What does it take to have a successful first meeting with an Investor?

Here are some thoughts...

Earning investment from an Investor is a lot like dating and/or forming any kind of relationship. Therefore...

1. Ideally, you're meeting an investor for the first time BEFORE you are raising capital.

2. Do some research into what they care about - both personally and professionally. But don't be a stalker.

3. Get a warm intro through their network. 

4. Get them excited about your company through a combination of voice and vision. Show your passion and explain why this is a big idea with big potential to make the world a better place.

5. It's likely that you don't have much built yet - so they will essentially be investing in YOU, not your idea or company. You need to convey a sense of personal credibility and conviction while still demonstrating that you are coachable and collaborative. This means you should be able to...
   
   a) Be clear and straightforward about what you know, your hypothesis and what you're still yet to figure out. It's ok that you haven’t figured certain things out yet - but its important to know and admit it.

   b) Avoid absolutist language and scarcity thinking

   c) Both eagerly hear and digest ideas/criticism while also defending key decisions or beliefs you have - all without being defensive.

   d) Earnestly ask for and capture feedback and advice. In particular, ask what the investor would need to get conviction about your company when you come back while raising a round

   e) Compensate for any weakness in your background or skillset by having pulled together a great advisory and operations team, a strong pitch deck with a clear narrative, and a beautiful product. Or better: Lots of traction!
   

6. Set good expectations about what you're going to do next with the company - including responding to or acting on their advice and requirements to invest - and be prepared to come back having delivered on those things (or have good information about why those things were no longer relevant). 

7. Focus on finding a fit instead of convincing them of something. After all - you have to live with them as a partner in your business. You need to like each other!

8. Relax

If you’re in a big company, it might be better to just start over

Building an innovation culture inside a medium to large, legacy business is hard work across multiple dimensions. Sometimes the challenge can actually be insurmountable with too many intractable forces working against change.

In some cases, it can be better to spin out a separate company with a new culture, mission and team composition. In these cases the legacy business provides the “seed” capital and takes a meaningful ownership stake.

The new company(s) should be free to aggressively pursue an innovation agenda - even if that means cannibalizing or even disrupting the legacy business.

This has many, many advantages (and, of course, some disadvantages). Amongst the advantages is that it allows outside investors to come in (reducing risk) and the development of an ESOP (employee share option pool). Both of these factors increase the chances of attracting top talent from Silicon Valley style companies who tend to be looking for high growth equity opportunities.

A related area to explore is setting up a strategic venture fund to invest in existing companies innovating in the areas you believe in. But that’s for another post.

So if you’re inside a large company fighting to drive disruption and new thinking, consider getting buy-in for a clean new entity with a different kind of structure, mission and people.

Platforms present unique challenges for Product Managers

For Product Managers, Platform Products are extra complicated to lead because there are more internal and external stakeholders to align and collaborate with.

Internally, the critical functions of your product development team expands from just designers, engineers, data scientists, and product marketing to also include Business Development and Partner Engineering.

Externally, you're no longer just creating interaction surfaces for your end-users - you must also create a user experience for your implementing partner; one that guides them, engages them and helps them be successful. Further, your end-user experience is heavily influenced (if not outright controlled) by the implementing partner.

As a result driving alignment, getting predictable timelines, measuring outcomes and iterating are all exponentially more complicated.

You have to be very, very good at communication, narratives, sync meetings, templates, guides, reviews and other alignment tricks to try to manage through the complexity.

In short; you have to be the very best Product Manager you can be.

It's often deeply underestimated just how complicated building a great platform is and how much unique pressure a Product Manager in that position is.

How do you EARN a Technical Co-founder?

You may have heard the saying "You don't find a Technical Co-founder, you earn them"

But what does that mean exactly?

It means you think of them like you would an investor. So you should...

1. Build your startup as far as you can without them. Pitch decks, designs, partners, investors, advisors, prototypes using freelancers, in-market product using yet more freelancers etc. Make your business worth investing in.

