Learning Pool

Sherry Coutu – entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, mentor & role model

It’s been a while since I’ve told you about someone interesting I’ve encountered in my travels so this blog is all about Sherry Coutu, award winning entrepreneur and a successful angel investor. She has the smarts (MSc with Distinction in Economics from the London School of Economics & an MBA from Harvard), the track record as a practising CEO (her first start up was acquired by Euromoney plc and her second was floated via an IPO in 2000 when Sherry was five months pregnant and it was later valued at $1 billion), a successful investment track record (she’s invested so far in over 35 companies, one of the most recent being Artfinder) and the network (she sits on the boards of LinkedIn and Zoopla.com as well as being an investor in two VC firms). Are you impressed yet? There’s a lot more. Sherry also has 3 young children and aims to spend one day per week putting something back via philanthropic pursuits (she’s on the board of Cancer Research UK, a trustee at NESTA, a non exec at Cambridge & Harvard universities and she works with NSPCC on a programme for disadvantaged teenagers). I suspect on the philanthropic front there’s probably a lot more. I know for a fact on the professional front there’s an awful lot more. Wired Magazine voted Sherry one of the 25 most influential people in the wired world in May 2011.

I hate to tell you this but Sherry Coutu is also very understated, very cool and very nice. I met her first a couple of months ago when Learning Pool was selected as one of the 9 SME finalists in the Cabinet Office’s Innovation Launchpad competition. Sherry has been the driving force behind this initiative which seeks to improve in a practical way government engagement with SMEs. I snapped the pic accompanying this blog when Sherry was delivering her presentation last Tuesday to the 120+ civil servants gathered at BIS. We’ve been lucky to have her input and insight into our Big Society School idea as part of the Launchpad process.

My favourite Sherry Coutu quotes that I’ve come across so far are “I think the most important question for any startup is “Is what they’re aiming for going to change the world somehow? Is it going to make it a better place?”” and about working in the technology space “it’s a great industry that we’re a part of … being able to peer into the future and to invest in things that are likely to change our world. … It’s a huge privilege”. In one video interview she tells how her father waved a bunch of fibre optic cable at her when she was 5 years old & told her it was going to change the world. Life is all about those moments, isn’t it?

I’ve always thought I was a decent enough plate spinner and until I met Sherry, I’d never been envious of another person’s career. I now realise I can surely do more. Sherry’s tutor at the LSE talked to her about considering becoming an entrepreneur…I turned down my place at the LSE when I was 17 because I didn’t feel ready to move to London. I wasn’t brave enough. I’ve wondered over the past few days about how different my life may have been if I’d grasped that particular nettle – but then I also got to thinking about all the good things I might have missed and I’ve concluded that life really is too short for regrets. It’s only in Kurt Vonnegut novels that we should visit those forks in the road & examine different outcomes.

I’ll leave you today with another great Sherry Coutu quote “As entrepreneurs you’re either seeking to disrupt something, or as a dominant market player, you’re seeking to retain your position. You know, you have to ask yourself, “Where’s the puck going to be in 25 years?” Yep – the gal’s still a Canadian! Sherry – it’s been a privilege to get to know you.

A blog about pride…

Last night I attended the awards evening for SeedComp 2011 – a Digital Derry initiative to uncover the North West of Ireland’s most promising digital business ideas. The process has been ongoing since late March & has resulted in 30 or so new business ideas emerging. This type of competition is a fabulous way for any town to encourage & promote some innovation & entrepreneurialism. The overall prize kitty last night was £10,000 and included a £1,000 prize for the most promising student idea – so it’s a very cost effective way to get some ideas moving in your community & get especially your young people thinking about starting their own businesses. Most brand new ideas only need a tiny amount of money to get started. We’re lucky to have our own Digital Champion, Mark Nagurski, in Derry to come up with competitions like this and then put in the hard graft to make them a success. Definitely worthwhile if your town doesn’t already do something like this.

