Sundown from the NERD Center… at Microsoft New England Research & Development Center – View on Path.

The past few months have been an experience to say the least.  I landed back here in Boston with a lot of uncertainty.  I did not have a real job lined up, nor did I have a network that I could lean on to help connect me within the community.  To be honest, just about the only thing that I was sure of, was that I was home, and that I was happier for it.

Knowing all of that, I did the only thing that I could think of; I started networking my ass off.  Looking back at my calendar, I have had at least 27 coffee meetings since the 2^nd week of January.  I met with VC’s.  I met with entrepreneurs.  I attended over a dozen community events all over town and met as many people as I could.  I spent more time on LinkedIn than I could have ever fathomed was possible.  To those who made introductions on my behalf, I can’t thank you enough.  All of it helped me to understand not only what I wanted to do, but also what I needed to do in order to achieve my goals for the long term.

So, what’s next?  Well, I’m excited to announce that I am joining the team at Intrepid Pursuits.  For those not familiar, Intrepid is a mobile development shop located in Cambridge just outside Kendall Square.  But calling it just a mobile dev shop doesn’t do it justice because I have learned that it is so much more.

Intrepid will give me the chance to take all of the skills that I have learned, from the Raytheon days of old to my years leading the charge at 10x, and use them to help build phenomenal products for our clients.  They have great leaders shaping the culture, and are even providing opportunities for others like them through the creation of Intrepid Labs, their in-house co-working space for venture-backed mobile and gaming companies.

I couldn’t be more excited to get started.  To all of you who helped me through the process of finding this opportunity, I thank you for it.  And I owe you one.

Some thoughts on Startup Weekend Mexico City, accelerators, and solving real problems…

Like many of you, I see the occasional buzz on social media when someone within the startup community blogs about the value of having an MBA and working in a startup.  Reflecting on that, I have tried to wrap my head around the value that it has brought and focus on the positives.  Below, I’m going to describe just one benefit that has recently come to light for me.

A Disclaimer:

I’ll start with my own personal disclaimer.  A lot of MBA’s receive criticism that is both warranted and necessary by the startup community.  Simply because we have received a graduate degree, it does not warrant an attitude that we are smarter, or deserve both title and salary above anyone else.  It doesn’t make us better founders or more likely to succeed.  If you are scoffing at these types, you’ve got my support in doing so.

There is also no replacement for experience.  While 2 years of endless case study review is a great way to understand the pitfalls, it does not replace being in the real world and getting your hands dirty.  In my mind, the same can be said for MBA’s with no real world experience prior to pursuing their graduate degree.  Experience wins for me almost every time when I’m in the hiring position.

I realize that some of my peers have a bullish sort of attitude.  Simply put, they shouldn’t.

We Have Soft Skills:

So where do I see the value in my MBA?  To me, the value that I have found is probably the last place that I ever thought it would be: HR and people management.  I’m not convinced that founding a company with a fellow MBA increases your chances of success in the slightest. I think experience to the contrary is the only way that my mind could be reversed.  In fact, I think that there are a lot of reasons it might hurt you (see disclaimer section above).  In the earliest stages, vision, talent, and ignorance to me are much more important than any degree.

That being said, most investors will likely tell you that effectively scaling is a place where even the best companies and ideas can fall apart.  And not only scaling the product and the business; but also in the hiring/firing that inevitably comes with success.  If you ask me, this is the spot where I see our fancy degrees really adding value to a company.  Passionate founders eventually have to start answering questions about benefits and payroll, interviewing candidates, and trying to discern real talent.  Managing the dynamics of a team consisting of you and your two co-founders isn’t too tough for anyone.  But when two becomes twenty, it’s an entirely different ballgame.  And while the class titles sound horribly boring and corporate, if you’ve never been exposed to the concepts that MBA’s learn in Leadership & Organization Behavior, or Strategic Management of Human Assets, you risk flying blind in the storm.

(Granted, in all likelihood I will owe Tony Rucci and Jeff Ford apologies for the ways that I will fail to remember everything they taught me.  But the bigger point is simply that MBA’s have been exposed to some ideas of how things could be done in an informed and meaningful way.)

