David Cummings on Startups

Blog

  • Questions to Ask When Hearing Startup Advice

    Recently I was talking to a tech investor about giving advice to portfolio companies. What’s mandatory for the entrepreneur to do vs only a suggestion or recommendation? This made me think: entrepreneurs need to ask a series of questions whenever hearing startup advice. Here are a few questions to start with:

    • What’s the startup stage for this advice? Startups trying to find product/market fit have much different challenges than early stage and growth stage ones.
    • Who’s giving me this advice? What was his or her background and experiences that shaped this advice?
    • Why is this person giving me this advice? What’s their motivation?
    • Who can I corroborate this advice with? What’s another person that would have an opinion on this advice?
    • Is this advice I can act on now or should I file it away for a later time?

    People love to give advice and I’m no different. As an entrepreneur, it’s important to ask questions in the context of the advice and figure out its potential applicability.

    What else? What are some other questions to ask when hearing startup advice?

  • Biggest Difference Between Corporate Intrapreneur and Startup Entrepreneur

    Recently I was talking to an entrepreneur that had previously done several stints as a corporate intrapreneur building new business units for large companies. Now that he’d been out on his own as the CEO of a startup with no big company behind it, I wanted to find out what was most different. Simple, he said, “Recruiting is 100x harder in a startup.” At the big company, people are lining up out the door to get a big company salary and the perceived stability of a corporate job. In the startup world, recruiting talented people requires more selling of the vision, convincing people to take salaries well below the big company salaries, and helping with the mental shift required to jump into startup life.

    Here are a few more thoughts on the recruiting challenge between corporate intrapreneur and startup entrepreneur:

    • HR teams, existing recruiting pipelines, and more are taken for granted at big companies where in a startup none of that exists
    • Most cities don’t have a strong startup community making startups seem more risky because of a lack of local lore, and if the startup fails, it’ll be harder to find another job
    • Places like the Atlanta Tech Village are especially helpful for recruiting talent

    Being a startup entrepreneur is very different from a corporate intrapreneur and recruiting talent is especially challenging as a startup entrepreneur.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on the recruiting challenge difference between corporate intrapreneur and startup entrepreneur?

  • Entrepreneurs Almost Always Burn the New Cash in 18 Months

    Entrepreneurs are an optimistic bunch. Just the nature of building something from nothing lends itself to people that believe they can figure things out (high locus of control). After investing in over a dozen startups, I’ve encountered a phenomenon that makes sense but wasn’t apparent before: entrepreneurs almost always burn the new cash in the bank in 18 months. Whether the entrepreneur raises $300,000 or $3 million, 18 months later the cash is gone.

    Here are a few thoughts on entrepreneurs burning new cash in 18 months:

    Entrepreneurs have big dreams, and after raising money, almost always spend the cash in 18 months. Entrepreneurs would do well to recognize this and plan accordingly.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on entrepreneurs almost always burning new cash in 18 months?

  • Atlanta Startup Village #34

    In less than 30 minutes, Atlanta Startup Village #34 will take place at the Atlanta Tech Village. With 600 RSVPs, it’s the largest monthly gathering of entrepreneurs in the Southeast.

    Here are tonight’s presenting startups:

    Not able to attend? Watch it live at 7:30PM EST on the Atlanta Tech Village event cam.

  • 6 SaaS Product Management Tips

    Product management in a Software-as-a-Service (Saas) startup is one of the most important functions, and one of the most difficult — great product managers are hard to find. While product management is hard, there are a number of great resources online. Start with David Cancel’s blog (former head of product at HubSpot) and go from there. Here are six SaaS product management tips I’ve found valuable:

    1. Use dark features to roll functionality out to select accounts
    2. Develop a product management planning process
    3. Follow Covey’s four quadrants when thinking through functionality
    4. Find a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly product rhythm
    5. Eliminate the five mistakes first-time product managers make
    6. Perfect is the enemy of good for product management

    SaaS entrepreneurs would do well to embrace product management as a core function and follow these six tips.

    What else? What are some more SaaS product management tips you like?

  • 3 Core Operating Documents to Complement the Meeting Rhythm

    In addition to a strong meeting rhythm at Pardot, we developed three core operating documents to run the business. Of course, we used great line-of-business applications like Salesforce.com, Pardot, and Zendesk to run different departments, but we needed a central view of the business for accountability, alignment, and visibility.

    Here are the three core operating documents we used:

    While there was a good bit of ongoing copy-and-paste to keep these three documents current, the value was immense as we scaled to 100+ employees. Building a high performance company requires a strong culture, strong communication, and strong operational excellence.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on core operating documents that complement the meeting rhythm?

