Category Archives: Learning

Community, Entrepreneurship, Learning

Givers and takers – a post on being a parallel entrepreneur

8 Comments

I often hear from many entrepreneurs about their desire to “give back”. Only after they have “made it”. What’s “making it” I ask? Usually its some form of monetary success or company milestone.

Here’s what I have learned – there’s no right time to start giving back. The right time is always. Right now. Today. This hour.

You may have heard of the term serial entrepreneur. Also the term parallel entrepreneur. I dont particularly like either term, but to me, a parallel entrepreneur is one that gives as much or as as quickly as she takes.

There are lots of takers, everywhere. Enough people seek out mentors, advisors, connectors and investors.

Not enough people are givers. Not enough people are coordinators, organizers, connectors and volunteers.

This has to change. You dont have to get enough to start giving. You can give a lot initially and trust me, the getting part happens extremely quickly.

We need more Avinash Raghava’s to help organize volunteer driven organizations.

We need more Subhendhu’s to help bring together Reverse pitch.

We need more Kiran’s to organize hasgeek forums.

We need more Chidambar’s to help bring Statup weekend’s to us.

I am missing many more. They are the unsung heros. They are really the parallel entrepreneurs.

I think they all deserve more of an applause than we give them. They should be an inspiration for us all to become parallel entrepreneurs.

Above all, be a force of good.

Angel investing, Learning, Tips, Venture Capital

What should a series A funding process look like? Step 4: Negotiations and Legal Discussion

7 Comments

Please read series A funding plan and strategy, the first step of the process – the introduction to an investor, the second step – first meeting and follow up, step 3 – present to the partnership and now onto Step 4 – Negotiations and Legal Discussion.

Congratulations, you have achieved what nearly 95% of startups (anecdotal evidence) wont end up doing – getting to a “term sheet” discussion with an institutional investor. After your first VC meeting, usually this step happens about 3-4 weeks later in India and a week or two in the US.

Typically most VC’s and their associate / principal will make a trip to your office between this period. They will want to meet the team, check out your offices and make sure that you are a “real company”. My personal experience shows that you should use your “lack of funds and frugality” to your advantage. Dont try and have them meet you at someone else’s office (has happened once) or try and spruce up your office (keep it clean, but dont go overboard).

Question I get is usually “I am working out of my home / garage”, should I invite them there? Let the investor know that you work out of home and they will usually ask you what your plans are post funding. Most will decline to come to your home, but if you wish you can ask them to meet at a coffee shop near your home / garage.

Most investors like the frugal quotient in startup founders.That shows that you focus on hiring the right folks and building the right product instead of “AC offices” and plush “Aeron Chairs“.

Your investor champion will typically call you with a short message in which she will say the firm is pretty excited about your opportunity and would like to offer a term sheet. She will invite you for a discussion on valuation and quantum of funds, at their office typically, with their associate and/or principal – let me call them “investment professional” or IvP from now on.

The IvP would have done quite a bit of work by this time to review your financial projections and assumptions. They will have also called a few potential customers, a few existing customers, some industry experts and a few of your friends and past acquaintances (yes, this happens in US and India) to get more information about you, the market, customers and other trends.

The negotiations are never one meeting. It will take typically 2-3 (or more) weeks to discuss between you, lawyers at both parties and the IvP. In your first meeting with the investors, they should state clearly why they are investing in your company – we like the market, we think the team is good, we think you can make it big, etc. They should also give you feedback on what needs work – you need to revisit your assumptions on hiring costs, the revenue projections are aggressive, your channel strategy is something they can help with etc.

Then they will give you two numbers of your term sheet – the valuation and the investment. They will say something to the effect “We are willing to invest $1 Million at a pre-money valuation of $3 Million”. Or they might say “We are looking to invest $1 Million for 40% of your company”.

You should be aware of these terms: pre-money valuation, investment quantum and post-money valuation, ownership %.

post-money valuation = pre-money valuation + investment

ownership % (for money invested) = investment / post money valuation – this is also the amount you “dilute“.

So in example 1: If they are investing $1MM at pre-money of $3MM, then your post money Valuation is $4 MM. So the company is valued at $4MM after funding. Since they put $1 MM, they will get 1/4 or 25% of the company.

