David Cummings on Startups

Category: Entrepreneurship

  • EO Accelerator Sales Day

    Today we had our quarterly EO Accelerator education event on sales and marketing. It was an all-day session from 7:30am – 4:30pm held at my office in Buckhead. Our expert instructor was Jim Ryerson of salesOctane, and he did a fantastic job.

    One part of the class was about persuasion and communication techniques to aid in the selling process. Here are a few takeaways:

    • Don’t talk — spend more time listening
    • Use short questions
    • Start questions with who, what, why, where, when, and how
    • Don’t ask yes/no questions
    • Offer alternate choices (e.g. do you want to start sooner or later?)
    • Always set an agenda for the next meeting at the end of a call, make sure both sides have homework, and promptly follow-up with an email reiterating everything

    In my experience, sales is the number one area entrepreneurs fail to do as well as things that come more naturally like product development and team building. I highly recommend making sales a top priority for entrepreneurs and really understanding how to create a repeatable process.

  • New Employee Lunches

    One of the most important things the entrepreneur of a startup company does is set the tone for the company’s corporate culture. Corporate culture truly is a competitive advantage when done well. The best time to set the tone for new employees, after the actual interview process, is their first day at the office.

    I like to take new hires out to lunch on their first day as the CEO of the company. Corporate culture starts at the top. Of course, this isn’t always feasible as the company gets larger, but for companies under 100 people, it should be doable.

    I recommend startup CEOs and co-founders take new employees out to lunch on their first day.

  • Feedback-Driven Businesses

    One of the biggest strengths of startups, and a major reason why they can compete with much larger companies, is the ability to innovate faster. It’s truly a competitive advantage to be closer to the customer and iterate quickly. Much has already been said about customer driven development related to talking to your prospects or customers throughout the product development lifecycle, but I don’t think enough has been said about using the same tenants of soliciting feedback to drive all aspects of the business.

    Here are some common examples:

    • Listening to employees to improve corporate culture
    • Asking the right questions with potential employees to effectively recruit
    • Interacting with suppliers to find how to work better together

    Obviously, this is a broad topic but I encourage you to work to build a feedback-driven business.

  • Shotput Ventures 60 Days After Demo Day

    So we’re exactly two months after our first Atlanta Shotput Ventures Demo Day. Let’s take a quick look at how things have played out so far:

    • Three of the eight companies have stayed in Atlanta and five have moved out (almost all that left returned to where they came from)
    • Two have raised a professional angel round or are about to close the round
    • Two have raised money from friends and family
    • One is trying to raise a Series A
    • One has pseudo shutdown while evaluating next steps
    • Two companies were put in part-time mode while the co-founders took consulting jobs unrelated to their startup
    • Two are generating revenue

    That’s all I have right now. Stay tuned for more updates in the future.

  • When to Move On

    I was recently talking to an entrepreneur who’s been working on his company full-time for three years and is at the point where he’s no longer passionate about the business. Rather, he’s identified another business opportunity that is tangentially related but would require starting from scratch. How do you know when it is time to move on from your startup?

    My advice to him was to figure out how to follow his dreams while taking care of his small number of employees (less than five). He believes the timing is right for the new business but needs to the day-to-day pay check to make ends meet. It is a tough situation, but when it is time to let go and change paths, you know in your gut what needs to be done.

  • TiE – The Indus Entrepreneurs

    Last night I had the opportunity to attend the Atlanta chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs annual gala at the Georgia Aquarium. It was a wonderful event centered around giving back. Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, was honored for his philanthropy and several entrepreneurs won awards.

    The biggest takeaway from the evening for me is how lucky we are to have an organization like TiE. TiE’s mission is to promote entrepreneurship around the world and they are doing a great job. I would recommend you look into your local chapter of TiE and get involved.

  • The Easy Way

    The easy way is to do nothing. Or, to take the path of least resistance. Are you taking the easy way in your business? What’s the hard way? What direction can you take that’ll make you a little uneasy but will push the limits of your potential success?

    We’re working on a new initiative in my company that is going to take some people out of their comfort zone. It will likely temporarily slow growth for a couple quarters, but will pay dividends down the road. I’m excited about taking the hard way.

  • Favorite Three Entrepreneurship Blogs

    There are three entrepreneurship blogs that I most look forward to reading new posts when I see them highlighted in my Google Reader. Here are my favorites:

    What are some other entrepreneurship blogs that you like?

  • Annual User’s Conference

    We’re doing our last minute preparations for a User’s Conference that starts a week from Monday at the Georgia Tech Conference Center. User’s Conferences are one of the most fun things we do each year because it is a chance for us to meet face-to-face with over 100 customers. Due to our inside sales model, most employees never meet clients in person, but have spent many hours helping them as part of services, support, engineering, marketing, etc.

    Our annual User’s Conference, now in its fourth year, also turns out to be a big morale boost each year. Once the conference finishes, everyone is so excited and jazzed up because there’s nothing like talking to a customer in person and hearing how much they like your product and company. It really is an amazing feeling.

    I highly recommend putting on an annual User’s Conference if your company can justify it financially.

  • Questions to Ask an Entrepreneur

    Charlie Goetz, a professor of entrepreneurship at Emory, had me over again yesterday to talk to a different MBA class he’s teaching this semester. Before class started, we had a great conversation about what questions we should ask a concept stage entrepreneur to get a feel for where he/she is in their thinking. We came up with some simple ones:

    • What problem are you trying to solve?
    • How are you different?
    • How many prospects have you talked to about it?
    • How far along are you with the concept?
    • Where do you need the most help?

    I’d encourage all entrepreneurs with a concept to answer these questions as part of reaching out to others for advice.