David Cummings on Startups

Category: Entrepreneurship

  • The Most Popular Blog Posts Here

    Once a year I like to see what blog posts are most popular here. SEO drives the majority of the traffic with social media in second place. Here are the 14 most popular posts based on site traffic:

    Clearly, planning/strategy content and SaaS content is popular. Look for more in the future.

    What else? What are some other topics you’d like to see?

  • The Power of Commitment

    At last Monday’s Atlanta Rotary meeting, one of the Rotarians was honored with a remarkable feat: he hadn’t missed a weekly meeting since 1962. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly 50 years at 40 meetings per year (no meetings during national holidays) for a total of 2,000 consecutive Monday lunches. That’s an unbelievable level of commitment and consistency.

    Imagine picking something you care about — like running — and commit to do it every day for a week. Then commit to do it for a month. Then commit to do it for a quarter. The next thing you know you’ll be like this club of runners that has run every single day for over 40 years. That’s commitment.

    Once committed, there’s a sense of confidence that you know you’re going to do it. Whether a big project, or a small one, one of the best ways to ensure the commitment is to share the commitment with friends and have them help hold you accountable. Friends want to see other friends succeed.

    Commitments are powerful. Tap into that power and achieve greatness.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on the power of commitment?

  • Leadership Weaknesses: Lack of Planning and Accountability

    Allen Nance put up a post this afternoon on the 8 Dimensions of Leadership. In it, he identifies himself as “Pioneering” whereby two of his top weaknesses are as follows:

    1. Lack of attention to planning (e.g. he’ll brainstorm with a group, say make it so, and be done)
    2. Lack of accountability (e.g. when someone says they’ll do something, it’s assumed it’ll get done, and that’s that)

    After reading the post I immediately recognized that it describes me as well. Not big on planning? Check. Not big on accountability? Check. My workaround is to force myself to follow the Mastering the Rockefeller Habits which results in more time spent on planning and accountability. For me, the two biggest things are doing a Simplified One Page Strategic Plan every quarter (planning) and doing daily check-ins (accountability). There are a number of other techniques like weekly tacticals, quarterly check-ins, and LED scoreboards to help with planning and accountability. Overall, I recognize planning and accountability aren’t strengths of mine, but I do well at setting up simple processes to address them so as to operate at an acceptable level.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on common leadership weaknesses of entrepreneurs?

  • Investors and Conflicting Investments

    As more startups emerge around today’s popular trends (e.g. social media, big data, sales technologies, etc) it’s inevitable that investors will start seeing startups that are competitors of existing investments (some loosely competitive and some that are direct competitors). Just this past week I talked to two different investors that mentioned they looked at one of the Atlanta Tech Village companies raising money and had to pass because it was close to being competitive with an existing investment.

    Here are a few thoughts on investors and conflicting investments:

    • Entrepreneurs pitching at large venture conferences should share enough information to get investors interested in a private meeting, and expect that everything that’s shared publicly will get back to their competitors
    • Venture investors don’t sign NDAs since they hear so many entrepreneur pitches, it’s difficult to keep track of who said what and what information is public vs confidential
    • Occasionally investors will have an existing portfolio company pivot and become a direct competitor to another portfolio company, making for a difficult situation
    • Some venture firms have multiple groups within their firm (e.g. an early stage team and a growth stage team) such that they agree to not share information (a Chinese wall) if they’re evaluating competing companies at the same time (usually different stage companies in the same industry — we experienced this at Pardot)

    Investors and conflicting investments are a standard part of the startup world. Entrepreneurs would do well to research the investor’s portfolio in advance of pitching as well as find the right balance between sharing too little or too much information.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on investors and conflicting investments?

  • Questions for Someone Getting Involved in the Startup Community

    In addition to spontaneous pitches, I’ve received a number of requests about how to get more involved in the startup community. Before talking about specific organizations, events, and programs, I start by asking a series of questions related to areas of interest and where they’d like to add value. Here are a few of the questions:

    • What size and stage startup is most interesting to you? Idea stage? Seed stage? Early stage? Growth stage? Many senior executives say they want to help startups with at least $5 million in revenue, to which I reply that we’re working hard to grow more but that there aren’t very many.
    • What markets and verticals do you have experience in? As an example health IT is different from marketing automation which is different from mobile device management.
    • What technologies are exciting to you? Internet of things? Big data? Cloud computing?
    • How specifically do you want to help? As an advisor? Mentor? Investor?
    • What do you want in return? Cash? Equity? A job? Personal satisfaction from helping an entrepreneur?

    After getting a solid understanding of what the person’s looking for and how they want to engage, it’s easy to point them in the right direction.

    What else? What are some other questions to ask someone looking to engage in the startup community?

