3 Things You Can Do to Make Your Startup Stand Out
You wouldn’t walk into a Google meeting with an idea alone.
The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America’s startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today’s answer to the question “What’s the best way to pitch a startup idea to investors?” is written by Justin Tobin, founder and president of DDG.
Having a great idea, building a top-notch team, beating down doors to find potential investors, and then making sure you are thoroughly prepared for that big pitch meeting are table stakes in the game of, “How do I get my startup funded?” Still, many new entrepreneurs—and frankly, more experienced intrepreneurs—miss the mark in those meetings.
So, here are three things to consider the next time you have a shot at major backing:
Get customers first
It’s not enough to identify theoretical customers. Too many startups are pitching vague possibilities to investors. And that makes them nervous. Mitigate some of the risk you’re asking investors to take by starting to build a consumer base before you walk in with your hand out. Having even a small consumer base means that you can back up your claims. If there are people out there who are buying what you’re selling, you’re really just asking investors for help scaling, not simply testing out whether your idea is feasible. With customers comes feedback, and with feedback comes the ability to hone your offering as much as possible before asking someone else to believe in it. If you have customers and are generating any money at all, you’re already ahead of the vast majority of other startups.
It’s not enough to identify theoretical customers. Too many startups are pitching vague possibilities to investors. And that makes them nervous. Mitigate some of the risk you’re asking investors to take by starting to build a consumer base before you walk in with your hand out. Having even a small consumer base means that you can back up your claims. If there are people out there who are buying what you’re selling, you’re really just asking investors for help scaling, not simply testing out whether your idea is feasible. With customers comes feedback, and with feedback comes the ability to hone your offering as much as possible before asking someone else to believe in it. If you have customers and are generating any money at all, you’re already ahead of the vast majority of other startups.
Put yourself in the shoes of your future C-suite
You need to look at your business outside of your lens as its founder. Even if you don’t have them yet, look at your business through the eyes of your future CFO, CMO, and CTO. Imagine they already exist and will be listening to your pitch. Having a bright and shiny idea might get you a meeting with investors, but if you want to walk out of it with money to fund your business, you’ll need to be prepared to answer to every member of that C-suite. As a founder, you’re understandably focused on the day-to-day concerns of running your business. But a good investor is equal parts CFO and CMO, and they’ll expect you to be able to account for each of their concerns and examine the merits of your business through all C-level lenses. Does your business have a viable marketing plan? Are your financials in order? You can avoid getting caught without an answer to these sorts of questions if you prepare for them ahead of time.
You need to look at your business outside of your lens as its founder. Even if you don’t have them yet, look at your business through the eyes of your future CFO, CMO, and CTO. Imagine they already exist and will be listening to your pitch. Having a bright and shiny idea might get you a meeting with investors, but if you want to walk out of it with money to fund your business, you’ll need to be prepared to answer to every member of that C-suite. As a founder, you’re understandably focused on the day-to-day concerns of running your business. But a good investor is equal parts CFO and CMO, and they’ll expect you to be able to account for each of their concerns and examine the merits of your business through all C-level lenses. Does your business have a viable marketing plan? Are your financials in order? You can avoid getting caught without an answer to these sorts of questions if you prepare for them ahead of time.
I talk about this with my corporate clients all the time—the intrepreneurs trying to get sign-off from their CFOs and CMOs. I have to remind them that while the idea of creating a startup within their organization may be sexy and get them attention, they need to make sure they’ve got the substance to appeal to every member of their C-suite.
Treat every investor like a large acquirer
Instead of framing potential investors as individuals, approach each and every one—no matter how much money they stand to invest—as if they are a big corporation looking to acquire your startup. If GE GE 0.13% or Google GOOG -0.89% approached you with an interest in buying your company, you wouldn’t walk into their boardroom trying to pitch them an idea alone, even a really great one. You would spend weeks making sure every aspect of your business plan was buttoned up and ready for purchase. Beyond the idea, you’d have to show them the opportunity that exists for your business and for them, and most of all, you’d have to show them how you’d already proven it works. So, stand out to investors by proving that you’ve done your diligence, and that it’s worth their time to do theirs.
Instead of framing potential investors as individuals, approach each and every one—no matter how much money they stand to invest—as if they are a big corporation looking to acquire your startup. If GE GE 0.13% or Google GOOG -0.89% approached you with an interest in buying your company, you wouldn’t walk into their boardroom trying to pitch them an idea alone, even a really great one. You would spend weeks making sure every aspect of your business plan was buttoned up and ready for purchase. Beyond the idea, you’d have to show them the opportunity that exists for your business and for them, and most of all, you’d have to show them how you’d already proven it works. So, stand out to investors by proving that you’ve done your diligence, and that it’s worth their time to do theirs.
