Category: Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Never give up but move on quickly startups are tough, you always have to keep fighting

Posted on by Ed Sim

As a young kid, I was always taught the valuable lesson of never giving up or quitting.  No matter how many times you get knocked down, you have to stand up and keep moving.  That is the same trait that I also admire in many of the entrepreneurs that I have funded over the years.  This mentality is what carries many great entrepreneurs from near death experiences to ultimate success.  However, I do caution that entrepreneurs should temper this “never give up” attitude with a “move on quickly” one as well.

Let me explain.  Many entrepreneurs will take this same “never give up” attitude with the sales process or raising financing.  On the one hand this attitude is what is absolutely necessary to get things done but on the other hand it can be quite detrimental.  What entrepreneurs need to do is learn how to qualify their leads and to do it quickly.  The worst outcome for an entrepreneur i to spend countless cycles on trying to close a deal that is not closable or spending way to much time on a lead only to end up giving away the farm to make it happen.  Never giving up may actually prevent you from finding the next great customer or funder.  I have seen this time and time again from many companies and what is problematic is that time is precious for a startup.  You only have so much time to hit your milestones so use it wisely.  When you are meeting with potential prospects make sure to qualify them in  the first meeting and understand if they really do have a need for what you are selling, the decision making process, the timeframe in which a decision is made, and ultimately the potential budget.  If the information does not meet your needs, move on quickly.  You can take your “never give up” attitude by trying to qualify as many prospects as possible rather than “never giving up” on one or two.

EntrepreneurshipVenture Capital

Startups getting caught in No Man’s Land stuck between seed and series a funding

Posted on by Ed Sim

“No Man’s Land” is traditionally known as the area between two trenches.  This is a reference to World War I and the vicious trench warfare and hand-to-hand combat that characterized that war. In “No Man’s Land” lay a wasteland of dead bodies and other debris and shrapnel.  Increasingly I am seeing many startups who were ably seed funded get caught in “No Man’s Land” between the seed round and a true Series A round led by a venture capitalist.

This is happening because there are way too many companies raising seed capital but not enough executing their way to a Series A.  This can happen for many reasons including not raising enough capital in the seed round to begin with and of course not getting your product out the door.  So what does an entrepreneur do when caught in this predicament?  Many try to do an additional seed round or add-on to the prior round.  While not a bad idea, this is rarely successful because many seed funded startups have way too many investors who are more apt to write off the investment then to bridge more seed money.  Secondly many angel investors would rather invest in that shiny new car or first seed round then add more capital to a used car or startup that did not “get there” on its first seed financing.  Smarter entrepreneurs are increasingly doing two things to make sure they don’t caught in “No Man’s Land.”  First, rather than getting 20 great names as seed investors, they are making sure to get at least 3/4 or more of the round invested by a couple institutional seed folks that may have deeper pockets and more ownership in the startup to really care about what happens in the future.  Secondly, the smarter entrepreneurs are really thinking carefully about what milestones need to be hit to raise that first Series A round and work backwards to determine how much financing they need to get there.  While not an exact science, it is imperative to think like this as you don’t want to be one of the many seed-funded companies that will linger in “No Man’s Land.”

EntrepreneurshipVenture Capital

The New York Startup Market Rocks and is REAL NYC becoming a gotomarket for startups

Posted on by Ed Sim

OK, I may be biased having been an early stage VC based out of New York since 1996, but I must say that the vibe, energy, and people at the Techstars NYC Demo Day event yesterday was simply awesome.  Dave Tisch and team simply did a fantastic job guiding the startups, recruiting the mentors, and organizing the event.  I was quite honored to have been a mentor and to have had a chance to interact with so many high quality teams.  The audience was awesome as well bringing together many rock stars of the past with those of the future.  In addition, over 750 investors came in from all over including London, California, Boston, and DC to network and participate.

