Sg2009wc:partner
From She's Geeky Wiki
Title: Finding Your Business Partner
Session: 2-M Bay Area Jan 2009
Attendees
- Jen - Electronics geek, firmware, MBA, 2nd prize at a biz plan. Great idea person, but not CEO, looking for partners.
- Stacey Banks - Own company consulting for security. More on biz dev, looking for geeks to support her.
- Joyce Kim - attourney, largest Asian American networking site. Business side.
- Casey Cottle - advice VCs and investors, also startups. How to find customers and partners. Dialed in on both sides, happy to play matchmaker.
- Jessica N- worked for a handful of start ups, sales international side. Business side.
- Veronica Tegen - Also on business side, actually advertising side. Want to tap into creativity and ideas.
- Amy Bowers - CTO at small start up, limping along. Starting a new business, probably alone. Looking for partner or mentor.
- Olivia Sadlowski- looking for partners or mentors. Proto house. RF ideas. Looking for business partner.
- Kim Flourney - new startup, web developer. Husband/wife techie company. Needs marketing partner and CEO. How to know who to trust.
- Tanuja Deo - sales for a company... has experience selling to startups. May be able to answer some questions.
- El White - Tech side (and note taker).
- Renee Lloyd - Laywer working with technologists. How the laws are broken and how to meet the needs of technologists.
Recently of the Berkman center. On advisory board for many small startups. Is there an innovative way to being an advisor? Seeing a need.
- Sharuda - business side.
- Renee and Casey to connect on how to do legal advising. Stategey, it and business.
Notes:
How traditionally we would find partners?
Need partners because we can't know everything and so we can spread the risk around. Networking is talking to a bunch of people- one minute spiel to talk to people.
How effective is Networking?
- Setting it very important. Hosted at bars are usually lacking but possibly good for the initial introductions. But it takes a lot more to figure out if a person is good fit with you- skill set, conflict resolution tactics.
- Distinguish between network and networking. Using your existng network means you are using a known quantity.
- How to talk about your idea while still protecting your IP? Tough balancing act.
- Finding an advisor is a good first step. But a difficult one.
- Findng a business partner you can trust is difficult.
- Legal, ethical, even interpersonal issues need to dealt with upfront.
- It is a good way to lose friends.
- Be careful how you structure equity and titles.
- Be upfront with failures... startups cannot carry deadweight.
- For someone in that role- put them on probabation: a set window, with a lead-title.
- Prenup analogy- plannnig the end is a really good idea. Safer for all.
How to protect your ideas?
- One view is to talk about it... failing to talk about it will ensure it goes nowhere.
- Being on a company's board of advisors is a compliment.
- It is a good idea to build your board. A nominal interest is usually enough. Get good advice is valuable.
- And a board can provide that and excellent introductions.
- And on the other side- be generous with people, offer help. It comes back.
- Board of advisors is not board of directors.
First Steps
- Talking about your idea- need an elevator pitch. Need a 60-90 second speech that will hook people and get them interested.
- J. had some experience with LinkedIn, on keywords. Make sure it is a two way street and not just a job interview. Ideas should be exchanged at the meet-for-coffee meeting.
- Developers and implementors are not neccessarily the idea people. Pressure usually goes from the idea people. If it doesn't feel like a two way street, it isn't.
- Avoid NDAs where possible. Many people will talk anyway. Also, you can change the NDA, cross things
out. VCs don't usually get NDAs... they would laugh.
- Blogs can be a good way to get developers... get them engaged enough to know if they are serious.
----
Does dress matter?
FOr the techies, we tend to dress casually.
- When we meet lawyers and and business people, do they care? Not so much. In a large setting, businesss casual is good.
- For sales and VCs, techies should dress up. In general, tech rockstars can wear what they want.
- Confidence is key. If you don't care, they won't. Dress the way you want to dress. That will drive your condfidence.
- The business/tech divide is shown in dress, though the business folks are getting less casual.
- Gender is an issue too. Women tend to be more feminine if they expect women but there is more formality with men, or maybe just less skin.
One on one is good, you can show yourself which, if you are looking for a partner, is what you want to do.
----
What questions should you ask your potential partners?
Different questions for tech and biz folk.
Start with your self assessment. Techie looking for biz dev?
- Ethics - business, personal work
- Want experience in startups, perferably with failure
- Contacts
- Aptitude - can they speak intelligently about your system... tell them and then they should tell you because if they don't get it, it is important to know very soon.
- Ability to identify competition
- Impact on your personal life (and theirs). Work life balance.
- Personality match
- Probe into their experience- understand what they did on their resume as opposed to
what they have on their resume. "How did you measure success?" is a good way to cut through BS.
- Can they understand the problem? Interested in using the product?
- Passion is good but must be able to talk about accounting and the minutea.
Biz dev looking for tech?
- Outcomes... need implementation
- What have you started from scratch? Avoid people who have never set up a system.
- What have you shipped to the market? Have to be able to close the deal. Must be good for the customers. Results oriented. Don't have to understand the customer but they should understand how their role fits in.
- Are you flexible? Ideas changes, can they bend? How stuck are they on the processs?
can they embrace change? They need to be adaptable.
- Do you have a plan B? What if they fail? Do they have resources to draw on when
things go poorly? They need candor about abilities.
- What can you outsource? Do you have a program manager view.
- Can you say no? People who over promise can lead to disaster.
- Maturity. Need a grown up. Biz/tech should not be a war.
- Need to manage prior IP. Can't have prior art leap into the path of the new company.
- Can they understand the problem? Interested in using the product?
- Candor about their abilities? Are they just googling source? That can lead to horriible IP issue. Open source can be good but they have to know how to use existing code. Legal awareness is important too.
- Passion is good but must be able to design for the scalabiltiy, do documentation
and other minutea.
What precautions can you take to make a partner leaving bearable?
- You have to talk about the worst case.
- Milestones are important to keeping in sync. That can lead to prenup and biz continuation stuff (i.e. large deliverable).
- Need regular contributions to source code escrow.
- Have the company own whatever is reasonable.
- Be aware of Intellectual Property issues.
- Undrestand work-for-hire vs employees.
- Trust is critcal. But watch them anyway.
Continued later in speed dating.