CLT Launch http://cltlaunch.com Most recent posts at CLT Launch posterous.com Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:54:00 -0700 Startups and Networking http://cltlaunch.com/startups-and-networking http://cltlaunch.com/startups-and-networking

Startups and Networking -

Startups and Networking

  • (Slide 2) Brand Desk Intro
  • (Slide 3) Why networking is essential to your startup's success...
    • (Slide 4) "How deep are the benches?" - Jim Van Fleet  Local in most cases is usually better.
    • (Slide 5) Meeting co-founders
    • (Slide 6) Building your team
    • (Slide 7) Finding resources
      • Legal, accounting, advisors, partnerships, strategy
        • e.g. LLC vs. C-Corp, freemium vs. paid, escrow vs. delayed payments, feeback and validation, marketing strategies, etc...
    • (Slide 8) Funding - VC's and Angels prefer warm intro's
      • Law firms and accounting firms
      • Other successful founders
      • Advisors
      • Partners
  • (Slide 9) How to network...
  • (Slide 10) Social media adds a new dynamic to networking
    • Twitter (my personal platform of choice), Facebook, and LinkedIn
    • (Slide 11) Face to face events
      • Meetups and groups - CLT Launch, Hackers and Founders, etc...
      • Conferences
      • Special Events
        • Startup Weekend
        • Launchbox Digital events in RTP
  • (Slide 12) Tools and tips for networking...
    • (Slide 13) Maximize your use of social platforms by using clients/tools such as Sprout Social
      • Search keywords
      • Following recommendations
    • Meetup.com, Plancast, Sonar, and Hashable are other apps/sites to help you maximize and plan your networking activities
    • (Slide 14) Always carry business cards - Moocards.com is a great site for cards.
    • (Slide 15) Understand that when you interact with individuals via social media their web persona may differ from their real life persona
    • (Slide 16) Perfect your elevator pitch
    • (Slide 17) Be helpful and sincere
    • (Slide 18) Don't wait for someone to become successful before you start building a relationship with them
    • (Slide 19) Follow-up
    • (Slide 20) Startup Weekend Tips - Maximize your XP...
      • Try to pitch if you can to maximize your exposure
      • Arrive early and mingle
      • Think about your team choice carefully - It's not only about the concept but who you're working with as well
      • Contribute
      • Bring all of your skill sets to the table
      • Meet the other teams
      • Have Fun!!!
      • Follow-up

 

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Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:50:00 -0800 9 Ways To Disrupt And "Hipmunk" An Industry http://cltlaunch.com/45148704 http://cltlaunch.com/45148704

9 Ways To Disrupt And "Hipmunk" An Industry

A great post from OnStartups.com

Posted by Jason Baptiste on Mon, Feb 28, 2011

disrupt and hipmunk resized 600hipmunk [hip-muhnk],   1.  verb:  To bring sexiness and simplicity into an existing industry with a fresh approach that delights people.  Example:  The real estate mortgage industry really sucks.  Someone should hipmunk it.  2. noun:  Startup funded by Y Combinator that makes it easier to find flights. 

The word disruption is thrown around way too much.  It's often used to describe ideas that are not disruptive.  Recently though, I've noticed a trend of YCombinator backed startups that follow a similar theme: Go after an industry or process that is excruciatingly painful and make it better. Sure all startups are about solving a pain point, but in the case of Hipmunk and others, the pain is chronic and unbearable.  

Find Something Tied To A Process That Consistently Sucks

Some things are just a pain and never ever change. The industries that can be hipmunked are ones that you repeatedly ask yourself "Why hasn't anyone made this better?" It can't be a temporary cure either, it needs to be a full blown relief of pain. In the case of HelloFax , it seemed like a silly idea at first to most. Fax machines are a thing of the past it would seem, but in reality they aren't. With all of the innovation we've had, trying to send a fax is still a pain. EFax is cumbersome and real fax machines are far worse. Every blue moon, there is no way to do anything other than send a fax. It's still horrible. With HelloFax, they took a process that consistently sucks and made it just work.

