Author: Sri Srikrishna (Page 17 of 22)

7 Easy Steps To Get Started with Social Media

October 28, 2009 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Unless you have been living in a cave (or exploring one or spelunking) you’ve been bombarded by stories about Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media. And like most people I know over the age of 30, you have a vague feeling of “Is this something I should be doing?” or “Where the heck do I even start?”

Well look no further. This last year or thereabouts I have spent a good deal of time blogging, poking, tweeting, digging (more like del.icio.us – ing) around the social media sphere trying to separate the chaff from the wheat. While trying to persuade some friends, who I believe have a lot to offer, to start blogging, I realized, having a simple “Here’s what you need to do” might be the best way to get these folks started. In planning for one perfect yet tight post I nearly didn’t do this. Instead have opted now to get started and spell it out as I go. Clearly I build on the shoulders of others who have gone before.

For the skimmers, here is the quick & dirty version

Have a written goal for why you are blogging
Have one handle or name across all media properties
Get started
Do your homework
Give, give and give some more
Work across mediums – not just text
Don’t forget the real world!

Write down your purpose & goal This is as simple as being clear why you are doing this. Not because your boss told you, or your cousin thinks its a good idea or worse yet, your spouse wants you to. It could be as simple as “Coz I want to” which is want most mountaineers seem to state as their reason. Of course it’d be a whole lot better if you said specific thing such as
- “Be seen as the #1 De-cluttering/organizing expert in the Tri-cities”
- “Be perceived as a top 10 blogger in analog design in India” or
- “Build a loyal following for my classical music compositions”
Pick ONE name Think through the name you are going to use, for you are going to use it in a whole lot of places very soon – on your blog, on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, SlideShare – and that’s just for starters. It has got to be distinctive (so folks can remember it), specific and long enough for folks to make out it’s you but short enough to not chew up too many characters. This may not seem such a big deal, but it can be if you are successful. So might as well plan for it. Some good ones to emulate
- http://kiruba.com/ – short, individual’s name, distinctive @kiruba
- http://chrisbrogan.com/ – still short enough, full name @chrisbrogan
- http://copyblogger.com/ distinctive and descriptive @copyblogger
- http://presentationzen.com/ descriptive; a bit long @presentationzen
Get started As my dad was fond of saying, none of your preparation for swimming is useful, if you don’t get in the water. So soon as you finish reading this ~~para~~ article, get started. Put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard and start typing. Sure it would help if you make a writing calendar – could be as simple as, “I will spend 30 minutes each morning or 2 hours on Tue/Thur.” Whatever works for you. But don’t wait for the calendar. Start with your own “natural” voice. Sometimes it takes a few posts to discover what that is. Regardless don’t try to speak in a voice that is not yours – be yourself (probably the hardest advice to follow)
Do Your Homework Building up a good social presence is no different than finding a job or getting hooked up. You gotta let everyone know and it helps if the people you talk to are themselves well connected and well thought of. Do your homework. Find out where the audience, you think you speak to, hangs out. Who are the thought leaders/bloggers in the space that you plan to blog about? Get your tracking infrastructure in place – starting with Google Analytics. There are any number of good posts & resources about building an audience for your blog – so when they come, you can know where they are coming from, what they are reading. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
Give, give & give some more Your mom was right. You gotta give, before you can expect to get something. So focus on giving – I mean freely – what would be of value to your readers. This could be links to other interesting articles, gadget reviews, your grandma’s secret crochet techniques or other exotica (no, that was not a typo.) Find what you are good at, and what is valued by your audience and deliver it reliably with no further expectations. It’s also worth keeping in mind that much of the social media is about conversation, which usually involves more than one voice – yours – alone. The best way to give is to comment on other people’s blogs, to participate in conversations on Twitter or other social forums. Give first and ye shall receive!
Cross mediums – try audio, slideware, video This might seem a stretch. Here you are still planning to get rolling or maybe just started in stringing a few words together, maybe Tweeting or mini-blogging (on Tumblr or Posterous). As one of the hottest social media stars, Gary Vaynerchuk has found – that video is his gig or as a zany Aussie hardware engineer did, you too may be a natural video star. Sometimes your content served up as a podcast may resonate with your audience on the go, as Chief Penguin Michael Katz has found. Till you play with it you will not know – iTunes, YouTube and SlideShare and others are changing the landscape of blogging & social media
Real world exists In the echo chamber that is the blogosphere (& now Twitter and FaceBook) it’s easy to lose sight that there’s a real world out there. So don’t forget to get out there, shake hands and pat backs (or is the other way around). Write for your local newspaper (if it is still in existence), attend seminars and better yet give talks. Volunteer with your local NGO, or BarCamp or TweetUp. Teach a class. Anything that tickles your fancy, will recharge you and change the world a little. You will bring all that and more back to your blog and writing. If you are like me, visiting the real world helps to stay married and seeing the kids before they get old enough to drive (away). And it will make you a whole lot more interesting.

