So What? Who Cares? Why You?

Kick Ass Ideas

My friend Eliot Burdett of Uptangent Venture Group, runs a great specialty shop he's set up to share his experience as a founder of several tech startups.  Just like me he's a disciple of transferring knowledge and skill to startups vs. simply consulting to fix the problems. 

As a teacher at heart, Eliot is always on the hunt for good books to share with founders and entrepreneurs.  He' is a book worm of the best kind.  He's sent me over a dozen books in the past few months and all of them have been great picks.

Here's Eliot's latest pick written by Chris Barez-Brown.

As inventors and entrepreneurs, we all can use a little "mental floss" (another phrase of Eliot's) now and again. 

If you want this book, click on it under "your book picks". 

Thanks E...keep 'em coming!

Smile and enjoy your journey!

Wendy
author/advisor/lady with the flipcharts!
So what? who cares? why you?
www.wendykennedy.com

The Best Things in Life are Simple

This week I hung out at MaRS doing a So What? Who Cares? Why You? workshop with scientists, entrepreneurs, and researchers from the medical field.  I'm always awe struck by MaRs -- what an incredible collaboration facility in the heart of Toronto - for those of you who have not yet been to MaRS, it's an important stop on your next journey looking at global hubs that are doing meaningful things to commercialize world class ideas.  Pretty neat people doing really WOWSA stuff in biomedicine, nanotechnology, and a whole lot of medical things that I know little about.

I spent the morning sharing my tools and frameworks to help scientists answer the questions investors ask.  Again and again, i'm reminded of the power that these simple tools can have on helping to shape and mold the business value around very complex science and technology ideas.  I always start these sessions by saying "this is not likely going to be rocket science for you" (which btw, might not be the best analogy to use with this audience :)!) but yet, afterwards, there's always a bunch of folks that hang around after inspired by the power of these simple straightforward approaches. 

I've always been a fan of Jim Collins and my perennial favourite quote is one of his "the essence of profound insight is simplicity" -- so that's my goal now -- to boil things down to a simple, yet powerful tool.  There's far too much complexity in technology and i think there's a big crowd of people that like it that way -- maybe they think it gives it a mystique - I think it just turns people off!

So I'm on a mission - and my latest one was to MaRS.  If a group of world-class medical researchers and scientists think simple tools can help them articulate their business value better, then i think there's promise in the rest of the science and tech community.

So I'm on a road trip like Rick and Shel only i'm backpacking it :)

Smile and enjoy your journey...

Wendy
So what? who cares? why you?
author/advisor/lady with the flipcharts!
www.wendykennedy.com

Here's Your Chance

Here's a treat that doesn't get offered all that often -- if you're working on something pretty cool, or just plain think you can hold your own with some pretty smart folks, try to book a ticket aboard the Rick Segal and Shel Israel "Tour de Tech" taking place August 11th - September 3rd.

If there's two people who'll give you an injection of entrepreneurial spirit and zest, it will be these guys.  I wish you luck - watch Rick's blog for the locations.

For Pete's Sake...Get Some Bloody Customers

Okay so at the risk of getting on my high horse again, I have to point to Rick Segal's posts over the weekend.  There's some great food for thought on some of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make:

1. The Eyeballs vs. Customers Trap -- So true.  I thought we had moved past this notion of eyeballs, but Rick's down at the Microsoft VC Summit talking with all kinds of startups, so obviously he's seeing this again.  His post on the need to focus on paying customers sounds elementary, but it's actually not.  When you start to focus on customers with money to spend vs. early adopters that love technology, everyone in your startup starts to gain clarity about what's important.  You get off the hamster wheel of building it because you can.  Choices get weighed against the value to the person out there who cares about what you do enough to part with their hard earned dollars.  That's the acid test.

2.  The Delicate Balance between Build vs. Buzz - Rick also posted about the dangers of the rubber chicken circuit and startups spending too much time building buzz.  I agree with this but with one caveat.  I always encourage inventors and entrepreneurs to get out and talk to the market.  But you've got to be careful not to make it your primary job -- you're not running for office, you're building a business.  It's the same danger that exists when founders become consumed with raising money, at the expense of building the business -- nothing whets a VC appetite like paying customers, strong partner relationships, and a product that's finished.  So enough said on that.