Simple And Clean Interfaces Come First

One of the best ways to make a product enjoyable and easy to use is with an interface that is simple+clean. Give the user what they want, the bare essentials, and make the information easy to digest. It's not about being the prettiest either. I love the hipmunk interface, but it's not whiz bang beautiful. It's clean, simple, and organizes information well. The flow of information should come first and foremost in a clean interface. Problematic and painful industries usually have a high amount of friction between the customer and information. They usually want to access or deliver information in a fast manner, but it often takes way longer than they would like.

It Will Probably Be Unsexy...So Make It Sexy

The industries most ripe for disruption are usually the unsexy ones that no one wants to touch. That's okay, look at it like the startup version of the popular teen movie "She's All That". Find the ugly one and turn them into something absolutely beautiful. It's not in the DNA of unsexy industries to think about everything else in this article. That's why they're unsexy and people despise them. The travel industry? Absolutely boring. Look at email. Everyone thinks that email is long dead and gone, but at the end of the day it's still widely used. Companies like Groupon and Thrillist are growing faster than any other company before. They figured out how to leverage an unused, unsexy asset and make it work for the user.

Take a look at Square.  Payment processing is a sleezy, unsexy, and just headache of an industry.  Square took that and turned it on its head.  They added a beautiful interface and made it frictionless for real world merchants to have a payment processing engine without the headaches involved.  

Call Out Your Competitor

Don't be afraid to call out your competitor and wage war. You should be respectful of course, but it's okay to stir the pot. Look at Salesforce. They proclaimed the end of downloadable desktop software and Marc Benioff was no stranger to letting the world know the companies that are his enemy. His spat with Microsoft is supposedly one of the greatest things that ever happened to the company!

Deliver Great Support

Most unsexy industries don't have a love for customer support. It's not that they deliver bad customer support, it's just that they don't deliver GREAT customer support. Zappos for example... they sell shoes. Who would have ever thought that a shoe retailer could be an iconic company? Well, Zappos is really a company with great customer service that happens to sell shoes. If you have a passion for support that mirrors Zappos, you can extend the great experience you deliver with your application to the real human interaction you may have with customers.

Look For An Industry That Rarely Changes

I've always believed that those who get comfortable and think they are immune to disruption are the most likely to be disrupted. Having a large customer base makes large incumbents feel like they will never leave. In actual reality, they will, but they just need a great solution... your solution. Problems don't make people change. Problems make people search for a solution. Until a good solution exists, they stick with the current one. It's like a do while loop of seemingly neverending pain. Do deal with pain while looking for a better solution, until you find a better one.

Work Towards Building Fanatics

The hipmunk mascot is barely a year old I believe, but boy do people love that little critter. Some have even created fan art! In a short period of time, Hipmunk has created valuable brand equity and fanatical customers. Some companies never get to achieve that. If you're able to resolve pain, finding fanatical customers will happen a lot faster.

Be Disruptive, But Respectful

It's fun to shake things up, call out your competitors, and make a lot of noise, but always be a gentleman or a classy lady. Have logic and let people see the rationale behind your argument. You should always have an answer that is more than "just because". Show those trapped in the Matrix why your solution is better and will free them from the pain that currently exists. Use a loud mouth and PR to get the world's eyes on you, but deliver sound logic. There is a thin line between being passionate and just being insane. Rationale is usually the difference.

Focus On Power Users

Not every solution should do this, but I noticed that it worked very very well for Hipmunk. A lot of the people that I know who are Hipmunk users, travel VERY often. Sometimes you just want to focus on the normal users, but you can get fanatical users and strong advocates by solving the pain for those that have it the most often. A person that travels multiple times a month with long flights is much more likely to want your solution when you first launch/unproven than a person that travels a few times a year, often for vacation+light work travel. Hipmunk, padmapper, hellofax, and others are just the start. The number of processes that are beyond painful run deep and present a world of opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs. What other industries are ready to be "hipmunked"? My vote: the domain purchasing industry. Someone should "hipmunk" Godaddy :).

You Should Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jasonlbaptiste, Friend me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jasonlbaptiste, Email Me: jbaptiste@onstartups.com, or even call: 201.305.0552

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Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:36:00 -0800 "Lessons On Starting A Company - A Silicon Valley Heresy" (Slaying Some Silicon Valley Myths...) by Mark Suster http://cltlaunch.com/lessons-on-starting-a-company-a-silicon-valle http://cltlaunch.com/lessons-on-starting-a-company-a-silicon-valle


Lessons on starting a company -

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Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:51:00 -0800 Startup Advice: Inside Tips From Expert Entrepreneurs http://cltlaunch.com/startup-advice-inside-tips-from-expert-entrep http://cltlaunch.com/startup-advice-inside-tips-from-expert-entrep

A mashup of startup advice from several well known and successful tech CEO's as well as a popular angel investor.