Rather than go in-depth on each Techstar company like Alyson Shontell or Ryan Kim already have, I wanted to highlight some overarching thoughts on the NYC market having been an investor here for over 15 years.  As mentioned above, what I loved most about yesterday was not only catching up with many new friends, but also many old ones who were an integral part of NYC 1.0.  Besides talking about the interesting pivots that many of the Techstars companies took during their 3 month program, many of us simply could not resist talking about how the energy was similar to the mid-90s but why this felt different.  In fact, I would liken the 90’s Silicon Alley scene as one of discovery but also one where you could argue that the “Emperor had no clothes” meaning that there were lots of great entrepreneurs and startups but no real lasting value created.  Look, New York had to start from scratch but 15 years later what makes this different is that we can see a much better result-the same energy combined with real operating and entrepreneurial chops, real succceses and failures, real IPOs and multi-hundred million dollar exits, and a focus on the entrepreneur and product, not on the spreadsheet. So why will this be different this time around:

1. Stronger Ecosystem-accelerators like Techstars, DreamIt, and NYCseedstart have real entrepreneurs and VCs with real experience advising these startups – the pivot and changes from many of these startups from DemoDay was quite impressive and evidence of a stronger ecosystem

2.Real technical experience-what everyone of these startups had in-common was a strong core team of technical founders, rather than business folks outsouring development.  And with that, it was clear to see how much these startups could accomplish with so little capital and just sweat equity.  These entrepreneurs understand the concept of lean startup and as opposed to entrepreneurs of the past who hailed from big media/ad agencies/big companies, this new generation of startups starts with the tech guys, the way it should be.

3. Financial support system-now you have Angels and VCs who get it.  I remember the number 1 complaint in the mid-90s, New York VCs don’t get it.  They are risk-averse and spend too much time on spreadsheets analyzing the nth detail on a financial model instead of focusing on the talent and product/market.  15 years later, we have many Angels who are former entrepreneurs and many VCs who get it that are in NYC.  Add VCs from Boston and CA and elsewhere and you have quite an experienced plethora of investors to work with.

The next inevitable question from this rah rah post will clearly be is this a bubble where yesterday further showed the frothiness of the market?  I can’t comment on the public markets but what I can tell you is how these Techstars companies raise capital and at what valuations and timeframe will surely provide us with some leading indicators.  Hopefully they all get funded but I also hope that these entrepreneurs maintain their confident yet humble approach to building their business the right way and not get too caught up in chasing the highest valuation they can get.  All in all, what a great day yesterday and I hope to see many more awesome startups build real businesses out of the New York area. Regardless of what happens, we now have a history of failures and successes which means that we all have more experience to help guide us as we continue to move forward to solidifying NYC as a go-to place for startup activity.

EntrepreneurshipVenture Capital

Reflecting on passed investments important to look back and discover patterns on your decision making

Posted on by Ed Sim

Every 3 months I dig through my “passed company” folder to look at what investment opportunities we passed on and why.  Inevitably, there are a few companies that are near-misses, but we end up passing on for whatever reason.  Did we pass because we didn’t think the team was great or because we didn’t believe that they could get a product launched?  Did we pass because of lack of traction in the beta release or because of concerns on valuation?  Looking at my “passed company” folder gives me an opportunity to test our reasons on passing and to see 3 months later if the entrepreneurs could actually execute or prove our concerns wrong.

While many times I find doing this reflection further confirms our reasons for passing, I also find myself from time-to-time sending up a follow up note to check in on these near-misses or doing a quick Google search to see how the company has progressed since our last communication.  Inevitably, there will be a few that “got away” and seem to be doing quite well.  No one is perfect and looking back every quarter gives me an opportunity to better hone my investing acumen and further refine my understanding on what separates a potential winner from a loser.  Many times we are so busy that we can only look forward to the next new thing or next hot deal, but I encourage you to occasionally take a step back, look in the rear-view mirror, and learn from your past history.  I promise you that this reflection will only make you a better investor in the long run.