2. Have a process. Execute it well. That includes...

• a) Find the senior engineers at the companies you admire who seem to have a background in the kind of work you're doing

• b) Reach out to them (LinkedIn is great for this) with a message that is highly tailored and extremely leaned in (remember that they are being bombarded by recruiters all day long - make sure to point out you're the CEO). Don't be coy, don't be dry. Explain why you think they might change the trajectory of your company and why its a MASSIVE opportunity for them. Ask for just 15 minutes of their time to explain the rest on a call

• c) Offer them a meaningful piece of the business with a 4-year vesting schedule and a 1-year cliff.

Tips for prioritizing your backlog

Tips for prioritizing a backlog

1. Annotate each item with what problem it solves (e.g. usability problem, new user acquisition, performance issues, content/Inventory issue etc)

2. Group them by theme

3. Ask yourself "What is the number 1 reason more people are not being more successful with my product this week"

4. Do the items that address that reason first, second, third

In writing: Being clear is more important than being “smart”

Being clear and well understood is more important than appearing clever by using flowery, sophisticated language.

Don’t over-communicate in your presentation

When presenting your product/business to customers or investors for the first time, It’s not necessary to explain every technical detail. Listing three strong bullets is better than 10 technically accurate but extremely dense bits of information.

The rest can go in the appendix in case somebody asks.

The all-important details can be part of a second, “deep dive” meeting.

Sovereignty by interest and intent

For all of history, we have been grouped and defined our sovereignty by where we are physically located in the world. In the last decade, in the online world, we are increasingly grouped and define our sovereignty by interest and intent. 

Be careful about your team’s definition of “Done”

It’s a common mistake to get 80% done and never fully deliver value to the market. 

“Done” means tested, stable, shipped into production, listed on the website, documented, promoted on the blog, shared via mailing lists etc

[Side note: The only thing better than “Done” is “Successful”. The only definition of success that matters is: adopted by a large and growing number of active customers. Media, pilots, academic studies, government grants etc don’t count]

This doesn’t just apply to software. This also applies to partnerships, operations etc etc.

To achieve this you need to align expectations across teams and partners about the definition of “done” and make sure you finish the things you start before chasing the next shiny object. Said another way - FOCUS.

To do otherwise is one of the biggest possible mistakes in business - spending resources and not achieving any return on that investment.

My definition of luck

My standard answer to "How did you achieve that?" is "Luck".

Luck = Preparation + Opportunity + Execution.

Startups help us adapt to a changing world

Startups are simply the best vehicles we’ve come up with to deal with a rapidly changing world by applying first principles thinking, creativity and the scientific method to adapt to, and fix what’s broken.

Data needs UX

Data without value added UX is simply stored potential energy. It’s not enough. L

Pay attention to the details

The details matter. Getting them right can be the difference between conveying a subconscious sense of credibility - or not. Pay attention to pixels, colors, margins, voice and all the things that "don't matter"

Originally posted to Facebook

Vision requires kindred spirits

Vision is having a prescient, almost fully formed sense of something you want to see in the world and then pulling the future into the present. Manifesting thoughts and hopes about a better way of doing things into reality.

Success requires almost every kind of skill imaginable. People skills, creativity, engineering, project management, invention, business acumen and so much more. Most of all it requires optimism and abundance thinking.

This kind of force of will can scare those who don't understand how or why this is possible.

In pursuing this journey, finding kindred spirits who's skills and insights can compliment your own is not only delightful, it's essential.

Pay for good help

There are a lot of hidden fees and charges in life. Little taxes and tips that often go unaccounted for. By far, the largest one of these is wasted time.

Ironically, time is the most expensive and precious resource we have. Both as individuals and as leaders of companies.

Do the things you love, do things that are high leverage and productive, spend endless time with loved ones, watch and read things that inspire you - but try to avoid choosing the cheapest option or the menial chores over getting the best service and professionals to help.

What you’ll spend in cash you’ll make up for in quality of life, momentum, and leverage.

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Don’t over-index on feelings

Most people live very practical and pragmatic lives. They go to work and do the job they’re assigned.

