Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Choosing your first employee - Attitude over Aptitude

The first employee of any start up plays a crucial role. It is in fact a process by which the culture of the organization begins. Navigating this challenge is not easy for start-ups!

Co-Founders typically are seen to be friends or colleagues and it is very often the employee whom they hire that turns out to be the first external person joining the team. While it is possible that the employee might not really be a complete outsider, but someone in what I could call as the latent network (one which we do not access frequently in the course of our work) and pull him into the active network (that which we access very often).

As someone who has helped a few start ups in their hiring, and seen many others make their choices, I find there are two broad requirements that emerge out as the most required in my opinion:
  1. Willing to push and attempt to think beyond what he/she already knows
  2. Hungry to work hard if need be
In addition to this, possessing the knowledge and the skill would only add up to the person as positive points.  But the real deal breaker would be hiring a person who is not willing to think knowing his/her limits and having no enthusiasm to learn if it takes. Simply put, I am looking at the right attitude fit before I look at the aptitude fit.

Knowledge and expertise of an individual could come with a well defined self-image; the start-up founders would need to know, to what extent these would be beneficial for the company and at what level it would be detrimental to the company's prospects!

If the employee is one who would take up additional responsibility beyond what is expected of him and executes this it would be an added positives, the founders however should be willing to give this freedom to the employee to explore and work with them.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Balance Product Development with Communication

Many startups work too much on a product but spend little time communicating about their product/services; there are other start-ups which do the other extreme - over communicate but spend little time on product development. As mentioned earlier, working out the communications to synchronize with what you intend to deliver through your product is quintessential.  It is crucial to find a balance in this activity of really doing the work - and talk about the work. 

In addition to the hard work put on the product the entrepreneur could at a minimum need to have the following as part of his communication activities:
  1. Elevator Pitch - short pitch that covers what the business does and addresses. Ensure it is catching the attention of the listener! Yes, it takes time to perfect this and its only by practice that this gets better.
  2. Short Business Summary - I would prefer a super short summary in a hard copy format - say around A5 size or even the hind of your visiting card that helps communicate what you do really precisely sharply. There are like like hook to the communication exchange done - people could look at this and find use at a later date.
  3. Business Presentation - this is an ever-evolving document. The more time you spend understanding your audience and the more presentations you make - this one only gets better. Spend time working out your presentation - remember getting the right graphic/images could make is just so much more communicating.
  4. A catchy website URL- there is really nothing like a web URL! for the company that clearly defines what you intend to do. This is invariably a one time choice - so think through and work out your thoughts with the name. For those who still believe offline is the only business - spending time online and having a good website could make a enormous difference.
  5. Blog - Developing a habit of blogging pretty regularly is important when you intend to communicate with your audience regularly.
Start-ups would benefit by devoting time towards a sustained communication effort. It would be ideal for the founding team to sit down on the communication dimension periodically and take stock of what they are trying to pitch right from day one (or even earlier depending on when they are booking their URL). 

Even as little as 30 minutes a week to re-look at the way you communicate could emerge very fruitful.Keep the audience coming back for more interesting, relevant aspects. So take the time off and get your communication plan worked out.


Monday, August 5, 2013

Early Customer interactions are very valuable

It is a hard time for entrepreneurs visiting a prospective client.Very often the entrepreneur comes back with the feeling - this guy just chewed away my time. He/She didn't give any feedback on the product, nor did he give me the purchase order! 
This is typical of the very first meeting, but over meetings the scenario changes. The entrepreneur could look at the multiple interaction with prospective clients in a different light. In these interactions, entrepreneurs are over loaded with tons of unstructured data. The entrepreneur needs to structure them to be able to figure out a common thread and focus on it - make the data into a valuable, actionable information. 
Yes, while the entrepreneur is focused on selling  the product to the prospective client, the client is really looking at what more can be got out from this product when in use. The client is looking at how the product that you intend to provide could be put to use - their focus is typically at cost reduction, scaling quicker than the competition etc - in essence overcoming an obstacle. 
Very often, we as entrepreneurs do not distance ourselves from the  product we are trying sell. The product that we go to the market could be just be a technology offering - if is important to make it a customer usable product with some "finishing touches". The Entrepreneur could leverage this wealth of information to really thinking of creating the "product" from the "technology offering" that he/she would get to the market.

As an example - you could have built a conference plat form, but the interaction with the customers keep giving you the repeated questions - Can I know where the customers come from? How much time they spend on it etc? Clearly, the customer is looking at some analytical interpretation of the technology - so adding a layer of analytics and presenting as a dash board could really make it easier to sell!