Startups

10 Annoying Behaviours of the prima donna CEO
Baby_crying

We’ve all seen it – the nightmare behaviours of the prima donna MD/CEO.  These are my personal favourites & I can’t wait to hear yours – so please add them in at the comments section below:

1.       Travelling in a different class to everyone else & expecting special treatment everywhere they go.  I used to work for a CEO that travelled business class when our start up could hardly make payroll some months.  Even worse – his PA was sworn to secrecy & if any team members happened to bump into him at the airport or getting on or off a plane, he used to pretend he’d been upgraded.  Pathetic.

2.       Being unable to as much as fart without the involvement of a long suffering PA.  I followed up with a Northern Ireland executive that I’d met in Washington DC about a mutual opportunity we’d discussed when we were in the USA.  He referred me to his PA to book a meeting with him.  I’ve never been back to him since.

3.       Going on & on about how brilliant they are & being the big “I am”.  Linked to this is telling everyone constantly that they are the CEO.  I used to work for a CEO in Belfast (some of you may know him, dear readers…) who at least once a day we would hear shouting from his office “But I am the CEO”…Boy how we used to roll around laughing at that.

4.       Hideous uncalled for temper tantrums.  One CEO I used to work for threw a chair at me one day – and I mean a proper typing chair with a solid metal base.  Had I physically attacked him.  No – I’d caught him in a bad moment & made some comment that he didn’t like & that was the result.  I managed to dodge the chair for anyone who’s wondering.

5.       Spending their investor/shareholder/VC money recklessly – how many times have we seen that?  $50k on a domain name, $150k on a booth used twice a year at conferences, flashy company car, unused apartment in Palo Alto that no-one in the team but the CEO is allowed to use and so on…complete waste of money & no-one dare say anything.

6.       Getting team members to do non job-related stuff for them.  One MD I worked for used to come in late to work & ring in for someone in the office to come out & first of all wait in the car park queue & then park her car.  If I ever get even slightly uppity, Paul says to me – “you’re getting more & more like X” – that puts me straight back into my reality box.  Same MD used to take a taxi from central London to Heathrow airport because she “didn’t like using the tube”.  Other examples of this might be asking members of your team to book personal travel for you or take your cleaning to the dry cleaners.  CEOs – do it yourselves!

7.       Dominating team brainstorming meetings with their own brilliance so that no-one else gets a look-in.

8.       Always hogging the limelight instead of encouraging others to have a go & try taking a lead every now & then.

9.       Leaving meetings when they’ve had their say – their time is clearly so valuable!

10.   Having ridiculous amounts of the latest technology gadgetry – half of which they don’t even know how to use.

I’m sure there are loads & loads more so let’s get them all out there.  This was an easy blog for me to write as I seem to have worked for more than my fair share of CEO assholes over the years (if you’re reading this John Thornton, you are not included in that pile!).  Having said that, it was one of my main drivers for starting my own business as I thought to myself, this really can’t be too hard if that asshole can do it!

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

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.

 

10 ways to punch well above your weight as a small business…
Punching

We all agree it’s great to be a small business but sometimes, especially if you’re just starting out, you might want people to think you’re bigger than you are.

Below are 10 ways you can do that.  I’m sure there are many more – so I’ll be glad to see your comments.  Also interested to hear if people think some of this is “wrong” to do as a small business…as in do you think it’s deceitful or just resourceful?

1.       Be professional from Day 1 of trading.  By that I mean have a logo & a brand, get business cards, have a decent website (not one of those dreadful one page affairs that tells you there’s more coming later), get collateral printed if that’s part of your sell…and always behave in a professional manner.

2.       Work hard to keep your website content fresh and changing; write newsy articles and blogs and aim to have new “stuff” on your home page every day or every other day at least – if your website isn’t refreshed, people will stop coming back & you’ll lose momentum from your launch.

3.       Use freelance resource if you don’t yet have a team in place, but present those people as part of your team & give them business cards, company email addresses etc.  Don’t lie about this if you’re asked outright…most people will be sympathetic to what you’re trying to achieve.

4.       Speak at conferences and events and be visible – a lot of people do this very well.  You have to hustle a bit to get onto the event organisers’ radar but it’s no doubt worth the effort it takes.

5.       Gather up a small advisory board & feature them on your website.  Most people will be prepared to help you get started & won’t demand 30% of your company or £1,000 a day in return.  A lot of luminaries like to dabble in interesting projects so make yours so & find an innovative way to reward them.

6.       Get yourself some testimonials.  Ideally from early adopters or your first customers.  If you don’t have any customers yet, offer some of your prospects a free trial or a discount in exchange for a written  or video testimonial.

7.       Use a proper landline number.  When Learning Pool was starting out, we obtained a London phone number to give the impression that we had a London office, even though we were based in Northern Ireland.  We never lied about this to anyone & always told the truth when asked – but the truth is that no-one asked.  They recognised it as a London number & assumed the rest.  Along the same lines have a co-working space or concierge service to use as your company address – don’t use your residential address.

8.       Register for VAT from Day 1 – even if you won’t get anywhere near the turnover registration hurdle in Year 1.  It makes your company appear bigger from the get-go and therefore more credible.

9.       Partner with a larger organisation if you want to pitch for a big contract or piggy-back onto a bigger company so that you can use their government framework if they’re on one – you will usually pay them a percentage of any contract you win in order to avail yourself of this but it might be well worth it.

10.   My last & favourite one – hold all your early days business meetings in the poshest hotel you can find.  We used to use The Goring Hotel as our “London office” in the early days of Learning Pool (it was the hotel the Middletons stayed in the night before this year’s Royal Wedding – that’s how posh it is).  We would stay in there for days on end ordering tea but never any food as we couldn’t afford that.  You’d be amazed at the number of people that have since told us they were convinced we used to stay there.  Ha – I won’t tell you where we did used to stay…but it will be in the book when we eventually get round to writing it!

That’s my top 10 folks – can’t wait to see your additions.  Keep ‘em coming.

Top 5 qualities the start-up CEO wants from team members
Start_up_employee

You have to be a certain sort of person to get on well in a start-up and there’s no doubt it isn’t a suitable career choice for everyone.  I thought a quick “top 5 qualities” may be useful for any of you out there that are wondering if this sort of adventure is for you.

My original list was much longer but I’ve whittled it down to the 5 that matter most to me – I realise that this is personal to me and many of you will have some of your own that you wish to add in the comments section.

Read on if you’ve been bitten by the start-up bug or are thinking you might jump in to the technology bubble that’s rapidly exploding right now.

1.       POSITIVITY No-one wants to listen to or work alongside a whinger or sniper.  Yeah – things generally aren’t even close to perfect in a start-up environment but get over it & get over yourself & you’ll  make a far better team member.

2.       HARD WORK No getting away from this one folks.  You cannot cover off everything you need to by working 9-5 for 5 days a week.  If that’s all you can give, stay well away from start-up land.

3.       COMMITMENT I want to know you’re gonna stick around long enough for me to recoup my investment in you – and there will be one.  The flip side to that is the minute you’re gone, you’re gone – don’t expect a leaving party & sad farewells in a start-up; no-one has time for that.

4.       ENTHUSIASM AND ENERGY Enthusiasm for what we’re all trying to achieve, hunger for success and energy which manifests itself as urgency in all that you do.  Don’t come sloping in to work at 9am telling me you are tired.  I don’t want to hear it.

5.       A SOLUTIONS FOCUSED OUTLOOK Don’t bring me problems.  We have millions of those already.  Push yourself a bit, work it out & bring me a solution.  I like that a lot better.

You’ll note nothing on the list has anything to do with your skills.  I guess they’re a given & a secondary consideration.

As always your comments are welcome – keep them coming & I look forward to reading them.

 

Entrepreneur tips from the uber Rich Felix Dennis
Felix-dennis

For today’s blog I’m straying from my usual format & embarking on a 2 part partial book review of Felix Dennis’s “How to Get Rich” which I’ve recently been reading again – more for the entertainment of Felix’s unique way of writing and his mad bits of homespun advice that really do make a lot of sense.  Also for his poems & the quotations from others he sprinkles throughout his writing which always make me smile.  Whatever you might think of Felix Dennis, you can’t argue with the fact that he’s made a helluva lot of money through his own hard graft & through doing things his own way.  Many of his enterprises he owns outright so he hasn’t had to accommodate the views of investors or VCs – he’s made a lot of his own calls.

I’ve enjoyed the book more second time round 2 years later – it annoyed me a bit the first time I read it.  I think the main reason I’ve enjoyed it more is because it’s written in a much more refreshing style than the hundreds of other “business” books I’ve read in the interim.

