One of the challenges of pitching a new idea is that, inevitably, you have to be able to compare it to an existing idea for people to understand what you're pitching. This is doubly true when talking to investors.
This is something we've really struggled with.
I'm not (too) dumb -- it's not as though I just claim we don't have competitors. But I have had a hard time picking a market segment that really fits what we do.
The past few days unleashed a freak set of circumstances that is soooo not interesting enough to explain, but they set me off on a course that has started to yield some interesting results. There are some big public companies in the space I've found, they're charging huge sums of money for their products AND we do something quite interestingly different to all of them.
I even saw a Powerpoint with 3 slides that look amazingly similar to some of the key points of our standard deck.
This is a big deal!
Just as Hollywood loves the "it's Jaws... in space" kind of pitch (that one was for Alien, if you're wondering) I think there's a lot of power in "It's X, but with Y" kind of statements, even though they gloss over a lot of detail and make CTOs very nervous.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying I've been buried in some market analysis this week. As I go deep on the space I'm looking at, I started searching on ISVs to see what kind of reseller partners are operating in the space. Partnering with resellers is one of many strategies we're considering for certain markets.
I don't want to give too much away just yet because I haven't finished doing my homework, but as you'd probably guess, we are basically in a database management and integration related field.
Which is why, when surfing to the site of a "recommended" ISV, I found the following message rather ironic:
Oops. But hey, at least they have a web site unlike this company ;-)
As I've mentioned before, there are a number of things I really don't like about the way Facebook works (see my post about becoming a Facetard).
But then every so often I read something that I think is really smart, like this news about a new JavaScript library for Facebook apps. As I understand it, the Facebook api is now available via any web site, in other words, you can embed any Facebook app into any website.
If Facebook wants to be a platform, this is a very smart move. It's also great for Facebook application developers who want to spread their wings outside the closed world of Facebook.
However, this kind of smart long range/big picture thinking is entirely at odds with my experiences actually using the site.
Case in point, my efforts today to add an MP3 to a Facebook profile. Allow me a small digression... The other day we were driving home from the mall after a fairly long day. My daughter was overtired, over-excited and probably over-sugared. Half-way home she launched into a fairly bizarre version of "Old MacDonald", most of which I recorded on my cell phone.
Highlights include "Old MacFarm had a Donald" and "Daddy had a quack quack... and a computer" and (weirdly) "and then there's spiderman!!!".
Anyway (proud Dad moment is over, normal programming resumes), I was trying to add an MP3 of the monologue to my wife's Facebook profile. A quick search found a basic MP3 player app. I installed it and went to upload the file. See the image below:
The only obvious button to press is the "Continue" button, right?
No. That leads you to some ad for a paid service to discover your secret crush. Great. And now I have to reload the file into the MP3 app.
I mean COME ON. You have a big friggin' button labeled "Continue" at the top of the page. The second biggest button is the "Tell My Friends" (aka the Make-me-a-Facetard button). Is it really that damn hard to make an "All Done" button and put it where some old duffer like me can find it?
So yeah, my personal jury on Facebook is out. Really out. Maybe I should Tell My Friends. <sigh>.
P.s. If you want to share my Proud Dad Moment, here you go:
A few folks have been having trouble with the link to our illustrious Plan B -- the ultimate VC investment opportunity... This version should work just fine.
Enjoy!
P.s. If you'd like to embed this video elsewhere, here's the requisite embed code goodness:
A number of years back, I was running a 3D animation studio. One of our projects was a feature film. This thing was the cheesey Count Dracula of projects that wouldn't die. We'd try and sell it, try and sell it, push push push push, get somewhere and then see it come crumbling down. It was absurd how many times that happened. And just when we thought it was dead and buried, it would leap back into life and threaten to bite us in our collective delicates...
I was a fundraising green-bean back then, but I learned a valuable lesson from the Hollywood folks we were dealing with.
I could understand why we weren't getting a yes. We were asking for a fair sum of money for something that hadn't been seen before. But I could not, for the life of me, understand why we never got a straight no. Until I had my revelation...
In Hollywood, the only sin bigger than greenlighting a turkey is passing on the next big thing.
So most Hollywood types strive to keep you in maybe-land. The idea seems to be that if they stand back and watch for long enough, you will reach a point where it is obvious whether your film is a winner or a loser. And at that point, assuming it is a winner, they all come rushing in ready to help.
And maybe-land is a foggy place filled with ghosts and visions. It is almost impossible to tell what's real and what's not.
