Archive for category Entrepreneur
What I learned through Startup Weekend Redmond@BizSpark
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur, Tech on September 1st, 2009
For this weekend, I was at Startup Weekend Redmond@BizSpark where entrepreneurs who are skilled at programing, business planning, legal advising, etc get together to build a business with working product just over the weekend. My team created an iPhone application “Learn That Name” which helps you remember the face/name of the contact on your LinkedIn account to avoid embarrassment. Although my background is a business development, I end up working primary as a lead web developer. I was just amazed at what came out just over the weekend, and my team won the first place by the vote from the other 14 teams.
I’d like to summarize what I think were the success factors which brought us a honorable mention at the Startup Weekend.
It’s all about a team work
With 16 members, we were the second largest group ever formed in the Startup Weekend. About half of the team were programming while the other half were putting together a business strategy. The key here was to coordinate 16 members who just met for the first time. Here are the steps we took to coordinate the whole team.
1. We first put Eric Koester, who came up with the idea, as a leader of the group since he was a visionary guy (tho he wish he had a programming skill!). We also appointed overall leaders and communication leaders in each of our programming and biz development department.
2. Before the first night was over, I collected everyone’s contact information on excel spread sheet and sent out everyone an email & poll to keep track of their availability by using Doodle.
3. The next morning, we had a meeting to put everyone on the same page. Again, what’s very important was to make sure all 16 members are headed to one goal.
4. To keep ourselves organized, we setup a Google Group (to share files and to have one email address for mailing list) and Dropbox (to share files between people who do similar tasks).
5. We frequently talked each other to make sure who is doing what by when. Everything just flow smoothly from that point.
Get objectives straight
There were many ways we could have developed our application: build web-based application for everyone to have access, build app for facebook audiences as opposed to LinkedIn, develop it on Microsoft stack to be eligible for receiving prize money, to add more fun features. We did none of those because we had a clear objective in mind: to launch a working product for LinkedIn audience in iPhone platform at the end of the competition. It does not satisfy the greater number, but it excites the few for sure, and that’s what we needed exactly.
Do not rely on partner services
Unless the process is automated, I do not recommend you to rely on getting ‘free’ subscription to any sort of services offered through Startup Weekend partners. We had issue getting a free 3 months trial hosting services from one of the partner and we never got it serviced. I decided to just pay $20 to get my teams website up and running.
Which angel investor group is the right one for you?
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur on August 20th, 2009
Before you even submit your business summary to angel investor groups, you should consider several factors to see if you can build mutual relationship with them.
1. Funding focus
Any group has its own characteristics, and angel investors are not the exception. Depending on the region and on the people comprised of, angel groups may be focusing on funding startups in specific industry. For example, Zino society only invest in the technology startups. One of the biggest reason why they are specialized in few industry is because there is a concentration of experts in the specific field in the angel group. So you are better off applying for the angel group that’s specialized in your industry.
2. Funding trend
As economy shifts back and forth, the funding trend of angel investors shifts as well. At Keiretsu Forum, less companies get funding these days in exchange for larger amount of investment for the one that gets invested. Unless you think your company is outstanding, you might want take different route.
3. Number of investors
No matter how many angel investors the group has, you are going to spend same amount of time preparing for the pitch. So it is better to approach large investor group so you can get the most exposures even if your company fails to obtain any funding lead. The more members they have, the better you are connected with other potential leads.
4. Fee
Depending on how big meeting is going to be (room, food, etc), and depending on how far you have to travel to get to the meeting, you will end up paying couple thousand dollars at the end. One good way to measure the cost performance is to use the following formula: sum of the cost you pay / # of angel investors specialized in your industry. You can always ask how many members would be interested in your company, or you can simply multiply the total number of angel investors and the percentage of the total number of investment your category. For example, if you run a software company and are looking to present your company at Keiretsu Forum Northwest, your cost performance is: $6000 / (100 investors * 42%) = $143 per investors specialized in your industry.
5. History
In my opinion, it is better to contact the angel group that’s been there for awhile for several reasons. First, an organizing committee most likely knows the characteristics of the investors well, so they can tell you what is going to be expected. Second, angel investors are likely to be familiar with the funding process and many of them can share you their experience of going through funding process. Third, it is self evident that both investors and entrepreneurs have been satisfied with the system. One thing to be careful is to not assume that it’s going to work for you just because it worked for others.
Conclusion
There are obviously more things to look at besides the profile of the organization, but you must at least study these factors before you apply. Otherwise, you will regret for paying large sum of your money for the outcome you have not expected.
LAVVA tries to be the next gen social search engine
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur, Tech on August 13th, 2009
LAVVA
LAVVA is a new search engine which claims to be social. While Google weigh the relevance of website by the coding of the website and its popularity measured by number of links, LAVVA relies on user inputs to determine what’s hot among them.