  • Making the Spontaneous Pitch

    At the Atlanta Tech Village I bump into new entrepreneurs on a daily basis and get spontaneously pitched a couple times per week. Naturally, most of the entrepreneurs are nervous but really want to tell me about their startup. After hearing dozens of these, here are a few tips for entrepreneurs:

    • Rehearse your pitch in advance so that it’s always polished and ready (Pitch Practice is every Friday at the Village)
    • Keep the pitch brief and to the point (don’t show up and throw up)
    • Provide social proof and evidence of progress (ideas are worthless — it’s all about the execution of the idea)
    • Make the ‘ask’ at the end of the pitch (e.g. want to raise money, intro to potential prospects, need some key recruits, seeking advisors, etc)

    Entrepreneurs, especially less sales-oriented entrepreneurs, need to practice their pitch and deliver it with confidence at all times. Making spontaneous pitches is part of the process and should be done well.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on making a spontaneous pitch?

  • Startup Communities and Help Through Introductions

    When I moved to Atlanta in 2002 I didn’t know anyone in the startup community. Whenever I’d read about a local tech startup in the Atlanta Business Chronicle I’d send the entrepreneur an email, explain my business, and ask them to lunch. Most of the time nothing came of it but a few times it worked out and I had the chance to meet several entrepreneurs in town. My first real intro to a number of people in the startup community came by way of the Atlanta Technology Angels (ATA). I was trying to raise money for Hannon Hill and met with several local venture firms as well as ATA. Through ATA I was introduced to the ATDC, angel investors, and other entrepreneurs in the community. While I didn’t raise any money, it was good to get more connected in the community. The main downside was that it took a year of effort and I was eager to meet more people at a faster pace.

    Now, with the Atlanta Tech Village, Atlanta Startup Village Meetup, and Startup Chowdown, entrepreneurs that want to get plugged into the community can meet dozens of entrepreneurs within a week. When entrepreneurs need help, high quality introductions are faster and stronger. Here are some of the most common networking requests:

    • Potential sales and customer discovery prospects
    • Candidates for job openings
    • Introductions to potential investors
    • Connections to entrepreneurs and advisors with relevant experience

    Stronger, denser startup communities result in faster, better introductions that help improve the chance of success. As much as entrepreneurs want to go it alone, quality introductions can make all the difference.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on startup communities and help through introductions?

  • Slides for Presentations and Slides for Handouts

    Earlier today we put on a program connecting executives from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta with health IT startups from the Atlanta Tech Village. Seven startups had 15 minutes each — five minutes to present and 10 minutes of Q&A — followed by lunch at the end. Most of the presenters used slides with limited product demos. While the event was a success and everyone received value, five out of seven startups used slides on the big screens that were designed as handouts, not for presentations.

    Here are a few thoughts on slides for presentations, as different from slides for handouts:

    • Slides should have minimal text (I like to have no more than 10 words)
    • Font sizes shouldn’t be smaller than half the oldest age in the audience (e.g. if someone in the audience is 60, the font size shouldn’t be smaller than 30)
    • Tell a compelling story while still getting to the value proposition quickly
    • Make the ‘ask’ at the end of the presentation
    • Presentations should be rehearsed to fit the allotted time (every presenter went too long)

    The next time you open Keynote on your Mac, ask yourself if it’s for presentations or for handouts.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on slides for presentations as different from slides for handouts?

  • Initial Customers Always Find Bugs

    Signing the first few customers is incredibly difficult (see The First Five Customers), yet after all that effort, the next challenge is keeping them as they inevitably find product bugs. No matter how extensively you test the software, end users always come up with edge cases and scenarios that you never dreamed of trying.

    Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind with initial customers and bugs:

    • Product bugs are normal and it’s best to budget development time in advance for fixing them
    • Apologize whenever a customer finds a bug and set expectations that it will be fixed quickly
    • Find a balance between automated testing (unit, integration, etc) and human testing
    • As the product matures, new customers will stop finding as many bugs

    Product bugs are commonplace. With customers it’s critical to communicate and get things fixed quickly, especially for the early adopters. Over time things will settle down and the product will become more stable.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on initial customers always finding bugs?

  • Slowly Letting Go of Some Scrappiness

    Until a startup achieves product/market fit, has a repeatable customer acquisition process, and enters scaling mode, it’s important to be as scrappy and cost effective as possible. Every dollar wasted is another dollar of dilution and a dollar closer to not having enough runway to figure out how to make things work (see Figure Out How to Stay in the Game Long Enough to Win). Once the business is scaling and is focused on maximizing growth, it’s important to slowly let go of some (not all!) of the scrappiness.

    Entrepreneurs that have bootstrapped the business have an especially hard time letting go of some of the scrappiness as the business starts scaling. With so few resources to begin with, there’s no choice but to make every dollar count, such that scrappiness is deeply ingrained within all the team members. Only, as more and more market opportunity is presented, the tendency is to continue using the same approach when it’s better to ease up a bit and try new things to grow faster.

    As an example, at Pardot we were having a hard time finding software engineers. We had always stayed away from using recruiters because we wanted to save money and figured that we’d eventually find great team members. After not having luck for several months we decided to hire recruiters (see Working with Recruiters in Startups) and offer a $10,000 referral bounty to anyone that sent a new hire our way (the bounty was for anyone, not just employees). By investing in ways to broaden our search for talent, we were able to bring on more engineers and grow the business faster. It was the right move to let go of some of our scrappiness.

    What else? What are some other examples of slowly letting go of some scrappiness to grow faster?