EntrepreneurshipVenture Capital

Know When to Hold ’em, Know When to Fold ’em need to be honest with yourself on company status

Posted on by Ed Sim

I had a tough call with an entrepreneur this morning.  His company raised a fair amount of seed financing but did not hit the milestones it needed to in order to raise a real round of venture capital.  The product is nice but they took too long iterating and releasing a subsequent version while the market around it moved much quicker.  In the process, the company ramped up too quickly before it knew exactly what the core value proposition was and to whom.  Net net, the entrepreneur was left with a few choices: skinny the company down and try to get to breakeven, look to existing Angel investors for a bridge, shut the company down, or try to sell the business.  I am not going to go through each one of the above decision trees in this post, but given the market dynamics today and the overflow of angel funding, I am sure that this is a conversation that many an angel and entrepreneur are having right now.  Net net, way too many companies have received angel funding and many of these companies will not raise subsequent rounds of funding.

That is ok as that is how markets work.  If you are in this position, all I can say is don’t give up but also be honest with yourself and team.  Assess your strengths and weaknesses, dive into the market and opportunity, and be as lean as possible to give you as much time to get to where you want to go.  If you decide to fight through it and pivot and have the support of your existing investor base then great.  Many companies have been successful that way.  If you decide it is time to move on and capture whatever value you can for the assets then great as well.  Just make sure that you have this conversation with your investors earlier rather than later to ensure you have enough time to execute on the new path. In the end, this process is not unlike what The Gambler from  Kenny Rogers song had to go through at the table.

You got to know when to hold `em, know when to fold `em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you`re sittin` at the table.
There`ll be time enough for countin` when the dealin`s done.

 

EntrepreneurshipVenture Capital

Put your users first! focus on an amazing customer experience before all else

Posted on by Ed Sim

As a VC who invests in seed and first rounds, I love revenue just as much as the next guy.  However, the focus on revenue should play second fiddle to a user/customer first experience.  Over the years, how many times have we seen companies grow from next to nothing in user base and somehow forget why they got there in the first place?  Yes, the answer is because they made an insanely great product or service that catered to their users.  Over time they then figured out how to generate revenue without destroying the delicate balance of putting the user first but generating revenue for the business.  In an article in the NY Times yesterday, there is a great quote from the MySpace founder, Chris DeWolfe:

“The paradox in business, especially at a public company, is, ‘When do you focus on growth, and when do you focus on money?’ ” said Mr. DeWolfe. “We focused on money and Facebook focused on growing the user base and user experience.”

This a question that we constantly struggled with at Answers.com years ago and now have found to have struck the right balance.  I remember some of the management and board meetings where we would all intensely debate whether to add an extra advertisement or not on a certain page and how that would impact the user experience vs the revenue line.  While this sounds like minutiae and too much detail, I would argue that if you don’t have this debate internally that you may be tilted too far in one direction.  In the end user experience won, the page views continued to grow, and consequently revenue improved significantly.  Over my 15 years of investing, it is pretty clear to me that the users are in control, keep them happy, and they will come back for more!

EntrepreneurshipVenture Capital

Standard investor update for startups great starting point on how to communicate with your investors

Posted on by Ed Sim

I remember when we hired a new CEO for one of our portfolio companies and my tip to him was to overcommunicate.  We had a few large VCs on the board and a number of high-profile angels that could also help in various ways.  His job was to keep everyone up-to-date but also to know how to get help when he needed it and from whom.  Given today’s excitement over seed investing it is not uncommon for many of today’s entrepreneurs to have 5-15 investors in any given round.  How you effectively communicate with your investors is an important priority that if done right will give you major value add while also not taking too much of your time.

