Entrepreneurship

01 Nov 2017
Sticky Post By Posted in Business Headlines, Entrepreneurship Permalink

Amazon’s HQ2 RFP Provided the Roadmap for a More Competitive Birmingham

Sticky Post By On November 1, 2017

237 Disappointments

Amazon received 238 submissions from 238 different cities for its request for proposal (RFP) regarding its second headquarters, HQ2. In the wake of the 237 losers will be millions of dollars and tremendous amount of energy and resources spent trying to promote hundreds of cities that didn’t qualify for even the most basic RFP requirements.

Birmingham, AL is likely to be one of the 237 disappointed cities because, for the most part, we don’t meet the minimum qualifications to submit a competitive bid

But that didn’t stop us from launching a big and—presumably expensive—advertising campaign replete with huge temporary monuments shaped like Amazon shipping boxes, oversized Amazon Dash buttons and a dozen or more feel good news stories both paid and unpaid in an attempt to woo Jeff Bezos and his selection committee.

Someone is going to win some advertising awards and get some really great news clips to frame for their office walls. It was creative and well executed. Unfortunately, much like the ill-conceived and almost criminally executed bid to land the last DNC convention, #bringAtoB will likely net the same economic impact with a monster bill to pay for the effort.

Yes, I’m one of the jerks who pushed back on this from day one of the campaign and have been called a lot of names on social media. People have been pushing the false equivalent of Mercedes choosing to build their plant in Vance as justification for opening threadbare pockets and spending money we hardly have. However, I have been far from alone in questioning the allocation of this money, effort and time when our city has so many opportunities to improve.

Simply throwing stones at the #bringAtoB campaign is not helpful however. Here is how and where that money, time and energy could have been used to move toward a city and economic environment that would have made us much more competitive not only for the Amazon bid but also for attracting other new opportunities to the area.

Provide Forgivable Small Business Loans

99.7% of the companies in the US are classified as small businesses and those businesses employ 48% of the total workforce. Many of the largest companies in Birmingham are shrinking their head count as software and technology automation requires less human capital. Regions Bank laid off approximately 260 people last year alone. Bradley (formerly BABC) laid off 13% of its administrative staff during that same time period. US Steel laid off 1,100 workers at the end of 2015.

For the sake of argument, let’s say $200k was directly allocated to the promotion of #bringAtoB. That could have translated into 10 small business loans of $20k to vetted and qualified small business operators to expand or even start their business. The BBA, Big Communications, City of Birmingham and others involved in #bringAtoB could provide additional support or resources to those new opportunities using the same amount of time and effort spent creating and launching the Amazon campaign

That’s 10 new businesses, employers and tax paying entities created for the same amount of money and time. If you took the perspective as an investor, this would be like placing 10 bets with the same amount of money as you would have placed on a single bet with a lousy prospectus. Job growth in Birmingham continues to come from small businesses and entrepreneurs- not the same big industry companies we have relied on since the 1960s to create new jobs and better opportunities.

Limit the Economic Development Fragmentation

We have the BBA, Tech Birmingham, Rev Birmingham, EDPA, Innovation Depot, Innovate Birmingham, UAB, Rotary, City Hall, City Council, Jefferson County Commission and others working on separate and disparate economic development programs. All of those organizations are funded by private contributions, membership fees, sponsorships, tax dollars or grant money. Those funding sources are finite, but we have individual groups spending money on individual staffs, salaries, operational expenses, strategic planning sessions, events, professional service providers, committee meetings, promotional advertising, grant writers and more.

The cost of that duplication is massively wasteful. Further, without a cohesive approach between all those individual groups, we end up with competing priorities and mediocre performance. As one of my mentors used to say, “there are only so many nickels in the jar.” We need to be better stewards of how we spend our limited resources. That starts with collaborating on a macro scale and setting a longer-term vision.

Create a City-Wide Transportation Plan

One of the primary requirements of the Amazon RFP was a campus with direct access to mass transit. While Birmingham has several rail spurs that run along former industrial sites, we don’t have what most cities would consider efficient and accessible mass transit. Organizations have worked to fill gaps in that plan with efforts like the Zyp Bikeshare program, but a long-term, workable transportation strategy has largely eluded us. We haven’t managed to come up with a way to connect the city with the surrounding area- like the suburbs which would provide a large percentage of the human capital required for a corporate campus the size of Amazon’s HQ2. We need to spend the money to come up with a comprehensive and effective mass-transit strategy that drags us into the 21st century.