There are two other kinds of people, though.

1) There are aspirational people who demand that they work on specific types of projects and problems. Big and impactful things that make them feel excited, important and inspired! This is typically a positive thing - but it can sometimes become unbalanced and lead to a situation where they are unable to execute on pragmatic, commercial things. It leads to a kind of execution paralysis.

2) There are other people who fail to act (or act well) because they feel afraid. They procrastinate or self-sabotage. This is due to a wide range of reasons that they rarely even understand themselves - but irrespective of the reason, it ultimately also leads to execution paralysis.

I suspect, in both cases, these people could benefit from recalibrating the role of “feelings” in their lives.

Part of crafting a successful life requires that you don’t over-index on feelings.

It might sound harsh, but In some cases, they need to harden up and be an adult. They need to look at the world with sobriety and meet the market (and it’s challenges) where it is, not where they wish it to be.

This is not to say that the aspirational people have to give up on optimism and ambition, only that the most effective way to achieve their optimistic goals is typically through very pragmatic and incremental means. Of course, the trick here is to understand where the line is, and have the right balance of impatience, stubbornness, and pragmatism. A difficult but critical balance to strike!

This is also not to say that afraid people can simply have their fear absolved - but rather that they need to act bravely to break out of their shell to provide for themselves and their families.

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Product is all about good choices

What Is the the actual problem? This should be very specific and hopefully involve specific pain that can be quantified in dollars and cents of waste and inefficiency.

Who is your user and who is your partner? I’m seeing a lot of startups conflate these two things lately.

What is the exacted behavior (particularly for mvp)? Ive always seem companies trying to boil the ocean here. I’ve been guilty of it myself many times.

What is the point of differentiation? What is the marketing message? Be specific. Better, cheaper, faster. Pick 2. It typically can’t be all three.

At the beginning, you can’t be everything to everyone or no one will get it or care.

I’m a big tv and movie nerd so I watch a lot of behind the scenes content about them. Movies and directors also talk a lot about choices. A good movie is usually the result of a series of very good, and very consistent choices.

Just like product. They’re both art.

Your product experience should be obvious and easy to use

A good product shouldn't require a training manual or even that much text to be initially useful to a user.

The trick is to have clean and clear UI/UX metaphors that seem obvious, great "clean slate" experiences that nudge the user to do key things when they first log in and in-line tips for what to do next (just 1 or 2 sentences at most). In this way, users learn how to use the software organically.

Tips, tricks, help and knowledge base should only be available for some advanced functions or to handle edge cases.

What are some of the best examples of this you've seen in the wild?

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Business People are from Mars, Academics are from Venus.

They are worlds apart. 

Neither is better or worse (and both are desperately needed in our society) but it’s an interesting challenge when they try to cross into each other’s field.

Where academics seem to be much more concerned in differences and intangibles, business/product are much more concerned with generalities and tactics. 

Where academics are interested in describing the world, business people are more interested in affecting it.

Where academics are interested in consensus building, business people are much more interested in finding hard facts and acting decisively to affect change.

Where academics work on the timescale of years, business people tend to work at the scale of quarters.

How do you know when you're ready for channel partnerships?

I come across a lot of startups who have a go-to-market strategy predicated on sales and marketing partnerships with partners.

The reality is, however, that in an early b2c business, If you can’t sell your own sh*t then it’s unlikely a partner can do it for you. 

Partners are usually a great way to spend endless hours in negotiation and ongoing alignment struggles only to see a meddling success when the partnership is executed.

Even then, all they usually do is magnify your own process. So if your process produces poor results then a partnership will just multiply that out. 0 x 10 is still Zero.

Instead, figure out how to tell your own story with a gorgeous website, explainer video, self-serve onboarding and training flow and more. Then figure out how to scale it with low hanging fruit like ads, content marketing, mailing lists, etc.

Then, and only then, lightweight co-marketing partnerships might be useful to supercharge these activities. Deep integrations should typically be left until later.

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