1. 9.04.2013

2. Who Am I?
• Charleston SC Native
• Have been a part of several startups
• Worked as an architect at
Apple (OSX) and Microsoft (a bunch of stuff)
Skewlz: Umiami, Berkley, Stanford, UC
Davis Livermore

3. Agenda
• What?
• Why?
• How?
• When?
• Next?

4. “A great building must begin with
the
Unmeasurable must go through
Measureable means when it is
being
designed and in the end must be
Unmeasurable.”
~Louis Kahn

5. What is a StartUp?

6. What is a StartUp?
25 hours a day
8 days a week
Everyday is Wednesday

8. What is a Startup?
“A startup is an entrepreneurial driven
organization that is continually searching
for a repeatable and scalable business
model” ~ Mark Babbitt

9. WOW – An Idea!
• Guess what?
– SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE.

10. WOW – An Idea!
– A real time chat/msgr with 140 char limit
(interest/intent graph)
• Dydadic Relationships
δ(G) =
1
3

11. WOW – An Idea!
– A search engine based upon summing probability
distributions over hyperlinks
•PR(A) = (1-d) +
d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … +
PR(Tn)/C(Tn)
δ(G) =
1
3

12. WOW – An Idea!
–Affinity Graph that allows you to connect friends based
upon network theory:
•(if A~ B) then (B~A) and (if
A~B and B~C then A~C)
δ(G) =
1
3

13. WOW – An Idea!
“Ideas are cheap. That’s not where the
value is in tech. Turning it into a
company or into a product, that’s how
you create value.”
~ Kevin O’ Conner, Double
Click Co-Founder
δ(G) =
1
3

14. WOW – An Idea!
•
• “No one cares about your idea. Literally,
no one, except maybe you cares about
your idea.Your belief that someone is
going to steal your idea is an illusion
based upon the bias of your own
perspective. Besides, ideas are
completely worthless. Execution is what
matters.”
~ Kyle Tibbits, Cofounder
@HoverApp Marketing @ThisLife (Acquired by
δ(G) =
1
3

15. WHY?!
• Here are some reasons NOT to do it:
– You want to help people - there are a
number of worthy charitable
organizations & causes out there

16. WHY?!
• Here are some reasons NOT to do it:
– You want to be as rich as the Facebook
guy or some other rich person.

17. WHY?!
Here are some reasons NOT to do it:
– You want a job where you get to hang
out with your engineering friends -- form
a hacker's club
• “aka – brogrammers club”

18. WHY?!
Here are some reasons NOT to do it:
– You want a small business to support a
nice lifestyle for you and your family
• you know your buddy's IT shop nets
$2M a year.
»Whoo Whee!

19. WHY?!
Here are some reasons TO do it:
– You've always wanted to build your own
company from the ground up -- you
were that kid selling lemonade

20. WHY?!
Here are some reasons TO do it:
– You've been working on an idea you are
passionate about that may make
revenue and you've gotten some smart
people interested in doing it with you

21. WHY?!
Should You?
– Willing to devote 100% for 0-5 years?
• Everything you do revolves around
moving NewCo forward:
–Take Care of you and others
–Cut out all extraneous BS
–Willing to live on reduced income
etc

22. Should You ?!
– Passionate?
• Do you lay in bed thinking about it?
• Stay up trying to code the idea?
• You are synchronous with the product

23. Should You?!
– Love to hear NO?
• That’s basically EVERYDAY.
– HONEST WITH YOURSELF?
• You will find out fast if you are BS’ing

24. WHY?!
“You MUST be able to
step on their throats
and let SOMEONE ELSE
clean up the roadkill”
~ Mark Cuban

26. Steps
– Secure domain name
– Familarize yo’sef with corp docs and
process
– Get a great lawyer that caters to
startups
– Form company (c-corp)
– Have a notional aspect of domain space
and tech space

27. Steps
– Educate yourself on funding
– Read Brad Felds book and Founders at
Work blog
– -The Four Steps to The Epiphany by
by Steve Blank

