Tag Archives: #Content in Context

Let It Bleed: Expert Advice for Building Your Dream #Startup Team

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Building a perfect team while also building a business can make or break any startup venture. Thanks to Startup Victoria, a panel of startup experts came together at last week’s gathering of Lean Startup Melbourne (with generous support from BlueChilli, General Assembly, The X Gene and hosts inspire9) to share their wisdom and insights.

To kick-off, Didier Elzinga, founder and CEO of Culture Amp gave a lightning talk on the theme of why culture eats strategy for lunch (a phrase often attributed to Peter Drucker). In a startup environment, culture is a key asset (especially in the beginning when you might not have much else…) so it’s not something you can easily pivot – in fact, culture is the fulcrum around which the business creates momentum. Most of us understand that our brand is our promise, but we often overlook that our culture is how we deliver it:

“Culture is what you are willing to bleed for, so who are you willing to bleed with?”

Didier then joined fellow panelists Tim Webster, formerly of Uber and now with Kllective, and David Hobson from Elance-oDesk to discuss how to build a successful startup team:

First, the team needs to feel a sense of connectivity, regardless of their workplace logistics. That means having opportunities to get together in person, and not just on conference and video calls. It will also be easier to establish and maintain a positive working environment among remote teams if the organisational intent is clearly stated from the start, backed by relationship building and appropriate communication tools.

Second, hire people for their core skills (hacker, hustler, hipster…) but only if they are also willing to learn, grow and evolve. It’s also essential to hire people in market. Use behavioural interview techniques to help identify the right people – whatever the role. Candidates are less likely to tell you what they think you want to hear; and it’s easier to explore how candidates got from one job to another (not so much what roles they have held).

Third, although you can outsource your IT, accounting, legals, HR etc., don’t outsource your culture. Getting the right fit of people to match what your culture needs is paramount. Set out the issues that aren’t negotiable or that you won’t argue about – but keep realigning with your culture to mitigate the risk of monoculture.

Fourth, focus on the end game – but don’t overlook the need/opportunity to seek new revenue streams. This diversification can be challenging for founders, but if channelled appropriately can result in ‘creative dissent’.

Finally, brand and culture are what customers think about when they hear a company’s name. So, this may require a balance between individual goals, and team and organisational outcomes.

 

Oxygen Ventures brings some fresh air to Australia’s #Startup Community

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Last week, Larry Kestelman’s new investment vehicle, Oxygen Ventures gave 5 local startups the opportunity to bid for a share of A$5 million in funding at the inaugural Big Pitch night in Melbourne (#thebigpitchAUS).

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The Judges at the Big Pitch

 

The #Startup Contenders

Drawn from over 300 applicants, the hopeful candidates (in alphabetical order) were:

Bluesky  Shopping portal for leading fashion and lifestyle brands.

ECAL On-line event and brand marketing calendar launched by E-DIARY.

etaskr Enterprise productivity solution that allows employees to ‘bid’ for in-house projects based on their expertise.

KartSim New go-kart game for PCs, from developer Black Delta.

WeTeachMe Booking platform for short-courses and special interest classes.

After each contestant made a short presentation, they were questioned by a panel of judges, comprising CEOs, entrepreneurs, corporate advisers and business development experts from a range of well-known organizations. Most of the questions related to the startups’ revenue projections, funding requirements and growth opportunities – but some were grilled in more detail about their business models and financial performance to date.

How did the participants fare on the night?

The Joint Winners were ECAL and WeTeachMe – with the People’s Choice Award (based on audience votes) going to KartSim.

My sense is that ECAL came out on top (with A$2.5m of funding) on account of their early success in signing up a number of high-profile sporting franchises in the USA and Australia, demonstrating their growth potential – otherwise with 1 million users, but only $440,000 in revenues, you’d have to think the business model would struggle.

WeTeachMe was successful in attracting A$2m in funding because the business model is simple, it falls into the growth category of lifelong learning, and the platform had already achieved significant productivity gains for its commercial clients. Plus it has the potential to scale up and go international.

With KartSim, I admit I have no interest in computer games, but it would seem to me that with a headful of (virtual) Steam behind it, the developers might be better off tapping into crowdfunding opportunities, as the early interest suggests ready and eager buyers out there, enabling a successful commercial launch without giving up any of the equity.

