metarand

Paddling For A Cause

This morning I ventured out in the driving rain and headed off to Palm Beach. I was planning on participating in a paddle session, named Paddle for Pete, which was organised to provide support for a local surfer who had broken his neck over Easter weekend.

On the 40 minute drive I was wondering to myself – would there be a handful of stalwarts on hand for the paddle? Arriving at Pittwater I was blown away – both literally as the wind was up, and figuratively, as there were hundreds of paddlers on hand. All shapes and sizes, from surf boards through skis, SUPs through surfboards — all eager to show their support.

It was a tough paddle – my stand up board is a 10.6, which is great in the surf and as a hybrid on short flat water runs, but when the chop is up it gets very, very tricky. I was most stoked to not only finish the 5km course, but do it without falling in or having to revert to kneeling.

This video from Sean Smith, aka the Fatpaddler really sums up the paddle. I feature near the start of the paddle, but it’s the later sections where you can clearly see the level of chop on the water — great coverage!

Here’s hoping Pete makes a quick recovery.

Tags: Fatpaddler, Paddle for Pete, Pittwater, stand up paddling, SUP

How To Successfully Pitch Angel Investors

Last week Innovation Bay Angels met for their quarterly dinner to hear pitches from a chosen few entrepreneurs. This was the fourth dinner of the year, a year in which we’ve assessed over 50 Australian companies and by the end of the evening we had heard live pitches from 14 entrepreneurs seeking angel investment this year.

As active angel investors (the group has invested multi millions of dollars to date), we see a lot of deals in different contexts and one thing we value above all is a quality pitch from entrepreneurs who are passionate and who have done their homework on their industry.

Our modus has been to ask entrepreneurs to submit an initial 90-second video pitch. That may not seem like a lot of time, but remember that most television ads only run for 29 seconds!

Those entrepreneurs who are chosen to actually present to the group at the quarterly dinners are given six minutes to pitch and may answer questions from the room for another six minutes.

Why all these time constraints and formats?

We’ve tried the unstructured, open ended approach and it simply does not work. Anyone can bang together a business plan or executive summary on a word processor and make it look good – but getting a message across via video in 90 seconds takes skill.

Standing in front of a room of 40 successful businesspeople and selling a business in six minutes takes further skill, discipline and practice.

Besides, investors have only so much bandwidth to hear from an individual entrepreneur and rattling on for 15 – 20 minutes won’t solidify your investment case, nor would it be fair on others who also want to garner the group’s attention.

What should your video be aiming to achieve?

One of the best comments made recently by one of our angels sums this up succintly:

“Short, sharp, punchy. Gives enough to establish credentials. There is enough in this quick summary to make me want to found our more.”

The videos we receive are placed on a private forum and members of the group are able to ask questions of the entrepreneurs who submitted them, and they have the ability to respond. From these comments (for the last round there were well over 300 comments) and the questions asked at the dinners, we’ve collated a set of Frequently Asked Questions, which I’ve set out below.

Entrepreneurs should know the answers to as many of these as possible and while they may not be able to cover off on each and every one in their videos, we would expect them to do so by the time they finish their six minute pitch.

THE ANGEL FAQs

PROBLEM/SOLUTION
How big is the problem you are trying to solve

What is your core value proposition

MARKET/CUSTOMERS
What is your customer make up – geographically and by industry

What is the return on investment (ROI) for customers

Can you give a bottom up outline of the market size rather than “a % of a $bn market”

How do you define your target segment, how many potential customers are there in this segment and what are they willing to pay for your product or service

What is the cost to acquire customers

If you are initially targeting a niche of early adopters, how will you get across to mass market adoption

Are there any regulatory or entrenched business practice barriers you need to overcome

Is there something about your space that means we need a local solution rather than a modified US solution

Are there any analogies you can use to explain your product, eg “the Farmville of Health Education” or “Groupon meets Zynga”

If you are initially targeting a niche of early adopters, how will you get across to mass market adoption

Are there any regulatory or entrenched business practice barriers you need to overcome

COMPETITION
What is your sustainable competitive advantage

Which are your major competitors and what do you do different

Not for everyone but: why are you best placed to win in this torturously overcrowded and undifferentiated space

While your product may in fact be different from others in the market, how do you get around the perception that it is the same as other products out there

TEAM/THE BUSINESS
Who owns the IP

Who will be on the team for executing

What are your views on the LeanStartup Model

What are the backgrounds of the founders

What is your backstory – how did you come to tackle this problem/market

Does your product exist already – if so, will you be able to demo it

BUSINESS MODEL
Outline some key figures – revenue predictions, staff

How do you make money, what is your revenue model

What is your distribution strategy

Are revenues primarily from product or services. How will that change in the future.