In order to help our new CEO, I reached out to all of the other investors, and we all agreed that if we all spoke to him a few days a week about the same information that he would not have time to run his business.  In addition, this would be redundant for the CEO since most investors were asking for the same basic information.  In the spirit of streamlining information flow, we worked with the CEO to put together a weekly email to provide us with the key metrics the company tracked along with departmental updates on key high priority projects.  We weren’t asking the company to create something they shouldn’t already have (key metrics, departmental priorities, cash balance) but rather we just wanted the data shared on a timely basis.  Over time, we all found that when we did speak with the management team that we did not have to spend a half hour gathering information but rather we could get right to the point and actually discuss the whys or hows on certain sales numbers, metrics, or prospects.  In the end, we were all much happier and more productive since we had the same baseline of information and could focus our energy on productive and deeper conversation on the business stategy rather than gathering basic data.

Over the last 6 months I have made a number of seed investments and have shared the following company update with them. Each CEO has had their own minor tweak but this should give you a sense of what investors may be looking for and how it can help you streamline your communication and focus on how to extract value from your many investors.  If you choose to update weekly then obviously it will most likely be a shorter piece with maybe only the cash burned and current cash on hand as the financials.  If you choose to send out a report monthly then it may be more like the form I have uploaded on docstoc.

One other important note I forgot to highlight is that since many companies I invest in are web-based and therefore many of them have real-time metrics I can track.  Michael Robertson who started Mp3.com and Gizmo5 (sold to Google Voice) had one of the best real-time dashboards for tracking his business.  I could see number of downloads, minutes used, new paying customers, etc. whenever i wanted to by logging into the system.  Other companies have created an investor wiki or use status.net (full disclosure-a BOLDstart seed investment) or other communication platforms for investors to share ideas and information.  I only imagine this will even get only better in the future.

Anyway, enjoy and I hope to hear some feedback on what is missing or what may be too much information.

 

Entrepreneurship

Scaling your management style founders have to adapt their leadership as their companies scale

Posted on by Ed Sim

After meeting with a number of entrepreneurs I recently seed funded, it was clear to me that one of the major challenges founders face is how to continue to scale their management style.  My preferred seed investment is in an engineering driven/product focused team who can code and get product out the door under the release early and release often model.  I often find that these types of entrepreneurs get quite a lot done with few resources and really have a strong pulse on the customer and market.  However the unfortunate aspect for these technical/product founders is that as their product becomes more successful, they often spend less time on doing the things they love – creating great product and iterating.  Many founders will find that they have to spend more time meeting with investors to raise money and dealing with internal employee issues.  In addition, many founders will find that once they raise capital and hire more people, that their one room, one whiteboard open management style is hard to scale.  So the question is how to get everyone on the same page?  How do you continue to be open and yet layer a simple process to create a shared vision and accountability?  Given that, I am bringing back an old post from 2007 on scaling your management style.  I want to be very clear though – do not be a slave to process and keep this simple.  At the same time, I hope some of these suggestions help:

What makes a startup team great early on in terms of getting product out the door and rapidly refining and honing the product from live market feedback can also lead to issues down the road if companies and employees are managed on a similar basis.  What is easy to roll out in a 5 person company gets harder to manage in a 25 person and even harder in a 50 person company.  Take the test – ask your key executives what the 3 key company goals are for the month?  Are they the same or not?  How will they help contribute in each of their functions to delivering on the 3 key company goals?  If they are not on the same page and you have trouble getting them together, you may want to continue reading for some thoughts on how to improve communication and accountability.

