It’s All About The People

Here’s a personal motto of mine:  “It’s all about the people”.

Entrepreneurs are people who are about to, or already stopped everything they were doing, just about to, or started a startup company into which they’ll be hiring other people that’ll help them turn they’re dream into reality. Together, they’ll be going to meet the Angel Investor people and later down the road, the VC people (note to self: great name for an 80′s rock band). They’ll be occupying the services of various providers, ran by again – people. They’ll spend time listening to the advice of the Lawyers people and CPA people. Some will reach the desired stage where they’ll launch a product or service that is meant to be consumed by – PEOPLE.
Sigh, so many people to relay on and interact with, just in order to turn one idea into a successful company.

When I meet with fellow entrepreneurs who come for mutual brainstorming, a piece of advice or get me to invest in their venture, I usually ask them to tell me about the risk factors in their project. Almost always I hear generic answers like: We won’t raise enough money, our financial/market projections are off course, technology show-stoppers may pop and keep us behind schedule, Etc.
While all may be very true and sometimes justified, I say:  ”You’re wrong”.
Why? Because all aforementioned threats are resulted by…you guessed it – PEOPLE.

If you failed to form partnership with the right people, hire the right people and raise funds from the right people, problems will come knocking down your startup’s door.
For some of you it may sound trivial – “The Right People”. Sounds obvious, isn’t it? Well, in my short time I’ve seen many entrepreneurs fail, and some who prevailed. No matter how many times I case studied entrepreneurs and their startups, it always comes down to the human factor – people. Those who built great companies (some of which were sold e.g. EXIT), did it because they surrounded themselves with the right people. Those who filed, always, but always, got there because the wrong person was filling a position he simply shouldn’t have. Ironically enough, it doesn’t even have to be a managerial role. I actually got to witness a great company collapses because of a general secretary. Not the CEO’s personal assistant – a general secretary. Yes, the right people should be traced and hired to any position in the company, from low level to top executives.

One of the things you can take from this post in particular and this blog in general, is that no matter how trivial it may seem – FOCUS ON PEOPLE.  If you’ll succeed on this task, the rest will happen. No, not on its own, but by YOU and the right people that are with YOU.

The Founding Fathers

For me, this is the most crucial “people related” junctions on the entrepreneurial highway.

Most of the times I meet a team of entrepreneurs, where one represents the technology or field of invention, and the other(s) represent “the business side” of the venture, in this post I’ll relate to the single entrepreneur scenario. Mostly it’s a one person’s dream that is shared with others who tag along.
So, a techie who invented something or had a great idea played around with it, perhaps crafted a preliminary proof of concept, and then ran to the “most qualified” person within his circles, who just happened to like the idea and before you know it, our techie has a co-founder, later to become the startup’s CEO. Hold it right there! Is this right? Is this super avid CEO actually qualifies for our techie to co-found a startup with?
Well, sometimes it is, but I came to realize that most of the times it isn’t. I’m not about to count the reasons so I’ll share my personal take on this scenario since it happened and keep happening to me too:
If it was right there, it was too easy, too quick or most importantly – too convenient, it’s probably wrong or at the very least not the best.

Suggestion: double-check, ask yourself the hard questions and answer yourself honestly. Spend some time to draw a simple Pros VS. Cons table. I make my decisions according to the following prescription: 90% facts, 10% gut feeling. Yes, your gut feeling counts. I have yet to meet someone that was capable of going against his gut feeling. However, our gut feeling reflects upon personality related qualities, not professional capabilities. You wouldn’t hire a shitty contractor to renovate your house just because he was a nice guy, right? On the other hand, if he’s well qualified and comes with the right recommendations, you’ll hire his services – EVEN if he’s kind of a shitty guy.
Conclusion: Try not to confuse between good interpersonal communications which is what you’re looking for in a partner, and a friendly pleasantness. Making friends along the way is a privilege, but not a necessity. We started this because we want to build a great company, not start a band together.  We all know that mixing friends and business is mostly destined to end badly. It takes unique people to make such relationship work, so if the right person is there and he’s not your friend, that’s a good foundation for building a company.

