Sophia Perl of Wisdom

I’m sure most of you have heard about PostSecret in which people send in postcards with your confession.  I came across another website called TruuConfessions.com targeted towards women.  I thought it was interesting actually in that women definitely do love their gossip.  When I read the About Us section which I always do on new startup websites, the founder talked about anonymous confessions as being therapeutic.  OK, I can maybe buy that.  Now, when someone posts a confession, she can categorize the confession into a category and then others can comment or say “me too” in response.

I like the general idea, but I don’t think the website layout makes it easy to contribute.  For instance, the confessions start halfway down the website, so I have to look down and then scroll down to see even more.  Just about all of the confessions are anonymous which they should be in my opinion, so why give the option of having a profile that can identify yourself.  What factors indicate that a confession is popular?  How do you distinguish the juicy gossip?

I’m thinking that there’s probably a twitter confessions website out there too.

I have a friend who decided to attend a VC pitch roundtable event for the first time.  He asked if I knew anything about that event and to be honest I did not know anyone who had attended such of an event.   BUT, I said, look it’s $60 or so, just try it once, worse case you get to network with some VCs.  So he went.

Before the event, you get the bios of the VCs so that you get an idea of what each VC’s expertise is in, possibly even cater your pitch based on this.  If you want to sign up, you can pitch for 90 seconds to a panel of 5 or so VC judges otherwise you can be a spectator.  The judging is based on whether that particular VC would fund the venture on a scale of 1-5.  Apparently, the 90 seconds was not enforced so my friend ended up feeling cheated hahahaha.  It’s OK because it takes more skills to sell in 90 seconds than it does in 5 minutes.  Eleven “companies” pitched in front of 30-40 people and my friend ended up in the middle, not bad, not good.  He really enjoyed the experience and even said that I need to do a pitch feedback event too.  I’m up for it.  Next time, you’ll see me. 

To find a VC pitch feedback event near you, try going to http://upcoming.yahoo.com and search on “startup pitch” and then your geographical location.  I did a search and came up with these bay area events:

• SVASE First Impressions Funding Pitch Feedback, with DFJ, ONSET Ventur…
• SVASE Funding Pitch Preparation Workshop
• SVASE Startup-U SFO: PPT Pitch

I’ve done a posting before about free work from 5-6 MBA students.  I wanted to comment on another way to get your business some free work from MBA students.  If you have a friend who is currently attending MBA school, ask him/her to do a school project on your business.  This could be a competitive analysis, pricing strategy, marketing strategy, etc, etc.  All you have to do is convince your friend that your business is interesting enough to use as a case study.  If you don’t have a friend in MBA school yet, you should start making such friends or better yet convince  your existing friends to attend MBA school.  Hahahaha.  I’m kidding about the last one.

I had the opportunity to ask a couple of entrepreneurs some questions and these were the takeaways that I thought were valuable.

• Funding pitch needs to have 3 things:
  1. Analysis of market (TAM) - Is it big enough?  Billion dollar?  Million dollar?
  2. Convincing management team - Can the team execute?  Do they have a track record?
  3. Technology / software / product - Can you show the tangible?  Demo / prototype?
• Focus on a market that you can dominate by 80%, it’s a mistake to start off too broad
• Figure out how to get your first customer, contact potential customers now and get some traction
• Even if you don’t have a product to show, you should still do some customer validation of your startup idea verbally

A friend of mine, who works in software research in the industry, is going to be a panelist on the topic of “Weathering the Economic Storm”.  She asked me if there were any topics that she should talk about.  I gave her my two cents below.

• You can’t control your fate, companies at any time will chose to do things that will keep them in business, focus on building up your skills and keep up with your networking
• People don’t help people they don’t know, get out and network and develop meaningful relationships, don’t ask for things so soon
• Some think that a recession is a good time to start a business, that’s a possibility, people are not spending much but if your business survives, it really will survive in a good economy
• Some go back to school and hope that the economy jumps back when they graduate
• Keep the communication loop open with you and your manager, know his/her expectations, pay close attention to feedback, you may not have that much time to rectify issues
• Surround yourself with people who know your skills or start educating people around you about what you can do, I’ve had friends who had no idea what I do, this doesn’t help when you need their help to find a job
• If you get laid off, search within and outside of company for a job, consider a variety of positions and even lower pay to get your foot in the door, know your strengths and achievements, get feedback from others if you are unclear about them
• Be prepared for an interview at any given time, even if you think that you’re meeting up with a friend for drinks
• Get on LinkedIn, it may help, it obviously doesn’t hurt