28. Steps
– Start working VC network
– Do not form a board of directors
– Iterate on everything code/ideas/money
– Raise round while scaling
– Close the round and keep raising
– Go to 50 customer leads present
hypothesis

29. Steps
– OH yea …
–Minimum
–Viable
–Product
–M V P

30. MVP
– MVP IS:
– The BASIC features that allows a
‘product’ to be deployed

31. MVP
– MVP IS NOT:
– A minimal product
• The point is to reduce iteration in
selling and verification

32. MVP
– MVP IS:
– Do it the cheapest way
• Its throw away
• If you don’t have a crew in tow
–Use a contract shop!
–Offshore is getting REALLY good

33. MVP

34. Three T’s
• A Ranked list:
–Talent – Who ?
–Tech – How ?
–Timing – When ?

35. Talent
• AKA THE CREW
• A great team will turn a grade B idea into
• a grade A idea
• (Also companies buy startups for the
team)

36. Talent
• AKA THE CREW
– At least TWO founders:
• One Operational or Business
• Other technical

37. Talent

38. Talent
• Some words on Co-Founders
– Get a great co-founder. This is too hard
to do alone.
– If you're not technical but have good
domain knowledge in something you're
passionate about:
• get a technical co-founder.

39. Talent
• Some words on Co-Founders
– Spend time up front learning if you can
trust this person because you will have
to trust them, with everything.
– Second only to your spouse or partner,
this is one of the most important
relationships you will have.

40. Talent
• AKA THE CREW
– Initial team needs to be a mix:
• Nowadays KILLER front end and
User Experience
• Backend just as important
• Some type of Stats or ML knowledge
is good too
• iOS/Android

41. Talent
• AKA THE CREW
• No one really cares where the crew
presides as long as they are cohesive
• We can thank GIT folks for this &
• The Valley churn

42. Talent
• “The only mistakes I regret are people
mistakes.” ~ Brad Feld
• “Steve hires the best people.” ~ Bill

43. Talent
• Create Advisory Board
– Knowledge of funding process
– Domain expertise
– Track record of building startups
– Able to listen to crying for hours
– They are like dating and BOD is like
Marriage

44. Talent
• Create Advisory Board
– They are NOT there to build stuff for
you or raise money
– Bounce ideas or just listen
– Make connections

45. Tech
• We know it We LOVE it…
– Sorry we cannot just code we have to
THINK
– Nowadays no one really cares about the
tech
– Framework coding has ushered in a
new era
– Patents are still important
• REALLY Novel algorithms and
methods

46. Tech
• Languages:
– Javascript, C++, JAVA, Python, R,
Scala, Clojure
• Backends:
– Polygot persistance rulez
• NoSQL and Graph Dbs
• Android & iOS
• Django, Flask, Code Igniter, SymFony

47. Tech – Which DB?

48. More Than Code
• Import numpy as np
• Import pynmf
• from numpy.linalg import norm
• from time import time
• from sys import stdout
• def DoMyStartup (V,Winit,Hinit,tol,timelimit,maxiter):
• """
• (W,H) = DoMyStartup(V,Winit,Hinit,tol,timelimit,maxiter)
• W,H: output solution (exit matrix)
• Winit,Hinit: initial startup state
• tol: value whereas you cant take it anymore (tolerance)
• timelimit, maxiter: limit of time and iterations
• #MajikHappens here… (eg rapid gradient descent to exit)
• return (H, grad, iter)

49. Timing
• Everything in life is timing
– Time is money ~ Money is Time
– Kill bad ideas fast and furious
– Apply to all incubators
– Apply to all angel venture lists
– Start prototyping - yesterday

50. Process Stuff
• Ya gotta do it to make it
– C-Corp Filing
– NDAs
– Offer Letters
– One Pager
– CAP Table
– Pitch Deck

51. C-Corp Filing
– Ok for some I can hear the groans Why
not an LLC?
– I am continually asked by VCs of whom
I make intros:
• Are they Del Corp C
–Just get the 250.00 and do it

