Tag Archives: Resources

How Do You Monetize a New Venture? Eleven Suggestions

Situation: An entrepreneur has created a new business offering a critical service but struggles with how to monetize it. The primary clients don’t have the resources to fund it viably. What alternative sources of funds or revenue can be found? How do you monetize a new venture?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The venture’s brand name must carry the message – the name must describe the mission.
  • One of the core messages is reciprocity. Reinforce this theme all over the site.
  • Testimonials are critical. Testimonial videos of real users personalize the experience. These drive participant acquisition and contributions.
  • Make participants feel like they are a part of a community.
    • Consider a variety of landing pages – same database but different doors of entry.
    • Encourage even more communication within specific target communities.
  • Look at MySpace vs. Facebook to guide the model:
    • MySpace was already big when Facebook launched.
    • Facebook exploded by making itself a more closed community – all exclusive colleges and Universities.
    • Monetize via donation or advertising vs. subscription. Fees could kill the opportunity. Too many other resources are available for free.
  • The key appeal is enabling people to do something that makes them feel good.
    • Post stories from those who have succeeded as a result of the platform, as well as those who have helped on the site. This will inspire others to participate.
  • How do you recruit new participants?
    • Some CEOs joined LinkedIn because of peer pressure – after enough people asked them to join, they did.
    • Install a template to encourage people to invite new participants – allow new participants to tell their story and the need that the service fulfills for them.
  • Consider adding premium content to the site, but only for those who have made contributions – monetary or in-kind.
  • Consider Fremium to Premium. In the Fremium model include a banner ad for users, like a university Training Institute.
  • Consider creating an advice network. Post questions and ask for answers from the community. Include an option to click to become a contributing participant.
  • Online there are eyeballs vs. action – the action is what matters.

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How Do You Manage a Business Transition? Five Thoughts

Situation: A company is moving from sole focus on servicing a market to a split focus including developing and marketing their own products. This is a significant transition for the team. What is the best way to organize this effort? How do you manage a business transition?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • While the company’s financials are great for their market, cashflow may be insufficient to fully fund a development company.
    • Internal development of new products can create conflicts if it creates competition for resources between internal and external projects.
    • To avoid this, create an independent company or entity – in a separate location. Seek outside funding whether bank, angel or partner financing. The independent entity can then buy resources from the primary entity at competitive rates.
  • Several years ago, another CEO utilized the strategy just described. The important lessons were:
    • Assure that venture is properly resourced.
    • Assure that there is a balance between proven structure and creative application development.
    • Utilize best resources available at same rates that key customers pay.
    • Offer free guidance but not free services – peer reviews are key.
  • A third CEO had an opportunity to open a new business using the spin-off model.
    • They allowed infrastructure sharing – with proper compensation and incentives (equity ownership).
    • Ultimately both entities were successful.
    • Lesson: Properly implemented, this model works.
  • There are four aspects to the challenge.
    • Product concept
    • Talent for execution
    • Financing
    • Distribution
    • The business plan for the new venture must address all four.
  • Building internally (vs. externally) creates natural conflict. Workers will tolerate change in direction from clients better than they do from insiders.

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How Do You Reprioritize Your Time? Seven Suggestions

Situation: A company delivers specialized consulting services. The founder CEO is also a lead consultant. As the company has grown, the CEO has struggled to prioritize her time as she shifts from consultant to leader. How do you reprioritize your time?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Look at the skill sets required to run the company and compare this with the skills of current staff. While the company has excellent consultants, do some of these people also have experience in business development or management?
    • Prioritize the skill sets needed and focus hiring efforts on those that can’t be filled by current employees.
  • If the CEO is also the chief rainmaker, then a top priority is hiring a manager/leader. The next level of development within the company will require a level of management.
  • Accept that the company can’t get an A+ grade on every project or detail. Learn to accept a B when this is enough. It will do.
  • Recognize that as priorities shift, vacuums will develop. Identify what will be missing. For those vacancies:
    • Write job descriptions for the roles.
    • Replace the leader’s roles with flexible teams instead of individuals.
  • Reapply financial resources to fund the transition as incentives for individuals to take on new work and responsibilities.
    • Look at profit-sharing models. Use profit sharing to facilitate the shift in priorities by adjusting payout incentives.
  • Anticipate the risks within the plan. Think through these thoroughly and develop contingencies.
  • As CEO, you will not be able to do everything that you do now. In your new role you won’t want to do everything you do now. Your view and responsibilities will change.