Remember, in about 2 weeks or so you’re about to sign a Founders Agreement with this guy. You’re about to take a long journey together. We already know he has some proximity to your social circles, so ask yourself this:
Is the person sitting in front of me really is the most qualified, skillful and trust worthy person to co-found THIS PARTICULAR startup company with, or is it a friend of a friend that owns some experience, or even vast experience, but mostly was just there and happened to be available to join the ride. For example:
He’s your best friend’s cousin, he served for 15 years as the VP Business Development of a fortune 100 pharmaceutical company where he did amazingly well, but..for your startup company you need someone that knows the internet like the back of his palm.
I guess you can take it from here.

Actually that was the good scenario. The even worst scenario is when our techie entrepreneur that masters programing decides he’s an “all-in-one” top management team.
Now here’s a recipe for a burned dish for you to chew on in 999,999 times out of a Million.
Why? Mostly because the odds of having one person that owns high marketing skills AND amazing coding capabilities are extremely low. Secondly, I believe that managerial concentration is a disaster waiting to happen. You need that other person (or more), who’s probably more qualified then you to handle particular segments of the venture,  and has the ability to tell you to your face that you’re wrong, and you will be.

Entrepreneurs are emotionally driven creatures. If you’ll show us a darkened LCD screen, we’ll find that burned pixel and call it white just for the sake of hope AKA denial. If there’s more than one entrepreneur on board, it’s more likely they’ll balance each other out.

If you follow this trivial “right people in the right places” agenda, you’re safe even when all founding entrepreneurs are wrong. Why? because you were just as wise to nominate the right people to sit on your startup’s board of directors or advisory board. Yes, choosing the right people means you’re not nominating a bunch of “YES MEN” (including your father or uncle) to serve as board directors. It also means that your employees were chosen the same way, thus they will also be there to wave the Red Flag in your face when they spot an acute mistake in the entrepreneurs judgment.

Take your time, ask around, consult with others and find the right people to found your company with, run the various departments of your company, raise funds from, and form strategic partnership with.

When excellent people are gathered, dreams are turned into reality. All you have to do is be patient enough and honest with yourself while looking.

Remember, if it wasn’t for excellent people, we would have never climbed off the treetop and land on the moon.

How ‘great’ is your great idea? sanity-check 101

So, you have this great idea and now you feel confident to do something about it. Well, if this is the case, you should buckle up, shift into first, push the pedal and start driving slowly up that interchange leading to E-101 – the entrepreneurial superhighway.
it’s not an easy ride, the road is bumpy, some drunk drivers out there, no speed limit what so ever, and in my book, you only get one or two chances to change lanes or intersections, after than you’re just burning fuel.

To stick with my cars and highways metaphor, this post is about those crucial minutes right before you put the keys in the ignition. Checking for oil, fuel and directions might come in handy before a long drive, right?

THE IDEA: BEFORE AND AFTER

Hurray! you thought of a great idea that to your opinion is going to change the life of millions around the world, or did you?
I’m not looking to demoralize or god forbid knock the wind out of your sails, but here comes rule #1:
“Thy Shall Sanity-Check Thyself Night and Day, Day and Night”

Mostly, the idea is extracted from your personal life and experience. It is rare that a pastry chef will have an idea for cloud computing platform and vice versa. Possible, but rare.
Whether you’re a creator, a visionary or a converged entrepreneur (all-in-one), you’re idea comprises a value proposition of some sort: something can be done better, something can be done cheaper, something can be done more exclusively, and of course – something that hasn’t be done thus far, should be done.
Different types of entrepreneurs start their initiative from a different spot. The visionary will envision a better ‘something’ (product, service, methodology, etc.) and should then seek for a creator to build it with.
The creator will build something great and will then seek for a visionary that will navigate the creation to the right place.
The converged entrepreneur can do both and more, but hopefully still bring in a fellow creator, visionary or delivery guy for the sake of second opinion and sharing the burden.

You’re one of them. How to sanity check yourself? Research it! first on your own, then with the help of others. Reach out to people of close proximity like friends and family and share your idea with them. Then move to their circles and hear people that are emotionally detached from you. Finally, harness the networks of your first circle friends to reach people that are directly related to your idea’s field.

