Archive for February, 2008
February 29th, 2008
Looks like we will be in good company. Whether you are considering leaving you day job for a startup, you are consulting while you develop a product, you are open for business and looking for early customers, looking for smarter customers, or you’ve found your niche and you are looking to scale up, drop by. We will also have a startup resource center that can help you if you need
- to get your startup incorporated and on a solid legal foundation
- to find a good name for your company (or your first product)
- to make sure your taxes are in order (you still have a few weeks)
- to find someone to help with your books
- to find your first office (or maybe just rent a conference room)
- to investigate whether filing a patent makes sense
- to get help drafting a business plan that demonstrates why your firm deserves investment
- to get assistance with a number of other challenges you face bootstrapping your software startup.
We are still focused on the “early customers early revenue” challenge, but we can recommend some good firms who can help you with some equally important concerns.
You can print this page out and bring it to get a free expo pass. Expo hours
- Tuesday, March 4, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
- Wednesday, March 5,
- 11:45 am – 2:00 pm
- Reopens, 3:00 pm - 6:30 pm
- Thursday, March 6,
- 11:45 am – 2:00 pm
- Reopens, 3:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Join us at SDWest 2008 March 3-7, the conference offers with both business and technology tracks and has an interesting mix of sessions for software entrepreneurs. In addition to the technology oriented sessions you would expect, the conference has added a “Business of Software” track that should prove valuable to folks in–or planning to be in–a software startup. As a part of the business track, Steve Blank is speaking on Starting and Running an Entrepreneurial Company: Customer Development and he is always worth listening to.
February 28th, 2008
Rob Hof notes–hat tip to Ross Mayfield–tonight in “Jotspot Returns as Google Sites: Wiki Style Collaboration” (emphasis added):
Ever since Google bought the wiki-based online application startup Jotspot in late 2006, people have been wondering if it had disappeared forever inside the bowels of the search giant. Tonight, Google’s launching Google Sites, using Jotspot’s technology to create a free group collaboration service that will be part of its online software suite Google Apps.
Like many things that come in one end and go out the other, it seems to bear little resemblance to it’s former self. TechCrunch observes in “It Took 16 Months, But Google Relaunches Jotspot” (emphasis added)
Google Sites looks absolutely nothing like Jotspot, other than the fact that both are hosted wikis. All of the structured data templates launched by Jotspot in July 2006 have been stripped out. Users now have a choice between just four basic templates - a standard wiki, a dashboard where google gadgets can be embedded, a blog-like template for announcements, a file cabinet for file uploads, and a page for lists of items. Instead of creating structured templates, users will now simply embed spreadsheets, presentations and word documents from Google Docs, as well as Google Calendars, YouTube Videos and Picasa Albums.
I had blogged about the Jotspot acquisition in “Jotspot Dissolves into Google Business Model” and later speculated that the “Dodgeball Duo Departure a Harbinger for Jotspot Wunderkinder” (although the earnout period still probably has eight months to run so this may still prove accurate). If Joe Kraus’ picture and his son’s lego creations weren’t splashed across one of the demo sites, it would require a vivid imagination to associate this new offering in any way with Jotspot.
The acquisition–and Google’s putting any further sites on stun and current sites into limbo–triggered our search for a new wiki/workspace provider. We’ve been pleased with our selection of CentralDesktop and have built more than 100 private workspaces for use with customers since we converted. We’ve blogged about them in several different contexts and have them listed as a partner because they have become an intrinsic platform for our business. We probably don’t say enough good things about them.
Other coverage:
February 27th, 2008
Peter Cohan makes the following points in his Great Demo! Seminar
- C level execs think in terms of dollars (budget)
- Managers think in terms of people and full time equivalents (FTE).
- Individual contributors think in terms of time spent vs. time saved
So it pays to express the benefits of your application accordingly. There may be a few more dimensions we sometimes consider:
- Scrap and re-work: process oriented folks can focus on this, quality assurance as well if they aren’t considering just errors.
