Tradeshow
For the last month or so, I’ve been busy at a class in Atlanta called CapVenture.
We had panels, speakers and discussions about the capitalization landscape and how to raise money in Atlanta. We also learned how to best position and pitch our companies, culminating in a 3 minute presentation in front of local investors. I’m proud to say CrowdMind came in 2nd place, thanks to help from my advisor, Lance Weatherby, and some coaching from Mike Schinkel.
Not us, but you get the idea
The result of coming in 2nd was an invitation to present at Venture Atlanta and FutureMediaGA. Both events provided a tradeshow-table-top experience to pitch CrowdMind for 3 hour sessions. It was a good learning experience – you rarely get to absorb so many perspectives and potential misunderstandings of what you’re doing. For instance, when you say the word “meeting”, as in “CrowdMind helps you gather insights to support decision making without the negatives of in-person meetings“, people immediately assume some sort of web conferencing video tool (like a webex).
The other big lesson learned was that there are 2 main types of entrepreneurs in technology – there are teams led by Marketing guys, and teams led by Engineering guys. The tradeshow seems to be the sweet spot for the marketing guys, listening to them describe how many of these things they go to (and pay tremendous amounts of money for)… all to constantly seek funding and customers.
I’ve heard that you need to have both types of people to run a successful startup, and seeing how these guys operate, I can see why.
Published in categories: Startup Life
Getting started
Hi, and thanks for visiting CrowdMind. If you’re using the system, this is our Alpha build. That essentially means we’re evaluating what people understand, like/hate, and “need” in the process of researching decisions using the tool. Enjoy, and please leave us any feedback you think of (good and bad).
The Buildup
We’ve been churning out this product for almost a year now (not to mention the time we spent talking about it). In early November, I went part time from my old job to try to build out the CrowdMind product. We knew working “after work” was not producing much, so I took a 30% toe-in-the-water “mini-plunge” while Richesh finished out a contract he was under. Well, unfortunately, having one entrepreneur try to build out the whole vision without communication beyond IM seemed to still be too much to handle. I found myself building lots of framework features to deal with our choice of programming language instead of producing features for the actual application. We knew we needed to get in the same place as soon as possible.
The Roller Coaster
As first time entrepreneurs, this has been quite a journey. We go from being really excited about what we’ve built to completely demoralized after showing it to someone new who didn’t “get it.” Things as simple as graphics can really sway someone’s entire view of what we’re doing. There seems to be this magical simplicity level that everyone can recognize. But anything “new” or “different” has some trial and error to find that sweet spot. It’s really tough to find the words and images that represent things that are recognizable to a large group of people. For instance, what’s a common word for the sentence that you would put in an outline. Topic sentence? Statement? Opinion? Fact? They all seem true sometimes. Those are the types of problems we deal with constantly.
The Pitch
Pitching as new entrepreneurs has been… interesting. People are very willing to listen to us talk, but we’ve learned that we’re not a very good investment yet. I think our risk factor is still way too high. Here are 2 new guys who haven’t done anything (that anyone outside the consulting world has heard of), and a vision of a product that is fairly different than what they’re used to. Our frequent response has been, “Wow, that’s pretty neat. So… what can I do to help you?” That sentence does not mean, “Where do I sign up?” Early stage investments for new entrepreneurs seems to be after you’ve already got a product and a decent user base. Before that, you’ve got to believe in it enough to do it all on your own.
Understanding the Vision
CrowdMind has been a difficult product to explain. That’s a pretty scary premise. With the way the web is trending (simpler and simpler), we’ve been really uncomfortable with a vision that at one point was taking 10 minutes to explain. The pitch has gotten much better for us, but we are still struggling to make great evangelists out of our believers. That’s something we’re hoping to rectify with some great examples on the site.
Published in categories: Startup Life