Updates on Startup Workshops and the Startup we’re launching

by | May 14, 2012 | Angel Investor, Business Development, CEO Succession, early stage, founder, Launch, Revenue Growth, Scalability, startup, startup CEO, Tom Nora, venture

I started a new group 2 months ago in Los Angeles – Startup Workshops – #SUWSLA to teach startup success concepts and try to launch new startups.We have over 100 members now, have had a few meetings and are in the process of launching a new startup with some of the members. Below is my update to the group today. Please feel free to join (it’s free to join) even if you’re not in LA, you can get involved in the discussion and we travel to many other places. And if you are in So Cal, please join us for one of these events. The next one is a Happy Hour Thursday night in West Hollywood.

Message to group 5/14/2012:

This group now has over 100 members, with minimal exposure – pretty cool.

I never had a goal of maximizing overall # of members, just to provide tools that can be used immediately as well as a network where members actually help each other to start and grow startups. So far, so good – we have some pretty amazing people in the group and we’ve (almost) started a startup.

HAPPY HOUR – looking forward to this, 16 rsvps so far plus a few more I know of. The goal of this is to make connections and hear about the startup we launched together in April. There’s a lot of frustration in trying to get a business going, especially when it relies on technology to succeed, so please come if you can and bring a friend who is interested in the startup thing.

STARTUP #1 “LAUNCHED” – WE’RE STILL EARLY EARLY STAGE – Last week we had our second meeting, this week we’ll have our third, with home work assignments, so it looks we may be actually doing something here. It’s an experiment so stay tuned. We have a strong team, but we’re still looking for more development skills.

NEXT GENERAL MEETINGS – I’m getting ready to announce this, leaning toward Funding The Startup as a topic. I’m trying to finalize sponsors and the venue. Not sure if we should try to launch another startup after this one, what does everybody think? Starting to look like an incubator here. Also working on an Orange County meeting for late June, details coming. Also looking at Palo Alto, Scottsdale, Boulder, Austin from inquiries there.

Hopefully I’ll see/meet you Thursday night or soon after.    @tomnora

TALK LESS! (or, the fine art of Sales)

by | May 5, 2012 | Angel Investor, Business Development, CEO Succession, early stage, founder, Launch, Revenue Growth, Scalability, startup, startup CEO, Tom Nora, venture

The current massive movement of new startups is an awesome moment in our time. The power of the individual is unprecedented.

But one of the problems with the new would be all-functions entrepreneur is lack of training in some of the key areas of entrepreneurship – SALES skills. The technology has changed, but the art of selling and closing sales has not. Humans make decisions by being convinced by other humans, even if the convincing is implemented by automation, data mining, and semantics. Respect the human sales skills.

In most of the pitches I get from early stagers these days, they start talking and demoing and don’t know when to quit. They keep “selling” me. This one one of the most fundamental mistakes of selling. It’s much better to say as little as possible, then shut up and listen as much as possible. Pretend you’re interviewing the other person and you want them to talk. You’ll be amazed.

When I hear a pitch, I want to ask questions, probe, dig deeper into specific subjects. If someone talks too much I often forget or lose interest in my original questions. I also feel like they must be a bit desperate. The other night someone was trying to show me a demo of their mobile app in a loud bar. Since we couldn’t hear the audio, they were trying to scream the features to me. Very sad demo.

So don’t talk so much, listen more, you’ll close more sales.  @tomnora

The Art of Sales by Alec Baldwin :

http://j.mp/ILFWw3

500 Startups? How about 5000!

by | Apr 18, 2012 | Angel Investor, Business Development, CEO Succession, early stage, founder, Revenue Growth, Scalability, startup, startup CEO, Tom Nora, venture

Southern California is going to reach the tipping point. A year ago I wasn’t so sure but now it’s getting crazy. Craig Page @CraigDPage hosted a party 2 weeks ago in Santa Monica that celebrated 500 startups in the SM/Venice ecosystem known as Silicon Beach these days, and he may not be far off.

Then last week there was a Venice Town Hall where you could see that locals are in awe of the influx of startups in their (my) little town by the beach. They’re calling it a Venissaince.

Orange County is growing some amazing companies like @signnow who is attracting Tier 1 VC funding @vkhosla.

Coworking spaces, Incubators, etc. Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Diego, Downtown L.A., on and on. C++ meetups where 100 people show up. Jason Nazar @jasonnazar meetings where 400 people show up! Jason Calacanis @jason Startup interview show @TWIstartups with some of the top startup people in the world, who seem to visit L.A. a lot these days. Google has 500 people here now and is building bike paths in Venice. Startup USC. Startup UCLA. Factual! SpaceX.

I love it. I guess it could happen, So Cal could surpass Silicon Valley some day. Never thought I’d say that. My home town.

Oh well….  5000 could easily happen.   @tomnora

Even In The Quietest Moments (it’s lonely at the top)

by | Mar 26, 2012 | CEO Succession, early stage, founder, Launch, Scalability, startup, startup CEO, Tom Nora, venture

“Even in the quietest moments, I wish I knew what I had to do”   – Supertramp

[This is about the loneliness of the CEO in a startup. A real startup, that has employees and funding and a going operation.]

 

It’s late on a Sunday night and you’re sitting alone preparing for the week ahead. It will include travel, employee issues, hiring, firing, product design, cash burn, a new facility, the next funding round and some client and partner visits. You have a great team for your little startup, in management and elsewhere. You have a few “startup whisperers” who advise you from afar, your parents are very supportive. Your spouse shows incredible patience and listens to your war stories every day. It’s not that you don’t love this, you do.

But in the end it’s all down to you. No matter how many people surround you, no matter who great your ecosystem is, being the CEO of a going startup is often a lonely job. By definition, in the final step of making many decisions is you alone making them.

  • Others depend on you to do this.
  • You have more information than anyone else in the company.
  • You get more blame and more accolades for results.
  • The outside world looks to you first, wants to talk to you.
  • No one is equal to you inside the company you need to maintain your leadership.

So it really is you alone.

 

How do you improve this situation? Draw from all these resources around you, especially external ones.

  • Pick one or 2 board members to get closer to, (pick the right ones).
  • Don’t ask for advise or what to do, that will confuse you and they contradict each other over time.
  • Find an old college or high school friend who’s disconnected from the business. Or a favorite teacher or professor.
  • Pay attention when outside mentors magically appear in your circle; I’ve met some of the best advisors at meetups and coffee shops.
  • Read voraciously, not just business or CEO books, but history, biographies. etc.
  • Try to mentor a potential replacement even if you’re not looking for that; you’ll learn a lot.
  • Use external consultants – management, executive, legal, recruiters to discuss ideas. Mark Zuckerberg hired an executive coach so he could learn to be a leader. The Google founders surrounded themselves with a dozen moentors and advisors.

I’ve found in my CEO positions that optimizing this thinking process can make the difference between success and failure, usually does. Please reach out to me if you want to discuss any of this with me. I’m @tomnora on twitter.