Technorati Tags: How-to,Blogs,Social Media

Be Humble – Lessons from my dad

July 21, 2009 / Sri Srikrishna / 5 Comments

One particular story my father had told me numerous times when I was a teenager, was about his encounter with a money lender. This was the first and only time I had ever heard my father use an expletive – a gaali – as they’d say in Benaras. The story stuck with me initially because of the unvarying way he’d narrate it, and also the way he’d point out his own outrage at being called names.

Later as an entrepreneur, when I was borrowing money (and yet again borrowing some more) and seemed to have my hand out perennially either to Angels or prospective VCs, this story really hit home.

Very early in his career, my father joined the firm that he’d spend the next 37 years at. Founded as a trading company, the firm was as cash strapped as only a growing firm could be. As my father put it in the early days of their business, they “boldly and often baldly borrowed money.” Not infrequently these were at usurious rates from local moneylenders. As the young company’s accountant, my dad usually was the pointed end of this borrowing thrust. The borrowing was done in the name of the proprietor (my dad’s boss) but almost always singly handled by my dad.

One day they found that there were yet again in need of cash and approached a money lender from whom they had borrowed before. In fact, they were yet to pay off their previous loan. Even as they were warming up to their pitch for borrowing more money, the Shylock began abusing my dad’s boss – calling his mother names. My dad was livid and about to jump on the Shylock’s throat, when he felt a warning tug on his hand – his boss was practically pinching my dad’s palm off. My dad got the message and kept his counsel. Soon enough, after lumping the name-calling, they had pried some money out of the curmudgeon and headed back to their office.

Soon as they were out of earshot, his boss asked him,

“Did you borrow money from him?”

“Yes,” my dad replied dutifully

“Well did you return his money?”

“No of course not!”

“Then what the hell were you getting all worked up for when he abused me?“

Many a times I have felt quite sanctimonious, even outraged, at the behavior of prospective customers, partners and of course VCs. Whilst this was truer when I could be called young and hot-blooded, it’s not something I have completely lost. So when that familiar feeling swells up in a meeting, I recall my father’s story and his advice to be humble!

Be Considerate – Lessons from my dad

June 21, 2009 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

My father always waited till we got to the railway station or the airport, before he’d have the TALK with me. I never figured out why he waited till one of us was getting ready to leave town. It somehow made it a whole lot easier for him to have this conversation. The gist of many of these eve-of-departure conversations, when I was in college and then graduate school, was, “Be considerate.”

I appreciate my father all the more, given the number of different ways he has tried to get me to understand this. “Don’t be self absorbed – think of others; show that you are thinking of others. It’s not enough to say I love you and not demonstrate that love in any other way. Be it with flowers, chocolate or that diamond necklace (okay, he didn’t say that last one, but I don’t think my wife would have minded, if he had).

My own reaction to my father’s advice ranged from non-comprehension (“What are you talking about Dad?”) to mild irritation (“Why did you wait till I was leaving to have this talk”) to sometimes outright combativeness (“Did you not tell me money is not important?”). The day this lesson really hit home was when he commented “If you were a fool, it would be a lot easier for me to accept your behavior; unfortunately I know you are not a fool – which makes me all the more sad. Your being inconsiderate is then either a choice you are making or worse.”

As the father of two not-so-little girls, I know that it’s not easy for a father to say this. Of course knowing how I feel with my own kids at times, it’s a miracle my dad did not kill me or at the very least slap some sense into me.

I realize this as I work every day with very smart people and see not so smart behavior, especially when it comes to being considerate. It’s as if being successful or at least ambitious, means you can’t be considerate. Luckily for me, I am surrounding by people who are neither shy nor retiring. So they don’t hesitate to give feedback and keep me honest.

In my own case, on more than one occasion, I have had a senior colleague ask me, “Could you not have asked me to hand out the recognition awards? At the very least you could have asked me to be present, when you handed them out?” Having worked with my team for the better part of decade I realized (often all too late) that this was not about who did the handing out, as much as being inclusive and more importantly, not excluding even by omission.

This morning, as I set out for a short visit with my dad and a new week at work, I still hear him say, “Be considerate!”

It was only when I turned forty a few years back, that several new synapses fired for the first time in my brain. I realized that over the years, my father while narrating stories – often incidents or vignettes from work – had been imparting some serious wisdom to me. After 20 years of listening to these, sometimes grudgingly it finally dawned on me that much of what I’ve learnt and continue to practice as a professional stems from these stories of my dad. Starting this month, I hope to blog about some of them. Fred Wilson’s post yesterday about thoughts on this 20th wedding anniversary on building a long term relationship finally got this post off the ground.