Before I start let me tell you about my own rather tenuous connection to Felix.  One of my friends, Catherine Bishop, used to be my partner’s accountant when he was just starting out & when she was just starting out – about 20 years ago.  She (wisely) moved from Alan to Felix & in that way she has been personal accountant to one of the richest British entrepreneurs and also one of the poorest! 

The chapter I’m reviewing today is Felix’s opinion of the 5 most common start-up errors – Blog no 2 will be on the Cardinal Virtues of the entrepreneur – both themes I’ve touched on in previous blogs.  I’m going to give you what Felix says & augment that with a few real life stories of my own.  So – let’s get on with the errors – bad news before good:

1.       Mistaking Desire for Compulsion – we’ve talked about this before folks.  To be a start up entrepreneur you’ve got to be driven to succeed in a way that most people just aren’t.  Most people just aren’t prepared to make the sacrifices needed, have no social life, neglect their families, risk everything they own and work every waking hour – not just for a month or two but for years.  If anyone had told me 5 years ago how much work & personal sacrifice was going to be needed to get Learning Pool up & operating like the beautiful machine you see before you today I’d have run a mile – or cried a lot.  It creeps up on you incrementally – each week you just do a bit more and a bit more until you seriously do start considering if you can manage on less sleep.  Other people will tell you about successful entrepreneurs who don’t work very hard – they’re either lying or they’ve set the bar very low.  If you know in your heart of hearts that you lack this compulsion walk away now – don’t put yourself through it.  Felix talks about how an invisible sliver of ice exists in everyone’s heart but people keep it small & hidden away.  Being a successful entrepreneur requires that sliver to grow over the years – I’ve seen it in myself – we need it to slay demons, beat off competition, harden ourselves against loss and disappointment.  If you don’t want to become like that – walk away.

2.       Over optimism Concerning Cash Flow – something else we’ve talked about before.  Competent cash flow management seems to me to be such a vital requirement in any enterprise that it always horrifies me when other entrepreneurs seem to disregard it.  There’s at least one person in the Learning Pool team who’s experienced over optimism in a start up’s cash flow before & more importantly had to deal with the consequences of poor cash management.  I’m sure you’ve all witnessed it.  As an entrepreneur you can leave balance sheets to your accountant but you must grasp the concept and importance of cash flow – it’s your organisation’s life blood.  This is one of Felix’s pet topics and his views on how companies waste money is well worth reading in full.  With cash flow forecasts, plan for the worst and hope for the best but don’t bury your head in the sand.

3.       Reinforcing Failure – this is about making a call to cancel a project which isn’t going to work.  It’s one of the hardest things anyone involved in a project ever has to do because they have personal buy in and also because they fool themselves into believing that things are better than they really are and in this way justify continuance.  Felix talks about the millions of dollars he’s lost carrying on publishing magazines that no-one was buying; we’ve done it with pet projects that seem like a great idea – but which at the end of the day no one will pay for – even though they may want it.  Remember that you are running a business and without sales it’s not a business but a hobby.

4.       Thinking Small and Acting Big – oh dear!  I love this one because I’m 100% positive that neither myself or my business partner does this.  I used to work for a start up CEO who wasted money on stupid things whilst the rest of us scrabbled around trying to get enough cash together to meet payroll and pay our creditors.  He travelled business class but even worse used to pretend to the people that worked for him that he was lucky and got upgraded a lot – he said that a number of times to colleagues that met him by accident at the airport and wondered why he wasn’t also flying economy to the West Coast.  He rented an apartment instead of staying in hotels, even though he was hardly ever there.  He insisted that Hertz had his hire car ready & running with the keys in the ignition when his plane landed & he didn’t care how much extra that cost.  Not for him the modest lifestyle of IKEA’s (very wealthy) CEO, taking the bus or using a 20 year old car to run around.  He was the BIG ME.  At least once a day we would hear him shout “How dare you – I’m the CEO” – that used to really make us chuckle.  It’s not nice to strut around like some obnoxious mini-mogul – that’s what Felix says and he’s right.  We need to think big & always act small.  Be a nice person & set a good example to everyone else.

