Maybe I'm crazy – Page 5 – Journey of a entrepreneur, one step at a time

Selling Investors a Ticket to Ride

What is one ride that every carnival has? The one that stands out from miles away in the night’s sky, with glimmering lights and fun sounds? The last hint is that the first one was built in Chicago, IL.

My company is slowly running out of money again. It is the ongoing struggle of starting a startup when the incoming revenue does not meet or even exceed the outgoing expenses. This situation, unfortunately, means that it is time to raise money yet again.

I had a conversation with my co-founder about how I could raise better, or faster this time around. For context, I tried to raise this round of $500k back in January. The result was a significant amount of interest and intrigue, but little conversion to investment dollars. Since then, I have been racking my brain about why I was not able to raise. I have analyzed, and microanalyzer each part of my pitch, about my product, my financials, and market size, and have been coming up with no apparent weak spot. My co-founder said that the pitch is fine, “you have improved greatly in the pitch, but I still have not seen you put effort into getting comfortable with the numbers.”

The numbers, there were a lot of them. The financial figures in the deck, what did they all mean, how were they going to work as we scale, unit metrics, and all. Then there are the other numbers, the investment and the ROI. On calls I had with potential investors, I would lean on my co-founder to answer those questions because he had a background in finance. But now he is saying it is my turn, “you are the CEO, if the investors can’t believe in you talking about the numbers then they will not feel comfortable placing their money in your pocket.” Well, that does makes sense, but where to start.

After thinking about this problem for a while, this week, I finally made a plan and started to take action.

Goal: To be able to confidently walk through the numbers in the model and the investment opportunity with an investor

Action Items

Read books investor book and angel book
Write out a script and scenarios of ROI
Find someone in the VC community to grill me for an hour a week for five weeks

This week I started attacking the investor books. I am a visual learner, so when I read, I often draw diagrams or write notes while reading. After 162 pages into the VC handbook, I finally understood their perspective and investment. Investors want to get in early on the ground floor, ride the ride for the ups and downs and all-around a then get off at the top. It hit me; it’s just like a Ferris Wheel.

This concept may be simple and understood by most, but for me, everything finally clicked. I get it now, and I get what my job is; to sell investors a ticket to ride the Ferris Wheel. Among all the other rides at the carnival who claim to get as high as the Ferris Wheel, none do. I need to position my startup as the company that stands out from the rest and goes the highest.

Feeling Down on my Luck

Startup

It is February 11th at 11:53pm and I just finished an hour and a half weight lifting session alone in the gym in my building. Oh and today was Monday, the start to another week for most people, for others it is just another day from the continuous grind of the last weeks of days.

A Letter to Ernesto

Startup

Dear Ernesto,

It’s not you, it’s me. It must be me the crazy one right. It’s like this fine line of crazy or brilliance. Some say there is overlap between the two while others see it more black and white. Regardless what’s it matter, you have ruled me crazy and that means our conversation is over (for now).

Living in the valley of death with the end zone in sight

Startup

“You’re on the 10-yard line.” The man said, sitting across from me at the Starbucks in Kenosha, Wisconsin. After many coffees with other executives, I have learned to just listen when they talk because they typically have more experience and insight than I have. Plus interrupting mid thought is never a good idea, so I just sat there nodding my head from time to time and opened my ears. The man continued, “I don’t mean to be harsh, but just giving you my honest read of your situation. You should be proud because you have completed 90 yards, but you are stuck on the 10-yard line. This is the place where so many startups land and hover until their next move. Take it or leave it, but a word of advice is to consider your next move carefully as it will be predictive of your startup’s success.” It took me a few minutes to fully grasp what he was saying. Were we in a good place? Heading down the right direction? Or completely off base? At this point, I was intrigued partly because this was only our 3rd time interacting since I first sent him a cold email and because he spoke with such clarity and understanding on where my startup was and where we were going. As he continued to talk, I started to comprehend what he was saying. The man was laying out the options of how to move the company forward and how he could help.

The Missing Piece in Finding Product/Market Fit

Startup

I haven’t written for a long while, well actually just haven’t published. I have written a few pieces and notes about my journey, but they have been stuck in a draft mode. No doubt they are good pieces about how the startup life has been going and the challenges I have been facing, but finishing them off till perfection (or a point where they are better than they are) has not yet happened.