Feedback from the panel on Bluesky suggested that despite offering a ‘one-stop-shop’ for consumers, the margins generated from the sales commission model would be insufficient to cover fulfilment costs (so it would only ever be a transactional purchasing platform); nor would the retailer aggregation model ever be allowed to encroach on brand or retailer loyalty schemes, thereby limiting the options to develop added-value services for customers.

As for etaskr (which I have featured before), it is still one of the few B2B startups that I have seen, which may make it appear less attractive to potential investors, since there seems to be some wariness around anything that is not consumer-focussed, or that does not play in a 2-sided market. Personally, I think this type of productivity tool is just the sort of tech startup that we need as it taps into the technological, organisational and demographic changes facing the modern workplace, and current attitudes towards job structures, collaboration and employee engagement and retention.

Footnote: What is ‘Disruptive’?


Interestingly, one of the Big Pitch sponsors was Uber (current darling of the startup community – if not of taxi drivers) which has been making presentations around town on what it takes to market a disruptive startup.

For me, there are three key attributes to a #disruptive startup:

  • Technology
  • Business model
  • Market engagement

A business like Uber ticks all three boxes – its proprietary technology comes in the form of the algorithms that track things like customer usage and vehicle capacity (not so much the apps which are similar to other peer-to-peer and #sharedeconomy solutions); the business model is rather like a network of city franchises (a common global platform with local autonomy); and the disruptive market entry strategy is designed to by-pass highly regulated industry structures – although Uber also likes to stress that it is working with taxi regulators.

Of the five startups that competed at the Big Pitch, only etaskr brings an element of disruption, because it is using a technology solution to challenge traditional notions of what a job is, and allows companies to tap into in-house resources that they might not otherwise be aware of. KartSim has some proprietary programming, but at the end of the day is just another computer game. WeTeachMe and Bluesky are trying to bring operational efficiencies to disparate markets, but they are both broker-aggregators, and don’t appear to have proprietary technology or unique business models. And ECAL is a neat content management solution to a problem that companies have been aiming to solve in other sectors – such as travel, education and health services – although it is not trying to break the existing market nexus between suppliers and customers.

But full marks to Oxygen Ventures, its partners, sponsors and the participants themselves for bringing a fresh perspective to the startup pitch night experience.

Digital transactions hold the key for Australia Post

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Last week’s news that Australia Post is shedding jobs made unwelcome reading for the 900 unfortunate employees who are affected, and the recent proposal to restructure (combined with the implicit risk to rural postal services) has generated some highly charged media commentary and prompted very passionate customer responses.

My personal view is that Australia Post will have to maintain a commitment to letter delivery as part of its protected monopoly obligations. But a “user pays” model that results in higher charges for a “premium” postal service may fail to offset losses from standard snail mail – because businesses will make greater use of existing document exchange and courier services, and retail customers will prefer to receive their utility bills and bank statements by e-mail or other digital solutions such as mobile apps.

Australia Post faces a dual challenge, quite apart from the decline in its letter business (which is rightly seen as a community service, albeit one that should be able to at least cover its costs). First, although it has diversified with a range of products and services, there is very little cohesion across its individual lines of business, and nearly all of them face strong competition, and/or rely on external service providers. Also, according to one software developer I spoke to several months ago, the sheer number of available services meant that some customer service staff did not have sufficient product knowledge and needed an in-house app to train them on how to up- and cross-sell these products.

Second, although it is trying to get into digital solutions, it seems late to the party (e.g., the MyPost Digital Mailbox, which has taken about 12 months from initial announcement to market launch). A few years ago, when I was working on a standard business identifier solution for the financial services industry, Australia Post was well placed to leverage its in-house knowledge of business customers (location, size, industry, spending patterns, logistics, etc.) and combine it with a unique entity ID to enhance and upgrade its business CRM database. However, it was unable to incorporate third-party data sources that would have resulted in even greater analytics on business customer behaviour, because the legacy data systems were unable to cooperate (and the teams that ran them unwilling to collaborate…).