In example 2: They are investing $1MM and are looking for 40% of the company. Which means the post money valuation is $2.5M and the pre-money is $1.5 MM.

How they come up with these valuation numbers is a series of posts in itself, but suffice to say its part art, part science and largely a function of market conditions (supply / demand). If you have multiple investors competing for your deal, you might get a higher valuation if your company is *hot*. If the investors you are talking to are the only ones who are still interested, and you need the money, be prepared to dilute more.

After this meeting they will let you, the IvP, their lawyers and your lawyers hammer out the other “terms”. The term sheet (pdf file) will have many other conditions and clauses. I wont cover them all, they require a series of posts in themselves and enough people have written about them.

The most important terms are: liquidation preferences, anti-dilution, full ratchet, drag-along, tag-along (called co-sale in the US), ROFR (Right of first refusal) and board representation.

Keep in mind that your company will pay for your legal fees, and also the investors lawyers. You need two sets of lawyers so each party can protect their interests.

Most investors will say most of these terms are non-negotiable, but depending on the deal they will negotiate with you – through the lawyers, obviously. Realize that the lawyers really are the go-between. They wont do or ask for anything the investor really does not want. So, its pointless blaming the lawyers (they are a few errant ones, but they are largely service providers who do as they are told).

What might go wrong and how to fix it?

1. You dont like the valuation or you would like more money (investment amount). That’s negotiable and depends on the deal dynamic. Some investors low-ball and others will give you “fair valuation” Its rare that an investor will over-bid – (A16Z is an exception). Let them know your expectations and be prepared to defend why you think your valuation metric is the right one.

2. They term sheet is loaded with investor-friendly (anti-founder) clauses. Some of those are negotiable as well. I would advice you to pick your battles. Choose 2-3 items you consider very important to you and only negotiate those. The investors typically will do that as well. Most likely you’ll meet in the middle.

3. The lawyers take up endless time splitting hairs. In India, legal advisers will work on a fixed fee for the transaction model, but in the US that’s rare. So in India the incentive by the lawyer is to protect the parties interests but spend as little time as possible so they can bill at a higher rate. In the US though, the incentive is to take the “right amount of time”. Be aware though, that lawyers only do as they are told. Either your investor is telling them some terms are non-negotiable or your are telling your lawyer some issues cannot be compromised. Either ways, get on the call, and fix things proactively.

If you like this post, please consider submitting to Hacker News.

Angel investing, Entrepreneurship, Learning, Tips, Venture Capital

What should a series A funding process look like? Step 2: The first meeting and follow up

14 Comments

Once you have a series A funding plan and strategy and also the first step of the process, the introduction to an investor, the next step is to prepare for the first meeting and follow up.

Since you got an email from the investors admin, I’d recommend meeting investors either on Thursday or Friday.   Typically the admin will give you 30 minutes or 1 hour. Plan to finish presenting your pitch in 1/2 your allocated time to leave room for Q&A and a discussion on next steps. I dont recommend taking anyone else for your initial meeting, since its exploratory for both parties.

Typically the email from the investor will request you to “send me something so I can review”. From my experience its better you dont actually send your pitch deck via email, but your ONE page summary. Include detailed profiles of yourself in that one page (5 sentence per founder, with previous *accomplishments*).

Here’s a money tip: Include a link to your LinkedIn profile (not facebook or twitter please) at the bottom of the email with the attachment to your one page summary. [Side note: Make sure your LinkedIn profile is updated]. Make it easy for them to find out about who they are going to meet with.

Another money tip: When they click on your LinkedIn profile try to have at least 3 “mutual connections” with that investor. That seems to be a magic number (yeah, I know these may be lame tips, but bear with me).

Prepare for the presentation and show up about 5-10 minutes early (not half hour). Try to pitch your deck to 2-3 others in your company and let them ask you multiple questions.

You should have a overview presentation of about 15 (7 if its a 30 min meeting) slides for this meeting. The average person takes about 2-3 minutes per slide (depending on content), so you will have 30 minutes to present.

There are 2 strategies you can adopt on your pitch deck: Either you go deep on content (the slides should speak for themselves) or moderate (you are needed for the slides, else they are “content free”). There are pros and cons to both approach.