Talent, training and trust – building culture person at a time

March 20, 2009 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Photo Credit: SOMBILON ART, MEDIA and PHOTOGRAPHY via Compfight

This evening I read Peter Bregman’s blog post about his experience at the Four Seasons in Dallas. It brought to mind my own experience at the ITC Windsor Manor in Bangalore. The family and I had been visiting some friends in the northern part of town. It was late in the afternoon, when we headed back. Of course the kids waited till we were a fair bit down one of Bangalore’s interminable one-way roads, before clamouring to use the restroom. Usually, the chorus of “I’m hungry” or “I need to use the bathroom” from the backseat would result in much heated discussion between my lovely wife and myself. Luckily we were right in front of the Windsor Manor, so no discussion was needed. We pulled in, parked the car and dashed to the front door.

The liveried doorman, the one with the enormous moustache, held the door open. “Which way to the rest rooms?” I asked as my eight-year old wiggled in front of me. The wife was still walking from the car, dragging our reluctant ten-year old behind her. “Straight ahead sir, through the arch and turn left. You will find the restrooms in the first corridor on your right.” We made it safely with time to spare. As the girls and their mom, took their time powdering their noses or discussing Dad’s driving – I hung around the corridor, admiring the Raj era landscapes on the wall.

“Can I help you sir? Were you not able to find the restrooms?” I looked up to see the liveried doorman, who was clearly headed for his break. I assured him that I had already availed of their fine facilities, was merely waiting for the family and thanked him for his concern. After ensuring I had everything I needed he finally headed out the staff door. It was only then that I noticed the discretely designed staff door down the corridor, through which another staffer had just passed.

I was just blown away – there must have been 15-20 people at the front portico, as the family and I had passed through the front door. It was a good ten minutes or so later, when the doorman and I met in front of the restrooms. We were not guests at the hotel and I am sure that his job required him to manage matters primarily near the front porch. Yet, the care and sincerity with which stopped to inquire after my needs and the way he tried to address the matter of my possibly not having found the restrooms clearly reflected the sense of ownership he took over helping visitors and guests. Elsewhere at the Windsor Manor, at their incredible “Jolly Nabob” restaurant, I have seen the same excellent sense of ownership and pride with the maitre d’.

As anyone who’s been in the hospitality business knows, finding good help – the talent – is hard. Training them and inculcating in them the sense of ownership and service mindset is even harder. And institutionalizing it requires trust! This is a lesson all of us could use and Windsor Manor and the Four Seasons teach us well to use in our own business and lives.

The ONE thing you need to succeed as an entrepreneur

March 10, 2009 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Last week one of the first tweets I came across, as I started my day, was a re-tweet by @CharlieCurve — a poetical summary of Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) earlier tweet.

“Stop worrying about who’s President, what the market did and FOCUS on your business & brand.”

Yep, focus – say it again – FOCUS is the one thing you need to succeed as an entrepreneur. If you thought you needed it before, the recession has made it a burning need as the economy totters, markets tumble and Cassandras abound. You’d think it would be easy to keep this one word in mind and hence stay focused.

Entire books have been written on the subject – most notably the eponymously titled one by Al Ries. The history of business is littered with not merely individuals or departments but entire companies losing focus. So this is harder than it appears.

It’s easy to understand why we lose focus, particularly in entrepreneurial setups. The passion and dynamism of being entrepreneurial is the first cause for the loss of focus. There’s always some new problems to be solved, a new customer to be served or more cash to be brought in. This makes it hard to say NO to a lot of things. So one YES at at a time, you get another ball in the air, and soon there’s no time to do things as well as they need to be done. Worse yet, you keep falling behind and losing ground.

Staying focused requires us to master just one word and that is “No” Doesn’t have to be NO, screamed at the top of your voice, or even a “Hell no!” hissed out the corner of your mouth. Just a plain and polite no would suffice. Everything else that lead you to be an entrepreneur in the first place will kick in, once you focus. So take Gary’s advice and quit worrying about anything other than staying focused on your business goals!

For the two of you who may have not heard of Gary Vaynerchuk – here’s a quick blurb. Gary, who by age 30 had grown his family’s small wine business into a $50M dollar business, knows a thing or two about building successful businesses. And that was before before he started “Wine Library TV” that has nearly 100,000 daily viewers. Gary has become a much sought after speaker on the matter of personal branding — patience and passion, he exhorts are critical elements to building your brand and business. But that’s matter for a whole another post.