- Cycle time can also appeal to folks who understand how a more agile organization can win business and more rapidly respond to customers, events, and competitors.
- An existing cost stream. Especially in an uncertain economy, it’s always best to attack a cost stream that is real. Future revenues are a possibility, costs, especially recurring costs, are a tangible reality.
Note: we have another Great Demo! seminar coming up Saturday March 8 at the Moorpark Hotel in San Jose (near 280 and Saratoga Ave). If you’ve been before (or you want to stay for the afternoon) we are offering an advanced topics session from 1-5 PM at the same location.
February 26th, 2008
Don Reinertsen, co-author (with Preston Smith) of “Developing Products in Half the Time” and “Managing the Design Factory: The Product Developers Toolkit” has a great quote about managing product priorities on his home page this month:
Priorities: Last Refuge of the Innumerate
What is our highest product development priority, cycle time or unit manufacturing cost? To even ask this question, suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of product development economics. If cycle time takes priority over unit cost, then it follows that we would prefer the smallest improvement in cycle time to the largest improvement in unit cost. If unit cost takes priority, then we would prefer the smallest improvement in unit cost to the largest improvement in cycle time. Does this make any sense? Of course not. When we prioritize we give strict precedence to one objective over another. Such strict precedence leads to bad economic choices.
The value of cycle time and the value of unit cost must be expressed in the same unit of measure: life cycle profit impact. It is only with this quantification that we can make good economic decisions to trade one for the other. Setting priorities for individual measures of performance is simply avoiding the important job of understanding how performance influences economics.
I really like this because it encourages founders to develop a simple model for what profitable operation looks like.
Reinersten also coined the phrase “Fuzzy Front End” for the early part of the the design proces in “Blitzkrieg product development: Cut development time in half.” Electronic Business, January 15, 1985. He later proposed some methods for “Taking the Fuzziness Out of the Front End” (hat tip to Preston Smith and his Don Reinertsen page).
Some other variations on “X is the last refuge of Y”
- “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Samuel Johnson
- “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Isaac Asimov (said by Salvor Hardin in Foundation)
- “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” Oscar Wilde
- “Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the troublemaker.” Natalie Clifford Barney
February 25th, 2008
I re-rented the 2004 film Comedian–I had watched it a year or two ago and wanted to see it again–it chronicles Jerry Seinfeld’s return to stand up after the end of the Seinfeld television series.Seinfeld’s objective, like those of a serial entrepreneur, was to create a new act from scratch. We watch him start out and he is strangely fumbling and awkward. We see a lot of backstage/offstage conversations. I speak a lot, normally to smaller crowds than Seinfeld does, but it was interesting to see him get the same “pre-game jitters” I do in the few minutes before a presentation is slated to start. I guess that’s a sign that he is still taking risks to improve his act. If he didn’t care he wouldn’t be nervous.
The Comedian parallels Seinfeld’s efforts in developing a new act with those of a younger comedian, Orney Adams, who is obsessed with fame and success. Near the beginning of the film there is a very short hallway discussion between Seinfeld and Adams that is the best scene in the movie for me. What follow is a transcript:
Orney Adams (A): You get to a point where you ask yourself, how much longer can I take this?
Jerry Seinfeld (S): What, is time running out? Are you out of time?
A: I am getting older.
S: Please.
A: I am getting older. Listen, I’m 29 I feel like I have sacrificed so much of my life. The last three years.
S: You got something else you would rather have been doing?
A: Not necessarily.
S: You got other appointments, other places you gotta be?
A: Not necessarily.
S: No, not necessarily.
A: I see all of my friends, they’re making a lot of money, making a lot of money on Wall Street.
S: What?
A: I just see that my friends are moving up? And I’m worried that…
S: They’re moving up?
A: They’re moving up.
S: Are you out of your mind?
A: No, I’m am not out of my mind. I just uh..
S: This has nothing to do with your friends.
A: I’ve upset you. I’ve upset you.
S: No, No, this is a special thing. This has nothing to do with making it.
A: Did you ever stop to compare you life, OK I’m 29 my friends are all married, they’re all having kids, they all have houses.