Content deep: Usually used by technical founders, these tend to focus on sufficient detail so that the investor gets a handle of the pitch The pros are: even if you suddenly develop cold feet (rare, but hey that happens) the slides convey your message. The cons: What’s the point of having you in the presentation?

Content moderate: My preferred approach. As you might have heard, investors are people, who invest in people. The pros are: You are in control of the presentation and are able to add “color commentary and provide lots of stories”. The cons: You might forget some very important points you wanted to cover, but those should have been on your pitch deck in the first place.

Here is a possible list of slides and a suggested order (tweak as appropriate).

1. Your background and your co founders: Try to answer these questions in this slide: Are you credible? What makes you unique to solve the problem you are going to solve?

Money tip: Dont use your background slide to only talk about yourself. Use your background to create “connections” with the investors. If you have (smartly) done some background, you will figure out some way to be a Kevin Bacon. Example: I know you invested in <portfolio company> and we recently hired a UX designer from there.

2. The problem you are trying to solve: Stick to 3 real use cases and make sure you have more detailed knowledge of your customer / user. Tell multiple stories here and use 5 minutes of your time on this slide. Why? Most people believe if you understand the problem clearly, you likely have a solution for it.

3. What is your traction? Show them that you are solving the problem already and address the question: So what if this is a problem? Are people buying? Are users signing up?

4. Your estimate of the market – preferably top-down and bottom up. Try to address the skepticism – is this worth the investors time? Money tip: If you market is < $1 Billion for US and < $250 Million in India, dont go to institutional investors. Dont waste your time, because it wont excite them. If you dont know the size of the market, dont make wild-ass guesses. Just say you are doing market analysis in your first meeting. It makes your pitch more credible. Ask the investor for their approach towards market sizing.

5. Your product: Address the question: Do you understand how the problem can be uniquely solved by you?

6. What’s unique about the way you solved the problem? Address the question: Do you have sustainable advantage or unfair competitive advantage over others.This might also be a place to address any unique technology challenges you have overcome.

7. How are you going to acquire customers? What approaches might help you best to acquire customers in a scalable fashion? What distribution mechanisms will you use to get multiple customers in very short time?

8. Competitive landscape. The best way to show this is a two-by-two matrix. Be real.

— If this is a 30 min meeting, you should be done by now.

9. How do you plan to make money (if you dont have financials) Or how are you making money right now?

10. The ask: How much money are you looking to raise and what are you going to do with that money?

—-

Slides 11-15 are for your product screen shots, since SNAFU’s happen all the time and you wont get Internet connectivity (or it will be a really slow connection), when you need it.

Use the last few minutes for Q&A and follow up. Have at least 3 questions about how they can help you get further and what improvements would they suggest to your product.

The easy follow-up asks: Ask for introductions to 2-3 of their portfolio companies so you can get a few customers. If you are a consumer internet company, ask them to use the product and let you know their thoughts. Suggest a list of questions they asked that can be the agenda for the next meeting.

Money tip: If you ask “What is the next step”? most will answer “Let me think about this for 2-3 days and get back to you”?. That’s lame.

You should suggest a next step. Examples:

a) Why dont I meet these people you recommend and lets chat on 29th August?.

b) Why dont you come by our office and meet the rest of the team so you get a feel for our culture?

What might go wrong and how to fix it?

1. You turn up really late for the presentation or you get lost trying to find the office. Apologize, try to use the shortened time, but most of all, pray that their previous meeting overran.

2. The investor turns up late for your meeting. If this is your top tier investor, you have not much option, but I know most of them will give you appropriate time if they are late. You can also have 2-3 more “asks” if they are late. If this is not your top investor, be courteous, shorten your pitch, and move on. Life’s too short for people who dont value your time.

3. Investor asks you a ton of questions for which you were either not prepared or do not have answers for. Be honest, say you dont know (its okay to not know) and suggest a follow up on your part to prepare and send him answers and meet again when you are ready.

4. Your “live demo” does not work. Go back and read what slides 11-15 are for.

If you like this post, please consider following me on twitter.

Angel investing, Entrepreneurship, India, Learning, Tips, Venture Capital

What does a series A funding strategy and plan look like?

15 Comments

This post is the first in a series that I am planning to do on fund raising. I have successfully raised money 3 times (to a total of $29 Million – series A, B and C) and failed twice (once trying to raise $2 Million series A and second time $3-$5 Million series B).