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Diversify or Optimize Current Opportunities? Four Options

Situation: A company that manufactures and sells components to a large corporation has a dilemma. This customer is throwing more business their way, under favorable terms. At the same time, the company wants to diversify to reduce exposure to a single large client. The challenge is that alternate opportunities are not as profitable as those from this customer. As the CEO puts it, should they use limited resources to chase copper when gold is readily available? Do you diversify or optimize current opportunities?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It is always dangerous to have all your eggs in one basket. Dedicate resources to develop alternative business opportunities, knowing that at first the new opportunities will not be as appealing as current opportunities with this large client.
    • Think back – has business from the large customer always been this profitable? In developing new business opportunities, one often must pay dues to develop opportunities for future profits.
    • Invest in business development to find new business opportunities outside of this large customer. Do this sooner rather than later. One never knows when a large customer will change strategic direction.
  • What are the company’s options and choices?
    • Stay the current course and accept the risks of this strategy or diversify.
    • Put some resources into studying options to diversify. If there is no gold out there, then maximize the cash from the current situation and invest it in something that will provide a satisfactory long-term return. If the large customer closes the door, then just shut down.
  • How could the company diversify? Geographically? Additional products to other customers? Put together a diversification plan and test it for feasibility.
  • Make sure that company’s and owner’s priorities are clear and not in conflict with each other.
    • What is the optimal size of the company?
    • How many customers are needed to support optimal company size and how much diversification is required for this?
    • What is the owner’s exit strategy and timeline?
    • If the objective is to stay small and exit in one or two years, why chase diversification? Think about what would be appealing to a potential acquirer. Perhaps it is just access to this large customer.

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How Do You Finance Growth? Three Options

Situation: A mid-sized company faces challenges financing their growth. Investment of time, energy and resources precedes the reward of future revenue. It can be difficult to balance the cash needs of current operations with new growth opportunities. How do you finance growth?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Have you analyzed growth opportunities and evaluated which could increase your cash flow? For example, if you increase manufacturing efficiency, can the savings help to finance growth?
  • If you produce parts or products for start-ups, can you structure the relationship so that if the start-up become successful and is subsequently purchased by a larger company there is a bonus payoff for the work that you’ve done?
    • Analyze – by project, not company – the jobs you’ve done that have eventually become large volume opportunities. Try segmenting your analysis based on the source of the original project: jobs for start-ups, mid-sized and large companies. This may provide insight on where to focus future efforts.
  • Another company performs clinical services for both big pharmaceutical companies and start-ups. To take advantage of the upside from working with start-ups they take payment both in cash and in stock.
    • One option is to set up a separate Investment LLC – not tied to the operating company but owned by the same people – that takes the stock position and can, at its option, provide limited venture funding to start-ups.
    • Start-ups are not yet threats to your large customers but are potential future acquisition targets. Because the stock financing is done outside of the operating company, it is more difficult to trace back to the operating company. Further, competing large companies have not tended to see these investments as threatening the way that they would view direct investment by the company in a competitor. At the time of acquisition by the larger company, the member’s ownership position in the start-up is liquidated.

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How Do You Focus Your Sales and Marketing? Eight Thoughts

Situation: A company has a technology road map and a flexible set of technical capabilities. To date they have elicited broad interest from a variety of different markets. They currently don’t have the resources to pursue a large number of different markets, and will likely need their next round of funding within the next year to year and a half. How do you focus your sales and marketing?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • A race to generate interest from a number of markets is a valid strategy at this stage of your development; provided that you raise or generate the cash to survive. This caveat describes your critical challenge – determining how long you can afford to maintain and fund a broad strategy.
  • Look at your burn rate and timeline. Pursue options that will generate cash before your next round of funding. Your top objective is to validate your ability to generate revenue prior to your next round.
  • You haven’t yet found the fish. You are fishing and have nibbles but no bites. Look at what your people are doing and start to eliminate options that are less likely to pay off both short and long-term.
  • To preserve development cash, create a new rule. Any project that you accept must come with development dollars. This will eliminate some smaller prospects and targets but will help you to focus on others which are more immediately promising.
  • When one company was in this position, their rule was that the first PO gets the engineers. No PO, no commitment of resources.
  • Another’s company’s policy is that they don’t work for free.
    • A softer version is to give the prospective client 30 days to produce an LOI for the proposed project or you will go elsewhere.
    • Even better is an LOI and $50K up front.
  • A third company’s strategy from the beginning was always to hunt for elephants – even when they had no money. This has worked well both short and long-term. It represented the level of faith that they had in their technology and capabilities.
  • The team needs to hear this message from you.