What are your plans for scaling the business (what are the requirements and obstacles to scale)

How are/will you handle the huge amounts of data that you need to gather

THE FUNDING NEED
How will you spend the money

What your investors should contribute in addition to money

THE DEAL
How much equity are you offering to Angels

What will equity split be

EXIT STRATEGY
What’s your exit strategy

One final point – don’t go asking investors to sign a non disclosure agreement. You’ll likely get short shrift.

I hope these pointers assist you in your quest for funding and good luck growing your businesses!

Tags: Angel Investing, angels, Innovation Bay

Stand Up Paddling The Inky Darkness

After preparing a yummy Cajun dinner on Saturday evening, I had a rare moment’s reflection and Tweeted:

Wondering where to stand up paddle tomoz – start of training for Hawkesbury Challenge…

You see, I’d earlier that day made the decision to attempt this infamous 111km overnight race in October. My tweet was picked up via Facebook by the Fat Paddler, Sean Smith, who responded with a suggestion – let’s hit the water at the Spit Bridge at 5h30am.

It’s heading into winter here in Australia so that means it’s pitch dark at that hour and likely to remain so until around 6am. Sitting in the comfort of my warm home after a delicious dinner and a glass of wine, made the decision too easy – sure thing, I replied, see you down there.

Waking the next morning as my alarm jangled my senses at 4h30am was way harder, but I was determined to do this thing! Driving the 20 minutes down to the Spit Bridge was an interesting mix of shaking off sleep and shrugging on a deeper determinedness – both being a challenge as the darkness was shrouded deeper than usual by steadily pouring rain.

I arrived at the water and sure enough the Fat Paddler was ready and waiting. After some initial trepidation as there were also rather fresh gusts of wind, I offloaded my stand up paddle board and got ready to paddle out. The local wild life, a school of about eight baby sting rays wallowing in the shallows, were my final welcoming committee as I paddled into the inky darkness and headed under the Spit Bridge and out onto Middle Harbour.

Guided by the Fat Paddler’s lights and the reflections on the water from surrounding houses we made our way further up the waterway. The rain kept falling intermittently, but thankfully the wind eased – paddling on choppy and dark water is a challenge on a 10.6 stand up paddle board. I made a mental note to pursue the acquisition of a 14 foot race board post haste!

I soon relaxed into the paddle, rhythmically slicing through the water took care of any natural instincts to question one’s sanity at being out there at such an early hour.

It was an awesome session, returning some four hours later to the Spit Bridge and one I definitely will do many times over as I build up towards the Hawkesbury Challenge.

For more on our adventure and some pictures of our journey make the jump over to the Fat Paddler’s site.

Tags: Fat Paddler, Hawkesbury Classic, Spit Bridge, stand up paddling, SUP

Stand Up Paddling: Upper Reaches, Lane Cove River

A relaxing Autumn paddle on the upper reaches of the Lane Cove River, which runs through the north shore of Sydney.

Tags: stand up paddling, SUP, Sydney

Stand Up Paddling Somewhere On The Central Coast

Tags: stand up paddle surfing, SUP

US Leads The Way With New Office For Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Bloomberg reports that the US Commerce Department is in the process of establishing a new Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation to help entrepreneurs transform ideas into companies.

This office, according to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, will help fledgling business owners get training, credit and access to government research, in a bid to encourage the ‘right kind’ of risks by business leaders.

The office will be geared toward the first step in the business cycle: moving an idea from somebody’s imagination or from a research lab into a business plan. What we need to do is get better at connecting the great ideas to the great company builders.

Bloomberg notes that this plan is picking up the ball from Barack Obama’s comments a few days ago that new technologies and businesses are the key to re-establishing economic growth…The administration will try to ‘catalyze breakthrough’ technologies.

What I find really interesting here is that this rhetoric echoes the Australians who announced in May that they would be creating a Commercialisation Institute. I put forward a paper in July on how I believe such an initiative can optimally assist entrepreneurs and boost innovation.

However, we are still waiting to get a feel from Canberra that something is actually being done beyond the rhetoric. I hope that this US initiative is able to achieve a catalytic breakthrough in Australia too by showing up their tardiness in getting stuff done!

The other interesting echo is that Gary Locke points to the United States’ failure in capitalizing on its solar technologies. Similarly, Australia was a world leader in this area with technology developed in Sydney. Today this is being commercialised in China. Carpe diem, my friends!

Tags: Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute, Office for Entrepreneurship & innovation

Sydney’s Dust Storm Fail Whale

What a weird and wonderful morning. I was working away early this morning as the usual glow started appearing on the skyline, but it seemed more intense than normal.