As a background please read Elizabeth’s great post on “Behind the scenes of a seed round”.

Fund raising is one of the most difficult parts of a founder’s job. Getting money from investors of any type is hard. Dont be fooled by stories of entrepreneurs talking to investors and getting checks in 10 minutes. Those are truly black swan events.

The first thing you have to realize is that you need to develop an comprehensive plan and strategy to raise your series A. Think of it as an effort that’s similar to the launch your product. For purposes of this discussion lets call series A, as your first institutional round. I am also making the assumption that you have a working product, paying customers and are targeting a very large market (>$1 B for US, >$250M in India). If any of those criteria are not met, dont bother trying to raise money in this environment.

What are the 3 most important elements of your funding plan?

1. The pitch deck – a 15 slide PowerPoint presentation which summarizes the market, problem, traction and investment requirements. This is needed only for the face-to-face meetings.

2. The target list of potential investors – a Excel spreadsheet which has investor’s firm, name of partner, list of 2-3 recent investments (in the same general space as yours), email addresses, phone numbers, admin assistant’s name & email address, investor connection (people who can give you warm introductions to the investors), status and notes fields. You could use a CRM tool like Zoho if you like, but its overkill for this purpose is what my experience tells me.

3. An email introduction (40 – 100 words) and a one page summary. A simple text file with no images or graphs (something that the investor can read on their mobile phone (most have blackberry, although that’s changing). This can be sent to your connections to introduce you to investors or directly to known investors.

What should your strategy be?

1. Who should you target by role?: Investment firms have partners (decision makers) and associate / principals (decision enablers). Partners make decisions so if you can, get a introduction to a partner. If you cant, its not all doom and gloom, since many partners rely on their associates and principals to source deals for them.

2. Who should you target by investment thesis: Every investment firm has an investment thesis (how they will deploy funds to get best returns for their investors). This should guide you as to whether you’d be a good fit for the firm. Example: An investment firm might say we believe India’s broadband access and huge number of consumers with high disposable incomes is a great target for Indian eCommerce companies. So, they will deploy a certain % of their funds in eCommerce companies. Similar theses exists for big data, SaaS, etc.

Example: if you are an education startup focusing on India, Lightspeed (thanks to their success with TutorVista) should be on the top of your list. If you are a SaaS firm targeting US, Accel (thanks to Freshdesk) should be on your list. If you are a travel technology startup, Helion & Saif (thanks to Make My Trip) should be obvious targets.

A word of caution: If a firm has invested in a company in your sector, they will very likely ask you to speak to the CEO of their portfolio company to perform cursory due diligence. You may decide that company might be competitive and likely to execute your idea better since they have more resources. So proceed with caution and dont reveal any thing during your due diligence that might hurt you later.

Many investors invest in a sector because they “need one of those in their portfolio”. Example: Every firm has a baby products eCommerce company. So, I also recommend the “herd rule”. Which means, you should talk to other investors if your competitor has been funded by your first choice investor.

3. Who should you target by investment stage: Although every Indian investor claims to be sector agnostic and stage agnostic, there are a few early adopter VC’s. If you are the “first” in a new space, then consider an early adopter investor, else any investor who has not made an investment in the sector will suffice.

In a next post I will outline what the series A funding process should look like. This post will include information about whether you should follow a “back-to-back” process, or do a “listen and tweak” process.

If you like this post, please consider submitting to Hacker News.

Focus, Learning, Tips

The power of active observation for entrepreneurs

3 Comments

There’s an awesome stand up act that Jerry Seinfeld does in his “I’m telling you for the last time”. In that he tells the audience a secret about men.

The question on many women’s mind is “What are men thinking about?” is his premise. He goes on to say “Let me clue you on to the secret women. Here’s what men are thinking.”

Nothing.

We are just walking around, looking at stuff.

Its pretty funny and mostly true. Its also true of most people, not just men. Most of our “thinking time” is spent thinking about nothing.

Nothing.

That’s such a waste of time.

What I think it really means is its not worth sharing what we are thinking about.

We are “constant dreaming” about mundane useless stuff and our thoughts wander to more useless stuff.

While we go about some daily routines, we are still thinking and less “observing”.

Most successful entrepreneurs I know have a heightened sense of observation.