Raising money – recession or otherwise

February 2, 2009 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Photo Giovanni ‘jjjohn’ Orlando via Compfight

You’ve finally taken the plunge. Quit that steady paying job, roped in a couple of friends and started your own business. You’ve even squirrelled away some money to pay the rent and keep the wolves from your door, at least for a year. If you are smart, you are still working out of a coffee shop or your father-in-law’s basement (or attic) and keeping your burn rate low. And all this before the market imploded and the economy slid from being merely slow in to a full-blown recession. You’ve even managed to line up the first customer and then it hits you — you are going to need money to buy hardware, software and pay those two programmers you plan to bring on board. The capital you and your partners had pooled together no longer looks like it will stretch as far as it needs to.

Barack Obama might have been talking about your business in his inaugural speech when he said: “The challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time.” Alas, because you are not a Wall Street firm or even a regular old bank, the Government is unlikely to step in and bail you out. You realise you are on your own.

A friend asked me recently, “How is an entrepreneur going to find funding in times such as these? Even with a compelling idea, I suspect it would be difficult to get people to fork out money. And even if you do get start-up capital, managing working capital will be difficult, won’t it?” This was right after my waxing passionately in an earlier column as to why the right time to start a business is always ‘now’, carpe diem and all that! So if indeed the best time to start a business is ‘now’ — in a downturn — what should an entrepreneur do for money? Even if you figure out a way to find money, is there such a thing as good money or bad, for that matter? And don’t even the smartest of boot-strappers need working capital?

Get customers to pay your way
The best way, in my mind, to run a business is to get your customers to pay for it, preferably up-front. At first glance it may seem outrageous, but getting customers to pay you is not merely about money but about validation — of your business, the value you bring and yourself. If it can work for lawyers, accountants and other service providers (all of whom you encountered when you began your business), there is no reason why it shouldn’t work for you.

I don’t intend to trivialise the raising of money. Unlike trying to get venture capitalists (VCs) to invest in your business or your wife’s uncle to cough up cash, getting customers to pay your way may actually be worth all the time and energy you pour into it. It is hard, but not impossible. Whilst getting money from your customers is easiest done in professional service businesses, it can be done for virtually any service offering, and with some imagination, for product businesses as well.

In my first start-up, $5,000 advanced by a customer was used to buy our first computer, develop software and to deliver it. Many an entrepreneur, freelancing for the first time, has tapped their previous employer to be their first customer and source of (micro) capital!

Beg, borrow or…
Bills unfortunately have a mind of their own and so they reproduce and pile up. Telephone calls, printing paper, Internet access — all generate bills even as you look to land that customer who will pay you in advance. So you will need some money before you can get customers to pay your way. In an ideal world, this is the capital the other founders and you would have brought into the business. As most of us discover this is never enough and even the visits to angel investors or VCs take up not just time, but money for travel and expenses such as a decent outfit to wear to those meetings. So let’s just admit it, we need more money than we thought we did.

If Sumerian clay tablets are to be believed, entrepreneurs have been borrowing from their relatives forever. So family, beginning with your parents and siblings, are your lenders of first resort. For those brave enough, in-laws and friends form the next round of prospective lenders. Only spouses of the founders should be exempt from this global scan of relatives, by blood or marriage, as a source of loans or working capital.

An alternate way to borrow from family or relatives is to have them guarantee a loan you take with the bank; this way they are not directly lending you the money, you get access to capital that you otherwise will not have and you are liable to the bank directly. While the relative who co-signs the loan is taking comparable risk whether they write you a cheque or co-sign at the bank, they don’t have the same near-term cash flow implications nor will they have to explain to their spouse why they are giving you money.

Even when you are successful in raising debt by having family or friends lend to your company, don’t lose sight of the fact that you want customers to be paying you and continue to pursue that.

Conserve what you have
It may no longer be in vogue to be told “A penny saved is a penny earned,” but it never was truer. A good entrepreneur is a penny pincher extraordinaire! Extraordinaire, because he can pinch ’em unseen without making a show of it, without giving his team a sense of being deprived or thinking that he is penny wise and pound foolish. Now might be a good time to learn the true meaning of the term ‘fiscal conservative’.

Question every expense, anything that would involve the outflow of money from your business, including advances such as rental deposits. Rethink salaries, always the hardest thing to do, first. Don’t get yourself a new or fancy office. Look at every dollar or rupee you spend — do you really need to do that? Your borrowing from family need not be confined to just money, it could be work tables and storage units. Bring in your own lunch, reuse both sides of the printer paper, manage your mobile phone bills and see if you can take the train rather than the plane. Every little bit adds up and fiscal prudence is best learnt in tough times and can be practised subsequently in good times.

