CEO Coach

A unicorn is a start up that achieves a billion-dollar valuation. A scalable company is one that finds a way to increase revenues and profit margins without increasing overhead, or production costs. Startups that can scale may become unicorns, and starry-eyed founders and investors as well like to dream big. Here’s a dose of reality:  less than one half of one percent land the moonshot. On the flip side, many so-called Lifestyle companies become very successful, even though their founders have no intention of selling or going public. What benefits can these privately held companies offer investors to attract needed capital? Gillian and Anne detail several ways to provide investors sufficient returns to interest them.

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Anne  and Gillian continue their discussion of your funding options when you are starting a company, including some new takes on old methods, such as revenue sharing, and REIT-style investment groups. And, of course, when is it not a good idea to fund your startup yourself? Assuming you have the cash.

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Anne quizzes Gillian on funding options for startups. They discuss traditional equity. Debt. Convertible notes. Convertible securities, also known as SAFE’s. Even self-funding. Which is best for you? Gillian explains the differences among all of them, and pros and cons for each illustrate. This is Part 1 of 2, because there was so much to say!

We hear from Elaine Bennett, an award-winning speech writer who has written for Warren Buffet and Governor Howard Dean, and numerous financial and business consulting firms. Why do we want our listeners to hear a speech writer? Well, In our experience communications style, and specifically presentation style is often a problem for startup CEO’s. They are usually engineer-inventors and not at all accustomed to public speaking, much less getting their ideas across and even less, pitching to investors.  Elaine provides tips and guidelines startup founders and CEOs need to communicate their visions.

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We continue our conversation with Janis Machala about how to seek early stage investing, because we just couldn’t get everything we wanted to hear from her into one episode. 
This week Janis gives us her take on trends in diversity and inclusion in founding teams, incubators, investment decisions, and why these are good things.
Alternate ways to raise capital. Broadway Angels – 75 women investors. Fifty of them carved themselves out of venture firms and said, ‘We’re tired of what goes on. We’re going to raise a seed fund and invest for gender and diversity. And we’re going to invest on our own account.”

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Janis Marchala of Palladin Partners has been called the ‘Oracle of Startup mentoring and early-stage investing” which she has been doing since the mid-1990’s in Puget Sound. Along the way she founded Seraph Capital Forum to bring women angel investors front and center. Gillian and Anne talk with Janis about her experiences, observations and vision for early stage funding and what attracts her to invest.

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“Silicon Valley is the only place in the US where rich people want to meet with poor people” -- that is, if they have compelling startups. Anne Gillian heard that and many other tidbits and outright declarations at May’s TiECon Silicon Valley, the largest gathering of TiE Global members and entrepreneurs eager to hear wisdom from those who have started successful companies. As reported before  in this space, TiE.org is an organization started in 1992 by entrepreneurs who came from India to and founded successful companies. Their purpose now is to mentor up-and-coming entrepreneurs. TiE now has expanded to 13000 members in chapters in 61 cities across 18 countries. Listen to some of the many comments, reflections and useful advice heard over the two-day event.

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How important is it to raise your head up from your startup and read blogs regularly? Very important. A breadth of sources gives you a better perspective on what is going on inside -- and outside -- your industry. Your company does not sit in a vacuum. It thrives or dies on stage with many characters, actions, and plot lines. You are NOT the author; you are only the player for your small part -- and only for a short time. If you want to be a leader, you have a much better shot at success if you know what’s going on.  Hear how to manage the ‘daily deluge of opportunity’ that arrives in your inbox.

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Gillian and Anne revisit metrics to take a deeper dive into finding the right measurements in your business for clarity and intelligence-based decisions. Rigor is critical such as what to measure, as is a comprehensive look at event streams. There is place for the broad metrics that make everyone feel good, such as numbers of downloads or clicks on an ad. But other measurements will inform how you run your business. Hear how to find such deep metrics and who in your company needs to collect them, and who needs to know the results. Everybody in your company needs to collect metrics regularly. Some metrics require daily – or more frequent tracking. Others, often those for Boards of Directors, require aggregation and monthly, quarterly, and annual tracking. Who needs what, when and where deserves your attention to be sure that your teams have the power they require to optimize your success.

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While it’s true that VC funding to women founders has more than doubled in 10 years, the actual amount is paltry. Anne and Gillian discuss why this is so, and report on updates from Pitchbook and the first ever study from TechCrunch on women venture capitalists and whether they fund more startups with a woman founder. Conclusion? A firm ‘Maybe” and “Too soon to tell. The bright spot is the number of women investors is increasing, along with the growth of  organizations like Pipeline Angels and TiE Global Women’s Entrepreneur Network chapters in many cities.

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