It was only when my wireless uncharacteristically died that I stuck my head up long enough to really take notice. Going out onto the deck I saw what looked like a beautiful mist hanging in the forest around me.

But as the morning materialized, it became evident that this was truly an extraordinary morning. We’ve been enveloped by a monster dust storm, dramatically reducing visibility and casting an eery glow over the city.

Yi Ying Lu, who created the now infamous Twitter fail whale, has produced one just for Sydney’s dust storm. If you’d like to see a stream of photos capturing this phenomenon check out Flickr.

UPDATE: I couldn’t go past adding this picture by @jamesielliott (thanks to @paulmckeon for bringing it to my attention):

Tags: dust storm, fail whale, Sydney, Yi Ying Lu

Innovation Bay: Summer Angel Investor Dinner

I’m really pleased to announce that, together with my Innovation Bay co-founders, I’m hosting a Summer Angel Investor Dinner on the 6th October in Sydney.

Our June dinner  was totally oversubscribed. We had a huge demand from entrepreneurs wanting to pitch their ventures to our group, who included some of Australia’s and the world’s most successful and connected businesspeople.

It’s also really great to point to a success story from the June event. One of the companies that pitched – Posse – secured four new investors from this session and has gone on to launch in the US and UK. They are growing gangbusters and acknowledge the invaluable advice they’ve received from Innovation Bay and its members.

I expect the October event will be no different. We are currently screening potential demo companies so ping me asap if you are interested in being considered.

There is absolutely no cost to entrepreneurs for pitching at the dinner. Our only challenge is that we need to limit the number of companies pitching so be quick!

Innovation Bay Pitches In, Entrepreneurs Plate Up

Last night I hosted a fun Angel Dinner together with my Innovation Bay co-conspirators. Ross Dawson has covered the event most admirably – check out his blog post of the event. I’d like to thank those who attended: the entrepreneurs who stepped up to the plate and gave excellent pitches, NICTA for sponsoring, Table for Twenty for their excellent service, but most of all, Phaedon Stough and Ian Gardiner for pulling it all together on top of their busy day jobs.

As Ross mentioned we had someone from the Federal Department of Innovation introduce the group to the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute. That someone was Donna Valenti and I am most grateful to her for making the trek down from Canberra.

I’d asked Donna to come along as a way to kickstart a dialogue around what the formula for success should be for the CCI. They are in a process of consulting the start up community and it was good to have her share their current thinking.

The key questions for me, with respect to the CCI are: How best can the Australian tech community (in its broadest sense – ICT, bio, nano – researchers, entrepreneurs, investors etc) leverage this incredible opportunity to ensure Australia punches well above its current commercialisation weight? What precedents exist that we can point to, what are the measures of success and how can the Government adequately gauge sufficient economic, social and other ROI for its decision to deploy $196m initially and then around $80m annually? And finally, how can we create an environment in which entrepreneurial magic happens, continuously?

As you can imagine, I have some strong thoughts about these questions, but I’d very much like to hear your thoughts and aspirations – in an ideal world without constraints, how would you envisage the CCI unfolding?

I’d also like to hear from folks, especially in Silicon Valley, who have thoughts around how best to leverage up the current funding for the Institute so that it extends the ramp further for Australian start ups.

Tags: CCI, Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute, Innovation Bay

Startup Lesson No.1: Make Your Own Path

Last evening I had the absolute privilege of being a judge in the Creative Sydney Back My Project initiative. Chosen from a deep pool of applicants eight finalists duked it out on stage in front of a packed room at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In the background the Opera House flickered through a panoply of colours, exuding the freshness and vibrancy of Sydney and the mood of the crowd. On stage the pressure was on.

With just four minutes to present, the teams acquitted themselves extremely well and after taking questions from us judges the audience got to applaud for their favorite while we adjourned to deliberate. It didn’t take us long to realise a clear favorite had emerged from the crowd as the applause was deafening for one of the finalists.

Us judges didn’t know who this was, and independently we concurred with them – there was a clear winner. The team, Soapbox Project, had both wowed the room and for us judges we felt they would be able to achieve the most impact from the prize we could award them.

It was a great evening and especially gratifying for me to see the raw entrepreneurial and creative energy unleashing itself in this most wonderful of cities.

Now on to the topic of my heading. Every one of those finalists had one thing in common. A strong desire to carve their own way, a desire to be different, a desire not to follow the herd. This is the key trait required to be a true entrepreneur – and it is demonstrated most beautifully in the following video.

Keep watching. Keep doing:

[Via andrewg]

Tags: backmyproject, creativesydney