Entrepreneurs should be Leading Entrepreneurial Efforts

By last count, there at least six local or regional organizations that exist to directly or indirectly promote the formation and growth of entrepreneurs and startups. None of those organizations are actually led by an entrepreneur. A few of them don’t have anyone on their executive staff that has been an entrepreneur or even worked for a small business or startup. There is no doubt those people can play a crucial role in the support and success of the emerging business ecosystem but we need actual entrepreneurs to be in those leadership roles. There is no amount of research or relative proximity that can replace the kinesthetic experience of being an entrepreneur or business owner.

Work Toward the Next Opportunity Now

We should be able to self-critique and have tough conversations about what we must change without the fear that doubt creates preventing us from being open to our opportunities. While celebration of incremental improvement is crucial, we must not accept shallow victories as the sum total of our achievements. We have a long way to go and we must be able to talk openly and honestly about those shortcomings and how we want to work to fix them.

As we stand in 2017, we aren’t qualified for Amazon’s HQ2. We can argue the semantics of the RFP’s wording to justify in our minds how we manage to qualify, or we can start looking inward and filling the gaps highlighted by Amazon. The RFP did provide us a potential roadmap to being far more competitive and attractive to companies like Amazon in the future. It will take a collective, long-term and disciplined effort to fill those gaps and we need to pursue that challenge with as much energy and resources as we spent on oversized Amazon shipping boxes and faux-Dash buttons.

Photo via Creative Commons user Anxo Cunningham

24 Jul 2017
Sticky Post By Posted in Engagement Selling System, Entrepreneurship, Hallux Training, Sales, Start-ups, Strategy, Training With No Comments Permalink

Hustle U is Now In Session

Sticky Post By On July 24, 2017 With No Comments

The only thing better than failing fast is not failing at all. There’s definitely a non-negotiable learning curve to becoming an entrepreneur, but the right tools can make that curve flatter and cheaper. That’s why we’re building Hustle U—essential classes for startups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs.

Three classes are available now: Creating Your Performance Evaluation Process ($19), Building an Effective Sales Team (free) and Strategic Planning for Entrepreneurs ($49). We’ll be adding more classes soon. Let us know what you’d most like to learn by leaving a comment or talking to us on social. Or just call us at 205-530-3722.

19 Jul 2017
Sticky Post By Posted in Entrepreneurship With No Comments Permalink

Episode 2: I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Sticky Post By On July 19, 2017 With No Comments

In this podcast, we talk about the importance of the startup ecosystem. From providing cohorts and mentors to creating a culture of expertise, the startups around you will have an effect on whether you succeed or fail.

This can be challenging, because building relationships with people who aren’t your consumers or your backers can feel off-task, but that support system can help in ways you can’t anticipate. In our example, we talk about a local Birmingham neighborhood where retail storefronts looked out for each other.

19 Jun 2017
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Is Birmingham Shipt Out of Luck?: What Amazon’s Whole Foods Acquisition Means for Shipt

Sticky Post By On June 19, 2017 With No Comments

Within 10 days of Shipt announcing it had secured an additional $40 million through series B funding, Amazon announced it had purchased Whole Foods for almost $14 billion, and Instacart announced it will become the only official partner of Publix in 2020 and offer delivery service through every Publix location, beginning in Shipt’s Birmingham backyard.

“Alexa, Bring Me a Dozen Bananas.”

Amazon has already been delivering on-demand grocery pickups through its AmazonFresh service in limited locations. With the addition of the 431 Whole Foods locations and the investment Amazon has already made in advanced logistics, it’s almost a given they will start offering pickup and delivery services in each of those locations. Shipt points to the 43 cities they’re currently servicing in the Southeast and Midwest markets as validation of demand and their ability to scale. Amazon likely agrees. With their new Whole Foods retail footprint, an estimated 65 million Amazon Prime subscribers already paying annual memberships to the online giant, and Amazon’s ability to recreate the basic architecture of Shipt’s app/ interface/ automation tech, what is really stopping them from supplanting Shipt?