Every day investors hear from entrepreneurs with great, but unproven ideas. Most of the time, these end up being missed opportunities for both parties. If you want to stand out against today’s feverish startup competition, you’ll need to show that you have the steak to back up the sizzle.
Who Won the Republican Debate?
Trump withered under sustained incoming from both Rubio and Cruz.
Donald Trump is showing some wear and tear. The Republican front-runner took withering incoming from both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on a Detroit debate stage on Thursday, frequently appearing rattled as the pair laced into his checkered business record and history of flip-flopping on core positions.
It was a rough day all around for Trump, with Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, earlier delivering a devastating assault on him as a “fraud” who would lead the country into a “dark abyss” in a speech from Utah. Romney’s critique quickly won an endorsement from the 2008 nominee, Sen. John McCain, as the GOP’s old guard rallied behind a last-ditch effort to deny Trump the nod.
As the party apparently began cleaving over his candidacy, Trump arrived for the Thursday evening showdown with his trademark mix of swagger and prickliness in abundance. He opened the proceedings, for example, by attesting to the size of his manhood—a claim, it can safely be said, that has never before been made in a presidential debate.
But Trump quickly found himself on the defensive. And he was forced to fight from that position for much of the night as Rubio and Cruz, picking up where Romney left off, repeatedly laced into his business history in particular, continuing a joint if uncoordinated attempt to make a liability out of one of Trump’s key strengths with voters. To spell out the connection, Rubio premiered a new line: “He has spent a career of convincing Americans that he’s something that he’s not in exchange for their money. Now he’s trying to do the same in exchange for their country.”
Trump did not fare well in the face of the attacks. An extended exchange over the performance of real estate seminars branded Trump University was especially brutal.
Rubio brought the issue up as further evidence that the billionaire has willfully conned working people. But after some sniping between Rubio and Trump over the facts, Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly interjected to note that, in fact, as Rubio had maintained, the enterprise earned a “D-minus” rating from the Better Business Bureau, is now facing a class-action suit from over 5,000 plaintiffs, and a counter-suit by Trump had been tossed out with Trump required to cover the fees. “This is what the Court of Appeals found,” Kelly said, “They said that the plaintiffs against you are like the Madoff victims.” All of sudden, the debate felt more like a court proceeding, with Trump as the defendant.
Rubio jumped back in to describe a conversation he’d just had with a constituent who took the course, then requested a refund “when they finally realized what a scam it was,” and was denied. Trump replied uncharacteristically meekly that he, “gave many people their money back,” which a viewer could take as a tacit acknowledgment that the seminar wasn’t what it purported to be.
Meanwhile, Cruz —coming off Super Tuesday wins in Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska, a run that revived his argument that he’s the most effective anti-Trump in the field — also came alive in the debate. After a relatively sleepy turn in the last one, the Texas firebrand successfully pressed the point that voters should wonder what Trump is hiding about his plans to overhaul immigration, considering the dustup over off-the-record comments he made on the issue to the New York Times editorial board. And he managed to float somewhat above the fray of the hotter exchanges between Rubio and Trump, asking after one, “Let me ask the voters at home, is this the debate you want playing out in the general election?”
Whether any of it matters is the question that will obsess Republican leaders for the next two weeks. Trump has made it to the cusp of the party’s nomination having piled up scores of controversies any one of which would have sunk an aspirant under the normal laws of political physics. And he’s given similarly flimsy debate performances only to turn around and win the next contest. But the campaign does appear to be entering a new phase, in which the willing anti-Trump money from big donors will marshall behind a final attempt to shrink his support by highlighting all the vulnerabilities in his biography.
The aim, as Romney alluded to in his speech, will be to find ways, state by state, to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. If that’s possible, the fight will carry all the way to the July convention in Cleveland, where the party will have an opportunity to rally around an alternative. But it remains an increasingly long-shot proposition, born of desperation.
Google's Self-Driving Car Team Beefs Up Auto Experience
In recent weeks, the company has advertised nearly 40 positions, many are related to manufacturing.
Google’s self-driving car team is expanding and hiring more people with automotive industry expertise, underscoring the company’s determination to move the division past the experimental stage.