52. CAP Table
– This is who has what equity and at what
price
– Equity is the name of the game in a
startup
– Must be VERY simple
• Allows you and others to put in
various amounts of money raised and
address dilution
• Lists types of stock and outstanding
shares

55. Funding

56. Funding

57. Convertible Note
– Standard method for early stage
– Angels understand it, good for
friends/family
– Converts to institutional round stock

58. Kickstarter
– Great for pre-orders
– Great for “good cause companies”
– Can and cant be dilutive

59. Priced Equity Round
– It is possible
– It is the best mode for fast scale
– Makes it VERY easy for Series A

60. Organic
– Obviously the least dilutive
– Self funded yields really good results
• Series A
– Usually takes a little longer to scale

61. On Funding
– Get enough to complete customer
validation
– Or at least MVP
– Know the market: read blogs books
toilet paper rolls – everything
– As a coFounder know the terms and
terminologies – IT IS YOUR COMPANY

62. On Funding
– Nothing gets a VC F R O T H I N G
–Like..
–Traction or a Corp Deal !!!!

64. That’s a “B” folks…

66. Non Disclosure Agreement
– Or NDA:
• Have one and attempt to have
everyone sign it
• VCs wont so don’t
• Board members/advisors/janitors
• Although I have never seen anyone
enforce one

67. Offer Letters
– There are various types
• Above all do not make it complicated!
• Complicated equals legal crap
• Legal crap equals time
• Time equals money
• You don’t have any of the above

68. One Pager
– This document is your faceplate
• Discusses company snapshot
• Founders
• Industry
• Business
• Accountants
• Current Investors
• Market and Product
• Logo and Address

70. The Pitch Deck
– Know it love it sleep with it
– Important items (8-10 slides):
• Team up front
• Opportunity – Why your doing it
• Market
• What makes you novel
• Competition
• Amount of ask

71. Last words on Docs
– Please do not get fancy or make them
overly complicated.
– You don’t have time.
• Most who have done this before are
not going to screw you
• They are in it to make money with a
team as well as change the world
• If you run into someone who grinds
on these items – Drop them.

72. Now what?
– Test your idea
• If its consumer then talk to “regular” people
about it
• If they don’t get it in two sentences or less
refine the idea or explanation
• If its B2B make sure a corp ASKS for it…
–Or a close variation

73. Now what?
– Test your idea
• Prototype – liquid code - MVP
• Backend or heavy laden systems take
deeper research
–Enterprise etc
• Kill it early if its not working

74. Now what?
Test your idea
–Test early and often
–Do not fall in love with tech
–Fall in love with company
–Do Customer validation through
prototype

75. Now what?
Test your idea
–Make some mockups (iMocks is killer)
–Also wireframes via a great Ux person
–Get feedback fast and hard

76. I T E R A T E

77. Someone Loves Me!
• OK so lets say you raised 50k:
• Get incorporated
• Set up a HQ in an Epicenter
• Buy a domain if you haven’t
• Get a lawyer
• Get a team hopefully for equity – Or Offshore IT
• Think simple.
• Go Big.

78. Someone Loves Me!
• When speaking with other angels VCs:
Two sentences or less
Be prepared to give pitch
• (e) subject: email from ted tanner
(no canned emails)
• If you are getting traction be choosy
• Your lead investor is important

79. More Than Code

80. GO BIG OR GO HOME
• You are what you build
• Think BIG – bigger seperates the average from
cutting edge
• Watch pennies - except for talent
• Iterate Iterate Iterate
• Love to hear NO

81. GO BIG OR GO HOME
• FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS
• Listen to your customer
• Market your company and products
• Simplicity is key: everything you do must reduce
friction
• Sell something legal

82. GO BIG OR GO HOME
• Fail Once Fail Many
– WTF?
– Yea guess what - Everyone fails
– As a matter of fact if you haven’t failed and tried again
you’re not trying hard enough
– In The Valley its expected

83. thoughts
• Do not Panic and you may live…
• Busy is not productive
. You are your company
• Culture = if you have to talk about it…
• Lifestyle is what others do… You create the
impossible…

84. thoughts

87. Thank you for
Y O U R time!
@tctjr