For example, we always got a warm reception and everyone seemed to like the team and the concept. But for the first few months, everyone we met with didn't seem to think we could make something that would look good on film. Fine. We spent the money and did a film test. It was gorgeous. The MaybeBabies agreed. But what about the characters -- could they really be believable? Fine, six months spent on character tests. But is that realistic in production? Fine, 300+ page Microsoft Project Gannt chart showing how it would run (that freaked them out). But what about the script? Fine, we'll hire some allegedly A-list writers*. What about the producer? Fine, we'll hire a veteran. What about the <insert random roadblock here>? Fine, we'll <insert zealous attempt to please here>.
The point is that none of it was real. Sure, there were broad concerns that needed some answers, but they weren't the real roadblock between us and a yes decision. They were just ways of keeping us in the game until the mystery of our fate would reveal itself...
I see a lot of similarity between my Hollywood experiences and early stage fundraising. The more I talk to local early-stage CEOs the more I hear the same theme repeated again and again.
I was meeting with someone today who has an interesting business. They meet a real need and have a working product. What's more, they have paying customers and have done a TON of leg work to make sure the product is compliant with both the letter of the law and their customer's expectations.
The initial feedback they got from funding targets was "Come back when you have customers". Then it was "come back when you have a corporate customer." Followed by "Come back when you have a corporate customer that's a better example of your broader model"...
The point is that most of us startup CEOs have pretty thick skins. We may not like a "No", but we can take it without going postal and hunting you down like a rabid dog. What is likely to push us over the edge however is a plethora of roadblocks that have nothing to do with the big picture of what we do.
Just say no, folks, it's okay. We can handle the truth.
BTW, this is a good, although not recommended, method to get a firm "no".
* As an interesting side note, these alleged A-list writers were boneheads. The script they turned in was awful. It was so awful, and they were so highly recommended, I started to wonder if I really knew nothing about good scripts at all. We had an in-house meeting to discuss their draft. Several folks were making polite "it was a a good first pass" kind of noises when my then partner in crime stood up and delivered my all time favorite serious meeting quote: "I could have eaten a bowl of Alphabettis and sh*t a better script".
We like schwag. You probably like schwag too. At my last company, we used to print a lot of fun t-shirts and early on we took a liking to CustomInk. They have reasonable pricing, decent minimums and good turn-around times. Above all, they consistently deliver a high quality product.
Just before Christmas, we did our very first short run of T-shirts (less than 30 were made, so if you have one, you're very special) and I went back to CustomInk to get the job done.
You can upload artwork and design your shirt online with their flash app. Their site will give you a realtime quote and the ordering process is quick and easy. Personally, I like the Hanes Beefy-T -- it's a high quality cotton shirt available in a bunch of colors at a good price. I have shirts from CustomInk that are several years old and still holding up pretty well.
Another reason I like CustomInk is that their customer service is excellent. For example, when I submitted the last job, they called and suggested a minor change to the artwork which would reduce the cost of the order by $50 or so.
And that brings me to the reason for the post. CustomInk emailed me and asked if I'd post a review and a link on my blog. In exchange for that they're offering a coupon/discount towards our next order.
So, first of all, take a look at T-Shirt Design at CustomInk.com.
Second, if you'd like a super exclusive disruptorMonkey t-shirt, leave a comment below. We'll put the coupon they sent towards a new, never seen before t-shirt just for readers of this blog. Not sure when we'll get them made, but we'll try and do it soon.
Make sure you (a) play to our fragile egos and (b) tell us what size you'd like (their shirts run a little small so err on the side of safety).
I have a long-held theory that you really don't know what you're making (and selling) until you release it into the wild. Once you put it in the hands of potential customers, it's going to mutate and grow in ways you didn't necessarily expect.
Now that the Unifyr beta is underway, we're starting to see early signs of that evolution and it's interesting stuff.
One area of strength of our "secret sauce" is its ability to generate and analyze meta-data. And one example of that analysis is a feature that our beta users are freaking out about (in a good way).
Internally, we call it our FindaYoda feature. In a nutshell, when you search with a keyword, we'll show you data that matches your query AND we'll show you which other users have data that matches your query. Simply put, each user's data is private, but a representation of their expertise is not. When you do a search, you're not just constrained to "files" that match your query, you'll see people that match your query too.
Good meta-data can solve all kinds of problems, and FindaYoda is just scratching at the surface. But it's good to know that (a) it works and (b) our users really like it.
Earlier this week we had a pitch that we’ve been looking forward to for a while. Unfortunately, as you might imagine from the title and picture, it didn’t go as planned.
The main reason this week’s posts have been slow is that I’ve been (a) working on bouncing back and (b) trying to decide how to blog about this.
