The Graduates

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Last night was a big night for the participants in FastTrac. They graduated. It was a pretty big deal for some of the companies. Folks even asked to bring along their SO, kids, and parents.

One of the goals of FastTrac was to enable entrepreneurs to develop an effective elevator pitch and investor presentation. The real reason it was a big deal was that there were about 50 investors in the room. Folks from Atlanta Technology Angels, Imlay Investments, Kinetic Ventures, Noro-Mosely, Seraph Group, and UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund.

There was a lot of pitching going on. All the companies did a fine job with their elevator pitches. Five companies were allowed to give a five minute investor presentation. These companies were AdBuyNet, Izenda, LumoFlex, Simcraft, and Wireless Vision.

In addition to putting on a bang up show last night Cindy Cheatham has some investor follow up to coordinate.

The FastTrac program is part of the ATDC’s focus to extend its programming. We intend to do it again next year with a host of other plans to better serve entrepreneurs. If you have any interest in learning more drop me a line.

December 13, 2006  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Bear Down

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Growing up I wanted to be Dick Butkus. In Louisville, KY in the 1960’s the Bears were the closest NFL team and they were on television most weekends.

I became a fan of the Chicago Bears.

And after walloping the Rams last night the Bears are looking good. With their remaining schedule including teams that have a combined winning percentage somewhere in the .27 range the Bears could win out. If that happens any NFC ticket to Miami will have to go through Chicago.

In honor of the Bears I am changing out my blog picture.

Number 23… he had a pretty good night.

December 12, 2006  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Personal

rockstartup

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Made my way to web reality show rockstartup via Jeff Haynie’s blog. rockstartup chronicles the adventures of the PayPerPost team as they launch and try to scale their business.

Based on the episodes that I have watched it should make for some entertaining moments.

It is very interesting to note that PayPerPost is eating their own dog food in marketing the video series. They are paying bloggers $7.50 to write a 200 word post that is neutral in tone to help them create a buzz marketing campaign.

PayPerPost has also been causing quite a stir in the blogosphere. Michael Arrington has gone as far as equating it to selling your soul. BusinessWeek was a bit more restrained in calling it pollution.

Personally I land on the side of full disclosure. Some interesting models will emerge that support this point of view.

And say what you want about the product (which is ultimately important) the PayPerPost team has created a marketing campaign that has gotten attention, Ted is having a lot of fun, and I have subscribed to their podcast.

And BTW, PPP did raise 3 million bucks in fairly short order. My only question is this post going to get me my $7.50 out of that.

December 5, 2006  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing

Know Your Customers!

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As I mentioned last week, Nelson Chu gave a great presentation at the Q3 MoneyTree meeting.

The title of his presentation was Tips for Entrepreneurs: Know Your Customers! Nelson was kind enough to share his presentation with me. From Nelson’s point of view are are three reasons to get close to your customers. It enables you to identify big waves, it drives focus, and it creates value.

Big waves are important. Many thing the most important element to success. By knowing your customers it enables an entrepreneur to be specific about the target customer. To know:

Who is going to sign the check?
What is their burning problem?
Why your product is a need to have and not a nice to have?
When they are going to buy due to urgency?
Where you are going to sell it and the implications for the business?

Focus really does two things. It builds excitement among investors and sets the business focus. The latter enables you to build the right team, build the right product, and build early customer validation.

When you combine the above you create value. Big waves drive investor interest and exciting valuations. And actually having customer traction typically, but not always, drives valuation reality.

Nelson gave good food for though for any entrepreneur wanting to start a company. He is also the type of VC that I think any CEO would want on his side. He is smart, strategic, and most importantly measured. I have a hard time seeing Nelson blowing up if things are not going as planned.

December 4, 2006  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Customer Focus, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Shake, Shake, Shake

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UPDATE: Scott Burkett has some very valid comments about the early bird not getting the worm.

This morning PricewaterhouseCoopers and the ATDC presented “Shaking the MoneyTree” for Q3 2006.

All in all not a bad quarter for the state of Georgia. $126 million was raised during the quarter by Georgia companies, the largest amount since the fall of 2004. It was also a pretty big increase over the $56 to $70 range raised in the first three quarters of the year and puts the state in sniffing range of the top ten.

A total of 21 companies raised money. ATDC member companies Air2Web, CardioMEMS, EGT, iVivity, Jacket Mirco Devices, and Nexidia collected around $73 million. Seems like a good amount of participation by Atlanta VCs in the majority of the deals. Of the 21 deals, only 3 were early stage.