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How Do You Forecast Sales & Revenue? Six Suggestions

Situation: A company is developing new forecasting metrics for both sales and revenue. The immediate future does not look robust, and they are concerned about mid-term future revenue. Ideally they want to extend a 3 month forecast window out to 6 months. What is an effective methodology for forecasting revenue out 6 months? How do you forecast sales and revenue?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Get your team together and gather impressions on the direction of business through the end of year. How many see sales going up, staying the same or declining through the end of the year. Discuss the rationale behind each member’s estimate so that you fully understand their thinking and what metrics each sees as important to their forecast. Work to make the estimates and metrics as rigorous as possible.
  • Based on the metrics discussed, develop an algorithm that you can monitor on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending upon your needs.
  • As you develop your algorithm, test it against past sales forecasts and history. Can it accurately plot past performance based on the metrics that you had at the time. If not, what needs to be adjusted or better understood.
  • Do you ask clients for forecasts of their purchase needs and do you track the accuracy of their forecasts? Weigh their responses by the quality of their past predictions.
  • As an alternative to trying to predict demand, assemble your resources to fit the needs of your market and customers and arrange your resources for flexibility.
  • Look at industry resources. How far out do experts in your industry claim to be able to forecast demand and sales or purchases? How reliable are these forecasts? What can you learn from this exercise that will improve your own forecasts?

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Do You Give Equity to Board Members? Four Considerations

Situation: An early-stage company has a key advisor who is helping them to build a 3-5 year vision and plan. The company can’t afford to pay the advisor full-time but he’s interested in working one day a week or becoming a Board member. Should they give him equity as a Board member and under what conditions?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Adding Board members increases complexity, especially when it comes to big decisions. Once an early stage company transitions from their start-up Board to a more formal Board with non-founder members, particularly when a significant number of the new members have strong corporate experience, the Board will take on a certain level of independence in corporate and compensation decisions. Be aware of this, as a larger more independent Board may make decisions that the founders would not make.
  • It is not irregular for Board Members to receive equity or options. If you want to grant options, you must undertake an initial company valuation exercise, followed by annual valuations. It is common to grant options with 4 year vesting on a monthly basis. Vested shares can be purchased at Day 0 price, with some period to exercise options following departure from company.
  • Seek an expert in Board operation and compensation. There are a number of advisors with deep experience in this area who can advise the company on standard practices for Board operation and compensation.
  • If the company decides that they are not yet ready for an expanded Board of Directors, another alternative is a Board of Advisors.

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How Do You Evaluate Career Choices? Three Considerations

Situation: An SMB CEO has sold his business and seeks a new opportunity. Options range from a mid-level position in a large company to various options in existing or start-up smaller companies. How do you evaluate your career choices?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The most important factors are to determine what you want to do and what will make you, and your family, happy. Start with a Pro/Con analysis of each type of opportunity compared with your short and long-term desires. Which among the following choices are more important?

o    Financial stability and some level of job security vs. higher risk and potential reward with lower security.

o    Desire to be a player or to be the person in charge vs. being happy with a staff position.

o    Ability to create your own path or willingness to adapt to the priorities of others.

  • Given these choices, here is what you may find:

o    In a large or established company the most likely opportunity will be a staff position. The trade-off is stability for authority, but be aware that large company organizational politics may be severe.

o    In a small existing company it is possible to be a player in a key position. The trade-off is lower stability and viability for more authority.

o    In a new company there is the chance to be the CEO, bringing business experience to a group with technology expertise. The trade-off is high risk, long hours and low stability for a high level of authority.

  • Other factors to consider are how critical your personal situation is and the depth of your resources. If you have time and flexibility, take the time to find a situation that best meets your needs.

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How Do You Overcome Resistance to Change? Five Suggestions

Situation: A CEO manages more than one company and is overcome by the complexity of the task. The biggest challenge is the oldest of the companies which is increasingly resistant to change. How do you overcome resistance to change?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Regardless of the age or experience of any company, meeting on-going performance objectives is critical. The fact that strategic imperatives have led to the formation of spin-off entities does not change this. Managers and key personnel are expected to perform to reasonable expectations, whether in a family or non-family business.
  • Resistance to change may be a symptom of more fundamental issues. Is the older business receiving adequate attention from upper management? Are they receiving sufficient funding and resources to complete their objectives? Do they have the latitude to make decisions necessary to achieve their objectives? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then address this first.
  • Presuming that the answers to the questions mentioned above are positive let the key personnel in this company know that they remain a critical business entity. Telling them this 1-on-1 is not enough. They need to hear this in public forums within the company. They need to be clear on the opportunity that the company enjoys, and what this means both for the company and for them as employees.
  • You cannot over-communicate the vision, mission and opportunity. They already know that you are juggling multiple balls and need ongoing assurance that they remain important.
  • Make sure that you have a right person handling day to day matters in the core company and in each of the other entities so that as they grow that they can support themselves.

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