Let’s start with an analogy… Picture the guy or girl that you had a crush on in High School. The one that “if only they knew you” would be your perfect date. Now imagine that one day you said “Hey” and they actually said “Hey” back. Next thing you know, you have a get-to-know-you date set up at a friend’s house.
It was that kind of meeting. And we were that kind of excited about it.
Sticking with the analogy, at the last minute the day and venue change. Now you’re meeting Mr/Ms Perfect with two of his/her friends somewhere you’ve never been before.
And so it begins.
Back to real life. We had a fireside-chat kind of thing set up at a local office. But due to circumstances beyond either party’s control the meeting had to be moved to a hotel some distance from here. Our date was very apologetic for the change and offered to do the meeting by phone or reschedule it. We took option #3 – driving down to the new location to take the meeting.
Note #1: There is a lot of truth in the proverb “Fools rush in”
Naturally, the change in venue causes some issues. Where will we meet? Is there a good network connection??? Oh, and as a result of the reschedule, we’re now meeting with our guy plus two of his co-workers.
Note #2: A meeting with 3 people is NEVER going to be the same as a meeting with 1 person.
As you may know, I’ve done a lot of pitches in my time, from this kind of fundraising pitch to tradeshows and product demos. I’ve logged hundreds of hours doing this, and generally have some clue as to what I’m doing and how things can go wrong.
So naturally, we had a backup plan to run the product locally on a laptop in the event that Wi-Fi failed us. But as I mentioned, the change was pretty last minute. Come to find out that we have more data in the system than can easily be downloaded in the time we have before the meeting.
So now we don’t have a good fallback if the network connection drops out. Not good.
Note #3: When you start to feel a breeze blowing on body parts that don’t appreciate that sort of thing, take notice.
But there’s a Starbucks with wi-fi down the road. Fine. We’ll just shuffle down there if we need to. But let’s get to the Hotel well in advance and make sure the wi-fi is good.
Meanwhile, we’ve been working on the “Grand Enchilada” view of what we’re up to and why. As I mentioned earlier, our date seems perfectly primed to get what we do and really wants to talk about the tech and the product, so this is not our usual funding presentation.
Fast-forward to the day of the date.
I’m not a believer in omens, but the day starts badly.
Now that I look at the pants I ever so carefully ironed last night, I can see that they have some kind of feeding-a-two-year-old related stain. Bugger. Need to iron another pair, but I’m back on track soon enough.
Time to get in the car and go. I put the key in and get a “Low Pressure” alert for one of the tires. The low pressure sensor is a nifty idea in principle. If a tire needs 36psi and a slow leak has taken that down to 25psi, it’s a good thing to have. Unfortunately, the thing also triggers if there’s a drop to 35.9999psi. You have no way of knowing what’s going on without reaching for a pressure gauge.
So I check the tires. Sure enough, one is pretty low. Break out the air-pump, connect it and off we go. Or not. I check the pressure and it’s lower. There’s a hole in the tube on the air-pump. Crap crappety crap crap. Off to the garage.
Finally Logan and I get on the road and we’re making good time.
We get to the hotel and I talk the restaurant into letting us camp out. The wi-fi signal is “strong like ox” and all is well. We test, retest and test again. Sweet.
All your base belong to us. We are prepared.
Note #4: It’s called a false sense of security for a reason…
Our guy arrives and we exchange pleasantries. The other two datees arrive to. We’re ready.
I jump in to our 100,000 ft overview presentation. As I go through the slides, I have that vague nagging feeling that I’m not bringing all the audience members with me.
We get to the demo. “Let me show you the basics”
Kzzt.
The wi-fi falls down dead. Shit. It comes back. But we’re in a hotel, so I have to re-login to their gateway before I can get back to Unifyr. In an effort to help, one of the other dates starts asking some questions. We try and answer those while getting back online.
We’re back online. Our guy asks another question, one so basic to what we do that we have been able to demonstrate it for MONTHS. Click click, here we go.
Kzzt.
WTF! It’s down again.
More interim questions, but now we’re off in three different directions at once.
Back up. Logged in. Click click…works. But now the back end engine that has run for WEEKS without any glitches falls down dead. Stuff is no longer getting tagged.
WTDF!!!
And so the whole thing descends into chaos. I don’t think we made or demonstrated a single point clearly without a screw-up.
At the same time, we’re focused on a high level big picture. Really big (like this)... The stuff we never usually talk about for fear of scaring people. And there’s the rub – after early pitches we were told we weren’t broad enough. After this one, we were told we were too broad. Doh.
