I spent Wednesday & Thursday last week at the Southeast Venture Conference (also known as SEVC).  The event started last year and was held near Washington DC this year.  It’s primarily for VCs, but a few entrepreneurs attended the event.

You never quite know if these kind of events are going to be worthwhile.  The SEVC folks were kind enough to offer some starving-entrepreneur pricing (thanks Eric!) and DC is an easy drive from Raleigh, so it seemed worth the risk.  One of my favorite bloggers was also listed as a speaker and I had arranged to meet him, although unfortunately he had a conflict and had to back out.

All in all, it was a very worthwhile trip.

Most important news first.  We raised our first VC dollar!  Sadly, it was only one dollar, but the first one is supposed to be the hardest, right?  I had a great catch-up conversation with a VC I pitched last year.  His firm passed, but we’ve stayed in touch and he’s been great at giving straight feedback (if you find a VC like this, hang on to him/her because they are a VERY rare breed).  The subject of customers came up, and I mentioned that we had a couple of folks that had been willing to pay at least a dollar.  He promptly pulled out a dollar of his own and handed it over.  We’ll be framing it and hanging it in our lobby (when we have a lobby)…

There was a great panel that included Scot Wingo (CEO/Founder of ChannelAdvisor) and Jim Steele, (President of Salesforce.com).  I’ve known Scot for a little while now and always enjoy seeing him on a panel — he’s adept at keeping things simultaneously humble, entertaining and informative.

There was also a classic "Oh no he didn’t" moment at the end of the panel with a very VERY pushy entrepreneur who spent 3 minutes introducing his company and 5 seconds on his question.  When he didn’t like the answer Jim Steele gave, he actually proceeded to berate him.  As a fellow early stage entrepreneur, I’d be a little more reluctant to tell the President of a $7B company that he’s a dumb ass… especially when in front of a room full of VCs.  I thought Jim handled it very gracefully.

Jim had another presentation later in the day.  Salesforce are branching out into web services with their "Platform as a Service" concept.  The basic thinking is similar to what underlies Amazon’s web services — "We’ve built all this infrastructure and can package it up so you don’t have to".  In principle, I think it’s a great idea.  From what I saw, Salesforce is a little more oriented towards application developers.  What they offer appears to be more "finished" than Amazon’s offerings, but there are clearly pros and cons to both approaches.

What impressed me most about Jim was that after both his panel and presentation, he hung around answering questions until every question was answered.  I talked to him for a few minutes about the ‘Monkey and picked his brains about channel strategies.  When we were done, he readily handed over a business card.  I’ve met a lot of executives from much smaller companies that wouldn’t be so accommodating.

There was also a fascinating presentation by John Sculley (ex-Pepsi, ex-Apple, among other things).  He started off pretty slowly.  Since lunch was being served, I have to say that my attention was elsewhere.  But when he got going, I was hooked.  Much of his presentation was about virtual supply chains.  Doesn’t sound interesting, I know.  But he talked about mass customization (ordering online and getting a customized product shipped from China to your door in 48 hours… at a profit!!!) and the new breed of companies working with wholly virtual supply chains.  Another company he mentioned was able to prototype a new consumer electronics product for a major cell carrier in 45 days!  The product will be launched later this year at 36,000 retail points-of-sale (those kiosks in the mall).  Back in the day, I did a lot of work with some major toy companies.  Their assembly/supply timeline was measured in calendar years, not days.  The toys for Episode 1 were regarded as a major security risk as they were being shipped from China 6+ months before the release of the movie (and were in manufacturing for many months before that).

I spent a few minutes in an elevator with Frank Bonsal.  Mr. Bonsal is regarded as one of the Godfathers of the VC industry and was a founding parter at NEA.  I was, of course, wearing a disruptorMonkey button.  The big news is that Mr. Bonsal liked the name so much he asked for an overview of what we do and my business card.  Take that, Monkey Haters!

I also chatted with some very interesting folks from the IPO group at NASDAQ.  Clearly some very  smart people working on some very interesting stuff.

On the negative side (you knew I couldn’t keep up this happy stuff for too long, right?), some of the presentations were between average and lame.  I was surprised at how many of the company presentations managed to break every rule of presenting — way too much info per slide, no rehearsal and getting cut off before you’re finished because your timing sucks.  Notable exceptions were local boys  Neal Page of Inlet Technologies and Ben Weinberger of DigitalSmiths, both of whom did an excellent job.

So all in all, it was a productive and useful few days. 

Thanks as ever to the folks at Square 1 Bank for numerous introductions.  Thanks to the folks at Hutchison Law Group too.

Categories: Business, Inside My Twisted Start Up Brain...
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Posting will be light (again, sorry!) today and tomorrow because I’ll be up at the SEVC conference in/near Washington DC.

You can read all about the conference here.

If you happen to be attending and would like to catch up, post a comment or send me an email.  I can be reached via the "Contact Us" link on the disruptorMonkey home page.