12 fledgling ideas were shortlisted at the start of May and the new promoters presented yesterday. The judging panel included some tech industry veterans, one of Facebook’s senior executives, a couple of local entrepreneurs and a (friendly) VC. A terrifying prospect and indeed one of the competitors shared with me at last night’s event that although he’s presented to both Steven Spielberg and James Cameron in his career so far, he was more nervous going into the room yesterday.

It was therefore with great pride that Paul & I witnessed our very own Breda Doherty pick up a prize as part of her new venture with her business partner Catherine Morris. An all girl geek team. What could ever be nicer? Breda & Catherine met on the Invest NI/Digital Circle funded mission to this year’s SXSW event in Austin, Texas (thanks Matt!) and they’ve wasted no time in coming up with a new business idea & putting together a plan. Their new idea has elements of the passion of the original Craigslist (Breda interviewed Craig Newmark at SXSW) and it uses Bill Liao’s homespun advice on marketing messages (Breda interviewed Bill in Washington DC); I’m hoping their relentless execution against plan will show that Breda has maybe even learned something from Paul & me along the way (good stuff only Breda!). She’s certainly a different person today than the one who walked into the Learning Pool office in April 2008 to bring order to the chaos that existed at that time – more self confident, more informed about technology and investment, more assertive, more aware of how to get things done, more experienced, more of an all rounder…but still as sweet, still as stylish and still universally loved by her school chums, the whole of team lovely, our entire customer base and basically anyone who ever meets her.

Go Breda & Catherine – we’re all rooting for you & we can’t wait to see where this takes you.

Addendum to this blog (11 June 2011)

A few people have asked me why Paul & I are so supportive of one of our own star team members thinking about starting her own business…hmm…being a small business owner isn’t just about finding people & extracting your pound of flesh from them over the time they work for you. It’s also about adding to your local community & giving back where you can, providing careers & challenge for your people and equipping them with the skills they need to go on & do something else. Learning Pool is 5 years old this summer and we are lucky to have a high performing star team that’s the envy of many other companies. But after 3 years in a job, people are entitled to try their hand at something else and if they go on to take a stab at being an entrepreneur themselves, Paul & I see that as a perfect 10 scored for ourselves – our work is done & we’ve achieved one of the things we set out to.

The other day a local entrepreneur I met at a lunch told me how he’d had someone come in to arrange the desks in his company so that everyone could see each others screens – his reason for doing that – so that no-one would be on Facebook during the hours of 9-5. What did I do – I just sighed a bit to be honest. He wasn’t interested in what I had to say anyway. Old fashioned companies with old fashioned opinions – think on. Your days are probably numbered.

Entrepreneurs and Criminals…maybe it is quite a fine line…

I was delighted to meet the very interesting Sheena Leaf in Exeter on Friday. That’s Sheena in the photo. Sheena was originally a psychiatric nurse and these days is working on a project in Devon called “The Entrepreneur Inside”. It’s a project that aims to deliver entrepreneurial education to prisoners and Sheena’s part way through a prison pilot that will connect offenders with business professionals and a regional university business school to uncover legitimate entrepreneurial potential.

This is something that’s never occurred to me before – although a cursory Google search identifies a couple of serious academic research studies comparing especially drug barons & gang lords with entrepreneurs.

I find this a fascinating idea – as it’s all to do with circumstance and life chances as well as morals. On the flight back to Belfast on Friday evening I jotted down a few thoughts of my own about what some of the similarities are. This is what I came up with:

· We all like ducking & dealing – although perhaps we call that negotiation

· We all like to make money – sometimes even just for thrills

· Both sets lean towards being manipulative and control freaks – again we probably call that negotiation

· We all resent being told what to do & like to be our own boss and make our own independent decisions

· Everyone has a healthy disdain for the competition (there’s a famous story from a non-Disney theme park who used the objective “Kill Mickey” internally)

· We all work hard to make ourselves indispensable to our customer base and we all want “addictive” products to sell

· Both of us like spotting opportunity & backing “horses”

· We all monitor and respond quickly to market trends

· We both have a strikingly different risk profile than other groups of people

· We all like to break the rules although we tend to do that by using armies of professional advisers to look for legal loopholes.

Interesting eh? I’d welcome your thoughts on this & I wish Sheena every success with her ground breaking pilot.

10 reasons to work in someone else’s startup

If you’ve never worked in a startup business you don’t know what you’re missing. It really is the most fun you could ever have at work – even when they don’t become the next Groupon (let’s face it – any of us that have been around for a while have all got drawers full of old share option certificates from the companies we believed to be “dead certs”). However, if you’re not yet quite ready or equipped to start your own business, working in someone else’s startup can be a marvellous stopgap solution and one that brings all sorts of opportunity. These are my top 10 reasons why:

1. Whatever you do, your startup job will have more scope simply because there are fewer people in the company and everyone is required to work beyond their comfort zones – that adds more strings to your bow & improves your confidence;

2. Your working day will be far more varied than if you worked in a bigger or more established company and there’s bags more opportunity to move sideways into something else if you find you fancy it;

3. If you’re talented and hard working, you can move up fast & make yourself indispensable far easier than in a different sort of organisation; no-one cares about your age or gender or even experience – it’s what you can do today that matters;

4. Startup teams are really special – the bond between team members is unusually strong (probably because we all have so much at stake & let’s face it – there’s usually nothing else – no customers, no product, no money – so the team is EVERYTHING) and it’s a unique experience; when I think back to the startups I’ve worked in the teams have all been pure gold (Learning Pool’s Team Lovely pictured, snapped at our May 2010 conference by the rather wonderful Paul Clarke);

5. Visibility – you can have access to the CEO’s big picture vision if you want it (if you’re not interested in what that is, you probably shouldn’t be there);

6. You can learn so much so fast at someone else’s expense & with no financial risk to yourself – I remember the dizzy learning curve of my first startup dalliance – but even more I remember the exhilaration;

7. Potential long term risk-free financial upside in your share options – if you work in someone else’s startup & don’t have options ask them why;

8. The environment is extremely challenging & it helps you find out stuff about yourself as you become more resilient;

9. There’s a chance that this might just be THE ONE – the next Google or Amazon;

10. It’s serious fun – those roller coaster highs sure are high & we celebrate every success (sometimes even a little too much); you never know what’s around the corner.

Sounds good so far – sounds like you might enjoy this. If you’re going for it, it’s only fair for me to give you the other side of the coin – which I’m going to call:

5 team member behaviours that really p*** the startup CEO off – and in my book they are:

1. Whining – either to me or your colleagues about (delete as necessary) long working hours/not enough time to get stuff done properly/the spec is too loose/the working environment is too transparent/my salary is too low/the goalposts keep moving/etc);

2. Not being customer focused enough – unforgivable in a startup;

3. Wasting money – booking travel late, forgetting to cancel subscriptions, not parking in the cheapest car park at the airport, not asking for a discount on absolutely everything we buy as a matter of course, nor getting the most out of every minute of the day;

4. Not thinking about stuff – inexcusable & I don’t want to hear your excuses;

5. Not being a team player – peddling your own agenda, bitching about a colleague, not carrying your fair share – unacceptable – we’re all in this together & see above – the team is everything. If you don’t believe this you need to get out & let the rest of us get on.

As always – I hope you enjoyed this blog & I look forward to your comments or questions – some of you will no doubt have different views & stories from your own start-ups which the rest of us hope you will share.

Find Time to Give

I’m proud to serve my local theatre group in Derry as a voluntary non-exec director. I find it satisfying to convert some of my free time to serving the local community that Learning Pool is based in and I live in. It’s also a lot of fun. The photo above is of me with the Millennium Forum & Derry Theatre Trust’s wonderful and inspiring Chairman, Martin Bradley, & Ed Vaizey (Minister for Communication, Culture and the Creative Industries) – it was taken at the party thrown by the theatre the day after Derry’s success in bidding for UK City of Culture 2013 was announced.

