First Impressions Matter

We are in the process of evaluating the applications for Angel funding for our current round. Like most investor groups we use Gust as the platform for entrepreneurs to load their company information. Overall, I must admit I am disappointed in many of these applications. Many of the applications look strong in terms of idea or concept. Some apparently have traction. Some claim to have traction, but don’t support that claim. However, the real problem is that for more than 90% of these applications, it is the first time I am exposed to you. The application is my first impression. And first impressions matter! Here are a number of items that are problems.

Incomplete applications. Gust is a standard format platform. The executive summary, financials section, team composition are all fairly straightforward. Missing items or incomplete items leave a bad first impression on me. If an entrepreneur does not provide all the information by the deadline, then it requires substantial explanation. Leave a note somewhere on the document telling me when the document will be completed, and why you require the additional time. I understand, we are looking at a moving target, but at some point I need to review a snapshot.

Financials Section. On Gust, the financials section is where the entrepreneur asks for funding and offers a summary of projections. It includes a place to upload documents. Upload your documents. I expect to see a spreadsheet with details of the projections.

  • I don’t want to see a pdf file. With pdf I really can’t see the basis of your numbers. Load an Excel spreadsheet with assumptions and a polished look and flow.
  • One tab of sales projections is not enough. In addition to the assumptions tab, there should be at least tabs for a cover summary, a cash flow projection, hiring guide, balance sheet and revenue models. You need a minimum of five and don’t overwhelm me with 20. I don’t need that level of detail…yet.
  • Hidden tabs that include details I need to review are a minor inconvenience. Why should I work harder on your application? Make your data clear and easily accessible.
  • On the positive side, I have seen a few spreadsheets, that have a nice summary up front, a tab with an assumption table linked into the spreadsheet, a hire/HR table and clear, bottom up projections that go over time until past cash flow positive. The revenue projections are important and should not be overlooked.
  • Spreadsheets are a complete topic for another blog. For now, I will admit that spreadsheets are something of a work of fiction, because they are guesses. But the closer the entrepreneur comes to being correct about these numbers, the higher my confidence level in the venture.

Articulating the Value Proposition. Don’t make me guess what your real value is to customers. If you are not perfectly clear in articulating the product to the target market, then how will I know you will be able to effectively sell the product/service?

Proof Points – Gust does not ask for this, but it is important that you be very specific as to the stage of your venture’s development. This will come out in due diligence. But if you have a finished product or channel partners already lined up, that leads to a much better impression for investors.

Know the Rules of the Game. An understanding of how our Angel group operates will benefit the entrepreneur immensely. For example, if our average investment is $400,000 and you are seeking $900,000 then be certain how you can fill out the rest of the round. I don’t particularly like building piers. I want to build a bridge to the next round. If you have funding that supplements ours, then great. However, know that we prefer to lead rounds unless the terms of the other funding is sufficient. So, be careful uploading the other term sheet – know what we like.

Stage of Development. Don’t hide the point that customers aren’t paying or you don’t have any customers yet. Be honest and forthright and just tell us exactly how you will conquer the world. Make me take a bet on you through truth telling.

Traction. Traction is right. Traction works. Traction clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Traction, in all of its forms …has marked the upward surge of saving the world (thanks to Gordon Gekko for the quote).

Traction is the basis of all that is good in a startup. Traction is the market validation of a value proposition with its target market. Traction shows proof points on its business model. Traction is based in real sales (not a give away product) and has evidence of other proof points – channel partners, a supplier base or existing value chain.

No Faith Based Entrepreneurship. I am really not interested in what you believe. Save that for church. Show me the proof. All that matters are evidence based startups.

Get these right and investors will be your friend.

Disclaimer: These are my own views and not those of any investor group that would have me as a member.

Customer Development Interviews

A new book by Cindy Alvarez about customer interviews reminded me that it is often important to review the basics of our tradecraft.

There are a number of important points to consider when reaching out to potential customers. In the Lean Methodology, it is essential to complete customer interviews before building your first minimally viable product. Ongoing interviews with clients also helps you to stay in touch and cement relationships with clients as well.

It is best to interview someone face-to-face. Clearly, that is more time consuming approach, yet more effective than Skype, telephone, or online interviews. A key component of these interviews is the observation of body language. That observation is lost with anything less than face-to-face meeting. Video conversations only capture part of the picture, and the nuances of observation cannot be completely captured.