S: Yechh!
A: They have some sense of normality about them.
S: Yechh!
A: What do you tell you parents. You know, how do you deal with that.
S: What do you tell your parents?
A: Yes, your parents.
S: I have to tell you a story.
Glenn Miller’s orchestra, they were doing a gig somewhere and they can’t land where they were supposed to land because it was snowing, so they have to land in this field and walk to the gig. So they are walking to where they are supposed to perform and its wet and slushy, and in the distance they see this little house, and there are lights on and there’s smoke coming out of the chimney. So they walk up an look in the window and they see a guy and his wife, she’s beautiful, and two kids and they are all sitting around this table. They’re smiling and laughing and eating. There’s a fire in the fireplace. These guys are standing outside in their suits and they’re wet and they’re shivering. They’re holding their instruments. They’re watching this incredible Normal Rockwell scene.
And one guy turns to the other and says “How do people live like that?”
That’s what it’s about.
It can be hard to tell if we are pursuing our dreams or they are pursuing us.
February 24th, 2008
I was invited to take part in the Mission College Business Department Advisory Committee for 2008 last Tuesday; it was a very interesting experience. There was a cross section of folks from education and business, both large and small. I was impressed by the diversity of perspectives and everyone’s commitment to assisting the college.
Community colleges in California have a complex mission, offering not only degree and certificate programs for high school graduates who may continue on to a four year college but also offering continuing education classes for mid-career and new career needs. The college offers a rich mix of instructional modes to meet the needs of its students: traditional classrooms, on-line, one day intensive workshops, and teleclasses.
I made two suggestions that I thought the department might consider.
- Survey some of the graduates who had been out for 3-5 years to see where they were and how well Mission College had prepared them for the next step in their careers, whether it was attending a four year college, getting their first real job, getting a promotion, or getting a new job.
- Consider extending the intern program to allow Mission College students to work as virtual interns for out of region companies who may have need of people who can work on the ground in Silicon Valley. In this age of increasingly global projects, on-line teams, virtual admins, it would seem that there might be a virtual intern model that would also work.
Although it only seems like a few years, it’s been a while since I was in a college classroom; it was an interesting experience to be on a campus that is at ground zero geographically in Silicon Valley.
If you have started your company or are in the planning stages, I would encourage you to take a look at the Mission College Business, Management, and Marketing courses. In particular, some of the one day courses might round out your understanding of key issues for your business:
We offer four hour workshops for entrepreneurs to analyze and plan their businesses in a structured fashion, network and compare notes with other entrepreneurs, and get exposed to concepts and methods for business development from a very practical “do it in the next 90 days” perspective. We provide each attendee with an on-line workspace to continue to refine and enhance the plans they draft. But it’s a very specialized instruction model compared to the different objectives that a community college has to satisfy.
February 22nd, 2008
Here are 10 common reasons to issue a press release.
- Announce a strategic partnership or alliance
- Issuing a statement on a hot issue
- New client acquisition
- Holding a seminar or workshop
- Availability of white paper or article
- Company revenue, sales, or profit
- Announce new member of board of directors or board of advisors
- invitation for a special offer
- Participation in local event or tradeshow
- Winning an award
Normally, I only do a top 3 list, but I thought there were a number of good reasons to issue a press release.
February 21st, 2008
In earlier interviews Frank Bailey and Ed Correia each recommended using a broker as the most effective approach to finding an office. So I called Arwen Funk, a commercial and residential broker, to get some background. Arwen pointed out some potential land mines in leasing contracts such as property tax protection, methods of pass-throughs, and options to grow or adjust their office space. The Q&A that follows is an edited transcript of our call.
Q: Why do firms hire a commercial real estate broker?