I only wish I had enough free time to serve as a councillor but my working life is just too demanding right now – maybe later…

So what made me apply in the first place? My first three years living in Northern Ireland were spent working in one of Belfast’s busy high tech start-ups. Our customers were based predominantly in the Bay Area & Japan which led to a very long working day – start early to catch Japan before it went offline and stay late to welcome the Californians to their new working day. By the time the company was sold, I was close to burnout and wanted to be involved in a project that was enjoyable but also included an element of “putting something back”. I decided to join the theatre board because they were seeking someone with a commercial financial background. Seven years later I’m still on the board and the benefits I have enjoyed during that time have been many fold:

· I’ve met lots of interesting new people

· I’ve been able to satisfy some creative leanings in some small way

· I’ve helped the theatre flourish by working with the rest of the Board and the executive team to improve governance and financial management – the theatre’s creative direction didn’t need any help as the executive team have always had that side well covered

· I’ve been able to re-use some specialist experience and that was satisfying

· I’m proud that Derry is going to be the first UK City of Culture 2013 and glad that our theatre will be a key player in that.

My day job didn’t get any quieter. Indeed quite the opposite…it got busier. But I have no regrets about volunteering and figure I must have got better at managing my time.

If you don’t currently put something back, I urge you to have a rethink and consider what you could do for your community, however small. I promise you it will be fun.

10 fabulous things that have happened in the last 4 years

#teamlovely has been celebrating Learning Pool’s 4^th birthday for the past week or so – just look at that cake in the photo. There’ve been many times in the last 4 years that the achievement of this milestone seemed like a tall order – but resilience has always been the order of the day round here so we’ve just kept our heads down and carried on plugging away. A rather frightening statistic is that 75% of new start ups have crashed & burned by the end of Year 3 – so it’s good to be in a successful minority, especially during the current global economic recession. As we reach the end of our celebrations, this has got me thinking about the highlights of the last 4 years for Paul & me (this blog is a bit selfish for which I apologise now). Here they are in no particular order:

1. Getting to see Bill Clinton in Derry this week – that was cool & so was he (disappointed you didn’t mention “digital” Bill – ah well)

2. In the early days, making a snap decision to go ahead & build Modern Councillor whilst crossing the West End of London in a taxi – it’s been a roaring success ever since

3. Also in the early days, receiving a Letter of Offer from one of the Belfast VCs and turning it down – twice!

4. Blagging our way in to spending 45 minutes with a Director of Education in Capitol Hill & listening to his sage advice

5. Reaching the final of the 2008 All Ireland Seedcorn competition and having a great night out with our team

6. Following on from No 5, our team meeting Jerry Kennelly (founder of Stockbyte that was sold to Getty Images in 2006 for $135m) at the Seedcorn awards party and having him tell us we have a great company, to keep doing what we’re doing & not to take any investment (thanks Jerry!)

7. Holding a launch party in Johannesburg in Nov 2009 at the UK Trade Commissioner’s residence and having lovely Baroness Glenys Kinnock, Minister for Africa, as our keynote speaker

8. Being overjoyed when Donald Clark approached us and subsequently offered to join our board as a non exec director (great to have you on board Donald – #teamlovely loves you to bits)

9. Welcoming 200 people to our annual conference at London’s Royal Mint on 12 May 2010 and receiving their fabulous feedback

10. Being one of Deloitte’s Rising Stars at the end of 2009

11. Knowing that we’re well on our way to building the biggest & best public sector online learning community in the world

OK – so there were 11…here’s to the next batch!

To hug or not to hug…

I’m often surprised and pleased by the number of people that hug me the first time I ever meet them; some people even hug me as soon as we’re introduced. I don’t know why this happens although I must say I’m pleased it does. In my opinion, hugging shows you feel close to other people in a non-threatening & not too intimate way & it feels nice. Others in the Learning Pool team have been known to push me forward when there’s hugging to be done.

I’m in Scotland this weekend taking a couple of days out after a busy month of getting Learning Pool’s new Glasgow office up & running. Dave, Breda & I hosted a breakfast briefing in Edinburgh on Thursday at which one of Learning Pool’s non execs, Donald Clark was speaking. Donald is pretty much always controversial (read his blog athttp://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/ to see for yourself if you don’t believe me), especially when he’s talking to people that train others using traditional means – and he didn’t disappoint on Thursday. At the end of the morning, I could see Sheila Fleetwood (pictured with me above) making a bee-line for me. She’d been engaging in some lively banter with Donald over the course of his session & I must admit I thought for one second she was coming over to give me a slap. Instead, to my delight, she hugged me & thanked me for such an interesting & thought provoking morning. Phew!

