Rule of Awesome

For years I have struggled with the concept of “hiring only A players.”

After all, what is an “A player?” Is there a test? Is there a list of characteristics that outlines the specific nature of an A player?

On top of that, the concept of an “A player” extends beyond just the skill set into the ability of that employee to engage and comfortably integrate into a set company culture.

The famed Facebook and Google interviews don’t always expose top notch employees. It certainly is a process that scares off a fair number of folks, but it doesn’t guarantee that the new employee is that unique combination of skills, personality, drive and compassionate intelligence necessary for the perfect fit within your organization.

About eight months ago I started to recognize a commonality among the employees at my startup and others that clearing indicated “A player”-ness.

Why Your Customer Experience Strategy is Too Late

Recent articles published by Inc Magazine & Harvard Business Review have capped the increasing amount of attention paid to ‘Customer Experience’.  Apple, and the way they handle the massive crowds at their retail locations, catapulted the customer experience conversation that has exploded in the past two years. The concept originated in the service industry – hotels and restaurants – then moved into the retail environment (ie. Apple, car dealers, etc.), and is now everywhere we look.  The importance of customer experience continues to gain momentum in the B2B arena.  As the world gets smaller and competition grows, great execution of customer experience in the B2B space is now paramount.  While still not perfectly measurable, the strategy is sound: deliver an amazing customer experience and your customers will never leave you (they will buy more and provide referrals).

WISE Entrepreneurs

“Wisdom begins in wonder.” Socrates

When it comes to new venture creation, never underestimate the power of experience and expertise. While there is no lack of attention appropriately focused on young entrepreneurs, the 50+ entrepreneur set has been quietly leading their own entrepreneurial revolution. Research by the Kaufman Foundation suggests that twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25.

Interest in the “post-retirement entrepreneurship” movement is due in part to the numbers of baby boomers “aging up” but who are far from slowing down. The indomitable music icon, Cher, once challenged that she was too old to be singing rock n’ roll, reportedly replied, “You’d better check with Mick Jagger.”

The Case for a Strong Board

Clay Mathile, Founder of IAMS

If you’re willing to work and subject yourself to the scrutiny of other’s [creating a board] is the best investment you’ll ever make in your life.”

     — Clay Mathile, Aileron’s founder and former chairman of Iams Corporation.

Entrepreneurs carry a reputation of being self-made, uber-confident and highly capable business people. It takes guts, chutzpah and moxie to create something out of nothing – especially when others can’t see around the corners that you can. As a deep subject matter expert in your field, you are the reigning monarch leading your team into battle with great products, great vision and great expectations.

Yet, great entrepreneurs build a network of support to fill in the gaps – you just can’t be great at everything. When you run into challenges that need some brain power to solve – who are you going to call? Maybe Ghostbusters can help, but more than likely you should rely on the wisdom of a well-formed and functioning board of directors or board of advisors.
So if you have never created, recruited or managed a board – how do you get started? Aileron offers several courses in board creation and management including sessions for board members to learn how to become most effective. Assuming you can’t fit that into your schedule, you should be begin by putting together a list of attributes of ideal board members. Diversity on a board is great – familiarity on a board is not so great. You want to have different perspectives from industry and functional areas to add value to your interactions. Talent that represents finance, marketing, sales, your specific vertical, organizational (people) expertise can be extremely helpful. Recruiting your accountant, attorney and your Uncle Joe may not give you the answers you need to tough questions.

Fear Instant Gratification

All businesses and their leaders experience fears.  The fears could range from products being disrupted to the defection of top talent to the loss of important customers.  Fears are also real and ever present in start-ups today.  Will we be able to attract the talent to launch the business?  Will funding be available to launch the business?  Have we really identified our primary customer?    These fears are real and are generally self-inflicted because we lose patience and seek instant gratification.  Business success – whether in start-ups, small businesses or large corporations – requires patience and the shunning of instant gratification.  But, the race to achieve short-term results is a magnet for instant gratification thinking.  It is simply says “let’s take the easy route versus expending extra effort to become great.”