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Fri, 05 Nov 2010 07:06:00 -0700 Understanding How the Innovator's Dilemma Affects You by Mark Suster via Both Sides of the Table http://cltlaunch.com/understanding-how-the-innovators-dilemma-affe http://cltlaunch.com/understanding-how-the-innovators-dilemma-affe

Understanding How The Innovator’s Dilemma Affects You via Both Sides of the Table by Mark Suster

by Mark Suster on November 4, 2010

One of the most influential books of my career is The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clay Christensen.  I cannot recommend it enough for people in the technology or media sectors.

Many people bandy about the definitions of “disruptive technology” or “the innovator’s dilemma” without ever having read the book and almost universally misunderstand the concepts.

Let me start with Professor Christensen’s definition:

“An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.”

Professor Christensen uses real data from the disk drive industry to make his points.  Reading it felt like read a university book for an economics class and no wonder since he’s a professor at Harvard Business School.  It is not a beach novel to be sure.  The framework of his book has profoundly altered how I think about the technology market and affects how I thought about building my businesses and how I think about investing in venture capital.

The thesis of the book is that incumbents in markets – especially large and well entrenched markets – seldom survive fundamental technology changes in their industries.  In a world where we’ve seen newspapers crumbling, record labels struggling and Blockbuster imploding and making way for the rise of Netflix it seems kinda intuitive to most of us but we can’t quite place why this happens.

But understanding the framework rather than just thinking “those dumb fucks don’t get it” is very useful for thinking about how markets evolve.  It should affect how you think if you are an incumbent but also if you’re a startup.

Let’s start with the incumbents position in a market.  I’ve characterized it in a chart below.  It is often the situation that the incumbent offers a product that is vastly superior in the market in terms of performance or functionality.  This is important because the customers they serve (the red line) demand a product that meets their complex requirements.

Think of incumbent line as Siebel and the red line as the large enterprise customers that they served who demanded 1,800 features and sent out RFPs with checklists that had to be ticked off to even be in the running for their business.

When new companies enter the market they really have no chance to initially unseat the incumbents because the performance gap is too large and the costs / time of catching up too unachievable.  In fact, the incumbent is usually very dismissive of this new competition as our the large buyers of the incumbent’s products.

And weirdly the buyers of this technology often have a vested interest in buying from the incumbent.  They see it as a source of differentiation for them as a company because their less financed competitors can’t afford it (and often their careers are wrapped up in the multi-millions of dollars they’ve spent implementing it).  In short, they ain’t just gonna throw that away for some new fangled tech toy.

So the startups tend to focus on totally new customers.  They try to capture people that didn’t buy the expensive stuff in the first place because they couldn’t afford it.  Often the startups are actually serving a slightly different kind of customer or a slightly different market need.  The thing about “disruptive” technology as I interpret it is NOT that it is a major breakthrough in performance or functionality as most people conceive it.  It is often LESS performant.  What is “disruptive” is that is also dramatically less expensive.  And the providers take a much lower margin – they have nothing to lose, nothing to protect.

Enter Salesforce.com.  In 1999-2000 they weren’t doing enterprise-wide installations at Merrill Lynch, Dell and Cisco.  That would have been laughable.  They were serving a latent market need for mid-sized businesses to use CRM.  They offered a product that didn’t even try to compare with Siebel.  In fact, they tried to totally redefine the market.  ”Siebel cost you $2 million and 18 months to implement?  How about $30,000 and 3 weeks?”  They didn’t exactly grap the top end of the market.

So what did happen?  And what does happen in many other industries?  First, over time Salesforce.com’s technology got better and better yet the price didn’t shoot up dramatically relative to Siebel.  And after a few years enterprise customers started looking at the cost disparity and saying, “maybe Salesforce.com is good enough to meet our requirements?”