The operation now employs at least 170 workers, according to a Reuters review of their profiles on LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network. Many are software and systems engineers, and some come from other departments at Google GOOG -0.89% .
More than 40 of the employees listed on LinkedIn have previous automotive industry experience, with skills ranging from exterior design to manufacturing. They hail from a wide range of companies, including Tesla TSLA 3.93% , Ford F 2.42% , and General Motors GM 3.05% . See this graphic for a look at the composition of Google’s self-driving car team.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
Google has not disclosed details about the size or composition of its self-driving car team, and Johnny Luu, spokesman for Google’s car team, declined to comment.
The team could have additional members who do not publish profiles on LinkedIn.
Google has said previously that it intends to ready the technology for a marketable self-driving car by 2020, but it may never manufacture vehicles itself.
The tech giant is more likely to contract out manufacturing—much like Apple does with iPhone—or to license technology to existing car manufacturers, automotive industry experts said. Licensing would follow the model Google has used with its Android operating system for mobile devices.
In the past four weeks, Google has advertised nearly 40 new positions on the team, and many are related to manufacturing. The team currently has six people with such experience, including purchasing, supplier development and supply chain management.
Hires with manufacturing skills could help Google find and coordinate with a partner to build a vehicle, said Paul Mascarenas, a former Ford executive who is president of FISITA, the International Federation of Engineering Societies.
Google is also engaged in discussions with federal and state regulators about how to revise motor vehicle safety standards to accommodate autonomous cars.
The competition for technical talent is intensifying as tech and automotive companies race to build driverless vehicles. Beyond Google, the players include Tesla, established car makers such as Daimler AG and GM and, and technology companies such as Apple AAPL 0.73% and Uber UBER 0.00% .
Google’s team is being assembled by John Krafcik, an industry veteran who previously headed Hyundai’s U.S. operations and is an expert in product development and manufacturing. Krafcik joined Google in September 2015.
Another senior executive with previous automotive experience, Paul Luskin, was hired last month as operations manager, according to his Linkedin profile. An engineer with stints at Jaguar Cars, Ford and Japanese supplier Denso, Luskin most recently was president of Ricardo Defense Systems, a unit of Britain’s Ricardo PLC, according to the LinkedIn profile.
Google hired industry veteran Andy Warburton in July to head the vehicle engineering team, according to his LinkedIn profile. Warburton spent two years as a senior engineering manager at Tesla and 16 years as an engineering manager at Jaguar.
A third auto veteran, Sameer Kshisagar, joined Google in November as head of global supply management on the self-driving car team. Kshisagar is a manufacturing expert who previously worked for GM, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Luskin, Warburton, and Kshisagar did not respond to requests for comment.
For more on Google’s self-driving car, watch our video.
Google’s self-driving car group also has tapped people with experience beyond the auto industry, including aerospace (Boeing, SpaceX, Jet Propulsion Lab) and electronics (Intel, Samsung, Motorola), according to LinkedIn profiles.
Krafcik and Chris Urmson, director of the car team, have said they want to forge partnerships with established automakers and others to build vehicles. Krafcik made a public pitch for alliances at an auto industry conference in Detroit in January.
However, Google may have to look farther than the auto industry to find a manufacturing partner, said Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie-Mellon University professor who advises companies on self-driving car development.
The tug-of-war over who controls—and profits from—the stream of user data in self-driving cars is “an inherent and fundamental conflict” between Google and traditional automakers, Rajkumar said.
Instead, Google may choose to build its own engineering and design prototypes, then partner with a Chinese automaker or an Asian contractor such as Foxconn that wants to enter the automotive field, several experts said.
Michael Tracy, a Michigan-based auto manufacturing consultant, said Google sees the potential of several different revenue streams from its self-driving technology, including licensing its mapping database and vehicle control software, as well as an integrated package of software, sensors and actuators that would form the backbone of a self-driving vehicle.
The least likely prospect is that Google will manufacture its own vehicles, Tracy said, due to the massive expenditures required and the stiff competition from established automakers.
Donald Trump Defends Torture at Republican Debate
Trump defended waterboarding, torture and killing terrorists’ families at the Republican Debate.
Donald Trump defended waterboarding, torture and killing terrorists’ families at the Fox Republican debate Thursday, all positions for which he’s drawn criticism during the course of his campaign.
When asked about former CIA Director Michael Hayden’s recent comments that the military could defy unlawful orders to torture or kill civilians, Trump said, “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse, believe me.”