Nelson Chu of Kinetic Ventures and Max Chee of Millennium Technology Partners gave interesting presentations that I intend to post on later.

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Chasm Chatter

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Tara Hunt has a most excellent post today on Geoffrey Moore’s seminal concept. Seems like she is having some nice debate with entrepreneurs and marketers about the framework.

As often is the case, Tara is right. Marketing evolves in stages, and you can’t go from one until it is time to do so.

Relationships matter, customer feedback matters, creating a killer product that solves a customer need matters even more.

While it will undoubtedly make the rogue one shudder, I have found Mr. Moore’s book to be very helpful in getting entrepreneurs to focus their companies by creating positioning statements in a variant of the structure he suggests.

We provide {product/service class} for {the target market} so they can {statement of need}.

All of this based on relationships, feedback, and good product. It makes early stage companies think about what they want to be when then grow up.

Off to Savannah in the morning for my “Geek Marketing 101” presentation. Should make for a good post before the week is out.

November 27, 2006  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing

Being Thankful

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I long time ago my Mom started asking around the Thanksgiving table for everyone to state what they were thankful before anyone could eat. This was met with moans and groans at first but over the years have evolved into a bit of a tradition.

We have been fortunate enough over the past few years to spend Thanksgiving with my mother in Florida. On top of that, this year in school Kate made a Thanksgiving tree. The Thanksgiving tree makes Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree look like a redwood. But is has these little labels that we all have to fill out before dinner and then Kate is going to read them out loud and attach them to the tree.

So I have been doing a little thinking. These are the things that I am thankful for, more then will fit on the tree.

My health.

For that fateful night in NYC in 1992.

Which led to Abby being my wife. She makes me a better person and tolerates me when I am not.

Kate and Jack, it is amazing to watch them grow and learn every day.

My Mom, who is a cancer survivor.

The mercy when my Dad passed due to the disease.

My brother and sister.

My in-laws who have treated me like a son even though I stole the Kid to the South.

To live in America where I poor boy from Kentucky can make a little something for himself.

The ability of this country to go out and change its leadership.

To be involved with the transformation caused by the Internet from its earliest stages, and to watch the wonder it brings to peoples lives.

For Sweetness and 1985, the Big Red Machine, Maddux/Glavine/Smoltz, and the Cards of the eighties.

For pumpkin cheesecake.

To be able to take this day and enjoy it. The family, friends, football, food, and fun.

Happy Thanksgiving.

November 23, 2006  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Personal

Funding is Fun

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Tonight at FastTrac the topic was identifying funding and working with investors.

Charles put together a panel that included Stephen Fleming who is the Chief Commercialization Officer at Georgia Tech, Dave Unsworth from RBC Ventures, Fred Sturgis of HIG Ventures, and Jim Stratigos from Jacket Micro Devices.

Great panel that led to an entertaining evening. The highlight of the night was when Stephen broke out his “seven deadly sins of business plans”. He sent me the presentation via Powerbook to Powerbook bluetooth, a first for me. The sins follow.


1. Ask for an NDA.

At which point all of the panelists from the investment community literally burst out laughing. Seems to happen a lot with folks wanting to join the ATDC as well. Bad advice from lawyers.

2. Focus on the technology—not the market, the competition, and the customers.

Give the pitch that is focused on selling a piece of your company.

3. Practice top-down sales forecasting.

Having 2% of a huge market is a losing proposition. You want to be a top three market share player.

4. Use four significant digits everywhere.

Do you really think that revenue in 2010 is going to be $27,843,231 or $28,438,132? While your business model might spit this out, round the number in your presentation. $28 million will do just fine!

5. Position investors as necessary-but-unpleasant “mushrooms.”

Investors are partners. Selecting one is a courtship. You have to treat it that way.

6. Fill your plan with typos, errors, chartjunk, and repetition.

Use spell check. If English is not your primary language then as CEO it is your responsibility to put together the resources that can get the job done right. Pay somebody to do this stuff if you can’t.

7. Do your homework

VCs have egos. Big egos. If you don’t believe me just ask the Sand Hill Slave. You give them an opportunity to talk about themselves during your allotted time they will eat a huge chunk of it up and not learn a thing about you and your company.

8. Don’t expect Google to acquire you.

They can only do about an acquisition a month and odds are it ain’t you.

Fred also had an interesting comment about what is the most important consideration from his perspective, the technology, the team, or the market. To him having a market with some potential is the number one factor followed by the team. He wants a team that knows how to make money. More important than that he wants a person that is wanting to step up to the plate and swing for the fence.

Big risk, big reward.

I like that.

November 14, 2006  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital