Blue Bootstrap

GRA/TAG Business Launch Workshop for Internet-focused businesses

I'm live and on the scene blogging the workshop for the GRA/TAG business launch competition.

Introductions – Lance Weatherby and Sid Elliot, GRA AT&T executive in residence.

Lance is giving the presentation.

About the Competition

• Goals
  • Motivate and support entrepreneurs
  • Support and expand strategic clusters
  • Create awareness that Georgia is a great place to launch and grow technology companies
• $100K in funding, $200K in services

Qualifications

• Georgia based
• Internet technology
  • Online services
  • Web applications
  • Infrastructures
• Less than $500K external funding

How is your business going to stand out?

Why Apply?

• Money
• And services
• But there is much more…
• Forcing event to get together investment materials
• Business vetting
• Document feedback
• Presentation coaching
• Exposure to experienced entrepreneurs

He's absolutely right on all of these. I'm using the business launch competition as a reason to put together my business plan and financial projections. I'm looking forward to going through the process. Screw sleep.

Key dates

• February 18: preliminary entries
• April 15: final entries
• May 7-9: semi-final presentations
• June 4: final four presentations

How to apply

• Preliminary round
  • 2 page executive summary
  • Complete questionnaire
  • Terms and conditions agreement
• Semi-finals & finals
  • 20 page business plan (the shorter the better, judges typically don't read the whole plan, business plan is a thought exercise)
  • 10-12 slide deck
  • Mentor coaching
  • Practice presentation

Writing tips

• Clearly explain
  • The market
  • Your unique/innovative technology
  • Management team
  • Financials, stage of company, and use of funds
• Be concise
  • 2 pages is 2 pages
  • More is less, a lot less
• Spell check!
• Make sure the documents are consistent

Lance is really emphasizing consistency and brevity so before you go writing the Great American Novel, rethink and edit, edit, edit.

You are a semi-finalist!

• Woot! (heh – nice l33t talk)
• Do your homework on the judges
• Build your pitch
• Use Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule
• Practice by yourself – with a watch and mirror
• Practice with your team
• Practice Q&A

The Pitch

• Don't go alone
  • They want to see the team
  • 2-4 people seems right
• Only the CEO should present
• Dress the part
• Do something relevant and memorable
• Do not read your slides (agree! Reading from slides is a wasted presentation and boring zzzzz…….)
• Take backups (Murphy's Law is out in spades at events like this)

Q&A minefield

• Answer the question, bride, and shut up! (not the time to pontificate)
• Be honest, not defensive
• You don't say
  • "Well honestly"
  • "That's a good question"
  • Or any variants thereof
• Have a teammate take notes
• The CEO directs others (stay in control of the meeting)

The judges

• Want you to succeed
• Will behave better than investors (not surprising, it isn't their money)
• Do not know the Internet as well as you
• Will not know your business as well as you
• Will not have read your plan
• Will bring distractions of normal work
• Read them
• Thank them

Explain the product or service in plain English; simplify so that a non-technical person can understand. Knowing and understanding the market is very important – competitors, barriers to competition, size of the market. You can assume sophistication about technology but not about your business.

Resources

• http://www.tagonline.org/businesslaunch.php - site for the competition
• http://www.peachseedz.com – ATDC blog
• http://erc.atdc.org – good resource for anybody
• Lance at atdc dot org
• Melanie at tagonline dot org

Miscellaneous Q&A session (edited by yours truly)

• Companies that have well in the past are those with prototypes or betas and maybe some customers.
• Being incorporated in another state isn't an issue; the main criteria is that business is located and run in Georgia.
• ATDC, GRA, & TAG do not sign non-disclosure agreements.
• People want to see reasonable and realistic financials.
• Make your team look as big as possible without lying

GRA/TAG Business Launch Workshop for Internet-focused businesses

I'm live and on the scene blogging the workshop for the GRA/TAG business launch competition.

Introductions – Lance Weatherby and Sid Elliot, GRA AT&T executive in residence.

How to Work the Room

I came across this article at FoundRead on 10 tips for founders en route to the power-party circuit. I thought this was good advice given that Capital Connections and SoCon08 are a few weeks away.

1. Be more of a host and less of a guest.
2. Avoid permanently joining a "rock pile."
3. Dress for the party.
4. Don't "hotbox."
5. Put your coat and bad down.
6. Mentor someone about your – or you company's – core competence.
7. Don't forget to get mentored as well.
8. Be a good host while you're someone else's guest.
9. Managing the party host.
10. Always, always, always: Thank the host before you leave.

Exhaustion

I'm so fucking tired right now. I spent 29 of the last 35 hours trying to jam out a demo for a customer and failed; it wasn't my fault though – they gave me a 27 page spec exactly one week before it was due. I just got back from the dentist's office to get crowns (I've spent ~$5K in dental work in the last month). My body feels like flavorless jell-o.