If you practise all three strategies for raising money — getting your customers to underwrite you, borrowing from trusted sources and conserving what you already have — you will be in pretty good shape. And it is always the best time, when you are feeling safe and don’t need money desperately, to try and raise it from more angel investors, banks or VCs. Most importantly, you will be equipped to outlast the recession.

This article first appeared in print in the Hindu BusinessLine in February 2009.

Firing A Customer – When Should You Do It?

January 5, 2009 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Talking about firing a customer sounds blasphemous in the present climate of economic slowdown. Nevertheless talk about it we must , if only to get acquainted with the idea well before we actually have to do it. The idea of having to fire an employee, while unpleasant, has definitely crossed the minds of most entrepreneurs. Even the notion of letting go of a founder, for various reasons, is within the realm of possibility once the reality of an impending business divorce stares us in the face. But firing a customer seems suicidal or at the very least worth a close examination of someone’s head. Even in the best of economic times, it is hard to part with customers who contribute a significant amount of revenue. So, can there be a good reason to do so in hard times?

Five years after we began our software product business we had our first break-even year. The following year we made a real but nominal profit which, after one day of feeling good, made us face the fact that we would have to work even harder to grow or stay profitable. This, I will admit, was disheartening.

A close examination of where we were revealed that we had grown excessively dependent on one customer. This customer was taking us in a completely different direction from what we set had out. While the customer’s contribution had grown year-on-year (and was paying the bills), it would soon become non-scaleable, leaving us with little to spare for developing new products or alternate sources of revenue.

After much soul searching, Microsoft Excel crunching and internal debate, we decided to let go of this customer — not scale back — but truly let go. It was not easy; the customer was Japanese, we had spent five years cultivating the relationship, their CEO had practically adopted our CTO and their projects were technologically challenging and highly profitable. Over 18 months they went from nearly 60 per cent of our business to zero. And hard as it was, it turned out to be the right decision. In this instance, the relationship and our company survived the break and we were able to focus and execute in a scaleable manner elsewhere, which resulted in our subsequent acquisition.

So how do you know when to let go of a customer? What is the right way to go about it? How do you handle the fallout of such an action with your own employees and other stakeholders?

The deadbeat

If letting go of a customer could be easy at all, it would likely be letting go of the category of customers who are deadbeat — customers that don’t pay or those that pay many months later, act as though they are bestowing a favour on you and, in the interim, run up a bigger bill yet.

Most start-ups find firing deadbeat customers difficult for two reasons. First, an entrepreneur’s innate and at times unreal optimism that militates against terming a receivable as bad debt and the customer as delinquent. It is hard to separate the deadbeat from the merely late, particularly in India where we have a business culture of paying our suppliers late, if not last. Things get worse when a particular customer contributes significant revenue (at least on the P&L) but is a drain on your cash flow. Adding insult to injury, most such customers tend to be far bigger than the start-up and have greater resources available to them.

As an entrepreneur, hard as it might be, the moment you admit that you — a cash-strapped start-up — are financing the cash flow of a much larger company, is the moment you decide to let go of that customer. Having made the decision, you should pick the when and how with care. As with an employee or a founder, the assiduous application of common sense is critical to the termination of a relationship with a customer. Also, not every customer who pays late, occasionally or otherwise, may need to be terminated. Payment terms in your industry, your own reserves and cash flow planning should be factored into your decision. However, do not shy away from a quarterly review of your customers’ and your own receivables history to see if any of them are deadbeat; you may even be making some of them deadbeat by accepting such behaviour on their part.

The divergent

This group of customers is the hardest to let go of. They are a good source of revenue and profit for you, they pay on reasonable terms and promise continued growth. However, where they are headed and want you to go is very different from where you want to go. The good news is that if planned and executed well, such disengagement could be the win-win situation that business books talk about. This calls for honest self-assessment of where you want to go and regardless of how good the money or the relationship, if this customer will not take you there, then, the ability to disengage.

Such disengagement is best done by meeting the customer, explaining your assessment of the situation and your concerns. The customer may surprise you or at the very least agree and appreciate your quandary and be prepared to work with you for a transition. The longer you put off such a discussion and decision, the more difficult and messy it will get.

The difficult

With deadbeat or divergent customers you can at least put your finger on a cause. While this may not make it any easier to fire or disengage from them, the rationale for action will be clear. You can state and defend your reasons, even if they are unacceptable to the customers and sometimes to your own team members. There will, however, be times when you encounter customers who are neither deadbeat nor divergent and yet cause you no end of grief by being difficult. Such difficulty could range from the interpersonal — they don’t treat your staff or even their own staff well, to ethical issues — they expect you to do things that you feel are not correct. Again, these could be as simple as pre- or post-dating invoices or shipping documents going all the way to kickbacks. Others may merely be inconsiderate, wasting your staff’s time, nitpicking on every occasion or bad mouthing you.

In other words, customers can act just as any individuals could, in an insensitive, rude or inappropriate manner. As with friends or acquaintances, you are likely to overlook the first or the rare transgression.

However, many start-ups and entrepreneurs who would never put up with protracted abuse in their personal lives, tend to be tolerant or even masochistic with difficult customers. The toll this takes in the long-term is the primary reason you should fire such difficult customers. All too often, the brunt of such abuse will be felt by the front-line staff.

Unlike deadbeat and divergent customers whose impact is largely felt on your business first, the difficult ones will undermine the entrepreneur’s or the management’s credibility which is far more damaging. The need to act decisively with such difficult customers cannot be overstated.

Twice a year, review your customer list and their behavioural scorecard with your team.

Those customers who repeatedly behave in a difficult, divergent or deadbeat manner should be flagged and dealt with appropriately. This will allow your organisation to thrive like a garden that’s well weeded!

This article appeared originally in my Start Up Logic column in the Hindu Businessline

Four Things Entrepreneurs Can Do (More of) to Win

December 30, 2008 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Photo Victor Bezrukov via Compfight

In 45BC, Julius Caesar decreed the Julian Calendar. This formalized the then-new trend, that a calendar year begin in January—which for centuries before had started in March. Little did Caesar know that two millennia later, even with the minor modifications of the Gregorian calendar, the world at large would use this time to take stock.

With our own startup still finding its feet and so many good friends looking for jobs, I thought it might be appropriate to look at what entrepeneurs can do in 2009 to win. Even for those of you lucky enough to have a job, as Tom Peters said many years ago, you are the CEO of Me, Inc. and may want to check these out.

So here are 4 things that entrepreneurs need to do more of ~~in 2009~~

[a] Give – as in contribute freely, your knowledge and at least some of your time. Start with your employees, who may be worried about the company, their own jobs and unclear how best to contribute. Share your learnings with peers in your trade organizations, with customers and prospects – be it in a blog, newsletter or a speech. At the very least, you will realize that you are not in half as bad a situation as many others are. Giving is not only psychically fulfilling but is an investment in your own future that makes just plain good business. And on any given day, giving need not take more time than a longish lunch break!

[b] Reach out – get out in the field, in front of prospects & customers every ~~other~~ day. This means you—not just your marketing or sales person. You can’t talk to customers too much (in a single meeting you can, but then you may never be called back!) The silver lining in a downturn is that customers have time to talk. So reach out. You can start by calling on all those folks you haven’t connected with, just this last year, and work all the way back to those you haven’t spoken to since high school! Remember you are not trying to sell, but to connect.

[c] Listen – having reached out, it is important to listen. You would be surprised at the insights that arise when we truly listen to our customers. Often customer themselves gain clarity when they talk and so many of our own assumptions get uncovered and prove to be baseless. Listening requires both preparation as well as asking clarifying questions. Only those of us who do this well will get invited back.

[d] Simplify – this is a great time to simplify everything about our business and jobs. Simplify your products, your collateral, your sales pitch, your internal systems, your website – you get the picture. Make it easier for people to find you, to understand what it is you do, why you do it better than anyone else and why buying from you and using your products is going to simplify your customers’ own life and work. Simple is not easy – simple is hard! So the sooner you start the better.

In a downturn it’s easy to batten down the hatches and focus on the numbers – which is important, but we are never going to dig ourselves out of a hole, let alone grow or thrive with just a defensive game. So it is important to stay the course with Giving, Reaching out, Listening & Simplifying (GRLS). While this sounds like a lot of work, it is not. GRLS require passion, planning and perseverance – but aren’t these the very reasons you got into business in the first place?

You might want to check out the following two articles for interesting takes on this topic.

David Silverman in his HBSP blog, talks about Six Ways Entrepreneurs can Cope in 2009 and
Chris Herbert talks about The Four “R’s” of B2B Marketing in his blog.

Letting Go of a Founder

December 16, 2008 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

We’ve all read of horror stories of VCs ~~forcing~~ actions leading founders to leave their companies. But are there reasons for a founder to leave voluntarily or being asked to leave by other founders or the management team? Many a times, the answer is yes.

When people set out to start a business, a few jump in with little planning. Most though, do so after much forethought. Even when a good deal of planning has gone into starting a company, it is the rare entrepreneur who has actually thought about a scenario in which the founder leaves.

I realise that the very thought may sound nihilistic to some readers — can there be a start-up without the founder or can start-ups that survive without the founder do well or at the very least exist meaningfully?

