Founder to Founder with PhilHSC

In the first part of this special two-part conversation of Founder To Founder, Phil speaks with serial entrepreneur, Kim Teo.

Kim Teo is Co-Founder of PitchBlak, Australia's largest supporter of idea-stage entrepreneurs. PitchBlak has raised $20M for their own startups and learned plenty of hard lessons along the way. Alongside continuing to launch their own ventures, they now help founders across Australia to validate their ideas and build a compelling story to get pre-seed investment.

And here are five things you'll want to know about Kim before you meet:

• There's always an audiobook or podcast playing

• Get a kick out of spotting and seizing opportunities

• Say what I'll do and do what I say

• Straight up, respectful, no BS

• ENTP - Extrovert, Intuitive, Thinking, Prospecting

Kim and Phil talk about growth, short circuits to success by leveraging the knowledge of entrepreneurs around the world, how to think about market-place businesses and three habits that make founders successful.Follow Phil HSC:

iTunes: http://apple.co/2pc0GqJ

Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2AdJcPH

Overcast: http://bit.ly/2HhJAMX

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philhsc/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philhsc/

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The punchline is that money needs to survive three tests when you're an entrepreneur.

I raise this after troubling conversations this past month which left me thinking that most first-time founders don't know how to think about money.

While the reasons vary, I think the core of this issue lies in how people have received and valued money in their lives before taking on investment.

People invest for different reasons, three reasons actually...

Keep listening or read the full post here.

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Thanks for listening. If you'd like to know when new episodes are released or when Phil publishes his weekly blog post, sign up for the insider's email list here.

In Episode 57 of Founder To Founder, Phil speaks with Elevacao CEO & Founder, Marisa Warren.

Marisa is a global start-up advisor, investor, social entrepreneur and speaker, who is incredibly passionate about elevating women to higher levels and building a collaborative tech ecosystem. As an entrepreneur, Marisa has built three global businesses from idea stage to revenue producing, and worked in Australia and New York for companies such as SAP, Microsoft and Workday.

Whilst living in New York, Marisa founded ELEVACAO a global not for profit empowering women entrepreneurs to build and launch successful tech businesses. Since ELEVACAO's launch ​mid-2015, we've helped over 80 women get pitch ready for investment funding across New York, Sydney, Melbourne and San Francisco launching April 2018.

Marisa and Phil talk about the catalysts for welcoming more women into startups and technology role, how to move between life events and failure and four habits that make founders successful.

Investor: 'Will your business scale?'

Entrepreneur: 'Yes!'

That's the default answer from soon to be founders and entrepreneurs.

It's obvious to them that a need exists and the prospect of reaching millions of users and customers is intoxicating.

But as my colleague Jeffrey Tobias says, it's a mistake to think that a startup is a small business.

His point, quite rightly, is that small businesses have limited growth potential.

Startups, on the other hand, are limited to the size of the addressable market.

And it's this nuance that first-time founders rarely consider.

At the heart of the difference between a startup and a small business is the number of units of value that can be generated per person over time.

Keep listening or read the full post here.

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In Episode 53 Phil speaks with serial entrepreneur Antonia Saint Dunbar.Antonia led the design of THINX and was the Chief of Operations for years, and she is now taking on the shoe industry with her new high-tech heels and flats that feel like sneakers on the inside. She raised $1.8M in 40 days with pre-orders from 7,000 people around the world. Nominated as one of Women 2.0's "Top Female Founders to Watch", and called a "Feminist Genius" by the press for the invention of THINX (Fast Company's Most Innovative Co's of 2017, Entrepreneur's Most Brilliant Co's of 2016, and one of TIME Magazine's "Top 25 Inventions for 2015"), Antonia is passionate about disruptive innovation to provide solutions for women.

Through the THINX Foundation, the Fistula Foundation and other giveback partners, she creates companies that are dedicated to purpose in addition to profits, and solutions to help support gender equality worldwide.

Interesting facts:

•THINX was a TriBeCa Disruptive Innovation winner alongside the likes of the founders of Warby Parker, Twitter and Kickstarter as well as Scooter Braun (Justin Beiber) and Adam Braun (Pencils of Promise).

•Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, designers and artists, Antonia learned early on that you can create something out of nothing and that your idea exist in the world at large to help better people's lives. When she led the design of THINX and wrote the patent, she felt it already in her DNA to do so.

•Before co-founding THINX, Antonia was a marketing/PR executive who made key partnerships at various production companies, and she has also toured the world and played cello with artists like Carly Simon and John Forte of The Fugees.Phil and Antonia talk about how to move between ventures, developing resilience, integrating parenting with growing ventures and the three habits that make founders successful.