They watch everything. I mean they observe at least 50-80% more than the average person.

Most non-entrepreneurs people see the same things an entrepreneur does, but they dont observe.

A technique I use is active observation. It is seeing, then asking questions. As you know, questions are the root of solving interesting problems.

To discipline yourself to constantly keep observing, you have to train your mind to look, then ask. Not keep looking and neither keep thinking.

There is a downside to active observation. Its that you are not in the “present”. Critics will point to the mind-rest that your brain needs which helps it recuperate and rejuvenate. They might also say you should go with the flow to generate great results.

I prefer active observation when I am thinking about ideas and problems to come up with which need solving.

P.S. Post a few comments on facebook, I wanted to clarify that active observation is observing then doing. By default I assume most entrepreneurs are doers. Many though confuse doing (action) for progress.

Entrepreneurship, India, Learning

The frustration of “lack of progress” with your product

7 Comments

On the outside looking in, its extremely frustrating to hear of product teams shipping product multiple times a day.

I tend to often question: “What in devil’s name am I doing wrong”?

  • Is it that I have not defined the product requirements right?
  • Have we hired the wrong people? Does our team not have enough experience?
  • Is our culture not supportive of mistakes?
  • Are we not focusing on the right things?
  • Do we not have the capability to get stuff done quickly?

Experience with multiple startups has taught me that its ignorant to compare your company with others (who might have stated at the same time) who have more “visible progress” than yours does.

But I hate that experience.

Its hard not to compare and question why is someone else doing so well with a smaller team than you have.

Experience has also taught me that startups for most parts (like kids) have a step function in progress. Its rarely a smooth “up and to the right”.

I hate that experience as well.

Should all that experience not make the next go around a lot smoother?

So the question – “What the value of all that experience”?

There’s only one answer – Its overvalued.

There’s one solution to most of these questions and although it is a cliche and often repeated, the answer is “Hire right” – whether its consultants or contractors or full-time employees, you need to constantly evaluate and hire the right people.

So, how do you hire right? And how do you define “right”?

So lets start with not the job description, but with your culture and values. Hire the right person that fits your culture and can align with your values.

If you culture is defined by moving fast, hire and attract people that can do that.

How do you determine if someone “fits” your culture if all you can do is interview them for 1 hour or so?

Write down questions to situations where you feel your culture will make them act one way versus the other. Ask those questions during the interview.

Depending on the answer to those questions you can determine if they can align.

What I have learned is people rarely change. So its hopeless to expect someone who is not a good cultural fit, to come in and get “religion”.

Entrepreneurship, Learning

The most constructive way to give feedback

7 Comments

I had an extremely smart manager at Mercury / HP who could hold his own on both the strategic side with the CEO and also on technical topics with engineers. Robin was one of the earliest to help me get a polished side (I am not saying I’ve mastered it, he just put me on a path to “try” to be more diplomatic and refined) to  my brash and in-yer-face “talk to the hand, cos the face ain’t listening” approach. I had been known to give the Heisman (see the image on wikipedia to understand why) to many of my colleagues and while that was fine with the Israeli culture, there was a lot to be desired with most other folks.

He ordered a book for me that I’d highly recommend called “Crucial conversations” (link) to all entrepreneurs.

The book helps in dealing with confrontations at home, at work, and even with friends.How to Notice When Safety Is at Risk, How to Speak Persuasively Not Abrasively, How to Turn Crucial Conversations, and How to Stay Focused on What You Really Want.

There one really neat trick I picked up, which was worth the cost of the book.

Every time you want to argue or have a debate about a point, or provide (negative) feedback but do it in a nice way, turn your statement into a question.

For example, if you want to tell the designer that the UI he built does not help conversion and its actually more work for users to scroll down, your normal approach would be to show him the analytics and tell her that she’d designed it poorly. That’s when you realize the designer gets defensive and she’d take the extreme position because she gets a sense you are “attacking” her knowledge or turf.

Instead ask the question “What would help us get more conversions?”. Then try to have everyone come up with an answer together.

For example, if you want to talk to your engineers and you know using AWS is better than maybe hosting your own server, your approach might be to show him multiple blog posts and other articles about why his position is wrong. Again, you’d get a engineer who’s being challenged and now believes its best to defend his position regardless of how wrong he might have been. Rare is the person that would easily take this feedback and admit they were wrong.