Instacart Moving Into B and C Markets

Shipt specifically targeted smaller markets in the regions of the country where Instacart and others had a weak or non-existent presence. Last year, Instacart started offering delivery in smaller markets and found enough success to ink their recent exclusive deal with Publix. This is a big deal as Publix is a major partner for Shipt and has more than 1,100 locations in the Southeast—with 773 of those in Florida alone. Shipt will probably still be able to offer delivery from Publix locations but won’t be considered an official partner—which means any marketing fees, promotional consideration, or branding received from Publix will go away. If that’s the case, those shops become far less profitable and Shipt will either have to raise subscriber fees or eliminate popular Publix as an option for Shipt members.

Is the $60 Million in Funding a Problem for Shipt?

Instacart raised $400 million on a $3.4 billion valuation in March of this year. In total, they have raised $675 million over seven rounds. They currently offer service in more than 1,200 cities. That translates into $562,333 of investment per city. Shipt has raised $65.2 million over three rounds which translates into more than $1.5 million of investment per city. The bulk of that funding, $40 million, was announced just days before the Instacart/Publix deal and a week before the Amazon/Whole Foods deal. Is their future valuation now lower than what it was last week? Assuming they’ll need even more capital to compete against Amazon and Instacart, how will that affect future fundraising?

Don’t Forget About Walmart

Walmart has also been testing its own delivery service by paying their employees small fees for delivering products to customers that are on the employee’s way home. Time will tell if this becomes a meaningful segment for Walmart, but with a $219 billion market cap, Walmart can launch whatever service it wants in the same smaller cities Shipt already services.

What’s Next for Shipt

There is likely going to be some form of pivot coming from Shipt, and no one outside of their boardroom really knows what that will be. Anything is possible—from going after even more funding to compete in the space to aggressively shopping Shipt for acquisition. Bill Smith, the founder of Shipt, is a savvy and accomplished entrepreneur. From an outside perspective, he has built a solid team, and the culture within Shipt is reported to be strong. All of which will serve them well as they consider their options in this new landscape. Amazon may choose not to pursue delivery. Walmart may not enter the market. It’s entirely possible that Shipt finds a way of successfully competing with Amazon, Instacart, and Walmart even if they plan to pursue the same opportunities as Shipt. If they do pull off a successful competitive strategy, they will have cemented their reputation as the big startup “win” Birmingham has been hoping they are.

 

23 Jan 2017
Sticky Post By Posted in Entrepreneurship Permalink

Entrepreneurs Should Know the Difference Between Can’t and Won’t

Sticky Post By On January 23, 2017
Retro style image of a rustic wooden sign in an autumn park with the words Courage - Fear offering a choice of reaction and attitude with arrows pointing in opposite directions in a conceptual image.

Fear, skepticism and stubbornness are necessary for entrepreneurs. These things keep you between the ditches and make sure the company you’re driving stays on all four wheels. Questioning the wisdom of each action and assuming the worst possible outcome are things we obsess about and spend sleepless nights contemplating.

“…the terrible and the terrific spring from the same source, and that what grants life its beauty and magic is not the absence of terror and tumult but the grace and elegance with which we navigate the gauntlet.” – Maria Popova

When considering solutions, two words tend to come up repeatedly—can’t and won’t.

Can’t is when you are physically, spiritually, operationally, or structurally unable to do something—you don’t have the option to do it.

You can’t fly, see through walls, or run as fast as a car without mechanical advantages (or Kryptonian genes).

Won’t means there is a decision being made. The decider has some optionality. They can choose to do something or not.

I could go run a marathon but I won’t because it seems really hard, and I get winded going to the refrigerator.

As entrepreneurs find themselves making important decisions, won’t is often misrepresented as can’t.

Can’t is easy to say. Can’t is easy to justify and explain. Can’t ends the conversation. Can’t means you will likely take fewer risks, endure fewer setbacks and in the process, find justification in that risk-mitigating approach.

Won’t can be painful. Won’t is much harder to admit. Won’t is the honest answer most of the time. As entrepreneurs, we sometimes live in won’t but call it can’t.

Won’t limits risk like can’t, but there is far more sincerity and self-awareness in won’t. We had the choice and decided we wouldn’t do it. We considered the opportunity and decided not to do it even though we could.

Won’t can be the right answer but we don’t like categorizing it that way. We are more comfortable telling ourselves and others it can’t be done. Won’t begs for debate and further consideration and we should be more willing to engage in that discussion.