The answer to both questions fortunately is yes. Apple is probably the best illustration of this, with Steve Wozniak leaving to pursue other interests and Steve Jobs being ousted by John Sculley – so not one, but both founders left (or had to leave). Of course Jobs’ return and subsequent success is a matter for another article altogether.

So what should a founder or founding team consider about the possibility of one or more founders leaving, voluntarily or otherwise, the company they founded? Is this inevitable? Can this be avoided? Or should this be planned for and if so how?

Before we examine these questions, it’s worth reflecting that few companies — Microsoft under Bill Gates or Dell Computer under Michael Dell being the exceptions — survive, grow and actually thrive under the same helmsman from founding to widely acclaimed success. Change at the top is more the norm than the exception. However start-ups, particularly in their early days, are so closely identified with their founders — and founders with their companies — the change, of a founder leaving or being asked to leave, can be traumatic. So it is best planned for and, hopefully, never actually encountered.

Leaving voluntarily

I remember the day when one of my partners informed me that another of our founding team (there were five of us founders) wanted to quit. We had not been at it for a year and the fire of a new adventure still burned in our heart and flushed our cheeks — so it came as a shock!

In this instance, the issue was one of personal belief regarding religion in the workplace. I am not sure, to that day, we had even thought about religion (or its absence in my view and excessive presence in the departing partner’s view). This is an instance where a founder wanted to leave voluntarily as he felt there was an irreconcilable difference in personal beliefs.

There can be numerous reasons for a founder to leave voluntarily, many of which may have nothing to do with the business itself — family commitments (wife wants to relocate) or health reasons (allergies in Bangalore) are examples.

Of course, there could be several other reasons — loss of faith in business partners; the gradual realisation that a start-up is not for him or her; or the thought of a Web-based cobbler service no longer exciting them — there are as many reasons for a founder to leave as there are people.

Having an inter se — Latin for “between or amongst themselves” — agreement amongst the founding team members is the best way to prepare for this eventuality. While the heartache that follows the departure of a founder may take time to dissipate, such an agreement will minimise the business impact. Also, the fact that such an agreement is in place prepares the concerned parties to consider the possibility of a founder leaving and address the potential causes up-front.

A good inter se agreement would at the least cover issues pertaining to shareholding: Do insiders or the company get first right of refusal? Will the leaving partner be permitted to still hold some or all of his or her shares? If so, will he or she retain voting rights? If the company bought the shares, how would these be valued? What would the payment terms be? How would the death (strictly speaking this would be an involuntary departure) of a partner be handled?

A good corporate lawyer would be able to pull together a reasonably well thought out inter se agreement. Most people are comfortable having health insurance and don’t blame it as the cause when they fall sick. However, many folk balk at having an inter se agreement believing this may sow the seeds for the undesirable to happen.

As someone who’s been there more than once, I would say that you are better of thinking and planning for all eventualities and this will never be the cause of a partner leaving. And you will be glad it is in place, when they do actually leave.

Forced to Leave

There are primarily two different stakeholders — the Board of Directors and the management team — who may force a founder to leave.

In venture-funded companies — most of which have active boards — the board could be the primary driver for change, particularly if a founder is the CEO of the company. This could arise for good reason — if the company is growing faster than the CEO/founder is, someone else should be brought in as a replacement.

The founder, in this instance, could then focus on other areas such as key technology, marketing or other contributions.But if he is not prepared for the shift, he may be asked to leave.

Alternately, a founder may be asked to leave for not-so-good reasons such as having rubbed powerful board members the wrong way.

For such founder/CEOs of venture-backed companies, having an explicit employment agreement could avert dismissal under unfavourable terms or without cause.

The other founders or management team, particularly in closely held start-ups, can also force a founder to leave.

Again, the reasons could range from the appropriate, namely incompetence, unethical behaviour or sexual harassment, to the inappropriate — politicking with other members of the founding or senior team in the company.

The best way to address this is to have a clearly spelt out code of conduct, periodic performance reviews (including peer feedback) and open communication so that there are no surprises.

The inter se agreement is once again a good safety net for all parties in this instance.

Asked to leave

This is the hardest thing to both plan for and execute. While asking a founder to leave may not sound that different from forcing them to leave, it is not trivial and is the most likely of the three situations an entrepreneur will be faced with.

When a founder is caught stealing, for instance, the decision can be black-and-white and he can be terminated or forced to leave.

However, it is much harder to confront and tackle issues that have to do with cultural mismatch or personal behaviour that, while legal, show poor judgment or the more common issue of self aggrandisement at the cost of the company or its employees.