Note #5: Once you’ve been pitching for a few months, your pitch gets “polluted” with all the feedback you get. While feedback can be invaluable, the process of avoiding potential landmines can leave you with something so muddied that it offends no-one, but no-one buys it either…
So as you can gather from all of this, the pitch was a dud. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it was one of my worst… Ever…
Our dates were nice enough to be polite, but we knew we'd blown it and blown it good.
Looking back at things, there are a million things we'd like to have done differently. But I think #1 would have been to pass on the meeting face to face until we could control the environment.
In our eagerness to have our perfect date we left too many variables to chance. The result benefited no one, least of all us.
It's all very well to get a date with "that girl" (or guy) but if it ends like this, you're really no better off.
And with that thought (and sincere apologies to our dates), here's an appropriate ending...
We're not ready to start hiring yet, but we hope to be there soon. And thinking about the future other than the business plan and product development is a nice break. Plus, I've been on a rant week again, so why not end it on a strong note...
As a guy with a background in sales, marketing and biz dev, I've always known that hiring people for those positions would be hard. In the case of sales, I'll expect a candidate to have a structured approach to sales (like this). Marketing folks had better avoid phrases like "get our name out there" and "go viral". And as for Biz Dev, they'll need to walk on water and be able to convert it to wine while they're at it for me to be a true believer.
But some recent experiences have reminded me that there is one position I may never be able to find a satisfactory candidate for: HR.
In my career, I've had nothing but terrible experiences working with HR professionals. I always felt that a Director of HR ought to represent the needs of the employees...or at the very least act as an unbiased intermediary between the employees and the management of the company. A product manager represents a product and the HR manager should represent the humans...
But in my experience, HR folks represent employees in the same way that strip mining represents coal.
My first run in was during my move to the USA. As part of my relocation package, the company hiring me retained an attorney to secure my visa. My new boss was very keen for me to start as soon as possible. So I put my house on the market, and of course it sold almost immediately. I put all my stuff in storage and was living on borrowed floors and in weekly rentals. I called the HR Director repeatedly and was told that "everything was being done" to move things ahead. After a month without news, I asked to speak to the attorney. The immigration "professional" advised me to just get on a plane and we'd "take care of it when I got there". Five minutes of fact checking revealed that this was (a) illegal and (b) likely to get me deported. When I pointed this out to HR person, her first response was to accuse me of meddling.
Attorney #2 was better acquainted with the actual visa process and things started ticking along. Then that guy went quiet. I called repeatedly and was finally told that my employer had not paid the retainer!
Guess who's desk the authorization was sitting on???
I've also been through a bunch of restructuring & RIFs (reduction in force). The HR person is ALWAYS the one that wants to not tell the employees, because they'll worry (or some other stupid reason) and then wants to offer the minimum severance and health benefits when the axe falls.
I've argued with HR people as to why we need to offer direct deposit ("but it's so expensive"), why employees who've spent more than 8 years with a company should get more than two weeks severance, why the company should just cover the extra $20 per head increase in health insurance and why a head receptionist should actually be able to operate a phone system... And don't even get me started on the damn corporate handbook's they all seem to love so much.
I understand the need to operate within the law, but I see no reason to treat employees like challenged toddlers or act like Moses coming down from the mountain with a list of unalterable commandments. And that goes double in a small company.
Two recent events rekindled this particular flame. A friend of mine joined a well funded startup about 9 months ago. They promised 3 weeks of vacation and the chance to jump in and try new things. The salary wasn't great, but the overall opportunity was good. Fast forward to last month and the company hires an HR dragon. My friend has now been told that the new company policies mean she is no longer a salaried employee (she's now paid hourly). As a side effect, she lost two weeks of vacation and can no longer get health benefits for her family. Dragon goes on to tell her that if she waits until March and agrees to be moved into a dead-end role they may be able to make her salaried again.
Event #2 is one I've encountered many times -- the spend $40 to save $20 mentality that is so prevalent in HR directors. Job candidates are being flown in for interviews. The company is paying for the flight, hotel, meals, schmoozing etc. HR organizes all of that, but won't take care of transportation from the airport. "Just have one of the admins do it". The taxi ride would be about $17 each way. Probably $25-30 for a car service. But no, lets have a $25/hr employee do it instead. Of course, that's $25 plus overhead and the cost of the Admin not doing what they're supposed to be doing. And you can be sure that the HR person will frown if they submit an expense report for the mileage...
<sigh>
So if we're ever hiring for that position and you're a candidate, be warned: I expect you to actually give a damn about the people that make the company run. I'll expect you to look at the big picture. And last but not least, I'll expect you to treat everyone the same way.
Okay. All done. Next week's posts will all be about happy little bunny rabbits and flowers.