Incumbents feel threatened.  Often their response isn’t to radically cut cost and try to hold on to customers.  They can’t.  They have big installed bases.  They have existing customers who already paid big prices who would be seriously pissed off if the next guy bought the same thing for 10x less.  The incumbents have expensive product features to maintain and often expensive sales channels.  Think Compaq when Dell first went direct over the phone then Internet.

And if the incumbent did dramatically cut costs all they would seemingly do is start following the lead of the new entrant?  There you have the innovator’s dilemma.  The incumbents curse.  You can’t take a $5 billion revenue stream and say “Fuck it.  They’re going to eat our lunch anyways – let’s just cut our revenue to $1.5 billion and wipe ‘em out.”

So they do the opposite.  The increase spending on features / performance / functionality.  They gather with their cadre of high-requirement customers and have planning sessions about how they can make even more performant products.

But here’s the thing.  Often customer requirements don’t grow exponentially relative to their existing line.  And as you trace the red line in the graph above as it gets closer and closer over time to the new entrants functional offering there is a huge and rapid sucking sound that pulls the bottom out of the market as waves of customers “trade down.”  And Salesforce.com becomes a $15 billion company doing $1.2 billion in recurring run-rate revenue and growing while Siebel is sold to Oracle for a mere $5.8 billion.

The take aways for me are:

  • The incumbent eventually realizes what is happening to them.  They are run by smart & shrewd people or they wouldn’t become leaders in incumbent organizations in the first place
  • They are blinded for too long – reinforced by big revenues & profits that come from customers that corroborate their misinformed views of the future because they have a shared & vested stake in status quo
  • Disruptive technologies are often those the are less performant and feel “chintzey” relative to their well-heeled competitors.  They are radically lower in price.  They initially create deflationary pressures in a market.  They are nearly impossible to react to.  But while the price points are dramatically lower this often encourages more users, more innovation in the eco-system and therefore often a bigger market opportunity than even the incumbents perceived
  • I am reminded about how dismissive traditionally television media is about YouTube – even to this day.  About how dismissive traditional print was about blogs or the airlines views the “peanut serving” Southwest Airlines.  About how Microsoft viewed Google Apps.  Sony, the iPod.  US automakers made the mistake with the “low end” Japanese manufactures until the Toyota became the Lexus.  What future have telcos for call-based revenue in the era of Skype?

I know that Clay Christensen has written a book that proposes solutions for incumbents.  I haven’t read it.  Maybe I should.  But anecdotal evidence tells me that incumbents eventually struggle to massively disrupt their own large and profitable businesses – that change has got to come from outside.  Some have tried to artificially create “innovation labs” from within but I struggle to believe that this model will work for disruption.

Perhaps the best they can do is to help fund their successors.  Perhaps they can spawn the next generation of innovators and leave a footprint of their DNA along the way.  Or at least diversify the future fortunes of their shareholders in the way that Yahoo! earned handsomely from Google’s success.  I don’t know – it may not be intellectually or emotionally possible.

But if I studied every incumbent industry around me and saw the destruction that technology and the Internet was bringing I would at least want to have an ownership stake in my pillager’s future cashflows if I knew the sacking of the castle was inevitable.

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Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:06:00 -0700 "The Danger of Lean" by Justyn Howard, Founder and CEO of Sprout Social http://cltlaunch.com/the-danger-of-lean-by-justyn-howard-founder-a http://cltlaunch.com/the-danger-of-lean-by-justyn-howard-founder-a

“Half of these opinions won’t apply to a majority of you.”

If every lecture, self help book and Lean startup talk began with the statement above, I wouldn’t be writing this post. But they don’t.

Like any sales or self-help book, lecture or op-ed piece - the Lean Startup mindset has a lot of valuable lessons; when assessed against your situation and applied where it makes sense. The thing that troubles me is the typical presentation of “this is the way to do things” and “what worked for me will work for you”.

If you’re like me, at some point you’ve worked for a manager who changed your entire process after reading some book on this or that. They get all excited and has an entire team spinning their wheels until, god forbid, they read another book.

Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week was a runaway success. How many of you who read it are working any less than you were before?

No way in hell you’re going to outsource dietary supplement manufacturing overseas, let a virtual assistant manage your business and go win a Jui-Jitsu competition while vacationing 6-months out of the year. But, there were a lot of valuable lessons.