“You look at the Middle East, they’re chopping off heads, they’re chopping off the heads of Christians and anybody else that happens to be in the way, they’re drowning people in steel cages, and now we’re talking about waterboarding… It’s fine, and if we want to go stronger, I’d go stronger too. Because frankly, that’s the way I feel. Can you imagine these people, these animals, over in the Middle East that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we’re having a hard problem with waterboarding? We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding.”
When Trump then went on to defend his assertion that the United States should target the families of terrorists, he repeated a debunked conspiracy theory about the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“When a family flies into the World Trade Center, a man flies into the World Trade Center and his family gets sent back to where they were going… They knew what was happening. The wife knew exactly what was happening… I have no problem with it.”
According to the Washington Post, “There is no evidence that the hijackers had wives in the United States, shipped them home or even told them of the plot in advance. In fact, virtually all of the hijackers were unmarried. So there is no way the alleged wives could have known what was going to happen.”
This article was originally published on Time.com.
Republicans Debate Amid Party Split
The 2016 race for the GOP nomination has reached peak absurdity.
No. You were not hallucinating. Donald Trump really did just use the opening minutes of Thursday’s Republican debate to assure his supporters that he has an adequate penis.
The 2016 race for the GOP nomination has reached peak absurdity. And voters have only been casting ballots for a month.
The four remaining GOP contenders clashed in Detroit in a Fox News forum. From the start, it was clear the pile-on against Trump was going to be the central theme. In recent weeks, Trump’s rivals were lending their voices to the anti-Trump chorus. Mitt Romney and John McCain joined the fray in the hours before the debate.
Trump used the first minutes to respond with typical insult. He dismissed Romney as a loser and brushed off rival Marco Rubio’s criticism. He mocked Rubio for saying he had small hands and suggested it was an implied attack on his manhood.
“Look at those hands. Are they small hands?” he said. “I guarantee there is no problem.”
Trump continued with his typical tone. He called Rubio “this little guy” and twice called him “Little Marco.” Trump bragged about the impact of his Twitter account. He insisted he alone could defeat likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. He dismissed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas as someone who cannot keep up with his crowds.
“I was a half million votes higher than him,” Trump said of Cruz. “I was a million votes higher than Marco. That’s a lot of votes.”
It left Rubio shaking his head. “He doesn’t have answers and he’s asking us to make him the President of the United States,” Rubio said.
Cruz, too, was left reeling as Trump promised to torture terrorists, blustered about immigration and bragged about his poll numbers. “Yelling and cursing at people doesn’t make you a tough guy,” the senator said. “We need a President who is rational, not someone who pops off.”
The debate follows an astonishing one-two punch from the Republican Party’s pair of most recent presidential nominees and an unprecedented effort to derail the party’s leading candidate to join their fraternity.
On Thursday, 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and 2008 nominee John McCain urged fellow Republicans Thursday to reject billionaire Donald Trump and his front-running White House bid. Separately, dozens of foreign policy conservatives released a public letter urging Republicans to consider what a Trump administration would mean for foreign policy.
It was the most open rebuke of Trump and the style of politics that has perhaps given the New Yorker an irrevocable upper hand. It also might have been the day that fully separated the Republican Establishment from the party voters who have delivered Trump wins across the nation.
“If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished,” Romney said in Utah, encouraging voters to reject Trump in forthcoming contests.
Shortly after, McCain issued this statement: “I share the concerns about Donald Trump that my friend and former Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, described in his speech today.”
The foreign policy hands, who held senior posts in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, were more strident. “His equation of business acumen with foreign policy experience is false,” wrote the signatories, which included Ambassadors, Cabinet Secretaries and advisers. “Not all lethal conflicts can be resolved as a real estate deal might, and there is no recourse to bankruptcy court in international affairs.”
The pair joins others in their party in warning that a Trump nomination all but guarantees a Democratic winner. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell have both said their majorities in Congress cannot link arms with Trump, who at various points has refused to reject an endorsement from the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, has insulted women and has spread incorrect and fear-mongering attacks on minorities, Muslims and immigrants. Many parts of the Republican Establishment have been strident in opposing Trump, but it has not mattered.
That dynamic is set to play out dramatically Thursday night, as Trump’s remaining rivals for the nomination meet for a debate in Detroit. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas have been stepping up their criticism, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich continues to pitch himself as a sunny optimist who doesn’t play dirty—though he praised Romney’s comments Thursday.
This article was originally published on Time.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered