If you’ve been in technology start-up land for any length of time, you have no doubt heard of Guy Kawasaki. He’s a former Apple executive, founder of Garage Ventures, and author of 8 books. Now he’s doing something new which I think is very cool called AllTop, and “they have all the top stories covered all of the time.”
So if you are into Politics, Gaming, Sports, Celebrities, Tech, Automobiles, etc. then they aim to be the place to go to find out all the latest news. Since I’m a mom and love to know about what other moms are up to, I’m thrilled about their NEW Mommy Bloggers page called AllTop Moms! My little ‘ole entrepreMusings blog is currently near the top of the page. Thanks Guy!
If you are a mommy blogger or you blog on any of their other topics and you’d like your site to be included, check out their About page to get more information.
Yay, Moms! I did see some people on twitter (I’m @aruni) asking about a Daddy Bloggers page so check back frequently to see what new and interesting pages they add.
My sister-in-law, who lives in Mexico, forwarded me this email from Luis Molinar who she knows. I thought it was simple, powerful and compelling enough to share on this Valentine’s Day 2008.
Photo by Sandy Blanchard. Bulbs by Michelle Campion
Hello Dear One’s,
Knowing that for us to grow and heal from old wounds that keep us repeating our limited patterns that may say no to the universe, we some times need to take risks. I’d like to share this writing about taking risks in one’s life, to see if you’re living in fear and not taking risks, but stuck in your old patterns and consequently not living a happy and content life.
Risk
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To express feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk ridicule.
To Love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure
And at the same time risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He/she may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he/she cannot LOVE, LEARN, FEEL, CHANGE, GROW and LIVE.
Chained by his/her attitudes he/she is a slave.
He/she has forfeited his/her freedom.
Only the person who RISKS is truly FREE.
*********************
So Dear One’s, how Free are you???
Luis Molinar
HeartWorks, Inc. ToltecHeartWisdom.com
As some of you know, I co-write articles on the topic of success for university alumni magazines with my fabulous writing partner Pam Losefsky. Our latest article for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, is onJim Nolen. Jim is a UT Distinguised Senior Lecturer of Finance and President of CFO Services. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards.
Our goal with this endeavor was to get people thinking about what success means to them by reading stories on how others define success. Please click here to see more success profiles. One of the key things he said that resonated with me was:
“Thomas Edison said ‘I’ve never had a failure — I’ve found 10,000 things that didn’t work.’ It’s that mental attitude that really translates into success in the end — never thinking about failure, but saying instead, ‘I’m going to be successful. I may take a lot of detours, but I don’t have a problem with that.'”
It’s all in how we frame it, isn’t it? Life is one big university where we continue to learn and grow!
The editor has since asked us to focus on entrepreneurs for future articles and of course I am thrilled since I love meeting and talking with entrepreneurs! So after the next one, the series will be called Self Starter and we will be interviewing exclusively entrepreneurs from The University of Texas at Austin. Hook ’em Horns!
I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! 🙂 To see other great baby tips, check out the baby tips category.
Maryam Ghaemmaghami Scoble was kind enough to let me re-publish her January 30, 3007 tips on traveling with baby that she said was inspired after I asked her if she would write a guest baby tip for my blog. She also sent me an adorable picture of her looking at baby Milan. Maryam has been working as an event planner since 1995 and is now taking time off to be with her newborn son. Maryam’s husband, Robert Scoble, is none other than the “Scobleizer” a strong presence in the blogging community. Maryam spends her free time blogging about living, loving, and working with geeks as well as life, love, and everything else. If you are new to the blogosphere, you might not have heard that she and Robert had a baby, but they did and now she has great tips to share!
I honestly thought that my days of traveling adventure would be over once our baby was born. Not so! Barely four months old, Milan has accompanied us without much fuss to Paris, London and Vegas, traveling via Trains, Planes, and even on a bus. We are headed to Geneva next.
If you are traveling with child I highly recommend checking out My Traveling Buddy website.