So maybe I'm whining a bit; it happens. Days like today make me question why I decided to go off on my own. Enough whining though; everybody has days like today and running a small business doesn't make it any better or worse, just different.

Take advantage of me in my whiny-ass state: I have 4 invites for Xobni, a great outlook plugin if anybody's interested. Send me an amil – josh.watts at blue-violin.com

 

Nothing to see here

Just a test to see how posting from Word works.

[Update]

Testing updates…

 

Oh me oh EMI

Another long day yesterday.... I'm going to try something new. Around 4:30 in the afternoon, I'm going to step away from the keyboard and start having dinner with my wife and kids. Starting a company is stressful even under the best conditions and with 2 small children it's even tougher. My wife has been great about supporting my endeavor but she can't run the house by herself. I'm thinking that taking 3 hours a day, when I'm not distracted by work, to cook dinner and hang with the family will help everybody.

On page A3 of yesterday's Wall Street Journal, an article on the woeful state of EMI; they're laying off as much as one-third of their 6,000 employees, focused on the recorded-music operations. I was peripherally involved in the music industry in the late 90's and that's what brought me to Atlanta. When I lived in Seattle, I was the main developer for Amplified.com (an Atlanta-based company) and created a site to sell custom music CDs and secure digital downloads. They later hired me and I lived in a hotel for 2 weeks while my stuff was in transit.

All music companies at the time were faced with one problem: getting music that people would actually buy. We had a lot of indie labels and such but not much that sold. At the time, the major record labels were making big money but saw the disruption caused by Napster and quite honestly, were shitting bricks because they didn't know what to do. In true fashion, there was much gnashing of teeth and tearing of garments but nobody did anything because.... well, they didn't want to create another MTV and were determined to own the digital download market. As you can see, their strategy worked so well that suing their customers has become a legitimate business strategy.

For what it's worth, here's the business model for recorded music: take a chunk of plastic that costs about $0.50 to make and sell it for $15-18 to hipster teenagers. The artists themselves made very little, if any, money when you bought their CD; mechanical and publishing royalties and concerts are where the real money is at for artists.

Monday monday

Life is busy these days. I have multiple contract gigs and a new strategy for Blue Violin. 16+ hour days aren't uncommon. iTunes runs almost all day. Work-life balance lays in shards on the floor.

I'm not complaining. This is what I want to do - in fact, it's almost all that I want to do, much to the dismay of my wife at moments. Starting a software company may not be the noblest of pursuits but I find that I'm happier than I've been in a long time. For me, working and running a business is an exhilarating experience. It's not all sunshine and lollipops and I've had plenty of moments of self-doubt, especially when I'm trying to support a family at the same time. The peaks are fantastic and the troughs are abysmal. I"m trying to be even-keeled regardless of either.

Remember folks, it's only work if you would rather be doing something else. I'm right where I need to be.

January TAG/ATDC Entrepreneur Society meeting

Live and on the scene for the above mentioned meeting talking about the GRA/TAG Business Launch competition - $100K in cash & $100K+ in services for the winner. At the meeting today we have 2 former winners of the contest speaking about their experiences with the contest.

Damnit! Laptop blue-screened on me again.

Ok, back after a reboot.

First up, Sandeep Agate, CEO of REACH Call, a web-based telemedicine service. Made the decision to bootstrap (after winning the business competition) talked to the New York Dept. of Health and landed them as the first customer. Deferred salaries, 120+ hour weeks over a summer. Made the decision to get cash positive as quickly as possible. Did not put together a business plan (put together an executive presentation and financial model) and focused on building the business. Interesting story but the "questions" and "challenges" he's listing are well known to anybody who's opened a lemonade stand. *Yawn* I wish he'd talk more about his experience with the competition instead of giving us a history of REACH Call. Overall, not a compelling speaker.

Up next is Greg Warren of IVOX (listen to his StartupLounge interview), a provider of asset vehicle tracking technology. A couple of good sound bites

• "drive to the no" - ignore those who say you can't do it
• "in an ham and eggs breakfast, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed" when he decided to go full-time on IVOX.

Another business presentation but he's moving through it much faster to have a Q&A session. Just put up a slide showing sources of funding. No institutional money and cash invested comes from board members & convertible debt.

 

Competition benefits:

• business plan refinement
• message definition
• access
• exposure
• money
• validation
• support/community

From the meeting description: "Learn what made these two companies stand out from the crowd. Hear a progress report as well.Learn what made these two companies stand out from the crowd. Hear a progress report as well."

 

It's mostly a progress report i.e. sales/investing pitch. Greg does a much better job explaining the process and experience of going through the business competition on the StartupLounge podcast linked above.