This isn’t my way of saying you should get an MBA to be your CEO once you’ve gained some traction and have started expanding.  What I am saying, though, is that having one on your team and seeking their help through that process is a really great idea.  What may have seemed incredibly painful and useless to them in grad school has the potential to be extremely valuable to your company.

In the corporate world, companies find strength in diversity.  Why should your startup be any different?

Thanks to @shubs for the input on this piece.

Let me start by simply stating that it’s great to be home.  Having my family back in my life and having my best friends back in my life has greatly overshadowed the discomfort of sleeping on air mattresses and couches that I have endured.  Simply stated, I’m happy to be back.

Having been here about 2 weeks now, I’ve had the great fortune to be working out of the Techstars Boston / Dogpatch Labs offices in Kendall Square.  For an entrepreneur, this place is like tech heaven.  There is a constant buzz of conversation and cool stuff going on all day.  Break out rooms see a constant cycle of companies shuffling in and out and white boards are basically black with residue with the constant use.  It’s awesome.  It’s inspiring.  It’s energizing.  I feel like everybody I meet in the office is doing something larger than life.  It’s exactly what I had hoped it would be.  Boston, I’m home.

Taking the T to the office each day (that’s the subway for those who don’t know) is an experience in itself.  The walls of the trains on the Red Line, which runs through Cambridge, are painted with night school and web-tech school advertisements.  Those not wearing some sort of plaid or jeans have become the minority in this community.

Tucked into the back corner of the floor is a 15’ x 15’ square of tables that the Boston Startup School team calls home.  Not your typical group, they are a mix of twenty-something’s and thirty-something’s, who pound keyboards and hit the phones from dusk ‘til dawn.  And what they’ve built is nothing short of incredible.

Their story is simple:  For startups in Boston, finding good talent can be tough.  And finding good talent who are capable of hitting the ground running within a startup can be damn near impossible, especially when you’ve never hired someone before.  So they take care of recruiting talent from around the world for them, and even teach those people the skills they need to be successful in the discipline they want to work in.  Simple.  Effective.

That being said, not every student dreams of joining a company.  So for aspiring founders, they get the chance to build a network with access to some of Boston’s best and brightest, as well as the city’s hottest and fastest growing companies.  And they get to do all of that while developing their skills over the course of the 8 week program.  All of this leaves me with only one big question; where was BSS when I needed it 3 years ago?

I’ve spent the past few days meeting and talking with some of the alumni from the program and have been blown away by what the school has done for them.  The experience has been life changing.  For some, it’s a second chance; a rebirth of their career.  For others, it’s a network of friends and peers.  Each person’s experience has been unique and it’s been a blast to watch and listen as they’ve shared their story with me.

Alums parade through the office every day, hi-fiving the team as they celebrate their latest jobs offers and update them on their progress.  Companies pop in and out, asking for recommendations and trying to find out who hasn’t accepted a job yet that might still be available.

At a time when job markets and unemployment seem to be a constant theme in the news, it’s a funny change of pace to see it happening around me.  More though, it’s just flat out cool seeing how one simple idea and one program has changed so many lives in a such a short period of time.

Boston, I’m happy to be home. 

It’s with somewhat of a heavy heart that I am putting this post together.  After spending just over two years here in Columbus, I am moving on to pursue new opportunities back home in Boston.

I am writing today, though, because spending the last few years in Cbus (with those who are likely to read this) has changed my life forever; and I want to take the time to thank you for that.  Without you, and without Ohio, I would not have experienced everything that I have over the past 26 months.  Just consider a few examples:  I’ve been on Sand Hill Road and sat in the boardrooms at Sequoia and KCP.  I flew to Boulder and back in one day to witness 10 companies pitch their businesses.  More importantly, I had the privilege to mentor and advise 27 companies here in Columbus through my role within 10x.  I got to invest in two of those very companies and even got to serve proudly as the CEO for one of them.  Further, at 28 years old I had the opportunity to invest with unbelievable autonomy and trust on behalf of a local company.  I have made lifelong friends.  I have jumped in Mirror Lake (and was sick for a month afterwards).  I bleed scarlet and gray on Saturdays.

