Planet MicroISV

EP27: Does Amy Hoy get scared? (part 2)

Justin — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:56 +0000

In this episode of Product People: does Amy Hoy still get scared before a launch? How do you choose an audience? And she answers some listener questions. Highlights “So much of what we’re doing (with our online courses) is creating... Continue reading →

The Pricing Trilogy

sachag — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:22:47 +0000

So apparently, I’m wrong. At least, that’s what Nathan Barry is saying in his latest post about eBook pricing: Sacha... Continue reading →

Can You Buy Loyalty? The Downside of Discounts

Sean Work — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:31:57 +0000

1964 might seem like ancient history by now, but The Beatles were bang on the money when they sang ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. Okay, so it might be a bit of a tall order to make people actually fall in love with your products and services (now that’s what I call marketing!) but what about [...] Continue reading →

Episode 133 | The Founder Test:11 Founder Attributes that Will Determine the Success of Your Product

questions@startupsfortherestofus.com (Rob Walling and Mike Taber) — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:30:29 +0000

Mike and Rob discuss a concept they call the founder test. They have outline 11 attributes that will determine the success of your product. They also give updates for Drip and AuditShark. Continue reading →

Is ranking the SEO metric of yesteryear?

Dave Collins — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:05:11 +0000

Whether you’re handling your own SEO, working with a reliable SEO company, or just hoping it’ll somehow happen on its own, you probably like to measure your SEO performance. Which is why so many of us monitor rankings for our keywords. The higher the better – more so when we’re above our competition, right? Rankings, [...] Continue reading →

6 Simple Elements That You Can Optimize for More Home Page Sign Ups

Sean Work — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:10:37 +0000

Sure, generating more traffic for your website is always a good thing. But what if you could increase conversions on your site with just a few small tweaks? It could cost a lot less and take less time. Below are six things we did that increased our sign-up rate by more than 75%. But first, [...] Continue reading →

The Why and How Of Updating Your Angel Investors

Dharmesh Shah — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:02:00 +0000

There’s a massive amount available on the interwebs on how to improve the odds for success in new ventures. But almost nothing concrete is available on the care and feeding of your investors. You can do all of the Lean Startup experimentation you want, but we’re here to tell you that one of the the easiest and most underrated skills that a startup CEO needs is knowing how to keep your investors updated, excited and engaged.

The reason is: The CEO is the investor's user interface into the business. It's how investors see what's going on, and in some minimal ways, interact with the business.

We polled several early stage investors (including ourselves) that have 30+ investments each under their belts, and asked them their advice for entrepreneurs on how best to communicate with them and update them on the business. Here are the results.

1) Write your investors consistently. probably every 1-2 months (if you're early stage), and every 2-3 months if you're a bit further along. If you have a regular advisory board or board of directors meetings, that's a good time to send out an update. This is preferable to phone calls, both for you and for them. If you’re smart, you’ll send this letter out, in more or less similar form, not only to your investors but also to mentors, advisors and staff. And if you do ever follow up with calls, they’ll be up to speed and more productive.

2) Keep it short. 2 pages, max. Your investors want to know what’s going on, but they don’t need to hear every detail.

3) Use a template. We like the TechStars one. Katie Rae and Reed Sturtevant of TechStars Boston teach their companies to communicate with mentors in a way such that each letter builds on the previous one. Typically, the letter gives both highlights and low-lights since the previous communication, sets some short term goals, and then reviews the progress—or lack thereof—on the goals set earlier. Just knowing that you will be producing a report card helps focus you on the important stuff and ensures that things don’t get forgotten. Check out the investor update template for a sample.

4) Remind them what you're doing (now). I know this is going to sound strange, but often your investors are not doing as good a job as they could keeping up with all your activities, news, tweets and pivots. Always include a one sentence description of what you're doing (now) just as a friendly reminder. A side benefit to this is that it forces you to write (and read) your one sentence description. This is one of the hardest tasks in startup-land.