Australia Post’s anticipated expansion into financial services hasn’t materialised (the current CEO is a former banker). If Australia Post became an Authorised Depository Institute, it could offer on-line banking services in its own right, giving it an alternative funding source (in addition to, or instead of, issuing corporate bonds that are implicitly guaranteed by the government). Or, in conjunction with relevant partners Australia Post could expand its Load&Go pre-paid VISA card to become a universal stored value card (such as Hong Kong’s Octopus system).

Instead, Australia Post is relying on the current boom in online shopping to drive revenue growth from its parcels and logistics operations. To me, this is a short-sighted strategy.

If digital is the key to future growth (especially for a data-rich business that operates in logistics, communications and payment transaction services), Australia Post should be looking to  provide and expand business and consumer solutions in the following areas:

  • Digital document verification, validation and transmission (to help offset the decline in snail mail)
  • Location-based payment solutions (to leverage its geographic and transactional knowledge of business customers, especially retailers)
  • Update the current post code system to provide more granular customer data to businesses and to streamline delivery and location services (e.g., like the UK’s system of house number and postcode – imagine how that would make life easier for taxi drivers!)
  • Develop off-the-shelf productivity tools for SMEs – such as on-line data forms, CRM, CMS, e-commerce (become the IKEA of small business data apps – rather like flat-pack, self-assembly furniture, many businesses might welcome such a service)

Finally, if Australia Post thinks that parcel services will carry them through, consider this: each time I want to send a parcel overseas, the counter staff have to undertake the following steps:

  • weigh the item
  • calculate the postage (using a cumbersome sequence of drop down menus on their terminal screen)
  • capture some ID information (such as my driver’s license)
  • attach the customs declaration form (which I have manually completed) to the parcel
  • print the postage label and attach it to the parcel
  • attach an “ID sighted” label to the parcel
  • attach an “Air Mail” sticker to the parcel

More steps are involved if I want use any sort of tracking, insurance or express delivery service. What if I could complete an address and customs form label, and print it before I leave home (or at a terminal at the post office)? And what if this label had scannable items, such as the destination address, for easier processing at the counter?

 

 

 

Health Warning: Entrepreneurship is not all Plain Sailing

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Last month’s gathering of Lean Startup Melbourne was devoted to the emotional and psychological downsides to being an entrepreneur. Whether building a startup or managing a successful corporate career, we are accustomed to reading about business success stories; but while we do learn something about corporate failures, we don’t hear much about the personal cost when things don’t go as planned.

But first, given the seriousness of this topic, if anyone reading this feels in need of help then there are some excellent information and support resources available listed here. There are also some useful reference articles such as this.

The evening’s panel Q&A discussion was preceded by a very moving account from Tom Howard, co-founder of Adioso on his own challenges in building a startup, about which he has written here. Tom’s frank and honest story about dealing with personal struggles while trying to manage investor expectations was neatly summed up in this observation: “Writing essays on our struggle was some of the best marketing.”

The panel members were drawn from a mix of startup, entrepreneurial and corporate backgrounds, and their stories revealed episodes of depression, near-bankruptcy and burn-out – tales possibly all too familiar to some experienced startup veterans in the audience, or merely spectres of what the future may hold for other budding entrepreneurs eager to learn from their peers. One of the panel, Andre Obradovic is now a public speaker on mental health issues, and has channeled his own experiences into advocacy and raising awareness.

If there was one recurring theme that ran through the discussion, it was the surprise at what happened to them – seemingly successful individuals who suddenly encountered severe setbacks (personal, financial, emotional, psychological), that came close to derailing their ability to function in their roles (as people, partners, parents or employers). The positive conclusion was that in recognising what was happening, and doing something about it, these individuals have managed to rebuild their lives and their careers, and are probably all the stronger and more resilient as a result.

Meanwhile, a number of hopeful startups were brave enough on the night to showcase their projects in the evening’s Startup Alley: Influx (outsourced customer support for online businesses), Cloakr (mobile device solution for coat check services), Jutsu (personal goal-setting app), Followus (social media site management for small business) and Brakeboard (braking systems for skateboards).

Finally, the evening’s event was sponsored by a clutch of generous supporters: Mondelēz International, InnovAction, Zendesk, Bluechilli, The X Gene and hosts Inspire9.