1) Don’t pack too many little bags and suitcases. You will leave things behind or else won’t be able to carry all of them together. While it was easier before to have smaller, lighter suitcases, you now need to try and consolidate as much as possible. Remember in addition to the suitcases, you also have to push the stroller and you only have two hands 🙂 I used to pack a suitcase, a carry on and a bag for each of us and it worked perfectly before, but now one of us has to push the stroller while the other carries everything on the cart. My heart goes out to single parents!
2) Don’t forget the baby Bjorn or other form of baby carrier with you. You need to check in your stroller and sometimes have to walk long distances before claiming it back after you get off the plane. You can check in the stroller right where you check in to get on the flight, but you won’t get it back when you land until you walk all the way to baggage claim. In London, we had to walk far and long, and wait quite a while before getting our stroller back. Thank God, I packed a baby carrier with me.
3) Don’t forget the bottle washer and soap. It’s hard to wash bottles without the bottle washer and the soap at the hotels or airports might be too fragrant for the baby. I had to send Robert out to search for a bottle washer in Vegas and I had a hard time finding a perfume free soap in beautiful Paris, home to many famous perfumes.
4) If you are using formula, make a bottle ready before going through security screening. They won’t let you carry a bottle of water but they would let you carry the milk through. The bottle would be safe for an hour and two and you are not forced to run around and look for bottled water in the airport. The security officer in the Vegas airport told me that I could get out of line, mix my formula with water and go through again if I wanted to. I didn’t want to wait in line again, but next time, I will just make the formula ahead of time.
5) Check in early for your flight so you can make sure your baby has a bassinet on board. You can’t reserve one on the phone and if too many babies are traveling on board, you may lose out to those who checked in before you. We were late to check in for our flight to London and couldn’t get a bassinet as there were twenty other babies traveling on board. We got smart on the way back and checked in early 🙂
6) Make sure your baby is sucking on a pacifier or a bottle during take off and landing. The air pressure won’t hurt their ears as much. We were feeding Milan while the plane was taking off and landing and he fell asleep each time without crying.
7) If traveling by train find out where the bathroom with diaper changing table is located and book your cabin close to that. I had to walk through over ten cabins while the train was moving with a baby that badly needed a change, all the while worrying if we were going to reach the station soon.
8)Pack enough formula and diapers. Babies sometimes show allergic reaction to different brands of diapers. It’s also very hard to find the same brand of formula while traveling abroad and babies stomach often react to new brands.We ran out of formula in Paris and I couldn’t even read the instructions on the formula I bought and had to trust the reluctant pharmacist advice. Luckily Milan liked the new formula and it worked fine for us. Next time, I will pack extra formula though.
9) Having a travel system based car seat and stroller (we use Graco) works best because you can use the car seat in the cabs, buses, trains and cars, and then place the seat easily in the stroller when walking around. The stroller folds easily and is light to carry around. You can also use it as a cart to carry stuff around.
10) If you have older children I suggest running them through the airport to let them exert some of that extra energy so that they are good and tired and ready to sleep in flight. Planning travel during their sleep time is also a good idea.
11) With older children taking some cheap new toys and coloring materials helps keep them occupied during flight. When Patrick was younger, I always bought him a bunch of magazines so he could read them during the flight and of course he had his trusty hand held game players.
12) Remember that there are different rules for traveling with babies domestically vs. internationally. For example, babies traveling on your lap can fly for free on United inside the US but you have to purchase a ticket for them while traveling abroad. It usually comes to about 10% of your adult fare plus taxes, etc.
13) You need a valid passport for children traveling abroad with you, even if your child is only four months old like ours.
14) Before traveling make sure to check with your pediatrician about any medical issues you need to be aware of. Traveling with babies under three months is not recommended and some airlines won’t even allow a new born to fly. Depending on the country you are traveling to, your baby may need to get special vaccinations. I packed over the counter gas-relief medicine and baby Tylenol with us just in case.
15) Last but not least, check the weather and pack accordingly for your child. It was raining hard in London and Paris and we looked around for a long time before we were able to find a waterproof plastic cover for Milan’s stroller.
Bon Voyage and Happy travels!
______
If you like this tip, you might be interested in our other recent guest baby tips:
Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to blogger at babblesoft dot com. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and lotsa link love!