Patience is the most difficult mindset to master when you are naturally urgent. It doesn't come easily to me or many of my colleagues. And the irony that entrepreneurship is equal parts patience and urgency isn't lost on us either.

I have found that while you need to be urgent and patient simultaneously, the mix of each one changes with time. The issue is you only realise that in retrospect.

In the early days of a venture, founders are in full control of their time. They can design and tinker in the relative privacy of their development environments. Urgency is high, patience can be low.

As ventures grow and expectations on investment and growth start to take hold, that mix should change.

And it might. Slightly. From say a 90% urgency, 10% patience ratio to 80:20.

This slight increase in patience is afforded to internal activities where larger teams take longer to collaborate and get things done. And for the most part, the activities the team are focused on are relatively contained and controllable.

The nuance here is that growth also comes with additional external dependencies, all of which take time.

The one thing that founders never want to think, hear or embrace is that despite their best efforts to create urgency, the world outside their venture's walls moves at its own pace.

Partnerships take longer to form, consumer marketing takes time to optimise and product development needs to respond to a broader audience.

The cumulative effect of these realities puts obvious pressure on runways. It also creates stress on the already limited bandwidth of small teams and narrows the universe of available tactics to extend the time in market.

Keep listening or read the full post here.

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Thanks for listening. If you'd like to know when new episodes are released or when Phil publishes his weekly blog post, sign up for the insider's email list here.

In Episode 53 Phil speaks with John Bale, CEO and Co-Founder of Soldier On, a Not-For-Profit established after he discovered a severe lack of support for veterans (and their families) who discharged after sustaining injuries during their service.

John served in the Australian Army for 12 years and finished his career as a Chief of Army Scholar writing on the de-stigmatisation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the Australian Army. He was state finalist for 2014 Young Australian of the year and winner of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 (Eastern Region).

Phil and John talk about changing the perception of Post Traumatic Stress, the value veterans bring to the community, negotiating the 'in between' and the three habits that make founders successful.

RESOURCES

•Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger - One of John's favourite books

•The Founder's Mentality by Chris Zook and James Allen - Another of John's favourite books

•The Dead Prussian - John's favourite podcast

•Connect with John on LinkedIn and Twitter

•Audible - Get a FREE Audiobook & 30-Day Trial if you're not currently a member!3 KEY POINTS

•The mission remains constant (Soldier On's mission is to create the best generation of reintegrated veterans in Australia's history) but how you achieve it changes (07:15)

•Casting veterans with Post Traumatic Stress as the victims makes it easy in the 24/7 news cycle to understand and support the issue. This is not malicious but the conversation has not included the great qualities that veterans bring to companies and society and Soldier On is working to level up this narrative (10:42)

•Being 'in between' (ventures as an entrepreneur or transitioning from the military for veterans) can be really daunting. Having a network of support is essential. For entrepreneurs that means engaging with other founders. For veterans that means connecting with Soldier On (18:36)

Most parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles know of Hairy Maclary. For the uninitiated, Hairy is a fictitious dog who lives at a dairy and embarks on adventures with his friends. Each story is playfully illustrated, written in rhythmic verse and begs the reader to deliver each page with theatrical enthusiasm.

I owe a great deal to New Zealand author Dame Lynley Dodd, the creator of this great character.

An embarrassing realisation

My introduction to Hairy Maclary took place when our eldest daughter was a small number of months old. Until that point, I had been winging it. As clumsily as one could, I had been making my way through our story time routine using stilted and stutter-filled language. It didn't seem to matter until one day our daughter looked up at me when I tripped over a simple phrase, again and again. The look on her face said, 'what's wrong?'

Filled with shame, I had no response.

Keep listening or read the full post here.

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In episode 51 Phil speaks with Australian entrepreneur Matt Parry who founded a brand that is taking on Pringles around the world.

The Good Crisp Company launched in the US market in early 2017 as the premium and natural Pringle alternative. Today Matt's product is in over 3,000 supermarkets, one of the top ten fastest growing brands in Whole Foods stores and on track to do over $5M in sales in 2018 from $0 in 2017.

Phil and Matt talk about planning for unexpected success, the role of grass-roots sales plays in learning how to manage large B2B deals and the three habits that make founders successful.

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Stress is an unavoidable part of a startup. It affects team members in different ways and it's constant in a founders life.

There is a long list of situations, decisions and expectations that create stressful conditions. Add fatigue and a perfect storm of stress can easily besiege even the most accomplished entrepreneur.

It would be easy to lump startup stress management with the founding team but I think it is, and always will be, a team effort.

Keep listening or read the full post here.

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Thanks for listening. If you'd like to know when new episodes are released or when Phil publishes his weekly blog post, sign up for the insider's email list here.