The best way to address this situation is to ask ourselves the question, if the person doing this was an employee or anyone other than a founder, would they be asked to leave. If the answer is ‘yes’ for an employee, it ought to be ‘yes’ for a founder.

This is, of course, easier said than done — for founders have great emotive appeal — to the rest of the company, the community and, of course, to themselves!

However, as our mothers taught us, a stitch in time, does indeed, save nine!

Here experience and my scuffed knees speak — all those start-ups that avoid confronting this sooner, end up regretting it later.

(This article was published in the Business Line print edition dated December 15, 2008)

5 Things to Do When You Lose Your Job!

December 14, 2008 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Photo Credit: myCAES via Compfight

Last week, I began getting a flurry of invites to connect on LinkedIn from ex-colleagues, all of whom were at the same firm — a sure indication that pink slips were in the offing! Alas, I was right, as the entire location got the axe on Monday. I suspect the first day every engineer in the place was in a state of shock, not to mention folks in finance, admin and marketing. It was hard to see folks that I admired, liked and even loved, struggle with what to do next – even as I counseled some, made calls for others and helped with resumes.

As a veteran (survivor, victim and instigator of) numerous layoffs stretching from my first week at work in August 1988 through the mid 2000s, I thought I should share my learnings on the Top 5 things to do when you lose your job. ~~Not s~~ Surprisingly my first list looked very similar to the Top 5 things to do while you still have a job! Further thought and reflection helped refine it. So here goes….

Plan: Write down a set of objectives for next 90 days
As the man said, when you don’t know where you want to go, any road will take you there or NOT! So it better to know where you want to go first and then we can figure out how to get there. So get a plain piece of paper and a pencil and write down a set of 90 day objectives. This could be as forward looking as “I’ll figure out what I want over the next three years” to “I’ll have at least six/twelve/twenty four interviews.” Break this down into what you will get done in the next 5 days, 15 days, 30 days, and every two weeks beyond.
Create Collateral: Get your resume re-done
With the 90 day objectives in front of you, create at least two versions of your resume/curriculum vitae
- The first one is a plain vanilla, one pager (or one sheet, if you have to go to two sides of a hardcopy resume) that highlights your skills, summarizes accomplishment and a quick employment summary. This is useful firstly for yourself to hone in on what you want to highlight and particularly for headhunters to get a sense for who you are.
- You can do a second, more detailed one (build on the first, don’t waste time), that adds an objective up front (what are you looking for) and expands on specifics of what you have done or skills you possess to make you the right person for the stated objective. This you tweak for each company/interview that you appear for. Feel free to bring in an updated CV to the actual interview, particularly if there’s been a phone screen.

Doing your CV also means making yourself easy to find – so update your profile on LinkedIn, Spock or other business networks that may be relevant to your business. Regardless of your feelings or advice you may get to the contrary, it is worth posting your resume to the job sites – be they Indeed.com, Dice.com, Monster.com, Shine.com, Naukri.com or whatever specialized job sites may be there. Don’t forget your alumni sites, regardless of how long ago you graduated or it was only an executive ed program you attended at that school.

Reach out: Work the phone/email/fax
Be clear that you are in sales, regardless of what job you are looking for. Sales is a numbers game – so you have to set a clear target on how many folks you will call, how many mails you will send out and if you have to fax stuff, you’ll do it! Ten (10) is a nice round number, as are of course, 15, 20 or 25. Set realistic goals for the number of mails you’ll send or calls you’ll make EACH DAY. And then just do it every morning. Yep, start your day with this. Once you connect with someone, or when you can never connect with someone you are trying to reach, you’ll figure out what’s the best time, if it is not the morning. You don’t have the luxury of “I didn’t like how he spoke to me,” “Will she think I am desperate?” “I’m not sure I want to work there” – regardless of the truth of the these statements, they are EXCUSES – just move to the next call/email on your list.

Track
When you lose your job, the only thing certain is that you are going to have a few lousy days. The best way to keep these short, is to stay busy meaningfully which is best done by tracking two critical things.
I find using a daily diary or a notebook with one page per day is the best way to get this done. You can carry it with you and there is no boot-up time nor do you lose it because the battery died. I know folks who use MS Excel and a diary – choose your favorite method but do it!

Volunteer
Instead of sitting at home or in your cubicle (till your last day), get out and keep yourself busy. Volunteer to help out at your friends’ startup, at a local VC firm, at a non-profit – with your specific skills – be it letter (copy-)writing, programming, project management or basket weaving. Firstly this prevents you from moping around the house and bothering the spouse, kids or pets; more importantly it keeps your game sharp through practice at something real it helps you make new contacts, potentially learn a few new things and finally builds psychic karma for doing good. If it opens your eyes to new opportunities or insights about yourself, that’s icing on the cake.