21 Dec 2016
Sticky Post By Posted in Entrepreneurship, Start-ups Permalink

Read This Before You Join an Accelerator Program

Sticky Post By On December 21, 2016

I’m not creative and have never had that moment of total clarity where I had an idea worth turning into a product and company. I’m a services entrepreneur and love what I do. However, founders and startups comprise a large segment of my client list. While I’ve never participated in an accelerator program as a founder of a startup, I’ve been involved in programs as a mentor, resource and even in organizational design projects. Over the course of the last few years, I’ve become increasingly fascinated with accelerator and incubator programs.

At their core, they represent an amazing approach to helping startups gain perspective and traction as they throw themselves into making the next great thing. What’s even more amazing is talking to the people who’ve participated in them. I’ve tried to capture the things they’ve learned and shared with me. Hopefully, this will help aspiring participants make some decisions about which program may be right for them.

There are some globally-recognized programs that have impressive lists of graduates with several branches throughout the world. Techstars, Y-Combinator and others are the Ivy League of accelerators. They take the top 3% of the applicant pool. Their programming, mentorship and cohort selection breeds success on a scale not realized on other platforms. If you are selected to participate in either of those programs, you definitely should.

Most startups won’t be granted a spot in one those programs, but with the proliferation of smaller accelerators, you may find some that are worthwhile. There are several new programs gaining an incredible reputation after only a few cohorts.

First, let me start with the basics.

  • Most accelerators will offer some kind of seed/award/prize money for being in the program. You don’t always get it up front. You may get it in a series of smaller payments or after clearing certain hurdles.
  • These programs are broken into cohorts between 5 and 20 companies depending on their format and programming. It is most common to see 10 companies in a cohort.
  • Programs usually take place over 12-14 weeks.
  • Within these accelerators, you will’ve some kind of administrator or director, an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), mentors and investors. Some programs will have a stratified management layer of managing and non-managing “members.”

These accelerators can attract some amazing talent and be a critical springboard for your startup—provided you pick one best positioned for you.

Here are a couple of things to consider when picking a program:

Who’s Running it?

The directors, EIR and management should be successful entrepreneurs. You should look for programs where the leadership has been successful in a specific aspect of business where you also need to succeed. If you must generate revenue and scale your business, an EIR who exited their previous company with $2 million in debt may not be a good fit for you. Accelerators can become a form of “business welfare” where friends and associates who are otherwise unqualified to serve in those capacities get lucrative EIR positions or board seats.

It’s also a huge benefit when the leadership has been through an accelerator program—especially a prestigious one. Nate Schmidt of the Velocity Accelerator in Birmingham is a Techstars graduate and will be able to relate to his cohorts in a powerful way.

General and Specialized Accelerators

Specialization is an encouraging new trend in accelerators. Instead of operating general “tech” accelerators, savvy programs are starting to look for the underserved or emerging industries ripe for innovation. The Dynamo Accelerator in Chattanooga and Boomtown Healthtech in Boulder are great examples of this kind of specialization. By focusing on a specific market, they can attract better companies and highly qualified industry experts as mentors and programming that focuses on the specific challenges of that industry.

Funding Sources

Consider the motivations of those who are funding the program. For accelerators that have industry or venture capital support as their main source of operating cash, you may see a higher level of execution and greater sense of accountability than those backed primarily by academic or municipal stakeholders. For the former, they are participating to make money, benefit from the innovation created and boost their prestige as an accelerator. For the latter, the PR alone is often worth the cost of the program. They are largely spending tax money from a general budget or endowments that were granted out of philanthropic interests. If it is successful, that’s a bonus, but they win simply by participating and launching the program. That isn’t to assert those can’t be successful or that industry giants don’t get significant positive PR from sponsoring an accelerator. Understanding what the “money” gets from providing the funding is worth considering.

Benefits Provided other than Money

Excellent programming, mentors, EIRs and leadership can make an under-funded or new accelerator incredibly worthwhile. The inverse is true as well. Top programs should be actively helping you connect with important outside resources and finding new customers even before the program is over.

The mentors can be an incredible source of business deals and networking—provided they are the kinds of mentors you need. Are you building the next great wearable technology? Maybe you should take a second look at that roster of mentors dominated by bankers and lawyers.

Participants in the Cohorts

I’ve heard from dozens of accelerator graduates who’ve talked about how much they gained from the other participants in their cohort. These success stories range from finding their new CIO to merging with another graduate.

