Billions With Zero Knowledge - Austin Hill, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor

I am going to be speaking at Startup Canada next week. The conference runs from Thursday to Saturday January 25th - 27th.

This event is being produced by my friends at Garage Canada and the Quebec City Pole Economic Development Agency.

Venture Capitalist, author and evangelism guru Guy Kawasaki is leading a great line up of speakers with an agenda that is based on his great book The Art of the Start. He has done other Art of the Start conferences, but I believe this is the first in Canada.

I recommend entrepreneurs I advise to read a copy of Art of the Start. It is one of the best how-to guides on the basics of starting a company or organization that I’ve found. Simple, clear and jam packed of useful tips on starting something.

If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, or a practicing entrepreneur looking to network this is a great event to attend. I’ll be there with a few entrepreneurs who I’m supporting in a new startup.

My friend Tom Sweeney (Garage Canada) who is also speaking asked me to join Patrick Lor, Isabelle Bettez and Ravi Sood on a panel with Guy Kawasaki discussing the state of the Canadian startup scene.

I hope to see you there.

This shouldn’t be confused with the StartupCamp Canada that I’m helping to organize, which will be later this year.

On Thu 18 Jan 2007. [6] Comments

Every startup team has a rhythm, a team swing. 

When a team starts to fall into it’s swing every interaction seems to be surging the company forward in almost an effortless and fun way.

In his book Mind Over Water, rower Craig Lambert describes swing in this way,

Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing…Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself.  The swing carries us; we do not force it.  We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work.  We are not so much swinging as being swung.  The boat swings you.  The shell wants to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature.  Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster.  Trying too hard sabotages boat speed.  Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself.  Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing.  Aristocrats do not strive, they have already arrived.  Swing is a state of arrival.

No two teams can have the same swing. 

You can be in the same market, with the same product and your team swing will the primary factor in deciding who wins.

So your team could swing like this,

Or the same team could swing like this,

Either way - you want to staff your startup with people who can swing like you do.

(Note to self: Get copies of Jean-Luc Goddard films. This is brilliant footage.)

On Wed 10 Jan 2007. [6] Comments

I was reading Brad Garlinghouse’s Peanut Butter Manifesto about Yahoo’s strategy having been spread too thin across too many opportunities. Quoting the memo,

I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.

I also have a tendency to get myself into this problem. I try to be very generous with my time by spreading it among the many passions I have in my life. I try to maintain balance by looking for leverage in most of my activities. I’m trying to do things that compliment each other so that my peanut buttter is focused, and remains thick and crunchy (I actually like peanut butter). Once again from the memo,

My belief is that the smoothly spread peanut butter needs to turn into a deliberately sculpted strategy — that is narrowly focused.

Of course, this idea doesn’t just apply to companies. Everyone makes decisions on how to spend their time that involves choosing what is important and what is not. Every time I say yes to something, I am in fact also saying no to something else that may be more important. As such, I find having priorities or goals that I can build a strategy for how to focus my time is important.

I’m trying to allocate my time in the following manner. This isn’t scientific and doesn’t include hours spent with my family & friends outside of what I consider my professional work (which depending on how hard I’m working the amount of hours varies, but I try hard not to neglect it) . This is a fair approximation of how I’m scheduling my time.

• Project Ojibwe is my main focus. Working at a startup requires a lot of effort and I am working a lot of hours on this project. With an angel financing closing this week, working with the team on the product development, hiring and getting the launch prepared - this is more than a full time job. I love it though and wouldn’t have it any other way. I actually have problems shutting down my brain or winding down, so I find working on other projects helps me balance.

• Community & Volunteer Projects - Recently I’ve made it a concious effort to get more involved by volunteering on community projects. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had the experiences and succes I’ve had. I think it’s important to give back.
• This includes my involvements in Barcamps and StartupCamp (participating in fostering the technology & entrepreneur community in Canada). Often times this is just showing up, other times it involves helping organize or arrange fundraising. If I can stay in the background as much as possible, simply helping others do great work here that is my preference.
• I’m on the organizing committe for and speaking at the Montreal Youth Employement Services Entrepreneur conference this year (Mitch Joel who is great about volunteering his time who’s been involved there for years got me involved).
• My friend Hugh McGuire asked me to join a great team on the advisory board for a project at the Atwater Digital Libary Center helping at risk teens learn critical technology skills (More on that project to come)
• I’m on the advisory board for my friend Ron Dembo’s company Zero Footprint (as one of Canada’s technology success stories, Ron has focused on saving the environment with his new project - he is a great example of a social entrepreneur).
• I’m also on the advisory board of Coburn Ventures and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. I haven’t been doing much for EPIC in the past couple of years - but I still support their mission and will be looking for some leverage points to help them in the future.

• Personal Development - This is a broad category that includes personal goals related to my health and personal skill development. For instance, lately I’ve been filling my video iPod with samples of great public speakers (JFK, Ghandi, Steve Jobs, Clinton) to study and practice great presentation & public speaking techniques. Doing this while I work out is a great way to leverage the time for two goals (Health & Personal Development) Other times this includes learning a new tool (such as Illustrator which provided me with the fancy pie chart of my time above). This is the first time I’ve actively scheduled my personal development time into my professional calendar. I find it much easier to give myself this time when I have specific goals & skills that I’ve scheduled myself to learn.

• Mentoring & Advising Startups - I enjoy working with startups. I learn a lot from mentoring and helping out teams occasionally getting involved where I feel that my contribution is unique and significant enough to make it worth both my time and the startups. This is the hardest one for me, as I have to say no to pretty much all startup offers that come my way since I have a limited number of slots available to work with teams. I always try to find the time to meet with a team at least once, to hear what they are about and how I can help them. Most often, I give them my advice on the challenges they face, some feedback on how to present the idea to investors, and if I feel it’s worthwhile I refer them to VCs or angel investors who would be a good fit for them. There are three companies that I’m more formally involved with, either sitting on a board (just one) or actively helping the management team in strategy or fundraising (the other two). One of these companies is a new startup that I’m helping get organized, that grew out of Barcamp Montreal and we’ll be launching in 2007. I’m not day to day on this, but am one of the co-founders providing some resources. The idea and my co-founders were unique enough that I decided it was worth including in my schedule.

So for 2007 my dance card is looking pretty full.

With such a busy schedule, I look for leverage in most of my activities. My blogging, my impending podcast are both activities that I can leverage for all my goals since they apply equally to all my various projects.

Blogging is an activity that helps me to achieve all of my main goals. I have personal development goals related to blogging (writing quality, skills, goals for my Technorati rating etc.). I also use my blog to help engage in conversations with Canadian entrepreneurs. The topics I am writing about in my blog are related to some of the work we will be doing with Project Ojibwe. I also am using my blog to support volunteer activities that I’m involved with.

So blogging is a leverage activity. Consider it the crunchy peanut in my peanut butter

The central strategy behind all my time investments is building community through serving others. This is the central strategy in how I spent all my professional time. Part of this service includes me saying no more often then yes. I would be performing a disservice to get involved with every startup who approached me since my peanut butter would be bland and weak.

BTW - Jim Estill is another Canadian CEO who is writing about time management. His blog is worth a look if this topic interests you.

On Mon 11 Dec 2006. [6] Comments

 

I had to fly into Calgary unexpectedly for a couple of days this week. This meant I didn’t get around to doing a lot of posting in between visits with friends, family and a few meetings.

I’m just about to fly back to Montreal and will be in Ottawa tomorrow to speak at Ottawa’s, Barcamp. I’m going to be speaking about early stage financing and some of the lessons I learned from Zero-Knowledge’s financing experience. Due to the volume of questions I’ve been getting from my blog on angel financing I’m going to expand a bit more on some advice on how to structure and organize an angel financing round.

On Fri 1 Dec 2006. [3] Comments

I’ve always been an optimist. I think every entrepreneur needs to be an optimist to be able to confront the day to day opposition they will face.

When customers have told me a deal was done, I use to assume the deal was done.

When investors told me that we had a deal, I once believed we had a deal.

This worked well the first few times - then I got a great dose of reality.

Deals are never done. Even once the contract is written, the partnership is just beginning. In today’s litigious society, there is always a reason or clause that allows someone to reopen and question most contracts.

One of my favorite lessons on this was early in my career at Total.Net. This was in 1996, and thanks to a few disastrous IPOs (iStar Internet and Hookup Internet) the market for raising funds for ISPs was awful. We had cut back staff and were getting close to being profitable. We had raised a million dollars at a critical time from a New York investor who was the CEO a large public Internet company and worth half a billion doallars. We had a signed term sheet and started to celebrate.

After 48hrs without receiving the confirmation of a wire transfer, we got a call to turn on CNN. He was being led out of his house by the FBI after being caught getting ready to flee the country with hundreds of millions of dollars in pilfered funds. His company had faked most of their sales. It may be obvious, but our deal didn’t close

So tonight on CBC’s Dragon’s Den show entrepreneurs will get to see that deals are never really done. I found out a couple of weeks ago that the deal I critiqued in my earlier post on the Dragon’s Den didn’t end up closing. I still don’t know the details of why the Jobloft deal didn’t close (watching the show right now) but I think this is a great lesson that deals are never really done.

I’ve also had signed deals that have ended up in litigation - so remember - if you happen to be Pharaoh then you can follow the “So it is said, so shall it be done” motto. For the rest of us relationships need to be nurtured and worked on in detail both before and after a deal is done.

Update: The Jobloft team have posted their own comments on their deal not going through.  It’s worth a read.

On Wed 22 Nov 2006. [2] Comments

One of the great presentations at Montreal Barcamp was from Jonathan Karpfen who recounted a great story about auditioning for his job at Airborne Entertainement with Andy Nulman. Jonathan spoke about how he sent fake Fedex packages with funny video’s as well as having his friends sent letters to Andy promoting Jonathan as a great candidate for the job.

My friend Andy Nulman, knows something about auditioning talent. He spent 15 years as the CEO of the Just for Laughs Festival, is the author of two books (including a collection of great behind the scenes stories from the comedy industry “I Almost Killed George Burns“) and the co-founder of Montreal based Airborne Entertainement. Airborne is one of Canada’s fastest growing technology companies. I had the pleasure of working with a lot of the Airborne team during my time as an Internet executive at Total.Net and I know what kind of a great team he and Garner have created there.

Andy also maintains a great blog on the value of surprise.

I decided to sit down with Andy to discuss hiring great talent and finding team members who have personality & passion.

I’ve heard some unique stories about your interviewing process – can you tell me a bit about your approach?

My approach is simple—coming to me for a job is indeed like auditioning for a role in a play; it’s just that this play can be the world’s longest, lasting for years…sort of like Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap in England. Just like the theatrical setting, you will be playing a specific role at Airborne, interacting with others, sometimes starring, sometimes supporting. I can usually tell within 30 seconds if the person is right for the company; the rest of the interview is being polite. If they’re right for the company, they will find their place, even if they’re not right for the specific job they may be interviewing for.

You write on your blog about creativity, surprise and humor – how do you go about identifying these traits in the people you work with?

It’s somewhat intuitive; I watch how they react to Airborne’s setting and spirit, how they react to my office, how they react to me. I also dispose of the usual interviewing technique and watch how they react to an unconventional setting. I also check up on them a lot before they even get here. Google has been a Godsend, but these days, two quick phone calls and you can track down a fairly intimate friend of just about anyone.

Do some candidates react badly to being asked to show off their creativity prior to working for you?

