CEO Coach

What makes you tick? Where are your team members happiest and most productive? These are questions you must understand, first about yourself and second about your team. In the beginning, everyone has to wear many hats, but as your startup grows your team expands and so does opportunities to focus on the work that really makes the most of everyone’s talents. Enter your organization chart, which may be a new concept to you as an entrepreneur. Some on your team will aspire to leadership roles, while others will prefer to be Individual Contributors. Both are valuable and will contribute to your success. Gillian and Anne discuss how to determine who is which and find the right seats on your bus for everyone.

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There is growing evidence that indicates that impact investing supports the conventional bottom line with better returns for investors. In other words, investments in impact companies are returning higher ROI to their investors than companies that don’t take into account the social impact of their work.Early VC firms seeking for-profit companies that provided a social benefit were largely investing in environmental sustainability. There were notable exits: Tesla, SolarCity, NestLabs and 7th generation. Since 2001 such companies have invested $13 billion, and $10 billion of that since 2010. The trend emerging  is funding not verticals, but demographics -- underserved races, regions and economic levels, like TPG Ventures and Breakthrough Energies, both with backing from Bill Gates, among other leaders.  Anne and Gillian take a closer look at impact investing in 2018 and reflect on what they have discovered. What is the ‘double bottom line’ and why is it important? How does entrepreneurship support national security? Who are the leading impact investors active today? What does this mean for founders?

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Carlee Price, investor and advisor to early stage companies joins Gillian and Anne to talk about her just-launched a consultancy – Pique Ventures – that provides a novel service to founders who are in the idea stage of their company development. That’s super early in the game. Listen as they dig in a bit on the subject of vetting ideas for early stage ideas. How should you be looking at vetting your own ideas before spending a fortune to develop a product or service? Carlee Price draws on her background on Wall Street, her experience as an entrepreneur, investor, and advisor to all come into play to launch own consultancy. Hear solid tips on how to determine whether your startup idea has any chance of success. Hint: it’s all about the data and how you analyze yours.

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You hear it all the time ‘The CEO’s Prime Directive is to build value for her company’. Gillian and Anne take a closer look into what this exactly means. Build value for whom? Investors, certainly. They expect that. That said, focusing on the next quarter’s stock value or revenue growth alone does more harm than good over the long run. For whom else are you building value? What about your other stakeholders? Who are they? The definition of ‘Build Value for your Company’ is far more complex than simply adding dollars to your bottom line. Pleasure, satisfaction, social standing, independence, joy, relationships, connection to the community of consumers you serve and the vendors you support, your ability to support your employees financially and reward them emotionally, socially, and intellectually as well. Value is not about money. Listen to what every CEO needs to know about building value for all, and not least , at the end of the day-- herself.

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Professor Brianna Caza, an organizational psychologist at the University of Manitoba has studied early stage founders to find what helps them avoid ‘creeping strain’ and maintain high performance at their work -- in a word, thrive. Her findings, published in Harvard Business Review and academic journals may seem counterintuitive, yet her research shows clearly that founders have the ability to create simple management techniques that preserve their own energy and passion, even in the most turbulent times in their startups. Hear how she describes her findings and tips to Gillian and Anne. Bonus discussion: women receive a great deal of pressure from society at large and individuals closest to them about what they SHOULD want, do, and be. Instead,women need to determine what gives them joy and energy and what they need to make that possible.

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Remember elevator pitches? Well, elevators may not be the only place you find the venture capitalists you want to tell about your company. There are lots of other places you may get 30 seconds or a full  minute, if you are lucky, to pitch someone who has the resources to move your startup forward. Gillian and Anne discuss how to make sure your 1-minute pitch remains focused. How to hit all the items on your punch list. How to approach such people in the first place. Gillian has a fool-proof method and she has never been turned down, but it’s no shortcut.
Listen in for tips on how to perfect your ‘elevator pitch’ and how to get that follow-on meeting in their office for more than just a minute.

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Anne Gillian revisit bias from a fresh perspective -- how are your unconscious biases affecting the decisions you make in your business, for example in forming your marketing strategy, or seeking funding. They look more deeply at the definition of bias, which is actually a neutral attribute, and find it is hard wired into each and every one of us. What to do? They surface the question asked by Rand Fishkin (full disclosure, Gillian’s son and co-founder at Moz.) “How is my cultural conditioning biasing me.?” From there Anne brings up another new perspective on gender bias, this one from Jennifer Palmieri, Communications Director for the US Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, the first woman to be nominated by a major US party. Palmieri questions whether we are on the right track to end bias when we expect women to be and act according to the rules men have set, and she asks if there is a better way. 

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It’s not news that women founders got a miserable 2% of venture capital last year and have averaged 20% of all VC deals each year since 2006. Despite that dreary reporting, Anne and Gillian have found some signs of forward momentum in studies by PitchBook. They are small changes in a few major cities, but progress nonetheless. Listen to further findings on whether women VC’s tend to fund women startups and if not, why not, according to some striking new data crunching from PitchBook. Last, this episode will tell you about some surprising new research from Columbia doctorate fellow Dana Kanze on how best to overcome gender bias in funding. Spoiler alert, it’s not as easy as firms’ bringing on more female VC’s.

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When do you take money out of your startup? When do you start planning for that happy day? Gillian and Anne discuss key signs you may notice along along your startup road that indicate it is OK to take some cash out for yourself. Indeed, it is a good idea, and an even better idea to plan for your partial liquidity event from the very beginning. Doing so will keep you focused your startup’s finances, as well as your product and customers, and on track building value for your shareholders and yourself, expeditiously.

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Flash: the startup failure rate is considerably less than the 90 percent we hear about all the time. Since 2001 the total number of startups returned 1x or less to investors was at or under 60 percent, according to Cambridge Associates as reported by Erin Griffith in Fortune in June 2017. Still that’s only somewhat good news -- it still means more than half of all newborn companies do not make it to adulthood . . . or a fully realized corporate experience. According to Cambridge, a very small percentage of failure comes from disaster or other forces beyond your control. Hear how to avoid the rest.

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