David Cummings on Startups

Blog

  • The Power of Silence

    I think one of the most underrated leadership tactics is silence. What I mean by that is the common approach to leading is to constantly offer up ideas, opinions, input, etc. Generally, I’m not recommending removing those practices, but rather to spend more time not talking. Just listening, and the power of silence by leaders, is very impactful.

    Have you ever had an employee come up and ask for advice? Of course you have. The next time that happens, just nod your head and wait, uncomfortably, for them to offer their suggestion and resolution. I bet the resolution will be a good one, and a second benefit is keeping the monkey off your back.

  • Cohort Analysis for SaaS

    One of the SaaS measurements tools that I don’t think is mentioned enough is that of running a cohort analysis (Wikipedia) on customer data. The idea behind a cohort analysis is to track a group of data over time as an independent unit. With SaaS, the major areas to do cohort analysis are for churn and up sells. A common example would be as follows:

    • Analyze customers as a group based on the month they sign (each customer signing month would a new row in the spreadsheet with the left most row being the name of the month and year)
    • Look at the renewal rate and annual recurring revenue for that group for each subsequent month (each month after signing would be a new column to the right of the signing month in the spreadsheet with the column names being the number of months as a customer)
    • Look for trends in over time (e.g. renewal rates significantly increase after the sixth month)

    For more information, please see Fred Wilson’s post on cohort analysis.

  • Shotput Ventures Office Hours

    In lieu of an open house like we did last year, we’re doing a Shotput Ventures Office Hours program at two popular coffee shops in town. The goal of the office hours is to make the Shotput partners available for potential applicants to ask questions and learn more about the 12 week program. Here are the office hours:

    March 4, 2010
    1pm – 3pm
    Octane Coffee Westside (near GA Tech)

    March 24, 2010
    10am – noon
    Octane Coffee Eastside (near Emory)

    Please stop by and introduce yourself.

  • Billboards for Web Hosting Companies

    Driving around Atlanta recently I’ve see several large billboards for web hosting companies — yes, web hosting companies. Do they know something I don’t know? Since when did old fashioned billboards on the side of the road generate a better return on investment (ROI) when compared to online advertising? Here’s my theory: web hosting is so competitive, and has such low barriers to entry and obvious need, that the traditional online lead generation routes don’t have an appreciable ROI. Web hosting companies that continue to do the online advertising do so to get greater economies of scale so that these new customers eventually will be profitable. And, that’s why they are trying out billboards.

    Oh, and here are the companies that are advertising:

  • Rajeev’s Rule

    Through a tweet I came across Brad O’Neill’s blog post on Rajeev’s Rule:

    “When any sincere individual or group of people asks for your assistance in the pursuit of their business dream, strive to help them in any way that you can, be it small or large.”

    Rajeev Motwani was a Stanford professor and angel investor that was one of the most respected advisors in Silicon Valley and was always looking to help others. While I haven’t achieved his level of respect, I do aspire to give back and help other entrepreneurs in pursuit of their business dream.

    Please shoot me an email or tweet if I can help.

  • Money Now or Later

    One of the challenges in a startup is deciding when to trade off short term revenues (money!) to focus on the long term plan. This might sound like a strange concept — why would I want to say no to money? Let’s look at a few examples where this can happen:

    • A key beta customer really wants to pay for consulting work, but you know, based on previous experience, that this will take too much energy away from the product
    • Traffic is growing nicely on your site, and the urge is to put up advertising, but you know it’ll detract from the user experience
    • Users are using your service for free, and several have offered to pay, but time is better spent improving the product and not implementing a payment system

    Of course, this can be a good problem to have. My recommendation is to think hard and be wary of making short term decisions that can hinder growth or don’t have economies of scale.

  • StartupLounge PitchCamp

    Today I had the opportunity to help at the monthly StartupLounge PitchCamp program facilitated by Michael Blake and I must say that it is a great program for entrepreneurs and I highly recommend it. The program is designed to give entrepreneurs a brief overview of elevator pitches, time to refine the pitch with a couple mentors, and finally a chance to practice it in front of everyone. Generally, the thinking is that as an entrepreneur we suffer from expert’s syndrome where we know so much about our business that we can’t concisely say what we do in a 30 second elevator ride, and thus having an objective third party goes a long ways in helping.

    Here are some of the guidelines from PitchCamp:

    • There’s no perfect elevator pitch but there are ways to make a good one
    • Answering questions such as who you are, what you do, what pain you solve, and what you want is a good formula
    • An analog analogy can be useful to make the business more memorable by attaching the idea to an existing concept people are familiar with
    • A hook, or opening comment like “I was frustrated trying to…” can also be memorable

    Some other tips include recording yourself and practicing it on anyone who will listen. A choice quote: an amateur practices until they get it right while a professional practices it until they can’t get it wrong.

  • Atlanta Startup Valuations

    I’ve read a number of executive summaries over the years and most will include a section on fundraising, including the amount of funding desired, and for a smaller percentage, the desired valuation. Naturally, the expected valuations are all over the place, and don’t usually designate whether it is the pre or post-money valuation. Unfortunately, the vast majority of desired valuations are much higher than the going rate, especially in Atlanta. There aren’t any hard and fast rules but here’s what I’ve seen over the past few years:

    • Angel deals for pre-revenue companies with a beta product are typically at a $500,000 post-money valuation (e.g. $100k would be invested and the angels would own 20%)
    • If the entrepreneur or team has been successful before building a multi-million dollar company, expect a $1.5 – $2 million pre-money valuation
    • Revenue generating startups should take their trailing twelve months revenue and multiple it by a comparable public market multiple (the going rate for a similar publicly traded company), less a discount of 25% – 50% for being private (no liquidity or market for shares)

    I recommend that startups use this as a guide when thinking about valuations and raising money.

  • The Fast Follower Approach

    One of the concepts I don’t hear entrepreneurs talk about enough is the fast follower approach. The general idea behind the fast follower approach is to build a product in a semi-established, fast growing market. All too often entrepreneurs feel their idea must be completely unique for it to be a good one. Some characteristics of the fast follower approach include:

    • Companies doing well in the market but no clear leaders
    • Market large enough to support multiple winners
    • Incumbents that are tied to a legacy platform and can no longer keep up with the modern web app expectations
    • Method to improve an aspect of the market resulting in an x-factor (7-10x improvement)

    I’m a fan of the fast follower approach and believe entrepreneurs should look for markets and opportunities that meet the characteristics listed above.

  • Atlanta’s Online Marketing Software Cluster

    One of the themes we’ve heard over the past few years in the Atlanta technology community is that we should focus on our existing clusters like Internet security and logistics as we have a wealth of existing expertise and investors ready to go. Well, I’d like to start creating more dialogue around our online marketing software cluster. Didn’t know we already had a cluster? Take a look at these existing Atlanta companies that do over $100 million in combined annual revenue:

    The next time someone mentions clusters in Atlanta, I’d bring up the largest cluster that no one talks about: online marketing software. In fact, I’d bet it is one of our faster growing clusters as well.