Sure, but how else am I going to gauge it? From a resume? From a CV? From something they may have done five years ago that took them six months to do? To be able to react rapidly to an obtuse challenge is a skill all digital talent need these days. All I’m asking is that they show me that instead of some standard, boring document. Or if they have a standard document, at least make sure it’s not boring. I once had a woman who was appalled—totally aghast—that I would even dare ask her to do something as simple as “Go home and send me something that shows you truly want to work here.” She said “Like what?” I replied “I don’t know. It’s up to you.” She said with a sneer “You mean, you want me to work for nothing?” It took a ton of discipline for me not to say “Well, that would be at least twice as much as what you’re worth.”

How do people find the idea of auditioning for a job? – Given your background in the entertainment industry do you think there are similarities between auditioning talent for a gala event and hiring someone to join your company?

There are similarities, some of which I outlined above. But the thing about Just For Laughs is that after a night, after a week, these people were out of your lives. At Airborne, it’s more like a marriage—till death do us part…namely until you want to kill me or I want to kill you. It’s much tougher to project your employees into the future. I always say, though, “Give me the heart and the head will follow.” I hire on future, not on past. In showbiz, in many cases, your past carries much more weight. Talent is talent, whether on the stage or in the boardroom. In fact, I learned that from Tom Peters; employees are not “workers,” they’re corporate talent.

What advice do you have for anyone looking to find a job where they can show their passion?

First off, show your passion. If it turns off the place you’re applying to, well, it ain’t going to get any better if you do get the job. Again, it’s like a marriage—go in wildly and with lust. Don’t go looking for love in a graveyard.

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs trying to only hire passionate & creative people?

Open yourself up to them. You don’t have to be HoHo The Clown and wacky; you just have to let these special people know that their particular quirks will be tolerated and they will be allowed to bloom. This is where the world’s worst bait-and-switch crimes are committed; “Oh yeah, we’re open and creative” and two weeks later you find yourself in Abu Graib. No offense to the ordinary folks out there, but creative people are different, and must be treated that way. But the reward…ahh, the reward. Well worth it. For both parties.

Airborne is currently hiring - so if you have passion and are looking to join a great team - check them out.

On a personal note, this summer when hiring for my new startup I was surprised at how difficult it was to cut through the noise of job boards, resumes and job databases to find passionate and capable team members.

When we asked Sebastien to join our team it was after a number of afternoons in the office where he auditioned with the team and we did a few practice rounds to see how he would fit in. We couldn’t be happier with the results.

So if your next employer asks you to audition for your job - will you be ready?

Update: Check out Andy’s follow up posting with a hilarious story of another candidates audition.

On Wed 22 Nov 2006. [5] Comments

Every company, entrepreneur and I believe every person is in search of their one thing.  The one thing is that makes what you do special. The product, service, message, offering, feature, approach or solution that just fits with customers. The thing that the company becomes known for.

Often this search for the one thing can take years of experimentation, trial and error and fine tuning of products and approaches.

With consumer web applications and anything involving social software the need to find your one thing and make it easy for your users to talk about is critical.

Youtube is a fun and easy way to share video clips. Flickr is a fun and easy way to share pictures.

As Seth Godin points out in his great post on how ideas can become viral.

For an idea to spread, it needs to be sent and received.

No one “sends” an idea unless:
a. they understand it
b. they want it to spread
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits

No one “gets” an idea unless:
a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time

This explains why online ideas spread so fast but why they’re often shallow. Nietzsche is hard to understand and risky to spread, so it moves slowly among people willing to invest the time. Numa Numa, on the other hand, spread like a toxic waste spill because it was so transparent, reasonably funny and easy to share.

Notice that ideas never spread because they are important to the originator.

Notice too that a key dynamic in the spread of the idea is the capsule that contains it. If it’s easy to swallow, tempting and complete, it’s a lot more likely to get a good start.