I did all of this…because all of you…took a chance on me.

As I go, I want to stress to all of you working hard to make our tech community strong to keep pressing forward.  There are so many great things that people like Ben Blanquera, the people at WUSU, the SWCbus crew, and others are doing to get our community together.  I ask you to keep celebrating successes as a group.  Keep finding ways to get yourselves in the same room.  I’ve always been a big believer that entrepreneurs should be driving the community-building activities.  So for you entrepreneurs and community leaders: please keep finding new ways and be relentless at seeing them through.  I’ve watched you drive the community forward, and what you are doing is awesome.  So please keep it going.

I’ve always said that the best thing about 10x is the power that it has to bring everyone in the community together.  For me, and from the very first launch day, it was the fact that everyone was in one room with one collective goal that made it great.  It was cool.  It was powerful.  And getting the opportunity to grow and help those 27 companies meant everything to me and has undoubtedly changed me for the better.

To my two greatest mentors, Doug and Dr. Camp, I am forever grateful for your time, your advice, and most for your friendship.  I look forward to the years to come, your continued guidance, and the rounds of golf we’ll undoubtedly play.

Nikki, Nancy, Ben, & Mark, thank you for the help, being my sounding board, and for taking a chance on a loud-mouthed, short kid from Boston.

To my friends and to the 10x alums, I hope that you do not see my departure as something that is negative.  Returning to Boston was always my plan, and this will not be the last that you see of me.  Know that you’ve got a fan that will be sharing the great things you do with the Boston community; and that you’ve always got a place to crash when you’re in town.  I will miss you all and look forward to the day when our paths cross again.

Thank you for everything Ohio.

O – H…

-Mike

A little pre-kickoff treat as the season of wisdom continues…

Wisdom never sleeps… the fun continues through the weekend… Lesson #4

Day 3 of the holiday wisdom share… 

More words of wisdom during this holiday season…

Some thoughts of brilliance this Christmas…

I attended the Global Accelerator Network Conference over the past few days in Boston. Just like last year in Vegas, the speakers had some great insights and great suggestions that I think all companies could benefit from had they been in attendance.  So, in trying to impart and share some knowledge, I want to share some stories and suggest that maybe you try a few things as you move forward with your own company.

1.  This was an idea from the Marketing Manager of GNIP Elaine Ellis:  She suggested that once a week, marketing managers, or CEO’s (depending on the size of your company) could solicit the best article that each of the co-founders, employees, etc. has read and tweet it out from your company’s account.  The simple idea here is that we all read shit.  Most all of it is relevant to what each of our startups (and our followers) is working on.  And what’s sad is that none of us tweet half of it out, while at the same time our company twitter accounts are starved for content. With the company account inactive it means that we are missing opportunities to engage with our customers and expand our reach.  Twitter is a cheap and simple way for your customers to associate and think about your brand every day.   Do the simple math: if you have 5 people at the company that’s an easy 5 posts a week.  We will undoubtedly be trying this.

2. If you’re a CEO (and maybe over time a C-Level anything for that matter) this one is mostly for you.  Seth Godin made a great insight on the first day.  He said: “Investors didn’t hire you to do the work, they hired you to build the organization.”  I thought it was a really powerful statement.  I realize how small most everyone’s company is (or at least how small we all think it is), but your job as CEO, is to focus less over time on doing the daily tasks, and more time understanding and managing the business.  Identify the gaps, and understand when talent needs to be added.  We need to be making sure that we are constantly building a company, and engraining in some culture never hurts either.  The big aha here (for me anyway) is that every day you spend selling, coding, designing, etc. is a day where a sustainable business isn’t being created.  And you need to think about that every time you find yourself about to do a task that someone else in the company is capable of, or should be doing.