A couple of months ago, Dave & I were in Exeter for Likeminds (gosh – was that really February?) and we had a fab night out with some of our local guvvie pals we don’t see anywhere near often enough. That night I had a great conversation with Martin Howitt & Bill Wells about hugging and how much we like to do it. The three of us decided that one of the measures of how well Learning Pool is doing could be the number of customer hugs I receive every month – admittedly a rather unusual business metric. So far it seems to work.

Next week is the company’s annual birthday bash (hard to believe but we’re 4 years old) – we’re having a party on HMS President & I expect to get a lot of hugs that day – tell you what – I’ll count them & post the number back up here as a comment next week.

Conclusion – hugging is good with your business associates – keep doing it & keep those hugs coming for me!

Similarities between the Learning Pool community and the “Deadheads”…

There was a great article a couple of months back in the Sunday Times magazine. It made comparisons between the Grateful Dead (Californian band headed up by the late Jerry Garcia, prolific creators, performers, LSD fuelled, very personal relationship with their fans – known as the Deadheads) and the Apple Corporation (personified best in their use of the “Think Different” slogan). The basic premise of the article was that the Grateful Dead were ahead of their time in the way that they interacted with & involved their fans in the running of the band. It was an innovative business model that was the exact opposite of what every other band did.

This got me thinking about the way Learning Pool interacts with its own community – and yes – there’s a lot of similarities, with the exception of consumption of large amounts of LSD of course. Here are 5 of them:

1. The Grateful Dead allowed & even encouraged the Deadheads to tape their concerts and share the tapes with each other – as long as no money changed hands; Learning Pool encourages its community to use our authoring tool to create content and share it via the community – as long as no money changes hands. This is fundamentally different from how other e-learning companies operate. Even those that facilitate “sharing” make some money out of that process somewhere along the way.

2. The Grateful Dead’s operating model flew in the face of how bands did things back in the 1970s and 80s; Learning Pool bucked the trend in e-learning by launching a learning management system in 2008 that was built on open source technology and priced to disrupt the market. It has since been adopted right across local government making it the LMS of choice and the clear market leader by a long chalk.

3. Barry Barnes, professor of leadership in the School of Business & Entrepreneurship in Florida describes the Grateful Dead’s energy as “dynamic synchronicity”; I like to think that this description could be equally well applied to the way that Learning Pool builds products hand in hand with its community and steering group, encouraging community members to steer our direction and shape the way we do things is second nature and allows for dynamic interaction.

4. Continual innovation & creativity meant the Grateful Dead had a repertoire of over 150 active songs covering many musical genres and this in turn meant that none of their 2,300 or so live concerts were ever the same; the way Learning Pool builds content and accesses subject matter expertise with its members means that we have a huge catalogue of well over 200 up-to-date & constantly refreshed e-learning courses for our community to use.

5. The Grateful Dead understood that in an information economy, the key relationship is between familiarity & value (not scarcity & value as in the old supply & demand model) and for the band this manifested itself in the incredibly close almost mystical relationship that existed between the band and the Deadheads – in business parlance they brought passion to the customer relationship; Learning Pool has built an incredibly personal relationship with its growing community (tens of thousands of local government officers, elected members and school governors use our learning products) and our customers frequently tell us we are more like partners than suppliers or that we’re part of the fabric of local government – and that makes us both proud and happy.

In true Irish fashion I’m going to leave you with a local story about the Grateful Dead, as told to me by Raphoe man & famous fiddler, Martin McGinley. Jerry Garcia was in Co Donegal whilst recovering from his triple heart bypass operation & happened upon the Bridge Bar in Ramelton, a well known & popular music venue. He noticed that the McPeake band from Belfast were playing that night & returned later for the gig. He was spotted drinking tumblers of Jack Daniels at the bar by local men James McDaid & John McIvor. The boys sidled over for a chat & established that it was indeed really Jerry Garcia and with mounting excitement they asked him if he would get up and play a few numbers. Jerry said that he would – but the McPeake band refused to allow it – saying they didn’t permit anyone to perform with them on stage. Hard to know what to say sometimes, isn’t it?