I have lackadaisical students every semester believing that the business world is just waiting to draft them in the first round. It is hard to dissuade them even with intensive coaching. There will be NO instant gratification during the recruiting process. Start-ups rush to launch their business even though they have not fully identified their primary customer or differentiated their product.  Companies recruit external talent into key roles without fully understanding whether the candidate’s personal values fit the organization’s culture.  Instant gratification treats these recruits like mercenaries – make things happen now.  Senior management places pressure on the sales force to close deals prematurely so the quarterly numbers look inflated.  This action mitigates the short-term problem but creates credibility issues going forward between senior management, the sales team and the customer.  Instant gratification’s major purpose is to minimize potential.

Preparing Millennials for Startup Success

At a recent career fair our startup’s booth was besieged with students. It seems that startups are the sexy career choice for the generation hitting the job market today. We startup founders certainly need their energy, but too often the reality of the work shocks the Millennial graduate used to much more structure and support than a startup can give.

One could argue that the culture of startups is a product of 20-somethings. Many of the faces of the movement, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, have defined the work-hard, play-hard culture that startups take on. Google and Apple headquarters feel like the college campuses that Millennials so recently left. Social media and texting are commonplace ways that work is done. Face-to-face conversations in the workplace now are carefully scheduled, if they happen at all. There are natural pluses and minuses to these changes, but the rest of us have to get used to it.

However the Millennial generation must also adapt to succeed, especially if they wish to join the fray at a startup company. I have had the privilege of leading hundreds of Millennials across two entrepreneurial ventures in ten years. Based on this experience, I would offer these three ways in which startups fit their needs, but also need them to adapt quickly.

Back to School Reading

Now that Fall has arrived, it’s time for everyone to go back to school. Here are some recommendations about what you need to study to enhance your entrepreneurial knowledge and skillset.

The Startup Owner’s User Manual written by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf are a must-read for every aspiring entrepreneur. This essential guide complements all of the current “Lean Startup” ideas and gives you a step by step approach to a successful startup. The reading makes sense. The work is hard. The benefits are fantastic.

Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner (E-Corner) hosts a collection of podcasts and videos based on the Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s Thought Leaders Seminar. The seminar is a weekly lecture series on entrepreneurship featuring entrepreneurs, innovators and industry leaders. Stanford students earn credit for attending the series by registering for Management & Science Engineering Course 472. The series is also free and open to the public. If you don’t happen to be in Silicon Valley on Wednesday afternoons, you can get access to all the past speakers through the e-Corner website: http://ecorner.stanford.edu or subscribe to the series via iTunes.

Yoga is Judgmental

The next time someone says to me “Don’t worry it gets easier,” I am going to punch them in the face. They call yoga a practice, which by definition means that not only will I not be perfect, but that I will also improve over time.

As an entrepreneur, this is a powerful concept. It’s not about perfection, but about the pursuit of perfection. Startups are our practice. We never are able to create the perfect startup, but we can improve them over time.

The most perfect you are is right now.

Being present is a concept that is often thrown around as a practice of focus on what you are doing, and worrying less about what came before or after. For me, the idea that I am doing the absolute best I can in that moment, that regardless of my previous success or perceived future success, I am accomplishing everything I can in that moment, blows me away.

Less is more

Persistence and Perspiration

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” — Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill gave a rather short commencement speech at Harrow that should inspire or dissuade every entrepreneur. Every startup goes through a Tale of Two Cities experience: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” As a founder, you come to realize that reality never follows your business plan. The worst that can happen most times never does.  The best that can happen never materializes — but often is replaced by a better result. Entrepreneurs have great imaginations without which innovation would never occur. However, when it comes to execution, you must persevere and swing for the fences. You are David facing Goliath — but you already know how that movie ends — so you keep pushing every day.

What Inspires You

“There is nothing impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” – Audrey Hepburn

Summer is a reflective time. I enjoy the long days and still nights, especially when there is cool breeze, fireflies, and a star lit sky. Too often, we get caught up in the hustle and bustle of day-to-day activities and forget how important it is to pause and reflect on where we are, where we are going, and how we plan to get there. I hadn’t really thought about it in a while, but of course that gave me an excuse to stop and consider the importance of the sources of inspiration and renewal in our lives. We draw inspiration from all that is around us and use that energy to transform our work and our leisure.

This is especially true in the start-up and/or the running a small or high growth venture. Entrepreneurs are the busiest people on the planet, juggling multiple tasks, deadlines, and putting out a myriad of fires on a daily basis. They are inundated with advice, information, facts, figures, sales pitches, and more all on top of rapidly changing technology that is often more confusing than time saving.