3. Keying in on culture.  Especially in my own company, I want to start to finding more cheap and easy shit to get my team back into having a lifestyle.  It sounds counter-intuitive to say that I want them to work less, but working 24/7, without ever taking a break, is going to drive us all nuts.  I can be honest, and reflect that my own dev team seems to work non-stop.  Their work ethic is impeccable.  And while I don’t know what many people do for teambuilding or for fun as a group, after taking a few moments to reflect last night I’m convinced that my team isn’t doing enough.  And that falls on me for allowing it to happen.  Those that spoke on balance gave me the idea of starting a tradition.  Could be movie night, could be video games, whatever is a fit for the team…who knows what we’ll do.  But start driving some fun if you’re not already and do it on a recurring basis.  No investor will argue with you for budgeting in some team fun.

4.  Company gear - Realizing full well that we’re all strapped for cash… I think it’s smart to invest a small amount into team shit.  Nothing over the top, but a few t-shirts apiece, and maybe something stupid like a hoodie or two is what I have in mind for our team.  It never really resonated with me, the importance of having team gear until this week.  I always kinda thought it was just cool to rep the company and wear a t-shirt, but there was a speaker at the conference who emphasized that it’s bigger.  It’s about company pride.  Friends, family, founders, all repping and celebrating the brand.  Again, this requires a few hundred bucks probably, but I think the emotional gains way outweigh the cost.  Find a spot in the budget for it if you can… I know I’ll be trying to find one, and would gladly sacrifice a night at the bar if it has to come out of pocket.

5.  Dumb, inexpensive, and borderline outrageous marketing.  Saul Colt.  There’s not a great way to describe the guy.  But his presentation was brilliant.  He’s all about word-of-mouth marketing and how to do it by being right on the line of crazy.  Strategies and concepts around how to reach your customer and spend literally $0 doing it.  Free marketing… imagine that.  But what I took away even more, was that it’s about creating a marketing strategy that your customers will identify with.  My team and I spend a lot of time trying to look professional to investors and corporate companies (which is smart and necessary at the majority of these meetings).  But a big part of me thinks we should say fuck it when it comes to our public facing image and spend more time focusing on speaking to the people that use our service. I like big brands and the potential revenue streams that they offer, but they don’t really use our service in the end.  Risky, yes. A little crazy, yes.  But when you see a 250lb guy like Saul up on stage, showing pictures of himself in plaid pants, muttonchops and all… talking about getting 60% conversion rates because he gave out bananas rather than pens at a tradeshow, you start to reconsider the way you’re reaching out to your customer.  Check out some of his stuff.  There’s a place for a little bit of Saul in all of our companies.  http://saul.is/speaking/   

A great two days in Boston.  Thanks to Pat Riley & The GAN.

For the second part of this, I’d like to focus a bit more on the content, as opposed to the look and feel of it as I described in my earlier post.  So let’s start with market size and addressable market and we’ll go from there…

1.    Market Size

So you’re in an accelerator; which means that the likely expectation is that you’ve got a highly scalable idea and business model in a billion dollar market.  Great.  But so do the 60 teams that just came out of Y-Combinator and every other accelerator around the country pitching IT startups.  So how can you separate yourself from all the others?  Show some focus.

Please don’t do this.

As I said above, it is assumed that you’re in a market that is >$1B.  That’s just table stakes.  So rather than stand up on stage and claim that if you can capture just 1% of the market that you’re a $10M revenue company… show some focus.  Present your addressable market.  If you’re a B2C play and starting your business in a region like Central Ohio, show us how big that market is.  If you’re a B2B play and your target customer is mid-size retail businesses, show us what those numbers look like.  The point is pretty simple.  Stand out from everyone else by showing the audience that you’ve identified not only a target customer, but also an addressable market where that individual/company and others like it exist.  You’ll be better off for it.  People might even think you know what you’re talking about (cause you will).

2.    Competition

I’ll continue the recurring theme of raining on your parade by breaking more bad news to you; it’s very tough to be truly disruptive (if you really are, let someone else label you that before you claim it by the way).  There’s probably someone else out there working on something similar to what you’re doing.  But there is hope.  This is the section of the presentation where you get to tell us why they all suck and you’re going to win.

