Founder to Founder with PhilHSC

In episode 79 of Founder To Founder, Phil talks to serial entrepreneur and Fractal Ventures General Partner, Gerard Doyle.

In Gerard's words, 'My mission is to help the founders, innovators, creators and dreamers find their customers, to see their product being deployed and fulfil their business potential.

It is rare to find a startup that doesn't have a unique business proposition. It is unfortunately common to watch startups fail to position their business in the correct light, and to the appropriate audience.

I use my 20+ year of marketing experience combined with my experience as a founder of three Startups to help fellow founders discover and develop the optimal marketing solution for their business.

You might call me a growth hacker or a part-time CMO, but whatever name you give it, I create marketing strategies for Startups'.

In this episode Gerard and Phil talk about how to manage being 'in between' ventures, how investors should think about investing in founders and the three habits that founders need to develop to be successful.

3 KEY POINTS

•The faster you realise where your strengths lie, the better and it often takes someone else to help you understand where you play the best. In Gerard's case, it was a journalist but for others this could be a mentor (09:07),

•Every venture has a key growth metric, it the north star for the business to grow. Know it intimately and what levers make it go up and down, it will help focus you and your team when the going gets tough AND when the going is good (20:31)

•Investing in founders is essential to ensure they can be there for the long haul. Sophisticated investors are more and more reluctant to participate in financing rounds where there is no portion of the round allocated to wages for the founders (26:10)

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Wellness is a loaded term. It means too many things to too many people. And when it comes to scaling a business and teams, wellness isn't on the critical path which is ironic given how important team performance is to a venture's success.

Some founders consider wellness a personal responsibility of each team member (that was me).

Others solve for wellness by introducing yoga, healthy snacks and flexible work arrangements (to name a few) for their teams to access.

These two approaches (and every option in between) are opt-in and neither one mandates co-founder participation.

And herein lies the issue.

Team members are cue sponges. They notice when co-founders or any person perceived to be a leader starts acting in ways to improve or degrade their wellbeing, regardless of whether the leader is acting consciously or subconsciously. It's an unavoidable fact that they respond and modify their behaviours based on what their leaders say and do.

For the record, I think wellness should get more airtime than it does today. I think it's an undervalued asset for teams starting or scaling ventures. And while wellness isn't likely to stand shoulder to shoulder with product, technology or marketing on the critical path, it is simple to scale.

The key to this simplicity is the example co-founders set and talk about with their teams.

It's all good. Until it's not.

If I'm honest I only started embracing wellness as an ideal when I started thinking about it in terms of how I perform in the service of my wife, daughters, friends and teammates.

I reframed wellness from being an esoteric, nice-to-have cliche and began thinking about it as a core capability I needed to be successful.

Sound strange?

Ask or observe most entrepreneurs and you'll find that they possess a kind of invincibility psyche. This manifests in a number of ways but it boils down to their mindset being something like this: 'If I'm always on and upbeat, I will overcome all odds and others will believe we are worth backing'.

These same founders scoff at the idea of work/life balance and dismiss the 'marathon, not a sprint' analogy. To them, their venture, identity and livelihood are so inextricably linked that they see no other option but to never stop. This can end badly.

Team members see this behaviour and try to match it in order to fit in. Or they burn out trying to. And while it's true that entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, no investor wants to see a company fold because its founders implode.

Founders who are scaling their business constantly navigate a slew of known and expected obstacles. Ironically, scaling wellness involves implementing 10 simple tactics.

I encourage founders to do all 10 and then share them with their team in a kind of checklist format. Set the example and then ask the team to follow suit. It will change the game for you, your team and your business.

Keep reading the full post here.

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In episode 77 of Founder To Founder, Phil talks to Educator Impact Founder & CEO Ken Wallace.

Educator Impact is on a mission to support educators because we know better educators mean better student outcomes.

Launched in 2012, Educator Impact is an innovative, evidence-based 360-degree feedback tool that provides teachers and leaders with individualised professional development plans to help improve teaching and leadership practice and enhance student outcomes.

Ken and Phil talk about pivoting from a tradition career to startup, education technology and how to leverage seasonality and three habits to be a successful founder.

3 KEY POINTS

•The team at Educator Impact has been pivotal to its success. Their alignment to the mission of helping teachers have a greater impact on students and their learning is one of Educator Impact's super powers.

•Educator Impact didn't realise how important (and how much) seasonality played a role in the business model. As they understood how to manage the seasonality, the team was able to leverage it into a competitive advantage (15:50)

•Strategy is as much about what to say no too, as it is determining how to capture an opportunity (29.22)

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Asking the right question at the right time is an art. As my good friend Melissa Rosenthal says, it takes practice and when you get it right, it pays off in spades.