There are a number of pitfalls in the leasing process; renting an office is not a cut-and-dry process. There is a lot of paperwork, sometimes with land mines you can run into from a leasing perspective. It can really help to someone who understands the process and helps you to prepare, explaining issues as you go and often alerting you to the implications of a situation. You should keep in mind, more often than not, it’s the landlord who pays the commission: so finding yourself a representative is normally effectively free. But even when you pay the commission, the up-front expense is normally worth it relative to how much an experienced broker can save you in unexpected costs. When you do it yourself, the three areas you can often get caught on are: property tax protection, reimbursements of operating expenses, and planning for their future.
Q: How are property taxes a risk area?
In the state of California, any property–commercial or residential–is assessed property taxes by its county government. When Proposition 13 passed in 1978, it limited California property taxes to no more than 1% of the assessed value at the time it was purchased, with increases no more than 2% annually. The assessed value is not necessarily the purchase price: people sometimes overpay or underpay, so each county has the authority to reassess for tax purposes if it believes that market value was not paid. In addition to the base property tax of 1% of assessed value, there are usually several bonds and assessments that are also on a property tax bill. These additional fees fund school districts, street work, sewer systems and other local public items. They all add a little bit to your property taxes, but it’s very rare for someone’s total property tax to be more than about 1.25%, normally it’s around 1.15%. As long as the same owner owns the property, the property tax can only go up by a maximum of 2% every year.
If you are a tenant in a building that is sold to a new landlord, however; property taxes get adjusted to a new baseline and this higher cost is passed through to all tenants in the form of expense reimbursements. Assume your landlord bought the property twenty years ago and has only had a 2% increase ever year since. The property taxes are low but the property’s value may have quadrupled in that time. When you started to rent, your property tax expense reimbursement was quite small. It’s a proportional share of the landlord’s total tax bill based on how much of the total property you actually occupy. When the property sells for four times what the original landlord paid for it, this resets the assessed value and the new owner’s property taxes, and therefore your proportional share, will increase significantly.
A broker can help negotiate “Prop 13 protection” for you as a tenant. This protection allows you to set your property tax amount so that you only have to reimburse the landlord at a certain base level, usually the price when you first leased the space. This way no matter how many times the property is sold or how much people paid for it, you will never pay more than the negotiated baseline, plus the 2% increase every year, for the term of your original lease. If the property is sold, the new owner absorbs the expense of those new property taxes. Thus, new tenants that sign after the property sells will probably pay more in property taxes whereas you will be locked in at the contract rate.
Q: Can you explain about reimbursement of operating expenses?
Normally when you need an office you will look at a variety of different spaces on the market that might fit your size requirements. These spaces will be offered for varying lease rates and the rates quoted will either have a letter “G” after the amount, or they will have an “N” or sometimes three N’s. The “G” is for gross and the “N” is for net. Three N’s stands for triple net, but it’s really a net lease, just a finer distinction. In a gross lease, the rate quoted is the gross amount, which means it is the base rent plus the reimbursements (also known as pass-throughs) for all the expenses the tenants owe to the landlord such as electricity, water, property taxes, insurance, common area maintenance, and more. You will not get other bills for other things from your landlord under a gross lease. A net lease, conversely, has these expense items invoiced separately. The rate quoted in a net lease will be the base rent amount only then the tenants will receive a separate bill for all of the expense reimbursements. A broker can help you understand what you are agreeing to as a tenant and get the best deal possible.
Another aspect of expense reimbursement is understanding the pro rata calculation (the portion the tenant leases in relation to the total building space). For example, assume your office is in a 5,000 square foot building, and you’re a tenant using 1,000 square feet. Therefore you use 20% of the pro rata square footage of the building. Subsequently, you will probably be asked to reimburse the landlord for 20% of the electrical that’s used for common areas. Depending on how a property is setup, the tenant might contract with PG&E directly. The important thing to remember is that nothing is free.
Q: What should I look out for in terms of planning for the future?
If you’re in a startup with three people you may only need a small space, say 500 square feet. It is wise to build in some kind of growth pattern for at least the next lease term. For example, you lease a space for $1.00 per square foot, and you lease it for two years. Right next door to you is suite that would be a perfect configuration if you needed to grow and add one or two people – you could simply knock out a wall and add it to your suite. When you negotiate your lease, request if that space next door becomes available during your current lease term, you want to lease it for the same rate that you pay on our current space. More so, you could negotiate for an option to extend the lease on both spaces when those two years come up.