Here are some simple steps you can take to create a more fluid organization.  First, institute a weekly management meeting.  Yes, like you, I have an allergic reaction to the word meeting, but believe it or not, simple processes can help tremendously.  It is a great way for the CEO to get input but also guide the team to focus on the same company goals for the month or quarter.  Secondly, have key team members provide a weekly dashboard report and list of key goals to accomplish for the following week.  At every weekly management meeting, have each team member discuss progress against his/her team’s goals and what they will be working on for the following week.  How does each of the departmental goals contribute to helping the company meet its goals?  Once again, this all may seem simplistic and a giant waste of time versus managing the next product release, but you will be amazed at the number of companies I meet that have not gotten to this point and consequently seem to have different ideas of what the business is and how to get there.  In addition, having weekly management meetings and clear weekly goals with simple yes/no criteria goes a long way towards creating an action-oriented culture of getting results.  If a VP doesn’t deliver consistently, all of the other executives know and they also know it is time to make a change.  No one wants to be the manager that is known to overpromise and not deliver.  There is also a real difference between a manager having weekly individual meetings with their CEO vs. openly discussing theirr priorities and completed tasks with their peers.  With respect to cross functional communication, rather than complaining about engineering, for example, sales and marketing can now understand engineering priorities and what it may take to adjust and rearrange some of them to meet the revenue targets for the quarter.  Trust me, there are many more factors to a company’s success and failure, but please don’t make an allergic reaction to scheduled meetings and a simple lack of organization your cause for execution problems.

In fact, we can skip the word weekly report, and instead just say lay out the 3 things you were supposed to do this week and where you stand on them.  One other important point to note is that make sure that everyone on your team understands if they hit a roadblock on any of their goals to come to you immediately to tell you what the roadblock is, a couple ways to potentially resolve the issues, and then to discuss with you.  Clearly this is a methodology that can scale as you grow your team and business.  Good luck and remember to keep it simple.

Entrepreneurship

The consumer Internet business is not easy

Posted on by Ed Sim

It's not easy to build a service that everyone loves and even harder to build one that gets 3000 new users a day on an installed base of 2 million users.  Once there you may think of yourself in the drivers seat as having built a successful company.  Unfortunately, this is where the need for revenue comes to play.  As a startup you can only raise external funding for so long before you generate your own cash flow to pay for operating expenses.

Given these facts, I was quite saddened to read the blog post today from Todd Agulnick, Co-Founder and CTO of Xmarks, Inc.  In the post which I believe is a must-read for all entrepreneurs, Todd lays out how he started the company, built it, and tried multiple times to create a revenue model from the incredible number of users and data he amassed over a few years.  As Todd states:

We spent the next year turning over every conceivable rock looking for ways to use the data in our corpus that would prove compelling to our users and revenue-generating for us. Some of these ideas, like SearchTabs, saw the light of day; others never made it out of the lab. Our “SearchBoost“, service was an upsell to advertisers: pay us a fee and we’ll add a mark to your ad when it’s displayed to our users, showing the bookmark rank of your site. Our tests showed that we could boost ad click-through rates by 10%. We built it and it put it front of potential advertisers. Many were interested, but ultimately the feedback was negative: our user base was too small to be worth their time and attention.

As evidenced from above, it sounds like Todd and his team tried every conceivable way to build a business out of their awesome product.  If you are an entrepreneur you have to remember that building a consumer Internet business is not easy!  Even though Xmarks  jumped over 3 of 4 huge hurdles -building a great product/service, amassing users, and growing quickly, it was still not enough to build a scalable revenue model.  Does this mean that I expect entrepreneurs to have a sustainable revenue model from Day 1?  Definitely not but on Day 1, I do want to hear about the various ways you may generate revenue in the future.  I also want to point out that advertising will most likely not work for your business unless you can generate a significant amount of traffic, way more than you even think you are going to need today.  And finally like Xmarks, it may not work the way you dreamed it would but please take all of those lessons learned to your next startup as you will be all the wiser with the experience you had.

EntrepreneurshipOpen Source

EMC buys portfolio company Greenplum – more behind the story

Posted on by Ed Sim

Congratulations to Greenplum and Scott Yara, Bill Cook, and Luke Lonergan in particular! It has been quite a roller coaster ride over the last 10 years and there were a number of times we stared at the abyss only to come back stronger.  This is a story of great people and incredible perseverance.  The great news is that we leveraged two strong trends early on – the era of big data and the need for cheaper and better solutions and the fact that hardware is a commodity and the value is in the software.  We also leveraged the open source database platform PostgreSQL as the initial foundation for our technology. After all these years, I am glad to see that EMC and others have caught on to both of these facts.

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