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How Your Investor “Story” Differs from Your Customer “Story?

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Investor vs Customer Story

I dont subscribe to the meme that says you have only one “story” as a startup. I think you need different stories based on your audience. I want to talk about one particular case based on a real world example and share how the stories might differ, the messages might change, and the positioning might be different as well.

I had a friend who is building a hardware company. Or, so he thought. The hardware unit would sit in a car and monitor driving behavior. Since it was focused on a niche (but large) use case, he was able to confidently show a large market (over $1 B) in a bottoms up market research study.

He had also done some initial customer development and spoken to over 50 of his target customers who were all willing to buy and pay for the solution, talked to 5 potential distributors who were willing to stock and sell the product and also had talked to manufacturers who could build at scale. Armed with this information, he felt he could raise a $500K round, since he had a strong team of 3 folks with him.

Being Capital Efficient
Being Capital Efficient

To build the hardware he estimated 3 resources for 6 months, so he felt $500K would give him enough cushion to tide a few mistakes.

After 3 months of trying to raise money and talking to over 12 potential targeted investors in his list, he found out that the appetite for  hardware was just not there.

Well, there was appetite for a hardware company, but only at “scale”. Not in the initial phases, meaning the target investors,  who were “early, seed and angel investors” wanted to see upwards of 500 to in one case, over 5000 units, before they were willing to to give the angel terms – $500K at $2M valuation. My friend felt he was being low-balled, but he had no other options.

Most investors he approached were unwilling to fund his hardware company.

This is not about hardware though, the same “investors unwilling to fund” anything outside known or proven models exist in other areas as well. Markets get in and out of favor. The flavors of the month are big data, anything marketplace (consumer) and most all things SaaS, etc. and cloud (B2B).

So, when he reached out to me, my initial reaction was the same as other investors. Having burned my hand in hardware companies, I was unwilling to fund anything close to hardware. Over the last 9 months we have funded 10 hardware companies and 30+ software. Except for one hardware company, the rest still have not shipped product (nearly 3-12 months after they promised to do so) and most have been unable to raise a follow on round of funding.

On the other hand, 50% the software companies have been able to secure follow on funding. I understand funding is no measure of success, but it is a key milestone.

Instead I asked him to position his product as a “Insurance and driver data as a service” – DIDDaaS (forgive me) platform and get the version 1 out with software alone, instead of hardware. Turns out that worked. After 3 weeks of meeting the same investors he did before, with a software only, asset light play he was able to get $250K committed to start.

Trends point to the fact that even software companies are forgoing being capital efficient, but if your story depends on raising a lot of capital to be competitive, I’d say change the story to appeal to the capital efficient investor, EVEN if you end up raising a lot of capital.

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Creating Artificial Constraints as a Means to Innovation

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Artificial Constraints

Many of the entrepreneurs I know have created new innovative startups thanks to real constraints they had. For example, I was hearing AirBnB’s Brian Chesky, on the Corner Office podcast and he mentioned that when he and his cofounder were trying to get some money to get started and the only way to keep afloat was to “rent” their air bed they had in their room. That, then led to Air Bed and Breakfast, which is now AirBnB.

This was a real constraint they had – no money to “eat” so they had to make it happen somehow.

I have heard of many stories of innovation where in the protagonists had real constraints of either financial, technology, supply, demand, economic, social or any number of other characteristics.

The interesting story that I have also recently heard of how Facebook has “pivoted” from being a desktop offering to getting a significant part of their revenue from mobile is how they were given the arbitrary constraint of only accessing Facebook via the mobile phone.

So there are ways that you can create “artificial” constraints to force innovation to happen.

Most larger companies and some smaller ones as well, have to constantly find ways to create artificial constraints – to find a way to innovate and be more be a pioneer.

While some constraints are good – lack of funds at the early stage for example and lack of resources, there are entrepreneurs that are stymied by these constraints and those that will find  a way to seek a path to go forward.

I think this is a great way for you to think about innovating in a new space. If you have constraints, find a way to use it to your advantage.