Categories: Business
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A number of years back, I was running a 3D animation studio.  One of our projects was a feature film.  This thing was the cheesey Count Dracula of projects that wouldn’t die.  We’d try and sell it, try and sell it, push push push push, get somewhere and then see it come crumbling down.  It was absurd how many times that happened.  And just when we thought it was dead and buried, it would leap back into life and threaten to bite us in our collective delicates…

I was a fundraising green-bean back then, but I learned a valuable lesson from the Hollywood folks we were dealing with.

I could understand why we weren’t getting a yes.  We were asking for a fair sum of money for something that hadn’t been seen before.  But I could not, for the life of me, understand why we never got a straight no.  Until I had my revelation…

In Hollywood, the only sin bigger than greenlighting a turkey is passing on the next big thing. 

So most Hollywood types strive to keep you in maybe-land.  The idea seems to be that if they stand back and watch for long enough, you will reach a point where it is obvious whether your film is a winner or a loser.  And at that point, assuming it is a winner, they all come rushing in ready to help.

And maybe-land is a foggy place filled with ghosts and visions.  It is almost impossible to tell what’s real and what’s not.

For example, we always got a warm reception and everyone seemed to like the team and the concept.  But for the first few months, everyone we met with didn’t seem to think we could make something that would look good on film.  Fine.  We spent the money and did a film test.  It was gorgeous.  The MaybeBabies agreed.  But what about the characters — could they really be believable?  Fine, six months spent on character tests.  But is that realistic in production?  Fine, 300+ page Microsoft Project Gannt chart showing how it would run (that freaked them out).  But what about the script?  Fine, we’ll hire some allegedly A-list writers*.  What about the producer?  Fine, we’ll hire a veteran.  What about the  <insert random roadblock here>?  Fine, we’ll <insert zealous attempt to please here>.

The point is that none of it was real.  Sure, there were broad concerns that needed some answers, but they weren’t the real roadblock between us and a yes decision.  They were just ways of keeping us in the game until the mystery of our fate would reveal itself…

I see a lot of similarity between my Hollywood experiences and early stage fundraising.  The more I talk to local early-stage CEOs the more I hear the same theme repeated again and again.

I was meeting with someone today who has an interesting business.  They meet a real need and have a working product.  What’s more, they have paying customers and have done a TON of leg work to make sure the product is compliant with both the letter of the law and their customer’s expectations.

The initial feedback they got from funding targets was "Come back when you have customers".  Then it was "come back when you have a corporate customer."  Followed by "Come back when you have a corporate customer that’s a better example of your broader model"…

The point is that most of us startup CEOs have pretty thick skins.  We may not like a "No", but we can take it without going postal and hunting you down like a rabid dog.  What is likely to push us over the edge however is a plethora of roadblocks that have nothing to do with the big picture of what we do.

Just say no, folks, it’s okay.  We can handle the truth.

BTW, this is a good, although not recommended, method to get a firm "no".

* As an interesting side note, these alleged A-list writers were boneheads.  The script they turned in was awful.  It was so awful, and they were so highly recommended, I started to wonder if I really knew nothing about good scripts at all.  We had an in-house meeting to discuss their draft.  Several folks were making polite "it was a a good first pass" kind of noises when my then partner in crime stood up and delivered my all time favorite serious meeting quote: "I could have eaten a bowl of Alphabettis and sh*t a better script".

Categories: Business, Inside My Twisted Start Up Brain...
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I have a long-held theory that you really don’t know what you’re making (and selling) until you release it into the wild.  Once you put it in the hands of potential customers, it’s going to mutate and grow in ways you didn’t necessarily expect.

Now that the Unifyr beta is underway, we’re starting to see early signs of that evolution and it’s interesting stuff. 

One area of strength of our "secret sauce" is its ability to generate and analyze meta-data.  And one example of that analysis is a feature that our beta users are freaking out about (in a good way).

Internally, we call it our FindaYoda feature.  In a nutshell, when you search with a keyword, we’ll show you data that matches your query AND we’ll show you which other users have data that matches your query.  Simply put, each user’s data is private, but a representation of their expertise is not.  When you do a search, you’re not just constrained to "files" that match your query, you’ll see people that match your query too.

Good meta-data can solve all kinds of problems, and FindaYoda is just scratching at the surface.  But it’s good to know that (a) it works and (b) our users really like it.

More news as it happens… Thanks for tuning in!

Categories: Business, Inside My Twisted Start Up Brain...
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There goes my pitch!

<Sigh>

Earlier this week we had a pitch that we’ve been looking forward to for a while. Unfortunately, as you might imagine from the title and picture, it didn’t go as planned.

The main reason this week’s posts have been slow is that I’ve been (a) working on bouncing back and (b) trying to decide how to blog about this.

Let’s start with an analogy…  Picture the guy or girl that you had a crush on in High School.  The one that “if only they knew you” would be your perfect date.  Now imagine that one day you said “Hey” and they actually said “Hey” back.  Next thing you know, you have a get-to-know-you date set up at a friend’s house.

It was that kind of meeting.  And we were that kind of excited about it.

Sticking with the analogy, at the last minute the day and venue change.  Now you’re meeting Mr/Ms Perfect with two of his/her friends somewhere you’ve never been before.