Several readers who saw my Fundraising Toolkit post have asked me about my experience raising funds from angels and VCs for my first entrepreneurial endeavor. We raised about $15 million of which $3.5 million was from angels or what I would call boutique VC firms (i.e. a group of angels under one investment roof). Keep in mind that was all before the bubble burst back in 2001. Here are some of my observations based on my experience and from stories I’ve heard from other entrepreneurs.
Angels
They tend to invest their own money and reputation in earlier stage companies that can benefit not only from dollars but also their advice and contacts.
The really good ones (yes, there are fallen bad ones) have built their own businesses from the ground up. They have a great appreciation of what it takes to build a business and are creative with solutions to the inevitable unexpected issues that arise.
They tend to get their ‘hands dirty.’ Our lead angel investor for my first company was Marc Seriff, founding CTO of America Online. You may recall that in 1999/2000 talent was scarce and the Internet bubble was close to its biggest. Marc actually manned a career fair booth that we had at The University of Texas at Austin. He also participated in the interview process of finding great developers! Needless to say we found some good people. Since Marc was our lead for our first round, he even assured our vendors that he would make sure (i.e. personally guarantee) they got paid if for some reason we couldn’t close the round!
They tend to bring their friends along for the ride. Marc and another of our angel investors, Jack Baum, brought in their friends and contacts making the fundraising process a little bit easier. Jack also introduced us to the owners of our very first big paying customer who ended up doing a nationwide rollout with us. I remember framing the check! He and his partner Steve Winter brought in two of our three venture investors. The two good ones! Steve even served as our interim-CEO between the time we parted ways with the first CEO we hired to replace me until we found the next one.
They don’t necessarily have to invest money to be an angel. Richard Benkendorf was one of our advisors who introduced us to our first key customer in the Coca-Cola bottling system that helped us achieve our first $1 million in revenue! We framed that check too!
When the dollars needed get big for future financing rounds, angel investors usually voluntarily step back or can’t provide the needed growth capital.
Some of them may not have sat on a Board or been involved in building their own businesses making some board meetings interesting to say the least. In other words, an angel who made his/her money from their own business versus someone who came in later at Google, Microsoft, or Dell have different perspectives and experiences.
Venture Capitalists
They tend to invest in later stage companies with some revenue, product completed, and market traction. They seem to like to come in after an initial angel round of investment (if the deal structure is not too messed up).
The really good ones (yes there are bad VCs – in case you haven’t heard) have had repeated success with other portfolio companies, have built their own businesses, and come with a big rolodex of contacts and partners to help you cross some of the early hurdles. One of our venture investors, SAP Ventures, led by Jeff Nolan who blogs at Venture Chronicles (the only former investor I found who blogs publicly) introduced us to departments within SAP who were targeting the same customers that we were. He also gave me a copy of The Monk and The Riddle by Randy Komisar (see below for book link) that was a great read at a time when I think he sensed I was no longer enjoying the journey.
They tend to be more bankers/financiers than operating (i.e., built their own business) people. They tend to look at a business with a black/white eye on numbers and how fast they can get their money plus a nice return on their money out.
The good ones will often bring along investment partners in what is called a syndicate. A few VC firms who have worked together before will join forces to fund a deal which makes life easier for the founders because they can go back to building the business versus fundraising sooner.
They seem to use and apply a formula that they have achieved financial success with before which often means replacing the founding CEO or other key founders with people they have worked with many times before. If more often than not something has worked for them with a portfolio company in the past, they’ll apply the same logic to future deals companies.
They are investing other people’s money (i.e. their limited partner’s money – insurance companies, wealthy individuals, other corporations) and if they perform well those people will give them more money to invest. In other words they are risking more than just their finances and reputations, they are risking other people’s finances and reputations as well.
Who To Choose?
Personally, I think it all comes down to the investor fit and the stage of the start-up game you are in. It’s definitely better to have people who have built businesses on your side. It’s also good to have people who have backed high-growth businesses if you plan to IPO or sell to an established business in the near future.
Most technology start-ups don’t make it big. It’s a unique combination of talent, dedication, luck, timing, and great people that make the difference between the companies who become household names and those who shut down on the wayside or find another comfortable existence. We often forget that it is more than OK to start a good profitable business that provides value to your local community. If you want to play with venture capitalists, then you need to aim for the ‘household name’ category like Google or Yahoo! even if chances are high you won’t make it to an IPO.
My biggest learning was how important it was to be able to communicate with your investors openly and honestly. Trust your gut and if they respect and trust you as a person and you respect and trust them, it will be much easier to weather the inevitable storms. It’s easy to take money for money’s sake but in the end it can end up being more costly than what it was worth.
As Ben Yoskovitz says in his Startup CEO School of Hard Knocks post, you must have fun! When you are no longer enjoying the journey, take a break and look around to make sure you are doing what you should be doing. Make sure you are in the right place at the right time for yourself and don’t be afraid to make changes.
Being the busy family that we are, we eat out now and again. When we go to kid-friendly restaurants they generally give us papers to color on and crayons. The paper ranges from a single sheet with fish or puppy dogs to elaborate booklets with tic-tac-toe games to word puzzles to fancier fish or puppy dogs. I assume they recycle the paper, but what do they do with the crayons? In 99% of the cases, they are brand new and are barely used when we leave them on the table (because we already have a million at home). I hope they are given to some kids or schools who could use them.
I’m so excited to say that the first official video of Babble Soft Applications went live today on DadLabs – Gear Daddy. I have wanted to do a video demonstration of our applications for a long time now but I was cycling through my entrepreneurial hats so fast, that I didn’t have the time or money to do a really nice one. So now thanks to all the cool dads at DadLabs we have our very first one and it cost me some beers was relatively free!
Go to their site and please Digg/Stumble the post if you like it. They are fellow entrepreneurs and the more hits/visits they get to their site the more loved they feel and more importantly the more cool advertisers they can attract. Sitter City is their sponsor this week. Plus they always make me laugh which is one of my 2008 goals! If you for some reason you need even more incentive to go to their site, I’ve embedded the video below:
I also just found out that it’s on YouTube also. So you can check it out there too:
One of the many hats an entrepreneur wears is the “getting great press mentions” hat. It’s typically a frustrating process since unless you happen to know each editor personally, chances are quite high they will hit ‘delete’ or not return your messages thereby not giving you a chance to tell your wonderful, glorious story. This seems even more true in the baby/new parent industry because there are a bunch of cool new products released every day in this industry and the editors are inundated with pitches.
I know it must be tough for editors because they get so many thousands of emails from everyone wanting them to write a story about what they believe is TNBT (i.e., The Next Big Thing). But it’s tough for us entrepreneurs to get noticed too! Since we are spending money on SEO, I decided to take on doing the traditional PR work myself until we raise funds. This means emails and follow up calls to editors at places like Parenting Magazine, Twins Magazine, Parents, Pregnancy, etc., etc. Only the most popular magazines for parents….
That’s why our SEO firm has also submitted it for distribution in free press release avenues on the Internet which should drive more traffic to our site or at least build up some of our back links. 🙂
The problem with wearing so many hats is that you don’t have the time to wear one long enough to spend the required, necessary time to really dig in deep and make a big impact. I wonder what color the press release hat is?
We’ve all heard that saying. Once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget. I experienced the sensation ‘of riding a bike’ for the first time as a parent this weekend. Our 5 ½ year old son rode on his own. He and I were both exhilarated! I’m not sure who was more excited.
He hadn’t got on his bike since last year due to Holidays and weather and us being busy. Plus since we are city-folk for some reason we don’t seem to have a lot of time to practice bike riding.
On Saturday he saw his dad go for a bike ride and he wanted to go. I told him I would take him later that afternoon. We got him geared up and on his bike. I walked next to him and held the handle bars for the first runs. Then I slowly let go and held onto the back of his shirt. He kept telling me not to let go but then slowly I let go and he didn’t realize it. I told him “you are doing it on your own!” He started laughing, talking, and smiling until he rode up on someone’s driveway and stumbled off the bike. He did it several more times on Saturday and then again on Sunday, where he went even further.
