entrepreneurship

Advice From Rock Start Investors

Wsj tech cafe for blogLast night, my son, Matt, and I attended the Wall Street Journal Tech Café event at Think Coffee in New York and learned about how tech investors think from three of the greatest.  Here are a few nuggets on how to approach and pitch to investors…

Steve Case , uber entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist, advised that you should do a little research before you approach an investor and get to know his sweet spots.  Every investor has his own criteria, so for example, Steve invests in later stage start ups and generally in big ideas or platforms, rarely in products or features.    His main criteria for investing in a company:  people, passion and persistence.

Jay Samit , a top gun in LA, says, know your stuff! Too many entrepreneurs come to the pitch unprepared and unable to handle Jay (the typical investor in my experience), who gets impatient after about the second slide and shifts from presentation mode to Q&A. He also emphasized people—surround yourself with great people (a typical theme on this blog).  He hit home for me by stating that those closest to you should invest, endorse and support you on your startup; if they don’t, there is something wrong with the picture.

Brian Cohen, the mayor of Angels, says “make the Angel fall in love with you”.  Angels aren’t in it for the big win as much as to save the world, and their investment is much more emotional. Also, get them to say NO. Nobody likes to say no, so force the question and get a no (or yes) answer.  Finally, be coachable.  All startup investors offer much more than money; you need to be able to take their criticism and coaching.

Thank you, Brian, Jay and Steve and thanks to the Wall Street Journal—always my favorite news venue—for hosting this insightful event.  It came at the perfect time for me, as I have just lined up my initial friends and family capital and am looking for angels to help me launch Café Learn (more on that later….)

Charting A Path Through The Desert

DesertA few months ago, I transitioned away from running my first company, O’Donnell Learn.  That first Monday morning, I went into the office, sat down and thought, “now what?”

Starting a business is like charting a path through the desert.  There is nobody but you to figure out how to spend your time.  And, you have to be very disciplined about your time.   You have to plug along and put all those pieces in place so that you have a business (with customers) when you cross that desert.

Here are the primary ways that I spend my time these days:

  • Networking—meeting with      people who can help me get this off the ground, and helping others get      their initiatives off the ground.
  • Researching the market to      understand the problems and pain points, the need, and how my company can      uniquely fill that need. This involves hours of reading, and also speaking      to customers, experts and potential partners.
  • Planning the offering or      product.  This is a staged activity,      called market development.  Work with      customers every step of the way to shape your offering.  Right now, we are creating a two-minute video      that demonstrates our offering, which we will take to customers for      feedback in prep for creating our detailed product requirements.
  • Putting together my      advisory board and founding team—finding the perfect people for it and then      recruiting them to join me.
  • Articulating the vision      and message—then trying it out on others and then rearticulating it.  This takes a long time for every      business and new offering.  Getting      it right is essential!
  • Developing the business      plan and pitch for investors.

Wow.  That is a lot to get done!  And, I need to be very disciplined so that I am not scattered all over the place.  Here is a video I found that gives three great tips for time management.

I Have A Dream

What an appropriate day, on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, 50 years after his famous speech, to begin this blog. I too have a dream…that all of the children in this country, no matter the color of their skin or the neighborhood they live in, have the opportunity to shape, as Dr. King would say, “the content of their characters” by completing college.

So begins my journey to create the company that will help schools transform traditional courses into engaged, individualized and collaborative 21st Century learning.

I am Carrie O’Donnell, an ed tech entrepreneur with a unique perspective, having spent 20 years running a business that helps education companies design, develop and launch new brands and products. In those years, I learned a lot about what to do, and what not to do, lessons that I am planning to explore as we launch this new venture.