Are the other companies as hungry as you are—financially and ambitiously—or are they simply taking easy money to half-heartedly pursue a side project while they maintain their full-time salaried job? I’ve seen some startups play the system by participating in as many accelerators, launch programs and competitions as possible to generate cash. I know of one company that participated in three programs in 2016 alone.

Are they from various parts of the country or world or are they all from the same place? That may not matter to you, but if every company comes from the same town, you’ll sacrifice the unique perspectives only a diverse cohort can provide.

Choosing to participate in an accelerator is a big decision. The time it takes to even apply is a significant commitment. Make sure you consider what you want to get out of the experience and whether the programs you are considering can deliver.

18 Feb 2016
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5 Things Startup Competitions Get Wrong

Sticky Post By On February 18, 2016 With No Comments

Every city seems to be hosting startup contests where founders pitch their companies to a dais of “experts” live on stage in an effort to win some funding. Sometimes these competitions are massive and worth millions but many are much smaller; awarding $5k to $20k. It’s within these newer and smaller competitions that I have noticed a recurring series of mistakes.

1. The judges are not experts in entrepreneurial businesses

You see this when sponsors become the judges or the panel includes commercial bankers who are really not business-builders. I love bankers and many of my friends are a part of that industry but they are institutionally bad at valuating and understanding start-up businesses. They tend to judge a business idea in terms of if they would give them a loan and for how much.

2. Contestants are often post-funded companies that have been in business for a year or more

When you are awarding $10k to a company that already has employees and overhead, you have given them 6 weeks of operating costs. That $10k could have launched a prefunded company’s business plan and allowed them to get a credible pitch together to secure additional funds. Instead, you have floated an established company’s payroll for a few weeks. You’ve created almost zero value. If the contest is awarding $100k or more, that’s a different story but when you are giving away small amounts of prize money, focus on those for whom it has the greatest impact.

3. The best idea almost never wins

Based on the sponsors, the event’s host, the constituency of the audience and other non-business-related factors, the least deserving of companies often win these events. There are always ulterior motives at play and when those are allowed to propagate, you see some truly awful business models walking away with money that would have served a greater purpose being set on fire in the parking lot. Nobody wants to admit this happens- but it does.

4. The event tries to be “like” Shark Tank

As soon as one of these competitions invokes the Shark Tank name in its promotional materials, it immediately loses credibility with me. Mark Cuban is not coming to your event. It is a TV show that is 50% substance and 50% manufactured drama. The best contests hold non-public and lengthy discovery sessions between the companies and the judges. Financial details are poured over and every assumption is challenged. By the end of that process, a business plan has been credibly reviewed and vetted. When those judges name a winner, it’s a very carefully considered verdict. The contestants come away with invaluable insight and advice from experts that will benefit them in perpetuity.

5. Read the fine print for the award money

More needs to be done to explain to contestants any requirements that will be imposed on claiming the prize money after it is “awarded.” This includes details around benchmarking or timing thresholds required before the money will be made available. What tax implications exist and was that explained to them? One competition I watched closely actually had a very short window where the winners could claim their award and it required hours of drafting financial reports and updating the business plan. At one point, the 2nd place winner decided the $6k they won wasn’t worth the effort and forfeited the money.

It is truly outstanding that more of these competitions are popping up all over the country. These events can be future-altering opportunities for start-up businesses or they can be thinly-disguised advertising events for the paying sponsors.

As with most innovative ideas, the shift toward commercialization happens at some point and the original altruistic motivations are supplanted by the attraction to revenue and marketability. We’ve seen this shift happen with the best events. If you think that AOL purchasing TechCrunch won’t turn Disrupt into an event where sponsors look to sticker-up everything that moves like a NASCAR, you may be sincerely disappointed.

If organizers can focus on creating the best possible value for their sponsors while maintaining the worth of the experience for contestants, these competitions can help launch the next big idea.

28 Dec 2015
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2016 Will be the Year Successful Startups Get Real

Sticky Post By On December 28, 2015 With No Comments

Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I got a front row seat to the explosion of pop-culture as entertainment. Not the least of which was MTV’s first season of The Real World. That show can be blamed for the proliferation of reality TV with its promise of high viewership, low production cost and questionable entertainment. It also created a pop-culture meme of its time with the tagline, in part, being “What happens when people stop being polite and start getting real?”

