Archive for category 14 Point List
Invest or Not in a new fuel
Posted by Steve in 14 Point List, Pitch, Valuation on December 23, 2009
In Sunday NY Times (Dec 6, 2009, pg 2) there is an article titled KLM Tests a Biofuel That’s Made From Weeds.? They are using Camelina oil as part of the fuel to run a Boeing 747. The question is: Should you invest in Camelina Oil?
What would be the first questions?
1. What is the economic advantage? Is it more efficient or cheaper or both?? Not mentioned in the article.
2. How safe is it? This is being tested according to article.
3. Who is producing it? Not mentioned but a Google search can find it.
4. What is the likelihood of it being picked up as a fuel? No idea.
5. What is the investment target?? Companies producing it, the oil or seed itself, or companies using it?
6. Finally, if it is patentable, who has it?
Lots of questions.? From the point of this blog, the best bet may be to invest in a company producing it. Why? It will be the efficiency of production, conversion, and delivery that will make this a viable fuel.? The seed can be grown in many locations by a variety of people.? Too much competition there. Assume the fuel can be used by anyone, it would only decrease the costs of that business by a fraction.
The real win is in the producer and deliverer of the oil.? The exit plan would be to go public or get acquired by another energy company.? The two key entry criteria would be an existing customer and demonstration by the company that they can deliver; or at least their managers have the experience of delivering on their promises.
A point I am making is that the methodology described in this blog is the ability to quickly evaluate an opportunity and determine if you should spend the due diligence on a deep dive.??I would look at the 14 points and see how well it fits and then make the recommendation.? If it passes all 14, I would only recommend this if I was looking at a viable concern.?? Oh, and one more thing, if the investor has experience in energy then I would make it positive; but if they are not experienced in energy, then I would suggest they get some before they invest.
Startup charities have to earn our attention.
Startup charities are like any startup business; they have to earn our attention.
My premise is that startup charities do not command it because of the nature of being a charity. There are plenty of fakes that hurt the real good ones. They need to be treated like any other startup business: validity of the people behind the cause first and then the worthiness of the cause.
The number of charities in the United States that are considered tax exempt are between 40,000 and 50,000 and could number more. Although these charities are registered with the IRS, the number of charities indicates that they may exceed the IRS’s ability to vette them completely each year; some of these charities may exist for dubious reasons.
Those two points appeared in an article in the New York Times, this Sunday (December 5, 2009) on page 1 and page 29, titled Grab Bag of Charities Grows, Along with U.S. Tax Breaks (written by Stephanie Strom). You can read it here.
Remember on Nov 30, I wrote Believe in your charity by believing in other charities? The point of that article was that just because a person is running charity does not entitle them to get the services for free.? Some people tend to use their charity as an excuse to get free or discounted services.
On page 29, there is an article also by Stephanie Strom: Seeking Profits At a Nonprofit. It is a fairly unflattering piece about an energy company.? This energy company is accepting federal funds and donations to develop alternative sources of energy and patent them.? However, the reporter discovered that their one and only patent is NOT in their name but in the name of one of the founders. Given that we are not given any details, or the circumstances of the patent, we are left to believe that this is someone using the veil of charity to profit.
It is also a piece of terrible marketing for the energy company.
Unfortunately, some worthy charities have difficulties because they are just not popular as a way of showing that you are good citizen.? Last night I sat in a fund raiser for another charity, one that provides education for adults. One of the speakers, a professional fundraiser, pointed out that it is much harder to get donations for them versus a hospital. Why? Education is not sexy like a hospital. You gave money for books? Ho hum. You gave money to cure a disease!! That is very good of you. That is the mentality they deal with every day.? I donate to them.
Someone asked me why I should donate to them and not to someone that is more worthy. I said, They are worthy. I checked them out. The big charities get a lot of money already, but this small needs it too.
To reiterate my points:
- Just because you are a charity does not mean you should get services for free.? You have to earn that privilege.
- You CAN earn that privilege but you have to do deeds that demonstrate your intent.
- Talking about deeds and planning deeds do not count. You can try to convince me of the worthiness, but then I am going to judge you by you and your validity (just like any investor).
A startup charity is just like any startup business in the sense that you have to not just believe in the cause, but believe in the people behind the cause.
Enthusiasm does not make up for reality
Today I sat in on a student presentations for the English department at Southern Methodist University. Teams of approximately 12 to 16 students were given the assignment of presenting a proposal of putting a business into a foreign country. They were broken up by management, HR, public relations, logistics and operations. The point of the exercise was to teach a combination of presentation, marketing, and cultural sensitivity. My wife was reviewing their presentation skills and I was a there just as a surprise guest questioner.
I think my job was to ask irritating questions. I did a good job but I tried to be nice and ask them questions that would only demonstrate if they could think on their feet. Although they were not expected to present something that a VC would really be able to approve, they should be able to address out of the box questions.
One group was presenting the concept of a fast food burger joint in Australia that was organically certified. There are a lot of different regulations, purchasing requirements, and organizations they will have to manage. They pointed out that the government does scheduled and surprise inspections. I asked the management group how would they insure that they would pass these inspections and get the employees to comply (I intentionally left it vague). The response was perky (with the student bouncing happily): We think the employees will be enthusiastic to support an organic only vision.
I will tell my response in a moment… but for those of us that have experience in getting employees to comply all the time, what about all those myriad of regulations and organizations that will probably make it confusing and inconvenient? What about those employees that will not really understand how to do all this?
How do you get employees to comply with this? Simple, through training and reinforcement by someone whose duty is to do this. Complexity invites mistakes. Extreme complexity like all the organic laws and organizations they spouted tells me that mistakes are very very likely. Furthermore, for their main message to be that they are an ORGANIC burger place, they should be concerned about that one issue.
My answer was short: I think your enthusiasm is great, but you may want to consider having someone hired to focus on this task.
That person could even be call the second COO: Chief Organic Officer.
In any business where you have extreme complexity whether its just the quality assurance or its the key uniqueness (i.e. ORGANIC foods in a fast food place) you should consider having someone take a leadership position in that role. It does not have to be enforcement like a cop, but more like education and support. It will really help out the employees, improve the working environment and insure that the business stays on its marketing message.
Just because you are enthusiastic about something does mean it will translate 100% to your employees 100% of the time. Reality is that you need reinforcement and that someone takes responsbility.
They Why of Change
Yesterday I wrote about change and that you need to be prepared for it. The next question is why should you change; but more importantly, do you consider the whys?
Reading an article on Seth Godin’s page, “The Why Imperative”, you wonder if there are two reasons people are asked to change. One, it’s an extension of what they do and it is needed because of changing market conditions, and two, it’s a change for the sake of change.
In other words, “Change” can get out of hand. People change because it is something to do, as opposed to something that is the right thing to do. These changes then affect everyone in different ways and can cause people to be more reluctant to changes (because of the poor history of success).
So, when do you change and when do you not? The first step is to ask, “Why are we changing?” The second step is to have a way to properly evaluate that change and to evaluate with the proper objectivity that also takes into account the costs to overcome the challenges. Changes have to deal with three challenges: strategic, political and cultural.
Ideally, its purely strategic decisions: is it more economical? However, the reality is that change costs time, money, and political clout. Sometimes it does not make sense to do the change because of the other elements.
It never should hurt to ask why but it could hurt to do it. This could be an opportunity for someone else. Or, it could identify the selling points to get people to change.
Change Happens – Be Prepared
The difference between successful people in the US and unsuccessful people can be attributed to many different things but most of the time it comes down to how well they handle change.
Those that handle change better often do better because they know how to come out on top.
Rather than going into a lot of detail right now, I want you to think about the most likely change that could happen to you over the next six months. What are the likely outcomes? How will you prevent the bad outcomes? How will you take steps to insure the better outcomes? What if nothing happens?
When you get it in your mind that “change happens” you can often deal better with it. Be prepared is the Boy Scout Motto, for good reason, because change happens.
Short, quick, to the point ideas
Posted by Steve in For Job Seekers, Pitch on November 6, 2009
I like ideas presented short and simple. I want ideas presented to me on one sheet of paper, maybe up to four pages if it’s a process. That’s like an executive summary. Maybe we need a format for it?
New product idea: the standard format for short ideas
Problems addressed (or are they solved): people do not have a lot of time and need to determine quickly if it’s a worthy idea to pursue, need to understand the basic solution and how to implement it without a lot of fluff.
Examples already out there: Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Ideas for 2009 (Harvard Business Review Lists). The book is really short with each idea taking up a couple of pages (one or two pages in Word).
So, what should this format look like? I’ll leave that up to you to think about.
Take it to the next step, how about a web site that has ideas and then ways you can send these ideas to people with the following?