  • Video of the Week: Simon Sinek’s Start With Why

    Simon Sinek is the best-selling author of Start With Why. From the site:

    “It doesn’t matter what you do, it matters Why you do it.” With a little discipline, anyone can learn to inspire. Start With Why offers an unconventional perspective that explains the reasons some leaders and organizations are more innovative, more profitable, command greater loyalties from customers and employees alike and, most importantly, are able to repeat their success over and over.

    For our video of the week, hear Simon Sinek share the importance of Start With Why. Enjoy!

  • Develop a Meeting Rhythm

    At Pardot, we worked hard to develop a consistent meeting rhythm. As the business grew, communication and alignment became harder and harder. The effort necessary to get everyone on the same page at 50 employees was significantly more than when we were 5 employees. As such, we were constantly testing out the frequency and types of meetings.

    Here’s the meeting rhythm we used:

    • Daily Check-in – We held a 10 minute scrum every morning at 9:30am where we answered the following questions: what did you accomplish yesterday, what are you going to do today, and do you have any roadblocks.
    • Weekly Leadership Meeting – We reviewed the weekly KPIs from the prior week and talked about key topics in the business that could be addressed in 15 minutes or less. Topics requiring more than 15 minutes were tabled for the monthly strategy dinner.
    • Weekly All-Hands Meeting – Every Monday 30 minutes before lunch we’d have an all-hands meeting with everyone in the company (people working remotely would join via a Google Hangout) and talk about anything of note from the prior week. The meeting would be followed immediately by a catered lunch for everyone.
    • Monthly Strategy Dinner – Each month the leadership team met at a different private restaurant room for three hours and made decision about big topics as well as talked through issues that were put on the parking lot at the weekly leadership meeting.
    • Quarterly One Page Strategic Plan Off-site – Each quarter we’d take a day off-site and put the simplified one page strategic plan together for the next quarter.
    • Quarterly Celebration – Each quarter we got out of the office and celebrated as a team (e.g. a baseball game, picnic, etc).

    While this meeting rhythm kept us getting together for different reasons at a fairly frequent pace, it didn’t feel overwhelming and was incredibly effective for growing the business. Meeting rhythms vary from company to company and I recommend being intentional about the frequency and types of meetings.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on developing a meeting rhythm?

  • Watching a Startup’s Core Engine Grow

    Continuing with the idea that if you can get to 10 happy customers, you can get to 100, there’s also another element that’s fun to watch: the growth of the core engine. The core engine is the main product value and all the human elements that support it. Think of the customer count growing, the recurring revenue growing, and departments like product, engineering, sales, and customer success growing. While there are bumps along the way, the experience of going from 2 to 10 to 25 to 50 to 100 employees is incredibly rewarding.

    Here are a few thoughts on watching a startup’s core engine grow:

    • Know that at each stage (seed, early, growth) the entrepreneurs need to reinvent themselves
    • Most entrepreneurs that scale fast feel they under invested in building a talent pipeline of future hires
    • Metrics wise, keep an eye on three areas: financial, employee happiness, and customer happiness
    • Make sure there’s no leaky bucket
    • Ensure culture is the top priority

    Watching a startup’s core engine grow is a great experience, especially all the new learnings and getting to know the awesome people that join the ride.

    What else? What are some other considerations when watching a startup’s core engine grow?

  • The Importance of Customer Love

    After talking to several entrepreneurs at a conference today it became clear that there needs to be more focus on customer love as one the first foundations of a startup. Many people think that the process for startup success is a) raise money, b) sell a bunch of product, and c) sell the business. In reality, everything starts with 10 happy customers that absolutely love the product. Yes, once that’s in place employee happiness and the people side of the business is more important, but you have to have 10 customers that love it for that to even matter. Per customer love, one litmus test is to ask customers how upset they’d be if they could no longer use the product. Are they really upset or is it no big deal?

    Here are a few thoughts on customer love:

    • All products, especially business software, have a human element where people either love it, hate it, or are indifferent — the more love, the better
    • Customer love comes from product and people interactions — great sales, support, and customer success also help, or hurt things
    • Products don’t have to do everything imaginable for customers to love them — figure out what’s most important and make that great instead of a bunch things that are only good
    • Raise money after a group of 10 happy customers are already in place, and use the money to get to 100 — too many entrepreneurs try to raise money before the customer love foundation

    Customer love is at the core of every successful startup. Without that foundation, the chance of success is limited.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on the importance of customer love?