5.       Skimping on Talent.  This is so easy to do and for so many reasons.  Hire great people that are more talented than you are.  Seek them out & offer them whatever you need to in order to bring them into your organisation – it isn’t always money – it might be something else.  Don’t hire people that you believe to be lesser people than you.  It’s easy to do because it stops you from feeling threatened – but remember in all likelihood they will do the same and in this way your start up will become a den of mediocrity.  Look for great people.  For a long time at Learning Pool we used to struggle to attract great people but in the last little while we’ve been living with the motto – Better a Hole than an Asshole – and it seems to be working because our team is stronger than ever before.  Remember this when you’re recruiting.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this chapter review & I’d love to hear your views on common Start Up errors – so please share.

 

10 reasons to work in someone else’s startup
Team_lovely

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.

 

So you wanna be a startup CEO…5 qualities you absolutely need
Paul_and_me_casino

Being a startup CEO seems to be an attractive occupation right now and one that the press & certainly Hollywood makes look pretty easy as well as fairly glamorous.  I thought I’d write a blog about my own views on the necessary qualities people need to make it through to the other side.  Please note that being the CEO of a startup requires a different set of qualities to being CEO of a mature & established business and indeed, that sort of experience may well be a hindrance in a startup environment.  Also it’s no accident that the photo of Paul & me above shows us in a casino setting – there’s a lot of luck at play as well – so don’t feel too bad if your startup is one of the 50% or so that fail in the first year.   

I’ve seen other bloggers make great long lists of these but I’ve distilled mine down to 5 main qualities:

1.       RESILIENCE – this is the big one.  It’s also a quality you should look for in a business partner or in your team members as you recruit them.  The official definition of resilience is an ability to bounce back into shape.  In reality in a work setting it means being able to continue functioning & making sensible decisions in the face of adversity – which could be a one off event (like a disaster) or longer term (like always being tired from working 16 hour days consistently).  As part of this quality I would include not bleating about how miserable you are & making your colleagues feel bad as well – there’s nothing worse than that.  Resilience is what you need when the 10th bank you’ve spoken to that week won’t lend you money & you don’t have enough to cover payroll right now, it’s the quality that makes you get up at 3am to go & catch a plane to London even though you only finished work at 10pm last night, it’s what makes you sit down & start working on another response to tender when you’ve just had a rejection letter in from something you thought was a dead cert.  In summary, this is the quality that keeps you going & you either have it or you don’t – so be honest with yourself.  At the end of the day, having the stamina & energy required to make a new company a success should not be overlooked.  The amount of sheer hard graft is savage & impossible to communicate to anyone that hasn’t been there.

2.       READING PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS – you need to be naturally good at this and it’s the quality that stops others from pulling the wool over your eyes.  First up you need to have a gut feel about how things are going for the company – you should be able to just tell, a bit like second sight.  You also need a natural ability to read your markets and know what products are right, when to launch them, etc.  Other times you use this is in appraising ideas (which you do on an hourly basis in a startup) and rapidly sorting them into good & bad, negotiating, making decisions (most of the time with a serious lack of information), recruiting people, choosing partners and so on.

3.       OPTIMISM & POSITIVITY – if you don’t have this alongside being the keeper of your original vision, don’t expect anyone else to believe in your company and that goes for both team members & people outside.  I don’t mean blind belief but I do mean being confident and using a bit of spin when you need to.  By that, I don’t mean lying to your team about stuff – it’s more about protecting them from many of the stresses that they don’t need to know about as they have no ability to influence the outcome & it will only distract everyone.  You need to be able to absorb all of this burden and put a smile on your face and your best foot forward at all times.

4.       RISK – I’m unsure if this is a quality or not but being a startup CEO and being risk-averse do not walk along hand in hand.  You will borrow large sums of money, you will guarantee those loans against whatever tangible assets you own, you will take major decisions without any of the information you need never mind would like, you will fail at stuff over & over again.  If you are unable to compartmentalise & shut these things away in a place where you don’t think about them – you aren’t cut out for this life.  It will make you ill & paralyse you with fear.

5.       LEADERSHIP & VISION – your team needs to look up to you & your customers & other stakeholders will hopefully admire you & what you’ve achieved.  You need to keep the team on track, communicating the shared vision to them over & over again so that no-one ever loses sight of where you’re going, you need to be able to pull off what I call “Take my hand & walk with me into the abyss” when you only have half the story yourself and you need to be able to keep it real – no-one wants to work for a CEO that never does any work themselves.

I hope this helps any of you that are thinking about going down this route yourselves.  It’s hard work & unrelenting being in or heading up a startup but it’s also deeply satisfying and a lot of fun.  Always interested in hearing your views so post your comments up below.