He “got it!” Now his mind and his body know what the sensation is of riding on his own. There is no looking back. I felt so proud and the image of him riding away from my outstretched hand will forever be etched in my brain. Oh and fortunately in a digital picture and also in a video. 🙂
“It’s like riding a bike.” Right now I’m hoping starting another business, raising funds, and all the other fun stuff I’m about to do is like riding a bike. Some things are easier and you know what to focus on and what not to but there are so many moving parts that maybe if I just keep repeating in my head “It’s like riding a bike” I won’t fall down as much or I guess I’ll be able to pick myself up faster and get right back on!
As some of you know we signed up with a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm, SpryDev, back in mid-December. It’s been a great process and I already wish that we had our site designed with SEO in mind to being with. We are making several design, layout, menu, text, etc. changes that are very time consuming. I wish they could all be done overnight but given all of our time constraints unfortunately they can’t!
I think my biggest learning experience (note to self) so far is to have an SEO expert involved during the design of the site. It apparently will save a lot of time later. Now we won’t be sure if any of these changes will actually result in increased conversions for some time but so far they make sense to me. Apparently seeing results overnight doesn’t happen just like we can’t make all the changes overnight. Sigh.
The good news is in the past month we have seen a slight increase in the number of visitors. We’ve also seen more people finding us based on organic search (i.e., search terms in Google) versus a direct landing. Most people still find the Babble Soft site by searching on terms like Babble Soft, Baby Insights, Aruni (my name), etc. which is what I’m calling a direct landing. Since I’m not Britney Spears or some other famous person, it doesn’t really do us much good for people to be searching on my name! Now a noticeable few are finding us with relevant keywords.
Here are some of things we have done or are still working on:
Changing our menu navigation and adding cool buttons. All in the name of increasing conversion. Brian Massey who blogs at Customer Chaos is their conversion specialist and he’s given us some great recommendations that will hopefully pay off big time. Interestingly, he just did a great post called Here’s the Truth About Building Your Website that is pretty accurate.
Setting up a phone number to display on our site (should have that up soon – I need to record a great greeting message)
Adding Page Titles and Descriptions to each page. I can’t believe we hadn’t done that. DOH!! I guess that’s why they get the big bucks and further reason why we should have involved an SEO expert during the design phase of the site.
Building links.
Submitting articles, press releases, and other stuff to all the various sites that love them as much as we do. 🙂
Rose, our project manager at SpryDev seems to be very patient since I email her night and day asking her what else we can do and how fast we can do it. When it’s your personal credit card that gets hit each month you want to do everything possible to start seeing sales come in to offset those expenses.
Did I know that we would have to make some changes to our site going in? Yes, of course. Did I realize the extent of the changes, the time it would take to make them, and that cash wouldn’t start rolling in the door 10 seconds after we made each change? Not so much.
If you are interested in learning more about “What They Don’t Tell You About SEO,” go ahead and subscribe to this blog. If you know more about SEO than I do (chances are you do), then leave a comment and share your wonderful wisdom with the rest of us!
Picture by Sandy Blanchard Choosing a corporate attorney is an interesting endeavor. I have avoided using attorney’s for Babble Soft in the past because a) they are very expensive, b) sometimes they make you feel like they need to review everything you do for fear of some horrible thing happening, and c) I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life what my strategic business plan was. Since I have a new business strategy and have decided to raise funds, an attorney is a must have.
I’ve met with a couple and spoken to a few more. The first I spoke to was the attorney at my first company and although I would love to work with her we both agreed that the firm she is at now is catered more for more established businesses (i.e., very, very expensive). It is so much better to understand that up front because we have worked on many outside projects together, and I consider her a friend.
The second attorney I spoke to was referred by another entrepreneur in the area. I liked her and her partner but a few things gave me pause. One potential area of risk is the fact we might end up doing business with the other entrepreneur’s company which might result in a conflict of interest. They had good rates and good experience but did not have an in-house tax attorney. Since Babble Soft is currently an LLC and we’d like to continue as an LLC for at least our first round of financing, having someone who understands the tax implications could be important.