The second important issue is to help the interviewee get past the politeness factor. No one wants to deliver bad news. Your goal is to make them feel comfortable. There are two ways past the politeness factor. The first is to change the way questions are asked. Asking, “What do you dislike about the product?” makes it difficult to yield honest results. Instead, asking “How would you improve this product?” frames the question as a respectful call for assistance. Everyone wants to help. No one wants to be impolite.

Cindy Alvarez starts just about every interview with four basic questions:

Tell me about how you do __________ today?

Do you use any other tools or have any specific tips or tricks you use to help?

Is there anything specific that you always do before or after you do _______?

If you could have a magic wand and be able to do anything else that you can’t do today, what would it be? (Forget about whether or not it’s possible, just anything.)

These questions are open-ended and allow for understanding customer behavior and activity. It is also crucial that there is not a single mention of your product.

Here are a number of other tips to use during customer interviews:

  • Try to have two people attend
  • Work from an outline of 3 – 5 questions
  • Focus on real behavior not hypothetical
  • Shut up
  • Probe
  • Don’t overstay your welcome
  • Debrief the same day
  • FOLLOW UP!
  • Work to their Schedule
  • Disarm the politeness training
  • Ask open ended questions
  • Don’t influence
  • Ask the Right Questions
  • Frame the Questions Correctly
  • Parrott back
  • Get Psyched to hear things you don’t want to hear
  • Ask for Introductions

The goal of your interviews is to position the interviewee as the expert. A good interview avoids yes/no answers, and gives potential clients an opportunity to tell a story – one that may cause them to think of related problems they’re having, or may trigger more questions for you to ask later.

Remember, your goal is to determine how your customer is currently dealing with specific tasks.  What do they like about their current solution or process? Is there some other approach that they have taken in the past that was better or worse?

Attempt to discover what they wish they could do that currently isn’t possible or practical. How would that make their lives better? Who their organization is directly involved with addressing such approaches? How long does it take to make a decision?

Your interviewees’ feelings and state of mind are also important. How do they feel when they are performing this task?  How busy/hurried/stressed/bored/frustrated? You can learn this by watching their facial expressions and listening to their voice as they answer your questions. What are they doing immediately before and after their current task? How much time or money would they be willing to invest in a solution that made their lives easier?

There is a lot more to being good at customer interviews. Like most anything else, practice is crucial to getting better.

Monetize and Create an Annuity

Our clients at the OSU Advantage Accelerator are product oriented. In addition to products created on the internet, some of our clients work in the physical and life sciences. Among other things, they create spectrometers, legged moving robotics, and advanced arc detection systems. Some of our startups include econometrics companies, agricultural companies and software organizations as well. As far as innovation is concerned, we are technology without borders.

The question for all these companies is not just to make a simple sale from the products they create, but to develop annuity streams of future payments arising from these sales. How do we define annuity revenue? It is a predictable stream of income and profits derived from a wide variety of sources.

For example, one of my former clients sold a sophisticated piece of equipment used in forensics labs. While you might think forensics is a limited market, remember that not only local police departments have labs, so do the sheriffs and regional police, State police, Federal labs like the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and many other law enforcement agencies in the United States, as well as within the international community.

Here is how they created annuity from the sales:

  1. Warranty of the product after an initial period, and then renewed annually;
  2. Providing training to staff using the product. The warranty is only effective if staff using the equipment receive proper training.
  3. The training occurs once every three years, as the product is updated, and needs to be renewed.
  4. Updates require an annual purchase.
  5. The equipment needs to be certified and recalibrated every three years.
  6. New versions and updates to the equipment are available at discounts to existing owners.
  7. Updates on the software running the product must be updated.
  8. Other annuity streams include remote monitoring, consulting and customization fees, forums and user groups, enhanced support, a collective knowledge base access, as well as maintenance.

To customers, these were all value-added services. How these reoccurring annuity revenue streams are managed is up to the company and the customer and should be validated and employed based on the customer’s ability and willingness to pay.

Revenue streams create another benefit. They offer an opportunity for more customer contact and product loyalty. Creating a high contact product strengthens the client-customer relationship and leads to a larger referral stream and enhanced sales. What are you doing to add value to product sales and increase customer loyalty?

Out-Of-The-Building Blocks

I had the opportunity to chat with Steve Blank about the Business Model Canvas and his Stanford class. I suggested that there is much work to be accomplished even before embarking on the Lean Launchpad Class. When I taught at the University of Southern California (USC), the cornerstone class before the Business Plan class was the Feasibility study. In fact, there were two tracks for entrepreneurs: one for technology and another for other businesses, and each had separate feasibility and business plan classes. (Disclaimer: I am not a believer in the traditional business plan, but rather focus on the operational and business-building sides of startups.)

I adopted many of the topics in both courses as a precursor to the Lean Launchpad class for mechanical engineers at Cal State Los Angeles, which I developed. When I taught at USC, the feasibility class was part of the MBA program. Therefore, many of the entrepreneurial and business concepts were already familiar to many of the students. However, the engineers at Cal State had no experience with business and entrepreneurial terminology and concepts.

I found the key to starting a new feasibility class for engineers was to introduce a few creativity concepts and exercises as a way of enriching their way of thinking. Engineers tend to think in a very linear fashion, and are sometimes uncomfortable with ambiguity in business. They weren’t as interested in variations in valuations or marketing—they just wanted the formula.

At some point in any business process, the research stops and the marketing begins. I am also a big subscriber to effectuation – the concept that entrepreneurs must think differently than ongoing businesses; using evolving means to reach new goals. Startups that are resource poor can’t throw money at a problem in order to make it sellable. A large business may be able to afford such a play, but not a startup. Entrepreneurs must use a different toolkit and a different way of thinking in order to succeed. Both effectuation and the business model canvas provide those tools.

In my entrepreneurship class at USC, students were required to meet 25 strangers. Steve Blank’s classic line is “to get entrepreneurs out of the building.” Entrepreneurial knowledge can only be gained through meeting people in their industry, advisors, and anyone else who can help budding entrepreneurs think through the parts of their business, how they compete, what niche does their competitor target, and just about everything required to be known before thinking about spending a dime.

So what kind of research could an entrepreneur do before starting on their entrepreneurial journey? This is secondary research to be completed before getting out the door. This needs to be done before to make the primary research (getting out the door) more valuable and shorter in duration. After all, having better hypotheses will yield more confirmations:

  1. Know thyself. What are you good at, who do you know that can advance the concept, and why is this an important undertaking? Can you articulate the value and benefits? Is the opportunity clear?
  2. Know the industry. Every aspect of the industry, every competitor and their niche, how would you find the pattern of change in the industry to become the leader of the pack, who are the major suppliers, can you successfully target the underserved market?
  3. Know the value chain – who gets paid and how, can you gain access to critical supplies on good terms? Do you know every step of your business process from order taking to fulfillment and post sale customer service? Where is the most value added?
  4. What is the best way to reach the customer? What effects their buying decisions?
  5. Who are your target customers and their demographic data? Are they big enough to constitute a market? What color underwear do they wear? Yes, you need to know everything about the client down to their undergarments.
  6. Financials – Don’t even think of continuing if you can’t do a spreadsheet forecast called a pro-forma. We all know the spreadsheet is a work of fiction, but how can you guestimate the entrepreneur’s bet? What are the premises underlying the data on your targeted financials? What is the delivered cost of the product? What are the multiple streams of revenue? Get the premises right and be convincing to yourself.

Possibly the most important skill to teach engineers and principle investigators is a little marketing and a whole lot of sales. Let’s face it; with few exceptions scientists are not famous for being extroverts. We need to impart to them that sales is not a shady profession, but rather an exercise in building relationships and helping potential clients solve problems. Good sales and marketing skills help build relationships allowing engineers to fix the world and its problems. Sales and engineering make for a good match.

However, relationship building is sometimes difficult for engineers and principle investigators. Social engagement must be built into all classes. In my class, everyone had to do a one-minute sales pitch that you could give someone in an elevator—a classic elevator pitch. After the first three or four intrepid students made their pitches, the whole class understood the key elements. Not everyone ended up being comfortable with selling, but then again not everyone will become a CEO.

So remember that before jumping into the Business Model Canvas, there is still much thought and research to put into your plan. If you are able to do the homework before embarking on validation tests in the canvas, my hypothesis is that you may have better information through good secondary research techniques before embarking on validation testing in each of the nine building blocks.