5) Tell them the one or two strategic problems you are wrestling with. Got a few hard decisions? You’d be surprised how quickly an investor will respond. And odds are pretty good that they’ve seen this movie before and can help you come to a better decision. If it’s personnel-related, though, you may wish to be more circumspect.

6) Keep it honest, but don’t tell your secrets. Would you be comfortable if this email ended up in public, or in the hands of your competitors? If not, consider editing it down.

7) Always have 1-3 direct asks. Looking for some specific introductions? Ask. Need to source some key personnel? Ask. Want them to share some important news on their social media networks? Don’t be proud, don’t be shy, just ask. 90% of the time, the investor will probably not be able to help, but in the 10% of the time they can help, it's often pure gold.

8) Cast a wide net, but bcc. The more people you can keep up on your company, the more likely it is someone will be able to help you out, and the more you can leverage your network. But respect your investors’ privacy, and make sure you are not revealing any confidences in the letter. (I still screw this up—when in doubt, leave it out.) One idea would be to setup a simple mailing list so you're not trying to type in email addresses manually every time.

9) ARCHIVE all correspondence in a shared folder. Your investors will be grateful that they don’t have to be organized. This tip is so simple, yet almost no one does this. Your investors have more on their plate than just you. Make it easy on them by putting everything they need to see into one folder which they can reference. Send each letter by email (don’t make them have to hit links or print out attachments,) but include a link to the shared folder with the full archive. Inside, have all of your historic correspondence, and perhaps even your latest pitch deck, any financials you want them to see, etc. You might consider having two separate folders—one complete one, for the inner circle, and one that’s been redacted down for the broader crowd.

Startups fail for lots of reasons— but one of the most common one is that they run out of money. Informed investors are generally happier investors—and at a minimum more capable of helping. And, if you're out raising another round sometime, chances are, your angel investors are the one's that can help make intros. It's easier for them to do that if they hear from you more often than once every 12-18 months when you need some paperwork signed.

Remember, this exercise is as much for you as it is for them.

This entire process should take you less than an hour or two a month and it's worth it. Besides, if you do it right, you'll actually find that it helps you to write these updates -- and it's not a complete waste of time.

This article was a collaboration between Ty Danco and Dharmesh Shah. Ty is CEO/co-founder of BuysideFX and an angel investor/mentor (you should be reading his blog). Dharmesh is founder/CTO of HubSpot, runs OnStartups.com and is an angel investor in over 40 companies (you can follow him on twitter @dharmesh).

Looking for other startup fanatics? Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group. 130,000+ members and growing daily.

Oh, and by the way, you should follow me on twitter: @dharmesh.

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Entrepreneurial Advice from SaaS Pioneer and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Zach Bulygo — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:28:26 +0000

Marc Benioff is a classic entrepreneur success story. He didn’t like the way something worked and wanted something better. So, he took the initiative and created Salesforce in a rented apartment at the age of 34, after working at Oracle and Apple. Today, Salesforce is worth about $25 billion with annual revenue in excess of [...] Continue reading →

AdWords search ecosystem

Aaron Weiner — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:32:59 +0000

AdWords acts like an ecosystem of interconnecting and interacting parts. Some advertisers forget the importance of this ecosystem and how each part interacts with one another, which is why they don’t see their AdWords account perform well or they pay more for each click they happen to receive. Advertisers that do understand how they interact [...] Continue reading →

FA147 – The Fastest Way To Obtain Location Independence With Sean Ogle

Tim Conley, Online Entrepreneur & Business Consultant — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:14:16 +0000

How To Get Freedom Of Time, Income & Mobility

On this episode of The Foolish Adventure Show, I’ve got internationally known, Sean Ogle, on to talk about the fastest way to become location independent. Inside this episode, you’ll learn about:

Why location independence is the ability to choose where you are,
How to overcome uncertainty by turning it into an asset,
Leveraging skills to make money from anywhere in the world,
How to spend your time working on the right things,
Using mistakes now when the risks are small to speed success,
and so much more packed into this episode.

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