And so it begins.

Back to real life.  We had a fireside-chat kind of thing set up at a local office.  But due to circumstances beyond either party’s control the meeting had to be moved to a hotel some distance from here.  Our date was very apologetic for the change and offered to do the meeting by phone or reschedule it.  We took option #3 – driving down to the new location to take the meeting. 

Note #1:  There is a lot of truth in the proverb “Fools rush in”

Naturally, the change in venue causes some issues.  Where will we meet? Is there a good network connection???  Oh, and as a result of the reschedule, we’re now meeting with our guy plus two of his co-workers.

Note #2:  A meeting with 3 people is NEVER going to be the same as a meeting with 1 person.

As you may know, I’ve done a lot of pitches in my time, from this kind of fundraising pitch to tradeshows and product demos.  I’ve logged hundreds of hours doing this, and generally have some clue as to what I’m doing and how things can go wrong.

So naturally, we had a backup plan to run the product locally on a laptop in the event that Wi-Fi failed us.  But as I mentioned, the change was pretty last minute.  Come to find out that we have more data in the system than can easily be downloaded in the time we have before the meeting.

So now we don’t have a good fallback if the network connection drops out.  Not good.

Note #3:  When you start to feel a breeze blowing on body parts that don’t appreciate that sort of thing, take notice.

But there’s a Starbucks with wi-fi down the road.  Fine.  We’ll just shuffle down there if we need to.  But let’s get to the Hotel well in advance and make sure the wi-fi is good.

Meanwhile, we’ve been working on the “Grand Enchilada” view of what we’re up to and why.  As I mentioned earlier, our date seems perfectly primed to get what we do and really wants to talk about the tech and the product, so this is not our usual funding presentation.

Fast-forward to the day of the date.

I’m not a believer in omens, but the day starts badly. 

Now that I look at the pants I ever so carefully ironed last night, I can see that they have some kind of feeding-a-two-year-old related stain.  Bugger.  Need to iron another pair, but I’m back on track soon enough.

Time to get in the car and go.  I put the key in and get a “Low Pressure” alert for one of the tires.  The low pressure sensor is a nifty idea in principle.  If a tire needs 36psi and a slow leak has taken that down to 25psi, it’s a good thing to have.  Unfortunately, the thing also triggers if there’s a drop to 35.9999psi.  You have no way of knowing what’s going on without reaching for a pressure gauge.

So I check the tires.  Sure enough, one is pretty low.  Break out the air-pump, connect it and off we go.  Or not.  I check the pressure and it’s lower.  There’s a hole in the tube on the air-pump.  Crap crappety crap crap.  Off to the garage.

Finally Logan and I get on the road and we’re making good time.

We get to the hotel and I talk the restaurant into letting us camp out.  The wi-fi signal is “strong like ox” and all is well.  We test, retest and test again.  Sweet.

All your base belong to us.  We are prepared.

Note #4:  It’s called a false sense of security for a reason…

Our guy arrives and we exchange pleasantries.  The other two datees arrive to.  We’re ready.

I jump in to our 100,000 ft overview presentation.  As I go through the slides, I have that vague nagging feeling that I’m not bringing all the audience members with me.

We get to the demo.  “Let me show you the basics”

Kzzt.

The wi-fi falls down dead.  Shit.  It comes back.  But we’re in a hotel, so I have to re-login to their gateway before I can get back to Unifyr.  In an effort to help, one of the other dates starts asking some questions.  We try and answer those while getting back online.

We’re back online.  Our guy asks another question, one so basic to what we do that we have been able to demonstrate it for MONTHS.  Click click, here we go.

Kzzt.

WTF!  It’s down again.

More interim questions, but now we’re off in three different directions at once.

Back up.  Logged in.  Click click…works.  But now the back end engine that has run for WEEKS without any glitches falls down dead.  Stuff is no longer getting tagged.

WTDF!!! 

And so the whole thing descends into chaos.  I don’t think we made or demonstrated a single point clearly without a screw-up.

At the same time, we’re focused on a high level big picture.  Really big (like this)…  The stuff we never usually talk about for fear of scaring people.  And there’s the rub – after early pitches we were told we weren’t broad enough.  After this one, we were told we were too broad.  Doh.

Note #5:  Once you’ve been pitching for a few months, your pitch gets “polluted” with all the feedback you get.  While feedback can be invaluable, the process of avoiding potential landmines can leave you with something so muddied that it offends no-one, but no-one buys it either…

So as you can gather from all of this, the pitch was a dud.  With the benefit of hindsight, I think it was one of my worst…  Ever… 

Our dates were nice enough to be polite, but we knew we’d blown it and blown it good.

Looking back at things, there are a million things we’d like to have done differently.  But I think #1 would have been to pass on the meeting face to face until we could control the environment. 

In our eagerness to have our perfect date we left too many variables to chance.  The result benefited no one, least of all us.

It’s all very well to get a date with "that girl" (or guy) but if it ends like this, you’re really no better off.

And with that thought (and sincere apologies to our dates), here’s an appropriate ending…

Categories: Business, Inside My Twisted Start Up Brain...
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