Other ways to protect your costs for future could be to negotiate lease extensions with fixed lease rates (rather than risking paying the higher market rate when the time comes). Or to negotiate for the Right of First Refusal to Lease on other spaces that come available in the same building. Some tenants who plan for big success even negotiate options to purchase a property if the landlord ever wants to sell. Obviously, these options are all key to the future success of small businesses to allow them to plan appropriately for growth.
Q: So a tenant can negotiate to keep future costs down over certain period of time?
Absolutely! As in any industry, a layperson doesn’t know all of the possibilities – that’s why whole industries of “experts” are born! In real estate, a non-real estate person doesn’t often know to ask for protections in the form of future options. If you own and operate a startup, you’re probably more concerned about operating your business than spending time learning real estate 101. Your worries more likely include funding, market timing, delivery, fulfillment, employees, customers, etc. You assume the business will take off, need ramping up, and ultimately be successful. Well, what do you do if you have signed a five-year lease, but you’ve only got a thousand sq ft, and suddenly you are busting at the seams? Now you need more space, but rents have gone up so much that now you are competing with every other tenant in the world who comes up for that space just next door to you in your multi-tenant building. You are stuck and with leasing rates rising (theoretically) you won’t be able to grow without a large increase in your overhead which may stunt your growth. Now is when you’ll wish you’d had a broker who had negotiated some options for you to grow, move, etc. There are a lot of ways to anticipate and negotiate for future needs, the important thing to remember is that almost anything that you can imagine doing in leasing has been done at some point and a skilled representative will help you be prepared.
A good agent will know how to write options for extensions, refusals, expansions, and Prop 13 protection in your original lease.
Q: Founders are often starved for time, how much time would you normally would save a first time tenant?
Hiring a commercial real estate broker will save a newcomer dozens of hours–and headaches–depending on the situation. But I believe that the hours are not the main savings. Hiring an expert in any field is not just about the actual hours that are required to do the job, it’s also the years of experience that allow an expert to do it properly!
When hiring an expert it can be hard to understand what to ask for and what to expect. One way to mitigate the risk is to meet with the person and make sure they have a very clear understanding of what you need. A good broker will go out and do most of the leg work for you. All you need to do is look at a couple of spaces that your broker will have selected for you based on your needs and see which one you think is going to work best. Then listen to your representative’s assessments. They should be able to assess the type of owner of a particular building; is the landlord someone you could work with? Your agent can speak with other tenants on your behalf for feedback or aid you in those interviews. How are they in the negotiations; are they cutthroat or are they pretty easy to work with? Most properties have different people negotiate the leases and manage the property.
February 20th, 2008
I recently I enjoyed a conversation with John Nash, co founder of the Color Vision Store. I met John at our Great Demos! workshop in October ‘07. While doing our due diligence on the workshop registrants, I came across John’s website. Although I am not color blind, I was drawn by his niche market objective. A Google search on “color blindness” will retrieve less than 200,000 hits. Seems like an opportunity waiting to unfold.
Q: Are you color blind? Is that what led you to develop the site?
Yes, I am colorblind. I developed the site with my brother Keith–who is also color blind–over a decade ago as a channel to sell an educational guide that he developed, called the Color Vision Guide. Our goal then was to provide easy to comprehend information on color blindness and create awareness about related issues.
My brother was also a bit of a color blind activist. He took a swipe at the City of Palo Alto when they debuted their color-coded downtown parking zone scheme using purple, blue, lime and coral. My brother said “You know what that does. Makes color blindness a crime.” He got Herb Caen, the San Francisco Chronicle’s famous columnist, to print that.