The third attorney I met had done some pro-bono work for me a year or so ago because I guess he knew I couldn’t afford his services at the time. What I liked about him is that he does have a tax attorney in his firm, has represented several small companies in the technology space, one of my business Advisor’s has worked with him in the past, he was on time for our meeting, said he could help with introductions to potential investors, and he sent a brief follow-up note after our meeting expressing his interest in working with me. However, his rate is $125/hour more than the attorneys at the second firm I spoke with!
Special thanks to @princess_belle who blogs at GloKay, @chelpixie who blogs at Chelpixie.com, and LPT who blogs at Direct2Dell who tweeted me things to think about and questions to ask the attorneys. I plan on making a decision in the next couple of weeks so if you have attorney stories or suggestions to share with me or the blogosphere, please leave a comment. Thank you!
I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! 🙂
Today’s guest baby tip is written by one of my favorite dads, Daddy Clay. Clay is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of DadLabs. DadLabs creates all sorts of cool, informational, not-so-informational, and downright hilarious videos about being a father in this new era of “let’s share parenting responsibilities, shall we?” On Monday’s they have a new video in The Lab, on Tuesday’s they are in The Lounge, on Wednesday’s they have Daditude (Daddy Owen is pretending to be pregnant by wearing a pregnancy belly), and on Thursday’s they are all about Gear Daddy. Check them out!
Welcome any and all baby showers/keggers!
For lots of guys, as soon as the excitement of a positive pregnancy test wears off, the first concern is about money – well maybe the second concern – the first concern we’ll deal with in another post. But money is definitely a big worry. This concern hits an early peak on the first visit to the baby Mega-store – usually a scouting mission. There, a guy silently tallies up the expenses of all the items on the “necessities” list while trying to seem enthusiastic to the expecting mother. How are you gong to afford all the baby gear?
Women long ago figured this whole deal out. Need to outfit the nursery? They gather the gals for a baby shower to play cute little games and open gifts with nifty wrapping. They giggle and gossip. Sound like fun, fellas?
Get over it. Go along if you are invited, and tap into the power of community. Actively encourage your wife to land as many showers as possible.
And here’s a radical idea. Throw a dad shower. But we can’t call it a shower. Not gonna happen. Let’s adapt. How about having a Baby Kegger instead?!
You provide the beer. If you don’t like the idea of setting up a gift registry, host an auction. Ask your funniest buddy to MC and offer various goods and services up for sale to the highest bidder. Any bids on the last round of golf with the expecting dad before his life changes forever? Got to let the motorcycle or the season tickets go? All proceeds go to the stroller fund – – or the 529 plan.
Let your guy friends in on the action of supporting your new life as a parent.
______
If you like this tip, you might be interested in our other recent guest baby tips:
Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to blogger at babblesoft dot com for possible inclusion. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!
I’m making some progress on my personal 2008 goals. I signed up for yoga and have lost between .5 and 1 pound. Regarding my business goals, I’m still working on the executive summary, financial projections, visuals, and finding an attorney in order to raise funds. If all goes well documents will be substantially ready by end of next week, and I’ll be well on my way to finding the perfect lawyer…if that’s even possible. 🙂
Posting will be light over the next few weeks so in the meantime please check out the Work It, Mom! interview of me where they asked me the following questions:
What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
You’ve written that you and the other founder of your first company were “washed out.” How did you recover from that? Was it hard to jump back into the entrepreneurial game after that experience?
Many women entrepreneurs have mentioned that they felt they were not taken as seriously as businesswomen once people knew their companies were geared toward mothers. Has this been your experience?
What lessons from your first company are you applying to your second?
What’s most challenging part of your working-mom juggle?
What advice would you give a working mom who is trying to start her own company? What pitfalls would you tell her to avoid?
You have a great general attitude — what motivates you besides, well, creating a super-successful company?
Then pop on over to Thom Singer’s Some Assembly Required blog and check out my guest post on Building your e-Network where I expand on the following tips:
Do what you say you will do when you say you will do it.
When someone reaches out to you for help, answer them.
I plan to raise seed financing from angel investors for Babble Soft, and here’s what I will have in my toolkit.