The concept of using user inputs to show the result may seem new to Google users, but it is already being implemented by big players such as Yahoo (w/ del.icio.us) and Wikia Search Engine. Users on LAVVA can input their opinion about their website by clicking buttons for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and they can add comments, but these features are also implemented by Wikia years back. Was Wikia successful with social search engine concept? Not really. Nobody really seems to contribute to enhance the search result probably because it’s too much work for users to add their inputs. It is much ‘easier’ for users to simply use Google.
LAVVA plans to read user contents from other social website such as Facebook to make it as easy as possible for users to contribute, so it could potentially be the first social search engine to do it right.
Read More about LAVVA
Startup Tips: Cats and Dogs of your business
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur on August 3rd, 2009
I’ve seen many mistakes entrepreneurs make when they start their business, and I’d like to discuss about understanding a pain and customer driven approach.
Understanding a Pain
Every morning, one of my sister cats starts to cry for her breakfast. She obviously has a need for hunger fulfillment, or perhaps one can call it a pain in the market. So every time I feed her, her needs are fulfilled. This particular need will occur periodically as long as she lives, and she will do anything to get food from me. Although she can catch her food outside as an alternative, it will not offer her a greater benefit. That is the moment I feel like I’m an Entrepreneur fulfilling the unmet need of the ‘niche’ market, for free.
Wait, how would you call it a business if you get no return? No business can survive without cashflow but many startups offer its product or service for free. They will call it a ‘radical marketing’ to justify the expense, but they are doing it as an excuse to avoid being rejected. Sure, everyone will love you for receiving something for free, but would they still love you once you start to charge them? As I illustrated in the story about my cat, customers will beg you to get what you have if that’s truly what they are looking for. You are not doing yourself any favor by giving stuff away for free. If you got a great product, they will pay you to get it. If not, don’t waste any more money than you’ve already wasted.
Customer Driven
I noticed a lot of people walking their dogs in my neighbors, and I say 4 out of 5 dog owners are ‘lead’ by their dogs. If you have not known, dogs who lead owners actually think that they are the master of the house hold. If you think you are letting them walk around freely, you are wrong: you are driven by dogs.
You’ve probably heard about ‘customer driven’ approach of a business. It is true that things will only work if it starts from customer. But your business cannot be really ‘driven’ by customers. You got to be in control of your business and you got to make things happen for them. For example, I see a lot of entrepreneurs and management team that put too much faith in the power of social marketing. They think things magically happen overnight when you show them your product. Unfortunately, you won’t see the magic. First of all, customers will not drive your vehicle for you; you got to drive them around to show them exciting visions they’ve never seen. Second, your business will cease to exist if you simply implement suggested solutions from your customers who know nothing besides their needs. You got to listen to your customers, but you cannot let them drive you around.
Conclusion
A successful path to startup business, or perhaps to all size of the business, is to understand the nature of your customers beyond their psychographics.
Will sex happen for you? A new SNS receives 1 million seed funding
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur, Tech on July 15th, 2009
I just read a blog post Portland startup launches Web service for ’sex positive’ people at TechFlash about a new social network service called Blackbox Republic with a catch phrase: “Sex Will Happen.” What struck me was not its catch phrase, but the fact they’ve received $1 million dollar seed funding from angel investors (anonymous). Working as an intern at Keiretsu Forum, a world’s largest investor network, it made me wonder what’s so hot about them. Although we invest more per company, we only invest in few companies. So what makes angels excited about investing in a company that seems to be just another dating site?
It’s a niche social network service
Blackbox targets users who are ‘sex positive’ or someone who doesn’t think sex is an issue. As it’s clear from their title, Blackbox promises to ensure user privacy among users and even from the web administrators. This would make sense considering that it’s a social network and not just an instant hook up website. They also restrict registrations via invitations only to screen out unserious users and charge a membership fee to further raise its bar from users to register to their website. Not only that it connects users online, Blackbox plans to host events for users to meet each other in person. That would increase trust in meeting a person you met online. A bottom line is that it’s targeting customers that are privacy conscious and really serious about relationship in person, and not so excited about making hundreds of ‘fake’ friends online you never meet in person. So Blackbox is really a means to foster an in-person relationship through online with confidence.
Attractive Founders
Just yesterday I was looking for an online service to connect our investors and startup companies that are going through due diligence process, and I landed on a company website that sells online business social software called Jive that is used by companies like Nike and Intel. What’s really surprising is that Sam Lawrence, a co-founder and CEO of Blackbox, has been a CMO for Jive. Working as a marketing office at a company that sells business social network service, he must be bringing valuable experiences as well as great insights in the industry. Without his experience as a CMO at Jive, the company probably could not secure $1 million investment from angels.
Conclusion
The service itself may not be anything new or radical, but Blackbox might be the first company to do it right in this direction. I’m very curious to see what secret sauce they have to bring success to the company and definitely follow Sam Lawrence to see what experience he got by working at Jive.
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