When the website first launched we just took orders by mail: for the first couple of years there was not a shopping cart built into the website. But once we figured out how to take credit cards and add cart features, the site started carrying clinical color vision tests and other screening instruments. Slowly but surely the tenor of the site was less about education and more about providing tools to the commercial sector designed to screen color blind people from jobs. I’ll be the first to admit I may not want a color blind person reading the color-coded strips on dialysis machine, but over time I think we drifted from our mission of awareness and community for those with color blindness. So after my brother decided to move on to do other things and my mother, who was taking our orders to the post office, became too elderly to keep up the day to day business, I opted to scale back and take us to our roots: return the Color Vision Guide to the forefront, license our original illustrations, and start a blog with a bent toward supporting those with color blindness, not excluding them.
Q: I’m not color blind, can you help me understand some of the challenges you face?
I have a red-green hereditary (genetic) photoreceptor disorder (color blindness of the red-green type), also known as deuteranopia or Daltonism. I fail the Ishihara tests every time I take them. The challenges I face with my impairment are, fortunately, not too severe. In my daily work, as a consultant in the social sector, I don’t have a great deal of issues that need to be resolved due to my color blindness. I work on the computer a great deal, and some interface designers make poor selections when it comes to color that are hard for me to distinguish. I cannot generally tell the difference between purple and blue, and many times I can’t distinguish green and tan even when they are right next to each other. They just look like two shades of green. I recently posted a couple of examples on my blog of instances where color choices made by Google and Apple do not impart information as intended by their designers for people who are color blind.
As a child I dreamt of being the pilot of Boeing 727 and was eventually told that people who are color blind can’t be pilots. However, there are many documented cases of color blind pilots now. The issue comes down to how the aspiring pilot is tested. Many pilots who are color blind fail the clinical printed tests, but pass the practical light test which is conducted while standing in an airfield and identifying lights shone from a control tower. So maybe it’s not too late for me–although I might aspire to pilot something else besides the 727 now.
Q: Your site offers some great resources to other links, informative articles, and products. Is your business model a combination of ads and e-commerce?
Yes–that’s a fair assessment. The color blindness business, such as there is one, tends to be a bit seasonal. We see a big uptake in orders for the Color Vision Guide around the time that schools are sponsoring their annual science fairs. Color blindness is a great science project topic for school children. In between the market swings on our Guide sales I would like it if people visited the blog, commented on the articles and, yes, clicked on few ads.
Q: We highly recommend that people introduce their offering into a niche, it seems like you found one. What are some of the challenges you face in promoting your website?
One challenge lies in trying to determine who our readership is. Since I’m trying to wear the white hat and appeal to those with color blindness and others who would like to know more about it, it’s not crystal clear to me how big that audience is. On the other hand, statistically one in eight of your male acquaintances is color blind in some fashion. In pure numbers, about 10.5 million men have the problem I have: cannot distinguish red from green, or cannot see red and green differently. So they’re out there. I just have to find out what they want to know or hear.
Q: What are some strategies or methods you have found useful?
I’ve been touching base with other bloggers in the color blind community. I’ve also been working with a talented writer who helps sift through the myriad of Google alerts I get on everything related to “color” and “colour” blindness.
Q: Are there any practical tools for website and interface designers? Which ones do you recommend?
There are several good tools out that help programmers with normal vision create interfaces that are truly accessible to all. I have listed quite a few on my blog, but two come to mind. I have a post about a tool by Cal Henderson as well as well as a tool called a color decoder for color blind users who want to identify the color they are looking at.
February 19th, 2008
I was able to sit down with Raphe Patmore, CEO Buzka, recently and talk about his experience of participating in the ANZA Gateway Program. Buzka was one of about a dozen companies that were selected to enter the program in Fall ‘07. Raphe was also a co-winner for the Guy Manson Hottest Technology Award for innovative Australian and New Zealand companies.
Buzka is an Australian based company that offers web-based software products that allow you to share your favorite web stuff. You can save and organize all your favorite web pages by creating Spots on any interest or topic. Each Spot is a collection of pages that can be shared with family, friends, colleagues and anyone on the web. Below is the Q&A from our conversation.
Q: What were your three biggest concerns about entering the US market?
- How to ensure that we really understood the market.
- How to understand the demand for our product.
- How to access the US market: e.g. people and resources required.
We were also concerned about operational issues such as legal requirements and migration fees.
Q: What were the three biggest surprises from your visit to Silicon Valley?
Well, this was my first time here. I suppose there were too many surprises to list. My overall perspective is that this is turning into a much more intensive operation than I anticipated. The week I spent with my mentor was enlightening and stimulating. I came away with the feeling that we had to think bigger: if we raise the capital necessary to enter this market we will have our work cut out for us.
Q: It sounds like the program gave you a sense of larger possibilities?
Yes. Coming from Perth, there is a tendency for us to understate our ambitions. We did feel we were reaching our limits in in that market, and we had been playing it conservatively, we certainly were not overambitious. After meeting the experts with the ANZA program, I came away thinking that we can be considerably more ambitious.
Q: How specifically has ANZA helped you with this transition?
The Gateway conference the panel discussions focused on specific areas such as legal issues and venture capital. Through these panel sessions, I have made contacts with experts and very experienced people. They have helped me formulate my market entry strategy. They have helped me position the business better for investment and introduce me to prospective customers. Additionally, it’s given me more confidence that what we are trying to do has some validity in this market. The interest from so many people has given our team the confidence to really push to be in this market. ANZA is currently helping us prepare for the DEMO conference. We have a full team attending; the Production Manager, the Vice President of Technology, who is the co-founder, and the Senior Programmer.
Q: What have you liked about the ANZA program?
I think for most entrepreneurs, the most attractive part of the program was giving VC style five minute pitches in front Silicon Valley VC’s and media. Of course, there was some mentoring to help you through this process. I believe that ANZA exceeded their promises: we are very pleased with the outcomes. We didn’t anticipate a term sheet from investors because we thought we were still too early stage. What we learned was that it was perfect timing because we were in the early phases of building our stage two product. We received positive feedback regarding the value and prices. This good news gave us more credibility with our shareholders. Other results included further investments from the current shareholders, a market entry plan, and a product development roadmap. The program helped us to focus on our core product benefits. Working with experienced people has helped us refine our strategy. Our team is comprised of very talented and and creative programmers. However, they are not experienced marketing people, and real issue was could we turn this technology into a viable business?
Q: Is there anything ANZA could have done to improve your experience?
I think they could have better prepared us for the program. From speaking with the other attendees, no one anticipated how rigorous it was going to be. I think more feedback, not just from the mentors, would have been beneficial. I was hoping for more structured feedback from the VC’s regarding the presentation. I was also interested in what the mentors thought about the other companies. Some sort of debriefing later on a case by case basis in a peer group would have been interesting. There were several interesting companies in the program and I wanted to understand the differences in strategy, approaches, strengths and weaknesses for each.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about the Fast Track Program you are in now?
ANZA gave us a twelve page document on market entry strategy requirements. It has been both thought provoking and energizing for the team to fill out. Our temptation can be to over analyze and develop an 80 page business plan, but in the Valley, it seems you just need something that fits in your back pocket. A document like this at the outset of the Gateway program would have helped to sharpen our thinking before we came to the Valley.
Clearly, there were one or two companies who hadn’t done any real deep thinking about their product’s core benefits. I believe it was even more difficult for those who do not have business backgrounds. Some of the folks that came from engineering backgrounds appeared to struggle with the review material provided. They never really thought about looking at the business from other perspectives.
Q: Any tips for other entrepreneurs who might be thinking about working with ANZA?
If you are thinking of entering the US market, then it’s well worth joining the program. Also, if you are thinking about raising capital in the States, definitely join the program. You will quickly realize that it rapidly it expands your network of useful contacts. Folks who can help you frame your strategy, sell your product, and certainly improve your business. In terms of preparation, first decide if you want to enter the US market, because it will probably mean a lot of people moving to the US. Some people from Australia may think they are working hard now, but they will be surprised by the work culture once they get here. A big difference between here and Australia is the amount of networking.
Previous Posts