Over the years I have learned that the 'right' questions often have three dimensions;

•They are open (cannot be answered by a simple Yes or No);

•They require thought and are delivered with context; and

•They contain an element of reflection (they require the person answering to explain their logic).

I have also become reliant on asking these questions for two reasons, both of which have to do with self-awareness.

The first relates to pursuing a problem.

Like most people I have biases and like most entrepreneurs, I come with high levels of built-in conviction for the problems I want to solve.

The problem is that bias multiplied by conviction creates a potent combination that narrows the aperture to how one considers the history and future possibilities for the business model they are building.

First-time founders often suffer from this. The few that don't have a habit of continually asking questions.

They and their more seasoned colleagues know that their rate of learning is driven by thoughtful disagreement which in turn is driven by regularly asking 'why?' and other well-considered questions.

Building mission-driven teams is the second reason I strive to ask the 'right' questions.

I believe that a culture of radical transparency is one of the most important preconditions for creating a place that attracts the best people to do career-defining work. It also helps determine those who may not be a fit. In any case, this can only be achieved if every team member feels like they can ask well-considered questions to anyone in the organisation.

If this principle appeals to you, I recommend adding Kim Scott's audiobook called Radical Candour to your listening lineup.

Keep reading this post here.

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In Episode 75 of Founder To Founder Phil speaks with journalist and Co-Founder of SportsYear, Patrick Galloway.

Patrick is a sports reporter with ABC News in Sydney. He joined the ABC in 2012 after five years working with ESPN in the United States. He was formerly a researcher for Bruce McAvaney at Channel Seven. Patrick co-founded SportsYear in 2004.

RESOURCES

•Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn or Twitter

•Visit Patrick's venture, SportsYear

•Audible - Get a FREE Audiobook & 30-Day Trial if you're not currently a member!

3 KEY POINTS

•The longer you can be in market, the more likely you will understand who your true customer is and how to meet their need. Startup is a game of survival (9:55)

•Look beyond people who think your idea and business model is great. Determine if they would actually use your product (15:03)

•Know your numbers! Even if you're not a 'numbers person'. It's your business. Understand it, (28:16)

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Where do I start with my idea?

I get this question a lot and those who ask usually possess infectious excitement about an idea, are new to product development and remain convinced that their addressable market of customers is massive.

The irony is that 90% of people who ask where to start, don't.

Deep down they know why and it usually comes down to three reasons.

Fear is the first reason (and there's an antidote)

The first reason is fear. People fear what they don't know and more specifically, people fear what others will think of their ideas.

I don't like venturing into motivational territory because what's usually said isn't practical but in this case, I'll offer two thoughts that always prove true.

The greatest triumphs live just on the other side of one's fears.

And when you break it down further, fear only plays a significant role when the person believes that the only way forward is all-or-nothing. When it comes to building a company, it's rarely 'all in'. The reality is that it's a series of small experiments and a few successes for every ton of failures.

Here's the second thought:

The only person who cares enough to be anxious about your ideas is - you guessed it - YOU!

And here's the antidote for fear in entrepreneurship. Just ask yourself two simple questions:

On the downside, if going from idea to business isn't all-or-nothing and it's a series of small experiments, what have you got to lose?

Then on the upside, what happens if someone is willing to pay it?

Feel free to post a photo in the comments with the 'oh yeah, he's right' look on your face :)

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In episode 73 of Founder To Founder, Phil talks to Otlet and Shark Share Global Co-Founder Madeline Green.

In Madeline's words, 'When I reach the end of my life I want to be able to look back and know I spent my time wisely, working towards understanding, managing and conserving the biological world around me. I don't believe there is a need to save the world; instead I think we need to learn how to co-exist.

I am a marine biologist and molecular ecologist, who studies a variety of shark and ray species.

I am also an entrepreneur and the co-founder of biological sample sharing platforms; Shark Share Global and Otlet.'

Madeline and Phil talk about balancing an accelerating while doing a day job (or in Madeline's case finishing a PhD!), how to manage well-intentioned startup advice, developing grit and three habits to be a successful founder.

3 KEY POINTS

•Understand incentives and how they drive people to use your product but don't be surprised if when they start using it, they use it in a completely different way, that's a good thing! (12:10)

•When you're getting bombarded with startup advice, remember that you will hold much of the domain knowledge and the context. Frame the advice correctly but at the end of the day, back yourself and your judgement (30:32)

•Get ready and be good for heading one word hundreds of times: No. This is par for the course and while it might seem overwhelming to be on a streak of 'thanks but no thanks', remember to claim the lesson on each 'No'. All you need to do is ask! (31:40)

RESOURCES

•Connect with Madeline on LinkedIn

•Visit Madeline's venture, Otlet.