An Executive Summary. Thankfully people have moved away from the 35 to 40 page business plans that used to be required when I raised money for my first company. Now it’s easier to get your foot in the door with a 5 to 7 page summary. If they are interested, they will ask for additional information. In a typical Executive Summary you will see sections on:
The Company
The Problem
The Solution (i.e., Your Products)
The Market (including Competitors)
The People
The Numbers (i.e., the Financial Projections).
Financial Projections. In my opinion, creating Financial Projections for an Internet startup is often an exercise in futility that shows you have an idea of how you will make money. Most experienced technology investors know that predicting the future is a crazy process at best especially when you are starting from ground zero and success primarily depends on many viral factors. Financial projections for IBM are much different than financial projections for an Internet start-up. The assumptions you make are the most important part of the model as they give the investor an idea of the homework you have done on the market.
Since Babble Soft is not Twitter, I’m not already a gazillionaire, and I have a million things to do, I have a sharp MBA student, Anand Balasubramanian, helping me create an Advertising and Subscription based model. I love energetic, rock star, cheap, student help! He has done a great job so far building a simple, easy to understand financial model for me.
Visuals. Since I’ll be raising funds for products that do not exist yet, I have engaged a great local design, user experience, and information architecture firm, Projekt202, to create a few mock-up pages illustrating both the web and mobile components of our new applications. They seem as excited about the vision as I am and are taking on some of the financial risk with me. It makes me so happy when I find people who get what I’m trying to do! I’ll also have a demo account of Baby Insights and Baby Say Cheese ready to log in to demonstrate our existing applications.
An Investor Leads List. However you choose to keep track of your calls, meetings, and referrals it’s important to do so. I have met entrepreneurs who want to raise funds who aren’t organized about the process and end up looking a bit flighty. Unfortunately the investors are allowed to be flighty but they usually don’t tolerate too much flightiness in entrepreneurs. Remember: “She who has the gold makes the rules.” After a while it’s easy to forget what you promised to get to whom and who referred you to whom. It’s important to remember at what stage of the investing dance you are in with each potential investor. On this spreadsheet I plan to keep track of:
Name
Contact Information
Professional Background
Who Referred Them to Me
Investment History
Typical Investment Size
What Items They Need From Me, and
Personal Assessment on the likelihood they will invest.
Passion Tempered With Wits. I think that often the big thing that can swing an investor, especially an angel investor who has been in your shoes before when building his/her company is your passion. Why are you doing this when there are much easier ways to make a buck? What will keep you going? What excites you about the business? I am passionate about helping new parents and caregivers connect and find answers. I am passionate about building a business. I am passionate about finding great people to work with. If that passion is tempered with some logical thinking, that’s a big huge ‘ole plus! All of us entrepreneurs are a bit crazy at times so I just hope I don’t lose my wits in the middle of an investor pitch!
Since I am still working on everything above except for my passion which has recently been reignited, I’ve got a lot to do before the meetings I already have set up with potential investors in the next couple of months. If you have suggestions on other things I should have in my fundraising toolkit, let me know by leaving a comment below. It’s been a while since I have raised money and I’m always open to learning new things.
Join me for the journey. Subscribe to the blog and hold on to your stomachs, it’s bound to be a scary roller coaster ride at times!
UPDATE Jan 12, 2007: Found|Read republished this very post on their blog and called it My Funding Toolkit. Check out that post for some great comments! They have many more readers than my blog currently does so I’m delighted that they chose to share it with their readers!
In case you missed it, here is the hilarious video about Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft that was shown at his final keynote address at the Computer Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas yesterday. I think it’s so great to see his fun side! As an entrepreneur, I am in awe at what he has accomplished in his lifetime and even did a post about a prior appearance of his with Steve Jobs a while back.
The video stars Brian Williams, Steve Ballmer, Matthew McConaughey, Robbie Bach, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Kevin Turner, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, and others. Thanks to Long Zheng for posting his own video and helping me find a link. Here’s the link to the YouTube video that will hopefully show properly below (its been off & on again).
We’ve all heard that saying. Once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget. I experienced the sensation ‘of riding a bike’ for the first time as a parent this weekend. Our 5 ½ year old son rode on his own. He and I were both exhilarated! I’m not sure who was more excited.
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