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The Great Mobile App Migration of March 2020

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Mobile App Migration

Over the last few weeks as many in the world have been in lockdown, there has been a temporary “mobile app migration” happening. There are new apps downloaded and they replaced existing apps on the “home screen”.

While some of these apps are likely temporary use, for e.g. I have 6 “conferencing apps” – Zoom, Uber Conference, Webex, Google Hangouts, Blue Jeans and Goto Meeting. That is because of the many people I have conference calls with – each company seems to have chosen a different web conference solution.

Other apps seem like they will have staying power – Houseparty, for e.g. which has games, networking and video conferencing all built into one app to keep in touch with friends and relatives.

Houseparty

The apps that have moved away from my “home” screen, which I expect will come back once the crisis will be behind us include – Uber, Lyft and all the airline apps from Delta, Alaska and United.

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Perseverance with the Ability to Pivot on Data: 21 Traits We Look for in Entrepreneurs

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Perseverance with the Ability to Pivot

There are 5 key inflection points I have noticed which makes founders question their startup, to either make a call to continue working on their startup, pivot to a new problem or quit their startup altogether.

It is at these points that you really get to know the startup founder and their hunger and drive to be successful. I don’t think I can characterize those that choose to quit as “losers” or “quitters” because of many extraneous circumstances, but there is a lot of value that most investors see in entrepreneurs who face an uphill part of their journey to come out on the other side more confident and stronger.

These five inflection points are:

  1. When you have to get the first customers to use and pay for the product you have built after you have “shipped” an alpha / beta / first version. Entrepreneurs quit because they have not found the product-market-fit – because the customer don’t care about the product, there is no market need, or the product is really poorly built, or a host of other reasons.
  2. When you have to start to raise the first external round of financing from people you are not familiar with at all. Entrepreneurs quit because while it is hard to get customers and hire people, it is much more harder to get a smaller set of investors to part with their money, if you do not have “traction”, or “the right management team” or a “killer product”.
  3. When you have to push to break even (financially) and sustain the company to path of being self sufficient. Entrepreneurs quit at this stage because they have now the ability to do multiple things at the same time – grow revenues and manage costs, and many of them like to do one but realize it is hard to do that without affecting the other. So, rather than feel stuck they decide to quit.
  4. When you have to scale and grow faster that the competition – which might mean to hire faster, to get more customers, to drive more sales, or to completely rethink their problem statement and devise new ways to grow faster. Entrepreneurs quit at this point because they are consumed by the magnitude of the problem. They overassess the impact the competition will have on their company, give them too much credit or focus way too much on the competitors, thereby driving their company to the ground.
  5. At any point in the journey, when the founders lose the passion, vision or the drive to succeed. Entrepreneurs quit a these points because they have challenges with their co founder, they don’t agree with the direction they have to take, or encounter the “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome.

While I have observed many entrepreneurs at these stages at  discrete points in time, I have also had the opportunity to observe some entrepreneurs in the continuum, and I am going to give you my observations on 3 of the many folks I have known, who, have quit.

Perseverance separates great entrepreneurs from good ones
Perseverance separates great entrepreneurs from good ones

One went back to college to finish his MBA after getting a running business to a point of near breakeven, another found the business much harder than he originally thought he would and got a job at a larger company and the third was just unable to have the drive to go past 11 “no’s”‘ from angel investors.

Over the last 8 years, if I look at my deeper interactions with over 90 entrepreneurs, who I would have spent at least 100+ hours each, I would say that of the 24 people that are not longer in their startup, the one thing that stands out among the ones that persevere is that it is not “passion” or “vision” at all.

It is the inherent belief that they are solving a problem that they believe is their “calling”. They also don’t believe that there is any other problem that’s worth solving as much, even though there may be easier ways to make money.

So most of my questions of entrepreneurs to test whether they will pivot or quit are around why they want to solve this problem (which I am looking to see if they know enough about in the first place) versus any other one.

The answer to that question is the best indicator I have found to be the difference between the pivots, the leavers and the rest.

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