My current beef isn’t with Tim’s book, it’s with some of the teachings of “Lean”. Or more directly, that they don’t all include a disclaimer.

One of the most shared practices of Lean is the idea of releasing a minimum viable product (MVP) and letting the users take over. That’s not how it’s presented, but that’s what it boils down to.

If you asked Facebook users what they wanted in the product early on, they would have said custom profiles and a music player. That’s what users knew. Myspace set the expectations. Luckily Mark Zuckerberg had a vision that he wouldn’t compromise on, knew when to ignore the masses and built a massively successful business.

If Mark Pincus of Zynga asked users what they wanted, do you think they would have said “we want to pay real money, to plant fake corn”?

In 2005, the most commonly requested features for cellular phones were MMS and longer battery life. The iPhone didn’t support MMS for years, and the battery life still sucks.

The most successful entrepreneurs have a gift for seeing what users need, before anyone else. The most successful businesses change our expectations.

If all we do is build what customers ask for, we’re all going to end up with the same damn products. VC’s would just hire focus groups and an army of engineers and build it themselves.

Own your roadmap. Solve problems that require vision we don’t possess - we’re relying on you to do exactly that.

Do right by your users, always. Without fail. But know that often we don’t know what to ask for. And if you build what we ask for, based on our current world-view, know that you’re going to end up building what we already have - and I’m not paying you for something I already have.

Erase “MVP” off your white board and don’t release something until it’s ready. You’re the only one who knows.

Absolutely test your hypothesis, make sure there’s a market fit, and get feedback along the way. But don’t be timid and second-guess yourself out of building something extraordinary or worse, let beta users talk you out of your roadmap.

Half of these opinions won’t apply to the majority of you.

 

You can read more of Justyn's thoughts on his blog at justynhoward.com.  Also take the time to try out Sprout Social...a great social media management tool.

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Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:32:00 -0700 Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned and From Zero to a Million Users - Dropbox and Xobni Lessons Learned http://cltlaunch.com/32133724 http://cltlaunch.com/32133724

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:57:00 -0700 Rethinking the Product Development Process http://cltlaunch.com/rethinking-the-product-development-process http://cltlaunch.com/rethinking-the-product-development-process

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:30:00 -0700 Startup Metrics for Pirates by Dave McClure - language advisory http://cltlaunch.com/startup-metrics-for-pirates-by-dave-mcclure-l http://cltlaunch.com/startup-metrics-for-pirates-by-dave-mcclure-l

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:57:00 -0700 Great Video on Differentiation http://cltlaunch.com/great-video-on-differentiation http://cltlaunch.com/great-video-on-differentiation

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:31:00 -0700 The Art of the Intro (A blog post from Both Sides of the Table by Mark Suster) http://cltlaunch.com/the-art-of-the-intro-a-blog-post-from-both-si http://cltlaunch.com/the-art-of-the-intro-a-blog-post-from-both-si

I Buy Dead Magazines (the art of the intro …) from Both Sides of the Table by Mark Suster

by Mark Suster on August 15, 2010

The life of an entrepreneur is filled with 20 second opportunities. Some get converted into 5 minute opportunities or into a lifetime. Most are squandered.

It starts in a crowded room at a conference or networking event. You bump into the person you’ve always wanted to chat with or your perfect business development partner who can “make” you. What are you going to say in the moment?

I can tell you from years of experience that most people waste that moment. You have to count on somebody interrupting you within 60 seconds so if you’re impactful you ought to at least be remembered. I’ve written about the “elevator” pitch before. If you haven’t read that post I suggest you do since it’s such an important topic. I also did a very short video on the topic. [if you're in a rush or ADHD you can skip to end of this post for the "to do" list]

One person who doesn’t waste this opportunity is Sam Jones of Formation Media. I’ve met Sam several times and each time I’ve been at an event with him I’ve heard his opening line, “My name is Sam Jones. I buy dead magazines.” He gets a stare every time. You can’t help but lean forward and want to hear what the next line is. He’s a master. He waits for a brief moment and lets the suspense build. He knows your next line in advance, “Excuse me? You do what?”

“I buy dead magazines. I run a company called Formation Media. We think that the magazine industry is going through incredible change but that the Internet website experience doesn’t yet fulfill our magazine needs. People read magazines for a reason and it’s a combination of focused content and beautiful images. We set up Formation Media to bring that experience to the Internet. My partner was in product management at Demand Media. We know that their model works for a certain type of content but we believe we can build higher value sites where we can sell premium advertising and target niche audiences. We deliver much higher CPMs”

He didn’t launch into a 3-5 minute diatribe as so many people do. He gave me the chance to absorb the message. He paused. And smiled. So many times when I get off stage after speaking at a conference and people rush up to speak to me they go on-and-on and after the first 2 minutes I start zoning out and thinking “I really should talk to the 20 people behind you – just to be polite.” The intro is meant to be quick and impactful. It isn’t mean to build your lifelong relationship with the person – it is to plant the first seed. Don’t overstep that. Know that relationships are a multi-meeting, multi-year earned connection. Over reaching in your first encounter could blow your future opportunities.

Think of it like meeting anybody at a random non-work cocktail party. People obviously ask what you do – mostly to be polite and also it’s the easiest form of small talk. Don’t confuse “what do you do” with “tell me your life story.” Plant the seed. Wait. If they dig deeper they wanted to. If they didn’t then you can try to bond in other ways.

With Sam we could have then switched to talking about the Lakers and he would have achieved his objective. I could have been pulled away but his mark was already made. I was at a crowded event, Launchpad LA, at the SLS Hotel and had drunk several beers and as the host had a ton of people waiting to chat. But I was hooked with his opener. It’s hard to imagine that somebody pitching a content business business in LA really could have captured my attention – there are so many of them.

“Really? I thought the world was moving to more automated content creation and content factories. What kind of content? How will you differentiate?” We were off to the races and talking about how he had bought the CarAudio Magazine out of death and how he started by already having a subscriber base and fans. This post isn’t about Formation Media so I won’t drill down. But Sam is a first-class act and boy does he know how to nail an intro.

So 2 things reminded me of that story and got me thinking about writing this post:

  1. I was on a panel this week talking to a crowd of a couple of hundred aspiring entrepreneurs. Sam stood up to ask a question. He took the mic, “Hi. My name is Sam Jones. I run Formation Media. We buy dead magazines. My questions is …”
  2. I hosted another Launchpad LA event this week. It was a dinner. All 10 startups that are part of Launchpad LA got the chance to stand up for 2 minutes. The first minute was a 60 second description of your business. The second 60 seconds was a change to ask a bunch of high-powered industry people & VC’s for “one ask” and they were all holding papers where they would write you a message if they could help you. Before the event I told everybody, “this is your moment of truth. Don’t blow it. Prepare. Know your pitch and make your ask count.” 3 or 4 were good – most were underwhelming.  Great companies all, but if you’d never met them and judged them on these 2 minutes you might never know it.

Brad Feld was sitting at my table. He told me that he agreed how important the intro was. At TechStars apparently they spend the first couple of weeks making every startup practice this again and again. Once they have buy-off from David Cohen, Brad and others they have their 60-second pitch. They have a ritual that every time a new visitor comes to Boulder they walk them around to meet each startup and each one has to give their exact same practiced 60-second pitch. He said it’s really impactful both to help the founders clarify their vision and to more effectively communicate it to others. If you can’t communicate what you do in simple terms it’s likely that you do have a vision issue. You might lack clarity in your own mind about what you do or why you’re unique.

So my list for you is:

  1. Develop your 60-second pitch. Even if you’re a more accomplished company. Don’t wing it. Practice it and repeat it so many times it gets boring. Your wife, husband, girlfriend, sister or co-workers should be sick of hearing it. It needs to “land” when you say it. It needs to be memorable. “I buy dead magazines.”
  2. Master the art of the pause – I’ve known this for 20+ years. I was fortunate enough when I was 20 to attend Toastmasters for 2 years and they taught me so much about vocal variety, energy, pacing, well written copy, hand gestures, etc. Brad reinforced this at our dinner. He said, “often when somebody pitches they just keep going. I’m trying to process what they’ve told me but they’re already on to the next line so my brain is split between listening to them and processing what they’ve told me. As entrepreneurs you need to learn to pause and let the listener reflect.”
  3. Learn to pitch with energy – Anytime you’re given the opportunity to deliver your opening line do it with energy. Enthusiasm is contagious. If you’re monotone or lethargic I promise it will diminish what you’re saying. If you’re not naturally enthusiastic when you speak you MUST practice and gear yourself up at least for this moment. If you’re not enthusiastic about your business then how the hell do you expect me to be?
  4. Be ready for the elevator pitch – This is different than your opening line. This is the next 3 paragraphs of your story. You haven’t earned the right to say it unless your listener gives you cues that he/she is wanting to go there. Please know that the next level down does not entitle you to speak solidly for 5 minutes. You will bore the person for sure.
  5. And for fuck sake be ready for the “ask” – If you get far enough in your conversation that you’re pretty convinced that you’ve earned the interest of your other party and if you know that there is something that they can do to help then ask. This isn’t every encounter – often you don’t have the right for the ask. Unfortunately I can’t teach somebody when to know – it’s like art – you can just tell. But if it’s there then ask for something small, easily accomplished and very precise.
    1. Acceptable: Would you mind if next time I’m in Boulder I emailed you to see if you had 30 minutes for a coffee? I know that you’re running this major content division – would you mind if I asked for an intro to a junior member of your business development team to start a dialog? I know you’re a VC and we’re not ready for a large round – do you know any angels that might be interested in our space?
    2. Not Acceptable: Can you please check out my website and let me know your thoughts (yes, I get asked this ALL THE TIME at conferences). If I’m interested in your product I naturally will check it out. Can you introduce me to the head of corporate development at Google? (I just met you, does it seem sensible that you have earned my trust enough to bug somebody super busy on your behalf?)

Don’t put it off. Don’t think that your pitch is already good enough. Get feedback from tough critics. Everybody thinks they’re good at pitching their business. Anybody whose career involves being pitched knows how far from the truth that really is.

*** Appendix:
Practice what I preach. I have my standard line. Many have heard it too often. It goes like this, “My name is Mark Suster. I’m a partner at the largest VC fund in Southern California. But before this I built and sold two software companies. The last one was to Salesforce.com where I was VP Product Management.” Pause.

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:17:00 -0700 AngelConf (Paul Graham) http://cltlaunch.com/angelconf-paul-graham http://cltlaunch.com/angelconf-paul-graham

This is a single video from a multi-part series from the Angel Conference held by YCombinator earlier this year.  Although it is designed for angels, it gives entrepreneurs some insight into their thinking, valuations, deal flow, etc...

AngelConf as defined by Techcrunch - "Today some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent angel investors and entrepreneurs are coming together for AngelConf – a crash course in angel investing that is designed to get the many wealthy tech veterans littering the Valley involved in the startup scene. The event was put together by Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, who believes that while there are many potential investors in Silicon Valley, most of them are unsure how to actually get started (he suggests there may be only one actual investor for every 100 would-be angels). AngelConf is designed to help these potential investors get on their feet, with tips on everything from the legal paperwork involved to picking out the best startups."


Watch live video from Angel Conf on Justin.tv

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:53:00 -0700 A Couple of Great Presentations from Startup School 2010 http://cltlaunch.com/great-presentation-by-andrew-mason-ceo-of-gro http://cltlaunch.com/great-presentation-by-andrew-mason-ceo-of-gro

Great Presentation by Brian Chesky of AirBnB


Watch live video from Startup School on Justin.tv

Great Presentation by Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon (Startup School 2010)


Watch live video from Startup School on Justin.tv

 

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:50:00 -0700 Paul Graham at Startup School 2010 (Angels vs. Super Angels vs. VC's) http://cltlaunch.com/paul-graham-at-startup-school-angels-vs-super-0 http://cltlaunch.com/paul-graham-at-startup-school-angels-vs-super-0


Watch live video from Startup School on Justin.tv

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:45:00 -0700 VC Term Sheet Discussion by Mark Suster http://cltlaunch.com/vc-term-sheet-discussion-by-mark-suster http://cltlaunch.com/vc-term-sheet-discussion-by-mark-suster

Venture Capital Valuation Spreadsheet -

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Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:32:00 -0700 How to Pitch a VC via Dave McClure - language advisory http://cltlaunch.com/31098609 http://cltlaunch.com/31098609

Startup Viagra: How to Pitch a VC
View more presentations from Dave McClure.

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