For years, it seems, we have collectively gone out of our way to be polite when discussing startups that have spent millions and returned little profits. We have excused companies who have clearly focused more on their planned exits than building an actual enterprise. Company perks like free food, ping-pong tables and dedicated napping stations were celebrated as signals of an organization’s greatness.

For those who work within or closely follow the startup community, you can see increasing calls for companies to get real. While startup companies still hold a highly desirable reputation among the media, venture capitalists and the millennial workforce, there were some warning signs that all was not well. We started to see some high-profile examples of how the promise and excitement of some companies may be more sizzle than steak.

Theranos was very publically lanced (pun intended) by the Wall Street Journal when it cited some research showing questionable reliability in the screening tech it promotes. It also cited what could be called revisionist story telling on the part of their founder Elizabeth Holmes. Both the WSJ and Theranos have doubled-down on their versions of the story.

Because Theranos is trying to make health care screening and monitoring less costly and more widely available, they have been appropriately celebrated for years. Unfortunately, the actual application of their efforts is drawing worthwhile scrutiny and the intoxication with their story is starting to transition into a nasty hangover.

Twitter laid off 336 people this year; about 8% of its workforce at that time. This number is dwarfed by the thousands of people laid off in heavy industries like steel production and coal mining but it sent shivers through the tech world as people realized even a brand behemoth like Twitter had to accept a certain level of financial and market reality.

Layoffs, in general, are on the rise among tech companies of all sizes. The number of people hired and fired in the same fiscal year is growing and those recently short-termed employees are less likely to accept tales of explosive growth and dedicated investors at face value when considering employment at that “next” startup.

Square has demonstrated the ability to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in the last few years as burn rates in the tech sector continue to expand even as investor money starts to tighten. I’m not intentionally targeting Jack Dorsey by using two of his companies as example in this article but Jack is now trying to perform two turnarounds simultaneously at companies that are supposed to be in growth mode, not survival mode. By all accounts, Jack is just as capable of pulling this off as anyone and is certainly showing the dedication needed to get it done.

There are currently 140 companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more. The key word here is valuation. The simple way of illustrating how ridiculous valuations have become is to remind everyone there are only 51 US companies currently listed by Inc Magazine generating $1 billion in annual revenue. Before you send me a bunch of hate mail for comparing revenue and valuation without considering exit values, assets or goodwill payments, recognize that valuations are largely a conspiracy between start-ups looking for cash and VCs looking to attract more Limited Partners. VCs with a paltry 10% success rate routinely attract more private money every year. Valuations are works of fiction.

Whether its inflated valuations or global instability in public markets, private investment money is drying up at a statistically-material rate. VCs saw a decline in funds raised by 34% in Q3 when compared to Q2 this year. It also represented the slowest period for raising money since 2013. IPOs also under-delivered in 2015. As published by the International Business Times, “According to PitchBook, this money (IPOs) amounted to about $64 billion on 860 deals during the first 11 months of this year and about $94 billion on 994 deals over all of last year.”

As we close out 2015, it has become increasingly important for the tech and startup communities to become more self-aware, transparent and start getting real with everyone. Whether those communities are willing to pull back the proverbial kimono or not, there will be a reckoning with investors, employees and customers if they continue to paint their worth in endless streams of run-rates and growth trajectories.

Employees who were once more attracted to the name or promise of a startup are now more inclined to consider how stable a company is and whether they will be back on the job market within a few months chasing the next unicorn-in-valuation-only. Many of the Twitter employees laid off were rehired within literal minutes of becoming unemployed but that not likely to happen in perpetuity.

Investors who became VC LPs because they were tired of the 7% – 8% annual return for their public stocks and equities are now reassessing their risk-tolerance as the public markets have fluctuated significantly in Q4. The play-money investors were spending on longshot startup seed investments just won’t be as plentiful in the next 18-24 months as most pundits believe we have passed the peak of private investing for the current cycle.

People have already started to stop being polite about the performance of startups and established tech companies. Questions about profitability and long term viability are being asked with less guarded phrasing and with expectations they can be credibly answered by founders who have taken millions in private funding.

The companies that get real and are willing to not only tell us about the warts in their startup business but actively work on solutions for those imperfections will stand out from the crowd and attract the best employees, most dedicated investors, highest-value board members and loyal customers. When they make a mistake, they will own it immediately and without equivocation. They will build a company more focused on growth and durability than maximizing its exit offers. In 2016, the companies that are willing to get real will win while their competitors hope everyone continues to be polite about their lack of success.