•Start using Trello, one of Madeline's favourite tools!

•Audible - Get a FREE Audiobook & 30-Day Trial if you're not currently a member!

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Startup founders are advice magnets. Friends, family, investors, self-proclaimed experts and pundits, users and customers all like to share their two cents worth.

Most founders I know do their best to balance this advice against their vision but it's not easy.

A thread on LinkedIn brought this issue to light and people from across the advice spectrum weighted in. Those on the sidelines argued that diversity of perspective is important. Founder's said that the quality of advice from those without 'garage experience' is highly variable at best and that they rely on themselves to filter out the noise.

I side with the latter argument as do many of my colleagues and mentees. Yet screening for advice amidst the noise remains a daily challenge. This is because founder's don't have all the answers all the time and insights can come from the strangest of sources. This paradox usually manifests through a fear of missing out (FOMO) or the 'need to please'.

FOMO is a fine balance of curiosity and paranoia but often favours the latter.

The 'need to please' plays out where a perceived power imbalance exists. In the context of entrepreneurship, that perception comes from one party (investors) appearing to have more experience or capital than the other party (founders). And in order to access more experience and capital, using the thesis that more of both will accelerate growth, founders tend of over index the importance placed on advice from these people.

These two emotions are real and increase a founder's advice surface area but that doesn't help with screening for noise.

Read the full post here.

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In episode 71 of Founder To Founder, Phil talks to GiggedIn Founder and CEO Ed Onggo.

In Ed's words, 'I try to live each day like it's my last, but learn like I'm going to live forever.

I enjoy geeking out on all things tech, startups, personal development, music, neuroscience, and anything else related to becoming the most epic human one can be. Heroes include; Peter Diamandis, Tony Robbins, Naval Ravikant, Naveen Jain, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, Tim Ferriss, Ray Kurzwell, Simon Sinek, Jim Kwik, Tom Bilyeu, Mark Sisson, Ray Dalio and lots more.

The current business I am dedicated to making a huge success is GiggedIn. Our vision is to make shared experiences and going out a weekly habit. Why? Because life is short nothing tops the feeling of being in the moment at a gig or out having a laugh with mates at a show. These are the moments that are key to living a fulfilled and happy life.

We make more of these experiences happen through our subscription platform that makes it easier and cheaper for our members to access tickets from a curated monthly list of about 150 concerts, festivals, comedy, cinema and theatre shows. We are doing what Spotify and Netflix have done for CD's and DVD's but for all ticketed live entertainment.

I've led GiggedIn through several business model pivots (painful, but valuable learning experiences) to land on the model that is now experiencing healthy growth (~20% MoM). We now help thousands of members have more fun, have raised over $1.5M AUD, worked with over 2.5K events, and are backed by industry executives, tech entrepreneurs, as well as Artesian Venture Partners - one of Australia's largest Venture Capital firms.

I also regularly guest lecture at Macquarie Uni and volunteer time for UNSW CIE students to talk startups and entrepreneurship because I've always got time to spare to support young founders having a crack, plus I enjoy it.

If you feel like I can help you in any way or you're an investor interested in getting involved with GiggedIn - feel free to reach out.'

Ed and Phil talk about tenacity, learning and three habits to be a successful founder.

Resources

•Connect with Ed on LinkedIn

•Visit Ed's venture, GiggedIn

•Audible - Get a FREE Audiobook & 30-Day Trial if you're not currently a member!

3 key points

•Understanding incentives, particularly when building a marketplace business is essential (11:29)

•Patience, learning and tenacity is a winning combination. Each of these is equal parts practice and mindset (18:20)

•Stay married to the problem, not the solution. Solutions come and go but the problem remains constant until you nail it! (25:50)

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I often hear that software developers are the most difficult hire for non-technical founders.

The process and questions to determine a candidate's fit is a mystery to most of these founders. And regardless of whether they're looking for a Chief Technology Officer or a freelancer to help hack the first version of a product, they often feel completely out of their depth when speaking with developer candidates.

As a result, they rely on what they think they know about recruiting talent. For the most part, this means relying on their own experience in hiring people which as it turns out is usually, at least for first-time founders, very limited. And let's be honest, there are few people in the world who have a perfect hiring track record.

If your venture relies on software, and just about all do, the need to get hiring decisions right is important. In fact, it's crucial because (and speaking from experience) getting it wrong can be terminal.

Read the full post here.

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