Like anything else, there are ways that you can do that, and ways that you can do more damage than good.  Effective ‘Competition’ slides for me are ones that display choices.  The people that swing and miss on these are the type of companies that give the signal that they are everything to everyone.  They check every box in the chart to show that they do everything that the competition does, but have added the one magical feature that is going to tilt the scales. 

This doesn’t help either.

Maybe it’s just a personal opinion, but I think that approach does more damage than good.  As an investor, I like to understand and to see your choices.  I think that it is great when a company doesn’t check a box because they feel that a competitior’s feature doesn’t add value and instead they’re placing focus on something else.  The big takeaway here is that as a small startup, you can’t be everything to everyone.  And maybe it’s just me, but I tend to be drawn to companies who realize that they can’t be, and have taken the time to understand and place emphasis only on the things that will help differentiate them and make them successful.

(One cool other suggestion: if you find yourself in a space where exits are coming fast and often… it doesn’t hurt to show some comparables and bring that up.  Investors like to know that an exit opportunity exists in your future.  See? Not everything about your competition has to be bad…)

3.    Financials & the Revenue Model

Listen, we know you’re full of crap.  You know you’re full of crap.  So when approaching this part of the presentation list or state your assumptions so that we can at least follow along.  Some disclaimers: A) It’s not necessary to put up a hockey stick growth chart on the screen.  And B) If you put up a fully baked spreadsheet on a slide the numbers will be too small to read anyway.  So try to display the basics of the business model.  Answer the simple question of how you will make money.  Give the audience an idea of when you think you’ll start generating revenue, and if you want to get ambitious maybe discuss at what point you think you can break even and start turning out a profit.  Long story short, as long as the business model and revenue models makes sense and sound like you’ve given them some thought you’ll get by here. Just don’t present anything outlandish, and you’ll be fine.  Save the heavy financial breakdown for an actual investor meeting.

4.    The Ask

Aka, the end-all, be-all to every demo day slide deck.  At 10-xelerator we tend to put the ask in our teams’ hands.  I’d love to say that every company coming out of our accelerator is ready to go out and raise their seed round… but it’s just not always the case.  Napkin-type companies only have 11 weeks and their goal was probably to have a beta ready by the end of the program, not fundraise.  Even more, pivots are simply unpredictable and can flip any company and its business model on its head.  Or maybe, just maybe, you’re one of the lucky few that have already received their seed funding and are grinding away already.

It is for this reason that I tend to advise teams to own and shape their ask.  But before you do this, do your homework first.  Take the time to know who is in the crowd.  Go find the program coordinator in the days before.  Find out who is on the guest list.  How many investors are attending, who they are and go find out what they’ve invested in.  Understand the size and type of investments that they do.   On the other hand, find out if there are corporate executives in the crowd who can make connections for you. If you need introductions to customers, these are great people to ask for them, so be very clear who those customers are.  Maybe you need an advisor with some very specific industry experience.  So ask for an introduction from someone in the audience if they know anybody.  If you’ve done everything well up until now, and sold them on your problem and innovative solution…they’ll likely be willing to do these things for you.  Crazier things have happened.

But if you are ready to discuss fundraising, here are some of my thoughts.  Investors like to see different things, so my comments here are mainly valuable for this region of the country (the Midwest).  Here investors like me are interested in milestones.  It is the answer to their questions of ‘How long will it take you to get there?’ and ‘How much will it cost you (or really them) to accomplish that?’  As I mentioned above, if you’ve done well up to this point, there is an inclination to believe you are capable of achieving these milestones.  But be specific about your needs and what the results of the investment will be.  If you’ve got a preliminary capital access plan, even better.  We’ll know the timing is probably way off, but it’s nice you’ve thought about it.  The simple final takeaway here is to list a few specifics of your intent with the round that you are raising.  You don’t need to list all of the details, so just touch on a few high level things.

In the end, demo days are probably one of the most fun experiences that an entrepreneur can have in my mind.  So if this blog finds you lucky enough to be preparing for one, try to take a few moments in the weeks preparing and especially during the demo day to reflect on what you’ve accomplished in such a small window of time.  I wish you luck and success in the pursuit of your dreams.

