Coffee Notes (July 13, 2010)

Attendees

  • Gregarious N (Lil’Grams)
  • Steve K (MHS Capital)
  • Will (oLink)
  • Maurice W (Pay 4 Tweet)
  • Mike (Android framework)
  • Nick O. (health startup / lean consulting)
  • Romy
  • Tim R (Cloudspace)
  • Justin (seeking co-founders)
  • Tom (Block Wyld)
  • Nima (Yum Dom)
  • Darius D (customer service / operations)
  • Burt (Storify)

Building Your Deck

  1. Create a draft
  2. Socialize it with your close network who’s been through it before
  3. Iterate until you feel the story is right
  4. Pitch it!
  5. See 2

Know Your Audience

  • Often you have to adjust your case based on the audience and their awareness of your vertical (Romy)
  • Assume people don’t know that much about hour space - sell them
  • Recognize the patterns to be successful (Darius)
  • Research who you’re pitching to and what they’ve done previously (Mike)

How important is the personal story? (Maurice)

  • It is a great lead in for the story (Greg)
  • Make sure that if you say it, you’re still saying sincere and not sounding canned (Romy)
  • Having the story as the start and as a source of your passion then justified with Lean Metrics is very powerful (Nick)
  • Be careful not to ramble in the process - stories may enable that action (Darius)
  • It’s a great sales technique and makes the connection for many people (Maurice)

When do you take money?

  • Start talking as early as possible
  • Wait as long as you possibly can
  • Money doesn’t necessarily do great things for the product

What is a prototype vs. a MVP?

  • Prototype just demonstrates functionality (Maurice)
  • MVP is not a prototype (Nima)
  • Need to have feedback from customers and reactions to that feedback
  • Prototype serves as validation, of course, is your ability to execute and produce (Steve K)
  • When prototype has given enough evidence of the key metrics you’d like an investor to judge your business by (Steve K)
  • For consumer products, the cost is low and time to market is short - most will say bootstrap, get some early indicators (Steve K)
  • There’s still huge risk left over (Steve K)
  • Seems a good test of prototype could be whether or not scale can happen in a cost-effective and timely manner (Greg)

Charging Early vs. Freemium (Will)

  • Depends on if you say the value of your business is based on users, engaged users, and repeat users (Steve K)
  • User growth and acquisition is a rational way to garner investor interest if your business is predicated on that (Steve K)
  • Ideally there are comparable businesses that help investors connect the dots

What about for B2B?

  • Try to get some “consumerish” kinds of activity if possible (Steve K)
  • If you need large clients, try to get some pilots going with your targets (Steve K)
  • Be able to provide the references that validate your moving towards a solution that’s desired (Steve K)
  • Two constituencies you have to please: 1) is the economic buyer willing to pay 2) are the users of the product accepting and engaged (Steve K)
  • You’re 70% of the way there if you have users utilizing your service/product in a way that is directly related to what you believe impacts their business (Steve K)