It is somewhat indicative of where I am today with the company and why I decided to publish this piece. Over the past few weeks, I have been reading a few famous essays from Paul Graham and Marc Andreessen. I have never been one for long articles or essays, but have actually gained some perspective and value from these. The one that has been stuck in my head which relates so heavily to today is The Only Thing that Matters. In short, this essay is about understanding and analyzing three essential elements of a startup (team, product, and market) and their contribution to the success or failure of the startup. It ends with pointing out that the product/market fit matters most. Regardless of the great or lousy team or the good enough or perfect product, at the end of the day the market wins, the market decides if your product is a fit for its needs and desires.

This idea has been revolving in my head since I read this article a few days ago. More

A Match Made in IoT Heaven

Internet of Things

Today, we have 2 unique technologies positioned to take center stage in the IoT revolution. These technologies are powerful wireless communication technologies that each have a place of their own.

On the one hand, we have Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a 20 year old technology that has dramatically changed the way devices communicate with each other all around the world. It has become a standard of operating in personal area networks and a ubiquitous technology around the world. In this year alone, there will be 4 billion (with a b) devices shipped using Bluetooth. That is a huge number! The Bluetooth standard has become known for its lightweight protocol, seamless connectivity, and inexpensive module cost. More

What is traction?

Lessons, Startup

I’ve been doing a lot of information gathering lately. Talking to entrepreneurs who have sold their companies, talking to investors from angels to venture capitalists and talking to advisers. From every conversation, I have come away with 1 consistent word: traction. When I dug further that term seemed to fall apart into a million different pieces. Some said traction was having a million dollars in recurring revenue each month, others said traction was having letters of intent and contracts signed and others said traction was having 1000 of your first products in the hands of customers.

Hardware is Not Hard, Healthcare Is

Lessons, Startup

For the longest time, I thought that building hardware was hard. Coming from a software background with little exposure to engineering or hardware, I thought the odds were stacked against me to build a hardware startup. The age-old advice in entrepreneurship always struck a core with me that said, “stick to what you are good at.” I was clearly not set up to succeed from the beginning.

In college at Indiana University (IU), I studied informatics with a focus in business. For those of you who don’t know what informatics is, it’s the application of technology to different disciplines; basically, the idea that there are all of these computer science folks out there and business people and they don’t know how to talk to each other. Coming out of informatics I was given the toolset to be able to program as well as translate requirements from one side to another. The other thing to consider from my time at IU was that at the time they didn’t have any engineering programs beyond computer science. If you wanted to do engineering you went to Purdue up north, and for everything else, you went to IU. This also meant that there wasn’t a community of people familiar with hardware projects in Bloomington, IN which added to my misfortune. More

Battling Gut Versus Faith

People

What do we do when the path forward is unclear. Do we trust our gut or believe in faith that it will all work out?

Tonight, the climax of a long relationship has come to this point and I am at odds with myself. There is evidence to show that the path leads to a dead end. Over months and months of observation, this appears to be the outcome destined for the future. Yet, you have to consider the options and believe in the positive optimistic perspective that this will all work out.

Great Leaders should be Judged by What Comes After Them

Lessons, People

I was talking to a friend of mine, let’s call him Dan, the other day who works at an incubator. We were talking about this program that he became in charge of through a transition for the organization and now no longer runs it. The discussion was interesting as I was very impressed with the program as it had been around for 9 years and had incredible results with each cohort. In the startup

In the startup world, you see a lot of hype for the next best accelerators or incubators that can “truly help startups accelerate their ventures”, but many of them disappear after a few cohorts or years. When I heard about this program that Dan had run and its track record for 9 years and over 100 companies that have gone through it, I was thoroughly impressed. Programs just aren’t built for sustainability these days. I was intrigued and proceeded to ask Dan how he was able run the program so well and ensure its lively hood after he finished running it. He replied that “it does no good to just have a great program while I am running it.” He said, that his goal with taking over the program was not to be the end all be all but to build out the processes and standards to make the success repeatable in order to train the next leaders. I was clearly very impressed.