-Mike

A lot of people have been asking me lately about what I think makes a good Demo Day pitch.  While I would love to reveal a special formula or some sort of format, I am not sure it really exists.  But after experiencing two 10-xelerator Showcase Days, a few TechStars Demo Days, and some other local and national accelerator demo days, I can at least share what I think defines the ones that I’ve remembered the most.

1.    Tell us a story.

We both know that your product is awesome and is the best thing to ever hit the stage at a demo day.   And I am sure that the problem and business opportunity is so obvious that the audience couldn’t possibly not understand your amazing investment opportunity.  But that’s just not the case.  We, and they, miss it all the time.

So instead of wowing us with a demo video or some huge statistic right out the gate, start by telling us a story.  You’ll be amazed at just how much the audience responds and becomes immediately engaged with your product once they can personally connect to the problem you are solving.  Now of course we are all tired of hearing the opening lines of ‘Meet Joe’ or ‘Meet Suzy.’  Trust me, I’ve heard it many more times than you.  But there’s a reason that companies continue to lead off this way… it’s powerful stuff.  I honestly couldn’t tell you 90% of the content I’ve either heard or personally helped to create for almost every 10-xelerator pitch, but I remember the stories.  All of them.  Test me.  I dare you.

So you wanna wow the crowd?  Start by telling us a story.  Get our attention.  It’s all downhill from there.

2.    The audience is your customer.

As much as this will break your heart, not every person in the crowd has a checkbook.  But the good news is that there are a lot of potential customers out there.  Better yet, there are a lot of well-connected people who could make introductions to potential customers even if they are not one themselves.

But make sure to treat them like one.  Use words like ‘you’ and ‘we’ in the presentation.  Don’t refer to the customer’s problem.  Present it like it is their problem and you are solving it for them.  Continually build emotional ties to your product with the audience.  You won’t be able to see them in the darkness, but I promise you that they’re going to start leaning forward in their seats if you do this effectively.  You’ll have their attention.  And if you can get that, you’ve accomplished more than most.

3.    Less is more.  Simplicity is King.

My favorite day in preparation for Demo Day pitches is the first practice day.  It’s always the same story.  People come in with 25+ slides for an 8-minute pitch and there are usually about 50 words per slide.  By the end of the 2 weeks (and I would recommend taking that much time to prepare for one of these pitches) the deck is usually around 12 slides and the average slide has 10 words or less on it (and that # includes the title & ‘thank you’ slides).  The driving point is, simplicity is king.  Allow the audience to listen to what you are saying rather than trying to race through a bunch of text.  Eliminate the complex charts and endless text.  Try to figure out what you want the take away for each slide to be… and put that on the page.

4.    Videos, demo’s, & other media

Another hot topic people seem to bring up always is the idea of using professionally made videos within their presentation.  I’ll be honest; some of these videos are pretty cool.  Some of them are downright impressive.  But here’s the deal; what makes Demo Day cool in my mind is the simple idea of one person, up on stage and in the spotlight, pitching their innovative idea.  The edgy, simplistic deck that in all likelihood can never be used again is what makes the experience so special for the audience and for you as the presenter.  Videos take away from your airtime, and you’ve only got 8 minutes as it is.  In the end though, it’s your call.

On a somewhat related note, at 10-xelerator we now refuse to allow teams to use anything other than Keynote or PowerPoint.  Sure we have tried things like Prezi and Photoshop.  And yes, they looked cool as hell up on the big screen.  But ask the teams who used them; especially those whose decks froze, skipped, paused, etc.  Ask them if they could do it again, what their choice would be.  The simple fact is, PowerPoint and Keynote are effective.  And best of all, they always seem to work.

The one constant when preparing for Demo Day has been and will always be, prepare for the worst.  So when considering animations, cool transitions, and other fancy things like custom fonts and colors… consider the option to reconsider.  Keep it simple.  Demo Days are stressful enough as it is.  Why make it any harder than it needs to be?

More to follow…