Archive for April, 2007
Welcome to the newest area of the Expo blog! This section is going to be much more about Expo’s business and the space that we’re operating in. The point, simply put, is that media and commerce are colliding in unforeseen – and faster – ways than I think anyone would have thought possible. Editorial standards are shifting or crumbling but no one cares because the assumption is that not only are consumers smart enough to determine the bias of the speaker, but the consumer is now controlling and even creating the media itself. At the same time, commerce oriented entities (manufacturers, retailers and others) are flooding into media initiatives with both feet as a way to create, “new brand experiences.” It’s a fascinating, wide open time and we’re going to try to chronicle it right here.
April 27th, 2007
As you may have noticed, www.expotv.com is currently down right now because we are in the midst of launching a brand new site full of additional community features and functionality. We hope you like the new site and look forward to getting your feedback!
April 25th, 2007
David Becker Appointed as Chief Marketing Officer for Consumer Generated Video Product Review Leader
NEW YORK – April 25, 2007 – ExpoTV (www.ExpoTV.com), the leading provider of consumer-generated video product reviews, announced today that David Becker has been appointed chief marketing officer. In this role, Becker will oversee marketing, product management, strategy development and execution. Becker will report directly to Daphne Kwon, chief executive officer of ExpoTV. Click here to read more.
April 25th, 2007
There is a new blog called Found+Read that is a great resource for entrepreneurs. I’m going to try to make our sub-blog “Life of A Start-up” synergistic with theirs since they are building off an existing community and have a dedicated team working on on it. It will also allow me to focus more on writing about Expo’s business vs. some of the general blogs of late. Hope you like it
April 23rd, 2007
This is largely stolen from a buddy of mine who led me out of the entrepreneurial gate by several years. It’s the touch stone I’ve used at each step and it was very clarifying and calming. You owe your investors:
1. 100% of your effort. Your absolute everything to make the business work within the boundaries of legality and business ethics.
2. Honesty about the situation and your prospects (this is why you should absolutely put an angel investor representative on your Board of Directors).
From these two cardinal rules, there are a couple of things that I think follow pretty directly, namely that you should hear them out on pretty much any topic and, finally, even more than worrying about making them a billion dollars in the first year (which turns out to be surprisingly hard), you should worry first about protecting their capital by trying to make sure that there is more capital to keep fighting and by building something – a piece of code, a contract – that someone else would want even if they don’t want your company.
April 17th, 2007
I’d be remiss if I didn’t close out this section on angels and initial board members by talking about importance of finding “the guy”. I’m sure I’ll talk more about this later, but when I was a VC, the CEOs I worked with talked about what a lonely job it was because ultimately you’re responsible for payroll, for hiring and firing and for generating revenues. Remember, these were VC-backed companies, so you can only imagine how hard it is for an angel-backed company.
In our case, we lucked into a solution which was that we had a “guy” who was with us every step of the way. We didn’t know him before the initial round of funding, but he came in through one of the people networks that formed and he became the Board member representing the angels (always give your angels a board representative…see also “What You Owe Your Angel Investors”). He was a great board member. But much more than that, he owned our situation in his bones. Death was not an option and that internal fortitude on his part was critical in getting us over many rough spots early in the business. How do you find ‘the guy’? Great question. But I think you’ll know him when you seen him. If you’re not sure, ask him to read this post and see what he says. Maybe he’ll identify himself as the “anti-guy” (see below) and you can decide it’s better if he’s just a passive investor.
I think some people end up with the “anti-guy” (sees himself as adding value by being a tough on management & trying to make very rational decisions each step along), and that’s pretty much a terminal disease.
April 15th, 2007
I’m sure there will be disagreement on this, but I think the function of an early stage Board member is uni-dimensional: to help raise more capital, including writing checks themselves. Really smart people, people with great industry experience, people with ‘name recognition’ – frankly, they are all a dime a dozen. When I read about a potential partner getting a new Board member with tremendous name recognition, I raise my eyebrows…and go to the next story. Don’t be seduced into the idea that a Board member can open doors just by their presence. And if you let your Board members think that you value you them merely for their Board participation, then they will be excellent Board members and nothing else. In an early stage company, the only thing that matters is keeping the capital spigot open and that has to be an ‘all-hands’ activity.
April 10th, 2007
The business side of the Expo blog is going to pick up some steam over the coming months. We’ll write about the product review space and other interesting notes, but one thread of the blog is definitely going to be general guidance for people starting online companies. Prior to Expo, I was a venture capitalist and prior to our raising venture capital late in 2006, we spent a few years as an angel-backed company…a hard existence to be sure, both for us and for our angels…to whom we owe everything. Given those two set of circumstances, I get a lot of questions from fellow entrepreneurs. It felt like it was time to start writing it all down. Here’s the first post with this theme…logically, all about getting starting with angels:
Perhaps the most common question I get and the core answer is actually very straight-forward: you already know your “anchor” angel investor. It’s someone in your network who possesses three critical elements: a) a belief in you, b) financial wherewithal, c) the constitution to take a flyer with some of their capital. While I am sure that there are plenty of stories of companies that raised money exclusively from people that they didn’t know beforehand, they would still be the exception to the rule and I have to think that that process is vastly harder (with a higher failure rate) than the other path.
There are two obvious comebacks to this idea and I’ll address them (bluntly) in turn:
1. “I’m not comfortable asking people in my network to give me money. I’m worried it might strain these valuable relationships”: If you aren’t willing to look friends and family (there’s a reason this phrase is so common) and ask for money, you need to turn around and go straight back to your cushy corporate job. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartache.
2. “I don’t know anyone who could invest & no one I know knows anyone.” I’ve got pretty much the same response as above. If you don’t think you have the contacts to raise some capital, you either lack the creative thinking (you don’t know ANYONE?) required to be an entrepreneur or you almost certainly also lack the contacts required to get vendors, customers and employees that will be essential to building a business. The only caveat to this last comment is that if you are some kind of freakishly talented programmer who can “build it and they will come”, then scale back your thinking and build the first version of your solution without capital.
Once you have your “anchor” investor (who, by the way, may not end up being the largest investor), now you need to leverage the heck out of that person’s network. They are absolutely your best reference and everyone with money knows other people with money. Ideally, you can get two or three independent “branches” of interested angels going, but even these all might come back to the same “trunk” (your anchor). Once the dynamic of angels telling other angels about your deal is working, your round is basically done as long as you vigorously follow-up and keep the momentum going.
April 6th, 2007
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