anza event in plug and play

The event was designed for Australian entrepreneurs that were pitching their ideas and living a Silicon Valley experience for 3 days. The third day was open to the public so I could skip in and it was extremely interesting. This is a summary of my main takeaways:

From Ryan Junee “Success Story” (He cofounded Omnisio and in 9 months sold it to YouTube):

- Silicon Valley is all about who you know. The real value that VCs or incubators bring to the company is not money but contacts.

- It’s easy to get a lawyer “for free” in the Valley that accepts to be paid when the company raises funds

- If you think you are the only one with that idea you should talk to more people

- Ideas are great but in the end it’s all about execution

From the Marketing Business Forum with Brian Solis:

- Do you need to be in Blogs, facebook, Twitter (…) if your community is not there? No, don’t waste your time. You should first look and find out who is there.  What happens is that when you look, the community is often there.

- While doing a corporate blog, become the people you want to reach. Don’t promote your product, engage the client in subjects that might be of their interest. Share expertise, connect and grow the community. Participate in other blogs, recognize other blogs and talk about them. Be authentic and listen. Invest time in sharing your ideas. You are not blogging to share your product, you are blogging to share your expertise.

- Blog recommendation Peter Kim. He talks about social media and in this post describes what different companies are currently doing in that area

From the CEOs panel with Susan Haley, Steve Larsen, Larry Mrshall and Jennifer Zanich:

- As a CEO you do everything until you find someone better than you

- A CEO takes responsibility for everything that goes wrong and gives credit to the team for every success

- The CEO is the one with the vision and a great communicator of that vision. The vision is the basic tool to convince investors, team and everyone around the startup.

- Being a CEO is a lonely role. Surround yourself with great mentors and forget about your ego. No one will tell you that you’ve done something great.

- Statistically, first time CEOs are more successful than serial CEOs. They think they are going to be kicked out by the VC so they try harder, they are hungry and they listen, they want to be mentored and they don’t have ego.

- Though times are great, that’s when opportunities present themselves

- The CEO is the DNA of the company

- VCs are not making you a favor. Your approach should be: “I have this great concept. I’m selling a piece of my company and I would like to partner with you” Bring them in; convince them that they really need to be part of your team as a VC.

how to pitch to a VC

Great video every entrepreneur should watch before pitching to any investor. He says things we have herd many times but all together, fast and organized. Good way to check if we have everything. 

(From TED: “Ideas worth spreading”)

Single most important thing the VC is going to be investing in: YOU  

You need to prove:
- Integrity
- Passion
- Experience
- Knowledge
- Skill
- Leadership
- Commitment
- Vision
- Realism
- Coachable     

How to structure the pitch:
Do’s:
- Logical progression
- Things I know or understand (examples)
- Validations (somebody else says this make sense)
Dont’s:
- Things that are no true
- Things I don’t understand
- Thinks that make me think
- Internal consistence
- Typos, errors

Look at our betters: Steve Jobs
- Good: short, short bullet points
- Better: just headline
- Best: only images   

Include:
- Company logo
- Quick business overview, 1 sentence
- Management team
- Market
- Product
- Business model
- Strategic relationships
- Competition
- Barriers of entry
- Financial overview
- Use of procedures
- Capital & valuation
- Final pitch   

5 + tips:
- Use presentation mode
- Use remote control
- Hand outs are not your presentation
- Don’t read
- Never look at the screen 

other people’s learnings

7 ways I’ve almost killed FreshBooks, a great post about lessons learned. These are some parts of it:

- whatever numbers come out of your Excel jockeying, they’re wrong (…) It’s really easy to stare at a spreadsheet and say, “that’s it! I totally get this business…I understand how it all works and look at that year 5 revenue!”, when the reality is it will take 10 years to get there, cost you twice as much as you thought, and you’ll probably be running a totally different business by the time you get there.

- nobody cares about your business as much as you do, and frankly people who are smart – consultant/MBA smart – don’t know your business as well as you do despite the fancy words and references to past success (…) Stay open to their advice and take it into consideration as you make decisions, just don’t bet the farm on what they think you should do.

- sign the right deals with the right partners at the right time for the right reasons. You can build a business without being forced to work with the wrong people at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. The choice is yours – don’t forget it. Opportunities will present themselves if you keep your feet moving and you string together a series of small successes.

- I’ve learned to spend 80% of my time thinking about what not to do, instead of all of my time thinking about what we can do.

- there’s still a lot of time for you to change the world