Doing Things Differently

After five and a half years I have to say that so much has changed. I have certainly grown up in some ways and learnt even more but now it is time for me to spread my wings and do so thanking the Ariadne team and all our clients, friends and investors.

My appreciation of the struggle that entrepreneurs face daily is very real as I now consider that path myself. It’s not only about raising capital. It’s about finding the team you can rely on, the proposition to engage investors, commercial partners and customers, the passion to keep the conviction alive and the openness, the wisdom to know when to adapt or stick your path and the humility to see luck, fortune and good things when they happen.

When I joined Ariadne I was certainly not aware of the intricacies of the venture world. I can’t claim to be an expert now, rather far from. In some ways I wish I knew only what I knew then because it made me question why some things were done the way they were and had the bliss of naivety. In many other ways I appreciate how people have turned to me for guidance. Thank you for that opportunity.

Five and a half years ago there was no iPhone, iPad or iCloud and no Google Plus (I still don’t understand Google Plus!). Facebook was the upstart while MySpace (remember them?) was going gangbusters. Pintrest and Instagram didn’t exist and Zynga was probably only a swear word in some far away land. In the time since then we have seen markets and behemoths (Lehmans, Woolworths, Border) fall, corporates have had to face burning platforms (Nokia, Yahoo!, RIM?) and we have seen the absolute rise of social media and its impact on all things digital and physical (FourSquare, Instagram, Twitter). In the five years I have worked with some of the smartest people I have ever met and know that many of them will go on to build amazing businesses and do phenomenal things.

I’d like to stay in touch with the people I have met in this journey while at Ariadne, do drop me a line if you wish to twitter the old fashioned way or Tweet me in the new (@Dordje). My contact details are on LinkedIn.

Every year Entrepreneur Country puts on two fantastic forum events. While I am an insider (i.e. part of the Ariadne team of which Entrepreneur Country is a part) I really think these events are totally stand out – and this is why. Yes this is slightly sales oriented – full disclosure…

1. They are charged – The Buzz is huge
2. They showcase success stories by amazing people
3. Deals get done

So after 5 years of these events, with the most recent attracting 400 people, keynotes from BBC Dragons and successful entrepreneurs – what makes Entrepreneur Country different? Read more…

A common and increasingly asked question I find myself getting from start-up entrepreneurs is “Do I need a CTO or technologist as a co-founder, can I not just outsource the pure technical development and own the IP?” I have 3 key reasons, based on experience supporting start-ups through funding and commercial success, as to why I think the answer to be “Yes, absolutely”.

I can think of at least a dozen such conversations just from the last quarter of 2011. I can also point to an equal number of examples where early stage companies had made the decision to outsource only then later had to reverse the decision and to in-house their technology.

So in my experience, yes… you do need a technologist as a key part of your founding team – assuming of course you are in the digital/online/technology world. There are, of course, many advantages in having an outsourced development team (either on or off-shore) but the actual ownership and delivery of the product needs to be owned in-house. I am not alone… I had a chuckle when I read Charlie Crystle’s blog (a Founder/CEO/Hacker) where he posted: “Two posts ago I lamented the news that a local startup might outsource their core dev.” So to the why… Read more…

Getting a proposition wrong can be expensive and damage a product brand and yet so regularly I see great companies with great ideas and products miss the mark in their proposition.

One of the most difficult things for start-ups is building, testing, sharpening and reinforcing their proposition. All too often the entrepreneurs get the concept, design the software and launch it without spending the time on the “Marketing”. This is most often because people believe marketing is for the reserves of the big corporates or the focus of the washy people who could not do the business or science degree at university. This could not be further from the truth however. Marketing, positioning and proposition is fundamental to being able to get a going concern to really go! Why is this?

Developing the proposition is about defining the success criteria, understanding what you are selling and shaping the pitch to the right audience. It is about taking a step back and thinking about what it is you would want someone to tell you about your own product. Come to think of it, how many brands, services or products do you think you could probably define better than their own adverts do? Probably quite a few. This is the focus of proposition shaping.

There are typically 5 things that start-ups get wrong when they start to go to market (for investors and/or commercial development) which mean that people scratch their heads before they reach for their wallet, we need to rectify those 5 problems and sharpen the proposition and align it to our buyers.

The 5 typical problems I keep seeing in misaligned propositions are:

1) Thinking big and forgetting the baby steps that get you there

• the real market opportunity is won one sale at a time are you constantly refining your sale or slapping it out there?
• go-to-market is about aligning your achievable market to your vision, are you building credibility?

2) Spread too broad and lack focus

• fix-all solutions are hard to buy or too good to be true, is your proposition tight?
• tight propositions mean new services can develop in parallel, are you giving too much away in solving too much?

3) Forget that your audience don’t know your product

• even high tech can be simplified beyond technology into enablement, can your mother understand the proposition?
• don’t assume your market knows the problem like you do, are you selling from a common starting point?

4) Defining the proposition as a nice to have not a solution

• too much emphasis is put on the extra benefits, are you selling lots of benefits or a solution to a specific problem?
• people feel the need to over validate with external information, are you forgetting the original “spark” that led to the solution and how you solve the problem?

5) Don’t align the message to the solution

• proposition pitches try to be catch all and complex people buy simple, are you selling a solution or a service?
• people are looking to solve a problem, does your product proposition enable champions and evangelists?

When one understands these 5 concepts you can work to counter them in a tight and refined proposition. This means you can task your sales team, enable your marketeers and impress your investors. A tight proposition is one that is about what you can do for your customers, how you can help them solve a problem they have and how they can rave about your amazingness.

I am running workshops with entrepreneurs to test their propositions and help sharpen them with a focused strategy. Over a 3 hour session we:

1) benchmark for common mistakes
2) rebuild the proposition to be solution-centric
3) define the simplified messaging for enablement and championing

Do you want to run through your proposition or have a benchmarking session? Do get in touch.