14 Dec 2015
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Who are you Rooting for in 2016?

Sticky Post By On December 14, 2015 With No Comments

Last year, I posed the same question for 2015 and the response was far greater than I expected, so I decided to do it again this year. After spending the last year with entrepreneurial companies all over the country, this list was hard to create. For the sake of brevity, I had to intentionally leave people out who should be celebrated here. Here is my very abbreviated list for 2016.

Jason Provonsha, Warble

Jason is a founding partner of Warble, a beacon technology start-up within the Lamppost Group of companies. Their tech allows marketers to reach audiences and engage them based on physical locations that range from several thousand feet to a single square foot. As marketers double down on the logic that where someone see your message is as important as how it’s seen, Warble is already on the leading edge of this tech.

Jason is as pragmatic as he is hard-working so he is easy to like immediately. He will describe the tick-tock he hears in his head as he focuses on generating revenue to replace the seed investment Warble received. This practicality, coupled with some very compelling usage cases, creates the sense that Warble is already started on the “I knew them when” trajectory. There are many challenges in front of them but when you spend time with Jason and his team, you feel their commitment to winning.

Adeeba Kahn and Jason Templin, Shu Shop

I had the pleasure to serve as Adeeba and Jason’s mentor during their recent entry in Rev Birmingham’s Big Pitch Competition. Their collaboration will create Birmingham’s first ramen shop and izakaya (Japanese-style pub) in the downtown theater district. Renovating a space that has been empty for more than 30 years and creating a concept that fosters regular patrons driving a sense of community in a once derelict part of town, the anticipation surrounding the opening of Shu Shop is incredible.

Adeeba does not currently possess a filter between her brain and her mouth in the most entertaining and endearing manner possible. Jason is chasing a dream and the passion he has for the food, the izakaya concept and creating a neighborhood space near the Alabama Theater comes across immediately. The difficulty of succeeding in the restaurant business is well-documented but they are tapping into an unmet need and creating a market in Birmingham. Their brilliance might be in the simplicity and sincerity of what Shu Shop will become.

Sam Eskildsen, Main Street Family Urgent Care

As private health care in the US becomes exceedingly challenging for providers and patients alike, there is a growing need for urgent care facilities. The concept of these purpose-built facilities is nothing new in urban and suburban areas but Sam is building a chain of Urgent Care facilities in rural markets. These areas have been underserved for decades and as rural private medical practices fold under the difficulty created by the Medicare/Medicaid and Affordable Health Care Acts, patients no longer have access to quality health care in these areas.

Make no mistake, Sam is a capitalist. The model he has created will generate some healthy returns and allow them to grow from the facilities they currently have into additional markets. Sam opted to go out and solicit his investors one by one without brokers or other institutional funders. He raised a significant amount of capital in 18 months based on the strength of the model. His tireless work ethic led to Main Street opening its first fully functional location within 2 years of creating his business plan draft. Public and private health care will continue to create a myriad of hurdles to overcome for Sam and his team but if there is anyone capable of pulling it off, its Sam.

Paul Hottle, Nature’s Art Studio

This mention has been in the making for at least 20 years. My father, who spent the better part of his professional career as an entrepreneur and organizational development professional, recently followed his heart and did something truly for himself. Dad started Nature’s Art Studio to combine his love for the natural world and carpentry. Taking discarded materials from sawmills and material suppliers and repurposing them into pieces that range from functional to why not, he creates things as he imagines them- without commercial concern for their ability to generate revenue. This near-blatant disregard of the economic viability of each piece is probably why most of them sell within hours of posting them to his own website or Etsy.

After years of supporting our family as an OD consultant and spending more time in hotels rooms and rental cars than in his own home, Dad finally gets to spend some time doing what he wants to do. He taught me and my brother that luck and fortune are a byproduct of hard work. Thinking of him finally enjoying the fruits of his labor drives me to succeed as an entrepreneur, dad and husband. This is my feeble attempt to recognize what he gave me over the years by saying that I’m rooting for him in 2016. The truth is, I’ve always rooted for him.

This is certainly a partial list and I’m not excited about having to exclude others- but now it’s your turn. Will you take the time to think about who you are rooting for in 2016? Will you tell them you are rooting for them?

Few things are more powerful than knowing someone is pulling for you simply because they appreciate who you are and what you are trying to accomplish. So, who are you rooting for in 2016?

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