status updates (33%), responding to friend’s posts (32%) and sharing information or links (28%) represented the majority of activity.

Platforms

As expected again, Blackberry (34%) was the second highest response on brand of smartphone.   Palm came in as 13% and iPhone at 14%.  Surprisingly, the highest response was “Other” at 36%!  What did I forget?  A couple windows mobile responses and a lot of Motorola Q responses.  Yes, I know – same thing.  So that’s a good chunk of responses for the Windows Mobile platform.

Value and Pricing

Here’s where it got really interesting.

First, an overwhelming 71% said they would see value in a smartphone app that would let them interact directly with their social networks.  Where it got interesting was on price.  Whereas 38% said they wouldn’t pay anything for the app, the next highest response was up to $10 with 25% of the responses.  It was then $3 with 14%, $5 with 12% and $1 with 9%.

So it appears for those willing to pay for the app, they see enough value that they are willing to pay what would be a huge price on the iPhone app store.  While this did catch me a bit by surprise, it nevertheless makes perfect sense in a way.   I have nothing to rely on here other than outright stereotypes, those of iPhone users versus other smartphone users.  I am NOT saying anyone that uses an iPhone is not a business person.  But I think Apple has done a good job of positioning the value of their product line in the hardware not the app.  So it’s been my observation that by and large, iPhone users generally expect an iPhone app to be free or minimally priced.

Other smartphone users, not use to buying apps and approaching the survey question from a cost/benefit analysis I believe, answered based on the value they perceived in the app.  Regardless of whether any of these blatantly over-generalized statements are true or not, what I take away from these responses is that if I can deliver a social network app with high perceived value, I have plenty of latitude on pricing and users who will be willing to pay it.

My Next Step

Whereas this survey has convinced me there is a market for my idea and I am committed to moving forward more than ever now, it also drove home that the app needs to have significant value to be adopted.  The non-iPhone community may be willing to pay more for an app, but expectations seems to be pretty high as well.  So as opposed to moving directly into development, I am reaching out to several casual and advanced social network users to get input on what they would like to see in such an app and change my initial design accordingly.  If you would like to contribute to that process, please feel free to contact me and we can arrange something.

Finally, I’d like to thank all the people who wished me luck via the free-form responses.  I have some great friends and business associates and I look forward to sending you all a free advance copy of the application when it’s available.

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Market research results

Becoming an entrepreneur has many descriptors, but there certainly is an almost zen-like aspect to it.  It can be very hard to know when it’s the right time, what to do first, who to partner with, how to move ahead, etc. etc.  Then again, it really isn’t – when the passion is there, the stars align and many entrepreneurs say they “just knew” it was time.  Personally, I’m finding myself somewhere in the middle.

I’ve been seriously evaluating three entrepreneurial options for about six months now.  All of them have various plusses and minuses, and frankly I’m passionate about all of them.  For a variety of reasons, the stars seem to be aligning around one option in particular and who am I to argue with the universe?

I know one aspect of entrepreneurship is jumping in head first without knowing all the answers, but just like the coaching I would give to most entrepreneurs walking through my door, I want to gather some simple market feedback before getting started.  I’ve created a short survey whose answers I’m hoping will help me make that final decision of whether to move ahead or not, and I would really appreciate your feedback.  In particular, I’m looking for business professionals who:

• Use one or more social networks, once a week or more
• Own a smartphone
• Have two minutes of free time to answer a handful of questions

So, what do you say?  Help a fellow business professional / aspiring entrepreneur out and click over to my survey on Business Professionals & Social Networking.

Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts.  Please use the Share This link to send this post with colleagues you feel would participate.  I’d like to gather a good sample size of responses.

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Market Research

Two separate conversations over the last week have convinced me.  That higher power is: Clarity.

Entrepreneur #1 is focused in the telecommunications market and has developed a product based on intimate knowledge of a particular platform.  Given the entrepreneur’s expertise with the platform, several proprietary elements of the product have given the product good initial adoption within the market, with several thousand users.  Based on that success the entrepreneur had hired a resource to port the product to a second platform.

I introduce the entrepreneur to another (non-competing) startup in the same space with broader market knowledge.  They love the first entrepreneur’s product and see several applications for it, perhaps a joint venture.  However, their feedback points out that the secondary market they are trying to enter, while currently much larger, has much more competition and existing solutions.

The entrepreneur achieves clarity:

• Discontinues work on the new platform development
• Begins work immediately on pricing strategies and product road map
• Embraces a strategy of owning one market versus merely having a competing product in multiple markets

Entrepreneur #2 recently received some seed funding to begin work on her startup.  The entrepreneur has fantastic business skills and is doing a good job of supplementing technical skills onto her team when needed.  From our conversations, this entrepreneur is doing all the right things and making good progress.

The entrepreneur attends an industry-focused conference in New York.  Not only does she make a couple important contacts, but the content of the conference proves to be critical in developing her understanding of the direction, impact and business models within the sector her startup is focused on.  The conference helped her clarity around not only how to develop her startup, but how to secure her next round of funding.

So clarity is the whetstone that hones your focus and hard work and potentially takes your startup to it’s next level.  No one can tell you how to acquire clarity or where to look for it, but make sure to make the continuing search for clarity a priority.

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Stories from the field: Clarity