Instead present your hypothesis as a question. “What if …”? “What would”, “How can we”?, etc.

Then focus everyone on helping answer that question, making them part of the decision instead of being the ones to only implement it.

Try it tomorrow and the day after and let me know if you notice a difference.

Always ask questions instead of making statements of fact (even if you believe you are right).

It makes you come off as humble and truth seeking not the “know-it-all”. It also helps you focus on what you want as the end goal, instead of the minutiae.

Entrepreneurship, Hiring, Learning, Tips

How to A/B test your job description and hack your way to hiring success

5 Comments

The last post on hiring for startups touched a nerve with many recruiters, many who emailed me on why I was negative about their profession. I did not intend to throw them under the bus, but the post came off reading that way. So, to my recruiter friends, apologies. I could have been more judicious with my choice of words. I assure you though that my words are not worth their weight in gold, so many startup entrepreneurs will still call you to help them with their recruiting. To those that claim spamming is helping, please stop.

Onward and upward.

This post is about hacking your job description. Or in the new age way of putting it – A/B testing it.

I had to hire 3 engineers for our new startup. The first step I took was to send an email to a few good fellow entrepreneurs and friends.

Version 1.0 < or bachelor #1>

I told them:

“Ideal candidate will have 3+ years experience in web or mobile technologies. Should be a hands on developer (PHP, Ruby, MySQL, Java or Python)”.

After 2 weeks and 30+ emails later I got 4 resumes from friends of friends. They were “technically sound” according to my network and within my budget but were mostly out-of-towners.

I phone screened two of them to find them fairly challenged in terms of their communication skills, and the remaining two wanted me to assure them a job before they made the trip to Bangalore (I was willing to pay for their trip, but not assure a job until I met them and interviewed them).

Version 2.0 <or bachelor #2>

I added “Good communication skills required. Position is in Bangalore.” And posted it on my twitter profile, LinkedIn and facebook account.

3 more resumes landed on my inbox, but none of them were even a close fit. One person said in their email, he was a test engineer and wanted to move into development and the second was a ASP/.NET developer who “could learn PHP quickly”, but had been in Windows development for the last 3 years. The third sent me an email, saying ” I am currently 25K salary, looking for 40% hike”, in his 3rd sentence, without any questions about either the job, the company or the technology.

Version 3.0 <or bachelor #3>

I decided the simple useless job description I wrote was just that – useless. I had forgotten the cardinal rule – Sell yourself, sell the job, sell your company.

So I did a ginormous makeover. I posted version 3 on hasgeek – I titled the role “developer in residence” not tech lead.

Worked like a charm. I got 4 very high quality candidates asking for what a “developer in residence” meant. Two were very qualified, professional and very good fit for the role.

I did not stop at version 3, but went to a refined “pitch the value, not the features” version.

Version 4.0 or <bachelor #4>

I added the following and posted version 4 on hasgeek.

“We have a complete 12 quarter hands-on program outline for you to feel ready to start your own company, which we will invest in to get you best prepared for entrepreneurship.

Job perks

  • Catered lunch every friday.
  • Ability to network and meet venture investors and angel investors in special invite-only events each month
  • A working 12-quarter program to give you all the experience necessary to be an entrepreneur”

Worked even better. The posting intrigued enough people to deliver even higher quality resumes. I thought I was overreaching because and got 2-3 over-qualified folks for a “lead developer position” re marketed as “developer in residence”.

What I learned:

1. The most important part of your job description is the Job Title. Its obvious, but I see far too many “PHP developer needed” or “Web hacker wanted” and “Javascript Ninja Hatori” titles, which gets you a certain type of person. Usually that person is not the first 25 developer hires in your company. Be creative, but dont overreach.

2. Your job description is the first impression for 90% of your potential candidates. The next impression is a Google search with your company’s name. You control the first a lot more than you control the next impression. Realize that people will read your job description and decided quickly if its worth Googling your company. What you say and how you word it says a lot about your culture. Does it have many typos? Are you using cliche’s like Ninja, hacker, Superman, etc. because you cant really describe the person with a simple engineer title, etc.