The point I wanted to focus on here is the need for going out to get the customer input and then going back to the shop to build the product. I see a lot of inventors and entrepreneurs that don't get out to seek input from their prospective target customers -- the old "we know what they want mentality" or "we're going to build the first version and then show it to customers".  So I find myself always encouraging and prodding these folks to hit the road sooner rather than later.

So I encourage a delicate balance - spend time with customers and if you can get a few folks to be advisors.  Stay focused on the real game -- the game of customers with money to spend and willingness to spend it on what you've got.  That says you've got something that's real.  And a future that's bright.

Enjoy your day!
Wendy
author/advisor/lady with the flipcharts!
www.wendykennedy.com

Company Building vs. Feature Building

I always like David Hornik's posts on VentureBlog.  I was listening to his podcast on Deal or No Deal again this weekend. 

I think there's some useful stuff in here for all early stage entrepreneurs - I urge you to download the podcast and have a listen (or two!). He makes some great points about how to create 'high value things' in your company vs. building the value that an acquirer cares about.

It's so true that the tough part is in the execution - the daily operational grind of how to acquire and then maximize the customer base, minimize support costs, expand the distribution, source the right suppliers, etc. etc.  It's the commitment to sweat the details that sets apart of true company builders in my experience -- when a team is relentless, good stuff happens. Of course you have to be focused on the right details, but that's Hornik's point about the high value company building levers vs. feature building.

He uses the analogy of the game show "Deal or No Deal", you know that one with the brief cases where you pick a case hopefully full of money, but I know some folks who would argue that it's more like "Family Feud" :-)

Enjoy your day wherever you are.

Wendy
author/advisor/lady with the flipcharts
So what? who cares? why you?
www.wendykennedy.com

What's Your "Out of Box Experience?"

I was meeting yesterday with the executive team of a $15M software company.  We were talking product "readiness".  How ready are we to play to play the game -- btw, they've been playing the game for 10+ years already, but we were having a Jim Collins type discussion of "confronting the brutal facts of our current reality".  I  like to have this discussion to uncover and discover the true whole product.  Very often we think we've got it, but when you take a critical eye to what you do -- by critical I mean how your customers look at you, it can become an eye opener.

When you can't traction, or you can't scale, you've got to have this discussion.  And you've GOT to park your ego at the door. And it can't be a like-minds love-in...it's got to be a mix of different folks with different stakes in the product, some of whom are touching customers.

Here's a few questions I like to ask:

1.  What would we have to offer that our customers couldn't say "NO" to?

2.  How easy is it for our customer to deploy?  Walk step by step, piece by piece through the customer "out of the box" experience.  This moment of truth is the all important rubber hits the road question.  We can find a lot of answers about our traction and scalability challenges in my opinion if we look under the hood at this all important tactical execution details. 

3.  How would our customers prefer to buy from us? (interesting enough, the answer here is often not the same as the way we are selling to them)

4.  What are the customer's "must-have" vs. "nice to have".  We often get the laundry list of features vs. the critical "win the business" product requirements. 

5.  Who does it better than we do?  why is that?  how can we be different?

If you think you might be in this situation with your own traction/scalability, try digging in with some of these questions to diagnose what's going on.

Enjoy your day!

Wendy
author/advisor/lady with the flipcharts!
So what? who cares? why you?
www.wendykennedy.com

The Dangerous Game of The Name

Seth Godin has a good post/case example of how NOT to name -- Nintendo's new game, Wii, as its called points to what's dangerous about the naming game.  For one thing, Seth mentions the results of a Google search that shows thousands of results for this "wee" little name. 

Many times I've counselled founders of startups to be careful with their naming.  We still see product names that are the brainchild of an acronym.  You know what I'm talking about -- take the first letter of each technical term and make it into a name.

5 Tips for Creating a Name:
1. Tell something about the product benefits,
2. Be easy to pronounce, spell, and remember,
3. Speak to the target audience (not what you like)
4. Be able to extend across future products (ie. so you can leverage the brand)
5. Be able to be legally protected.

My favourite example these days is iRobot's Roomba(tm).  You know that robot that vacuums your house while you sit outside sipping margueritas.  A great name for all the reasons above -- and they've also got a sister product out now for washing floors - Scooba(tm)!!

Clearly iRobot has spent time thinking through its naming -- not only for its products but for its company name too.  It's a wise investment that pays big dividends, but only when it's done right.

Enjoy your day wherever you are!

Wendy
author/advisor/lady with the flipcharts
So what? who cares? why you?(tm)