Your idea is meant to turn into a product, service or market that will cater the needs of others, right? So start with those ‘others’ you’re about to rely address. The internet offers you more than a single way to sense, sniff and listen without having to share your idea with the general public. Whether you’re idea/creation is pointed towards a general audience (a new and improved social network) or towards a segmented crowd (a social network for private investigators), you need to be sure that it’s great for more than one person (YOU).

Divide your research into two: Your target audience and existing/similar/in the making products.

For people, go to social networks, blogs, Q&A sites like Quora and similar, read social studies on Google Scholar and similar, forums threads, influencers blog, etc. It’ll be fairly easy for you to sense a clear necessity if is there. Most odds, it would not be that clear. You don’t need to dig too deep. If it’s not there, it’s not there. It doesn’t mean you’re completely off track. It means the general concept needs to be tuned to an overlapping necessity. Maybe you shouldn’t create a new and improved social network rather than create an add-on that will help improving an existing network. Maybe private investigators don’t care for a social network of their own, BUT will “kill” for a service that was meant to be a feature on your designated network. From just a feature it can turn into THE idea. For example: a collaboration service that allows private investigators to consult in real time. You don’t need to create a social network for that. You need to create an application that can be incorporated in their Facebook account or installed on a handset.
These are simple examples for a super-acute pivotal change in concept and definition, only well ahead of time.

For existing products, search for market analysis reports, market researches, competitive/comparative analysis reports, startup and entrepreneurship hubs likeMashable, TNW, TechCrunch and similar in order to learn about similar inventions that already in the making.
Market research and analysis is a highly mentioned topic on TheMarketeer.Me.  I consider it a holy grail of a venture of almost any sort and recommend that at you hire the services of professionals, even if you’re a well experienced marketing person. When you’re leading the way, you’re partially blind folded. You can easily convince yourself and your co-founder(s) that you made the right choices, but even then, a professional with no emotional strings attached may come up with findings that are different than yours. Go for it, the sooner the better. The time and money spent may be expensive in such preliminary stage in the venture’s lifecycle, but trust me – it’s a lot cheaper than realizing you chose the wrong market after spending your seed money. Not worth the frustration. I’ve seen it one time too many.

I was brought into following this baseline: Different individuals forge similar inventions at the same time, in at least 4 different continents. So, inspire and be inspired, allow yourself to dream, always listen to your intuition, BUT follow cold facts when it comes to product/market decision making – never failed me thus far.
Yes, your intuition may be right when it comes to people: “My intuition tells me something’s wrong about this lady”, not markets and products. You may have a bad feeling about something and comfortably refer to this feeling as an intuition, but it’s not.
“I thought we should take this great technology towards online gaming where I rock, but the market research firm folks are telling us we should take it to the growing field of online fashion. What do I know about fashion?! My intuition tells me we should stick to online gaming” This is not an intuition! You’re confusing intuition with fear from the unknown. Don’t freak out because facts lead to a less or unknown horizon. It doesn’t mean you can’t make it, doesn’t mean the vision/creation is not good. Just means you need more of those ‘excellent people‘ on board.  if you still decide to follow your intuition on this side of the venture, and at such preliminary stage, l recommend you avoid raising funds from investors and try and take it on your own to a point where your market of choice is showing positive signs. The reason I’m offering this pathway for this type of decision makers is simple. If you choose the wrong market or product orientation when on your own and end up failing, you report back to yourself. If you do it with other people money, you’re in a pickle. Ever tried explaining failure to shareholders with a “my intuition told me to do it” kind of reason?

Eventually, conducting a thorough sanity check will allow provide the entrepreneur with the following tools:

-          Descend from 100,000 feet (Good Idea Utopia) to 3 feet and face facts

-          Listen to the thoughts of your future target audience

-          Slow down and make the proper adjustments before carrying on

-          Realize it was a good idea for you and 3 other people only and dump the idea

-          Find out you were 100%  in the first place and carry on

Hopefully, you already followed the guidelines of this post or about to after reading it.
If it got some of you discouraged or demoralized, read it again. It’s meant to provide you with tools and entrepreneurial methodology that will save you plenty of discomforts and money.
You will make mistake regardless. All startups reach a pivotal change in technology, product and even market of operation. If this post helped some of you to rush the famous pivotal change through, to the very conceptual stage of idea, don’t mention it.