At my new startup we talk often about our one thing.   The one thing that our community members will talk to each other about.  The one thing that will excite and inflame our users interest & amusement so that they will want to share our service with their friends.   Finding the one thing is harder then it looks, because it forces you to focus on the most essential parts of your idea and cut away all the other fat.   It’s also never just one thing.  It’s not just one feature, the name of the company or any one person involved in the project.

So it is with great sadness that we observed the passing of the god of the one thing, Jack Palance.   We talk about the following scene alot at our company.

What is your one thing?

YouTube Video Link

On Thu 16 Nov 2006. [2] Comments

Earlier this summer I ran across a great blog Startup Review by Nisan Gabbay, who was until recently an analyst at Sierra Ventures and now has a startup in stealth mode.

Nisan has done some great case studies detailing various startups stories. As a resource for technology entrepreneurs, case studies on successful Internet companies are not that easy to come by. By writing more detailed reviews on business models, financing strategies and different models of building successful companies he has compiled a great resource for any entrepreneur working on a web related startup.

His recent review on Facebook is a great study of how their micro communities grew out of college campuses by leveraging existing offline behaviors resulting in a social networking leader generating revenue of $1 million a week in Q1 2006.

Since I’m now keeping track of more then 600 RSS feeds, I hadn’t made it down to the letter S in my list of blogs before running into Mathew Ingram’s post on the Facebook case study. As one of Canada’s top technology reporters Mathew maintains multiple blogs covering his work, fun internet tidbits and the media industry. His blogs are in my daily read folder which means that many of the most interesting items waiting for me in my general feed folders are discovered through his posts.

On Thu 9 Nov 2006. [3] Comments

I was interested to see if I could both attend and blog about the Web 2.0 Summit at the same time given how I like to network at conferences. I’ve decided that I’m NOT [updated - I forgot the NOT] that kind of blogger

I’m having great conversations with various friends, venture capitalists, and other Canadian startups who are here while enjoying some really good sessions.

I’ve seen other bloggers who can real time blog a conference, but between the networking, sessions and lot’s of busy meetings I don’t think I’m going to be blogging the conference.

Instead I’ve taken a different approach. I’m launching a new podcast where I’ll be putting up interviews and conversations with some of the interesting people I meet on my startup travels.

I blame my good friend and resident Montreal podcast pusher Mitch Joel for placing the idea in my head. Mitch produces a great podcast Six Pixels of Separation on internet marketing. While he was showing me his podcast setup and gadgets - I decided to give it a try.

I’m collecting interviews with a bunch of Canadian CEO’s and venture capitalists as well as a few new & old friends which I’ll be publishing soon in a new podcasat.

I suspect I’ll be writing some conference wrap up posts - but if you are trying keep track of the conference as it happens there are a lot of more qualified reporters and bloggers who are doing a great job of covering the event. There is also a wiki for the event.

Details about subscribing to my podcast will show up next week when I figure out how to assemble all the great material I’m collecting.

On Wed 8 Nov 2006. No Comments

I met with Rob Hyndman last week in Toronto - where we had a great discussion about the state of the Canadian startup industry. Rob is one of the organizers of Canada’s Mesh Conference and an advisor & lawyer for technology startups.

By the end of the day, we had a conversation going with Stuart McDonald, founder of Expedia.ca and also a Mesh co-founder, and David Crow - who is becoming infamous for his instigator role in the Toronto Barcamp & Democamp.

We’ve decided to replicate the recent Startup Camp with our own Canadian flavor. I’m really happy to be involved with this great project.

Rob has the announcement up and has setup a wiki where we are encouraging people to start to list their ideas, questions or topics that you feel the conference should address.

Despite getting back into the startup game myself, I’ve started to advise and mentor a few teams of Canadian entrepreneurs. This will be a great venue to bring together the startup community so we can begin to leverage the great explosion of activity occuring in Canada.

On Wed 8 Nov 2006. [2] Comments