1) Please develop this
2) Hire me to develop this.
Get the idea? Create short ideas, present them in a concise manner, and then create an opportunity for yourself or someone else.
Social Media Engineer
Posted by Steve in Execution, For Job Seekers on November 5, 2009
I think this job is already out here but I am proposing it here. Twitter, Facebook, Dig. If you go to Namechk.com there are 132 social web sites you can use to reach people. I am sure there are a lot more, but these are the top ones. They range from eBay to Twitter, from 12seconds.tv to Zooomr (never heard of either). The problem is that there are too many social sites and methodologies out there. Then, even on those sites there are too many things to do.
If you are following 1000 people on Twitter, how do you make sense of the conversation. Its like standing on an street corner in rush hour in New York City. You can get attention by dropping your pants, but it’s the wrong kind of attention.
Sure, there are books out there. Thousands.
The answer is experts. They are already out there, called Social Media experts or gurus. I think it is time for something called a social media engineer. The job of this person is to properly place, grow and utilize the various social media websites for a specific purpose.
I googled it. Already some one is calling themselves that. Not a lot though.
I monstered it. The closets thing is a Social Media Manager for HP.
I whois’ed it. Someone has the site socialmediaengineer.com (Bill Deys), and they are doing nothing with it. It’s a wordpress site (same theme as mine!!!). He just got it June 8, posted something on Aug 18. Maybe he is trying to figure it out.
I googled for social media expert and number two is gallucci.net. Giovanni Gallucci is a local guy (Dallas, TX) and a great speaker. He gets it! Check out his site.
The bottom line here is that there is an opportunity out there. Some people are already jumping on it. Why not you? If you have a company hire someone like Giovanni to help you. Matter of fact, hire Giovanni, because, quite frankly, he is the only one doing it.
And then, you can help your business grow.
Maps – using them in your business
A picture is worth a 1000 words. What is a map worth?
Maps are much more valuable than simply telling you where you are and where you are going. They can be used as a decision tool; what is most economical path to get there? What destination should we choose? When you change this idea from a map to a graph, where position represents something other than longitude and latitude this can provide further meaning for you as a strategist directing your business.
The idea is called visualizing data. I got this idea from article by Manav Tanneeru on today’s CNN “A New way of looking at the world” . They also recommend a website by Ben Fry at benfry.com called Ben Fry (simple enough).
The approach is to take advantage of the information in data that you might never use and present it in a way that addresses a question and allows you to draw a conclusion. Evidently, there is a programming language called, “Processing” that allows you to explore and explain data. This can be researched in a book called, “Vizualizing Data” by Ben Fry.
The bottom line is that a map or smart graph can effectively communicate to people the direction they need to go … in business. You can use this in your decision making, presentations, and daily communication to not only get the idea across, but to get it done.
By getting it done (and done right) your business will be more successful.
Check out Ben’s web site. It is interesting.
Build Your Own Brand
Posted by Steve in Customers, For Job Seekers on November 3, 2009
On Monday, an article appeared on CNN, Me 2.0: Branding yourself online. Great article on personal branding as it defines branding and then goes into discussing social branding online.
Definition: Personal branding is promoting yourself like a brand . You have have skills, values, expertise that you can deliver to someone that needs it.
They only touch on a few things but essentially you use the internet, blogs, social websites, and manage your personal brand like you would any other brand. Problem is that you may not know how to do that. Two things you can do. Buy the book they talk about, Me 2.0 (visit the website, www.personalbrandingbook.com) or click on Job Seekers on the right and read the articles. Furthermore, we are going to go into further depth on how you can build your brand.
As a pat on my own back I will state that I have been writing about this for some time. As a job seeker and entrepreneur, build your own brand!
Why? Read yesterday’s post. Building your brand is as useful and as critical as building the brand for your company. People will tie the two together and for startups, which has more history? You! Use it.
Note: This is not an endorsement for Me 2.0. I have not read the book. However, it got mentioned on CNN and it may be worth checking out in the bookstore.
Use your personal brand when you start a business
Posted by Steve in Customers, For Job Seekers on November 2, 2009
In the past I have talked about the multiple focus of the job seeker, that the goal is to advertise yourself on the web. This also applies to the entrepreneur because your personal brand is as important as your business brand when you start.
Why? When your business starts which has a longer track record, your business or you? It is you! Leverage that track record into a brand, tie it to your business, and people will start to believe that your business has that positive brand as well.