Image of Jerry Garcia used above attributed to Jay Blakesberg with grateful thanks

Two Heads are Better than One – 10 pros of having a business partner

The photo above is me with my own business partner, Paul McElvaney. It was taken a couple of summers ago & we’re sitting on top of the world – ok – it’s the Giant’s Causeway but it feels like the top of the world when you’re there…it’s a much better photo of Paul than it is of me but I love it nevertheless because we’re both laughing and the sun’s out.

This week we were over at Belfast’s Start VI talking to some early stage entrepreneurs about their plans for their new businesses. This got me thinking about the whole business partner debate – to have or have not – so here are my thoughts on this subject:

1. If you’re dreaming big with your start-up you should think about finding a business partner – unless you already have proof that you’re superhuman. Our business, Learning Pool, has grown from nothing to 50 people and £3.5m turnover in 4 years. That’s a lot of work whichever way you look at it.

2. Partners should have complementary business skills – it’s the 2 + 2 = 5 effect. In our case, Paul’s far more technical than me & has a project management background whereas I come from an accountancy & legal background. Having said that – both of us are immersed in our chosen sector and we can both sell – that bit’s important.

3. Two people means you have more ideas for brainstorming and (at least) two views on opportunities and risks; you can also learn a lot from each other.

4. If there are two of you, chances are you have a much bigger network than one person and you just know more stuff and have more experience to draw on between you – so you can make better decisions than a person trying to figure it out on their own. There are many decisions that Paul & I make every day on our own but there’s also a lot that we decide upon jointly via a process of debate & brainstorming between us – it’s hard to understand unless you try it…and you have to be prepared to not always get your own way.

5. It makes the business more “formal” in those early days – if you were by yourself chances are you wouldn’t bother with monthly management accounts or you’d be more lax over expenses or you wouldn’t write so much down. This early discipline stands you in good stead when you start to scale.

6. Two people can cover a helluva lot more ground – business requires a lot of travel, pitching, attendance at events, socialising, networking. It also makes it easier to get away for a bit of a break.

7. Your partner’s there for the bad times – when you don’t win a contract you’ve pitched hard for or when the bank says No – but also for the good times – and it’s great to have someone to share with. A new business is like a rollercoaster ride and having a partner to bounce off & share stuff with & who picks you up when you’re down & vice versa flattens out some of those crazy peaks and troughs.

8. Most entrepreneurs are control freaks so it can be hard working so closely with another person, especially at first. They do say that you have to work at your business partnership like you would a marriage and that’s true. You have to be prepared to be completely open and honest in a way that you will not be used to – not even with your family or your spouse/partner. Your business partner will know more about your personal finances and even your personality traits than your close friends or family do. You will have seen each other make unpalatable decisions and behave ruthlessly and you will have exposed that darker side of your nature to each other. Once you’ve accepted this it is slightly comforting.

9. There’s some practical reasons when you’re starting out – like having more working capital as there are two of you or having more places to get hold of start-up capital.

10. Having a partner makes you more resilient and it makes you work harder – as you have someone else who’s opinion you care about to prove yourself to.

My own experience of this has been incredibly positive. Paul & I work well together. We both work hard and put an equal amount into our business in terms of effort and expertise – that’s important too – I don’t know how it would work if one partner felt short changed by the other but I guess it would be uncomfortable and unsustainable. We have a lot of laughs along the way and there’s a great deal of healthy competitiveness and “sport”. There have been some really bad days on the journey but there have also been some amazing highs and I wouldn’t change things for the world. I’ve ended up with a friend that I would trust with my life without any hesitation. And that’s a big deal.

I’ll leave you with a quote from John D Rockefeller “A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship”. Bit of food for thought in there. I look forward to your comments friends & readers.

Mary McKenna's Blog

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