3. Dont say too much, because people dont read too much. Most job seekers I found, only read keywords like PHP and sent me their resume. They did not read anything else. I mentioned “should have worked in a product company (not services company)” before in a branch version of the JD, but I ended up getting many resumes from folks who worked only at services companies.

4. Each version of the JD attracts a different crowd from a different job board. If you are posting on hackerstreet, or hasgeek – think and focus on being a little more creative. If you are looking for technical marketers, pluggd.in is pretty good and for fresh grads, yourstory worked best for me.

5. Describe the perks of the job. If possible please make it human by adding a P.S. at the bottom. People read the P.S. More people read the P.S. than you think. Make the P.S. memorable, or make it sound like a prize given for the one that had the patience to read the entire posting which you spent hours writing (or a few minutes copying and pasting from some other JD).

Next post – how I phone screened and what worked, what did not.

P.S. I do read and reply to every email, and I do like getting email, but I always prefer comments on this blog.

Entrepreneurship, Learning

The difficulty in giving honest feedback to entrepreneurs

18 Comments

I met a cofounder-team last week at the Microsoft BizSpark event. They were fairly young, and were working on their first startup, after 5+ years of working in a large corporate environment. They were both a year into their startup and were looking to raise funds (seed round). They were focused on the consumer Internet space (are now considering pivoting to B2B instead) and have been building a version of their webservice.

They definitely caught me at a “not so opportune time”. Actually, a friend pulled me in adhoc after a bad call (bugs in our software, customers complaining, etc. you get the point) to introduce me to them and ask me for feedback.

The next 30 min was painful for us all is the best way to say it. After the 5th time of me asking what problem they were trying to solve and if that was a real problem, I think I had a breakdown.

I tore into them for the next 15 min with both my friend and another individual sitting next to them. I claimed they had no idea what problem they were trying to solve, who their target audience was, what their product actually did that any of 20 other startups did not do already and why I would not use the product even though it was meant for folks like me.

They were patient, gave me a hearing, but I you could cut the tension with a knife. I felt awful 2 hours later. I had forgotten the cardinal sin I kept repeating to others they should avoid doing.

If you cant give constructive feedback, you are a moron, not an investor. If an “investor” does not help you with a next step, he is a moron. Period.

I had become a moron. The very thing I had detested in many other investors (not all, there are several exceptions).

You know the type. They kill every idea and suck your soul dry. They dont think your idea is good, they dont think you can pull it of, they dont believe you have what it takes.

I used to believe this was necessary tough love. It is absolute B.S.

What I did was inexcusable. It bordered on killing the spirit of another individual, which no person has the right to do. Even if they are an investor.

So, what should you as an entrepreneur do when you meet this type of investor?

First off, try some mind-relaxation techniques.

Second, give them the benefit of doubt. You probably got them on a bad day/week/month.

Third, ask the question:

“How would you go about trying to solve this”?

Put the ball on their court to give you a SINGLE next step that they (the smarter ones) would take to get you further along on your path.

One last point. Being an investor, you meet many smart, talented individuals daily and its difficult to not do some form of “pattern matching”. So, if anyone tears into your idea, remember at that back of your mind, you are likely doing something (either right or wrong) and its worth doing some more digging.

The worst feedback to get when you are pitching your idea/product/startup is no feedback.

P.S. I did meet the team this week and offered some (my version of the story) constructive ideas they could possibly work on, and was trying to help as much as I could. That does not make me feel better about what I did last week, but its good karma to erase the bad.

Entrepreneurship, Learning

Are incubators really necessary?

ReadwriteWeb had a relevant post about incubators.

As the infrastructure costs of “starting up” become lower, the barrier to get “funded” gets higher. Used to be you could get away with prototype. These days every investor wants traction. Traction is easier when you have help from an incubator.

You need not go to college to get a job, but there’s a correlation between higher degrees and higher pay. Similarly in 5-10 years

I can totally see a situation where 70% or greater of startups go through an incubator rather than go it alone.

It will increase the chances of getting funded and highly increase the chances of success.

I do think most companies will go through an incubator even if the founders are experienced folks in a few years. The current batch of incubators favor (either by design or natural fit) younger, fresh out of college grads.

The key part of this equation is that not all incubators are equal. If your incubator does not provide value (raising funding, getting customers or helping hire key employees), then its not worth wasting your time with them.