While commenting on the The Future of Storage blog post Does Anyone Care About Efficiency Of Storage?, I starting thinking about all of the different customers involved in a single sale. Since the impetus (and my company) surround storage, we’ll focus on this product and market.

The Setup

Generic product

A NAS (Network Attached Storage) Solution with 10 TB of storage.

Generic Customer

A small enterprise - 1500 employees, a corporate data center, corporate IT staff

The Customer List

IT Staff

The IT staff has specific technical requirements for the product, the management of the product, and the integration of the product into their production environment. Quite often, they have relationships with other storage vendors that have to be broken in order to make the sale.

CIO

The CIO has to ensure that the generic solution (NAS) as well as the specific solution (us as a vendor) meet with all the strategic goals of the company - long term, financial, number/size/type of vendors, etc.

COO

The COO has to ensure business continuity, and has to be convinced that installing and integrating a new storage system will not cause any interruptions to the corporation’s work.

CEO & Board of Directors

Depending on the storage vendor and the type of customer, 10TB NAS solutions can cross the border from discretionary and departmental budget spending to corporate capital asset purchases. In this case, the CEO & BoD have their own set of objectives and objections that have to be met.

End Users

The end users may often have different requirements from IT for storage. For most end users, storage is a commodity on with the same value as pens and paper. As long as it’s there, we can get our job done. If we run out, then the work quickly grinds to a halt and there are a lot of very unhappy end users. Also, like pens and paper, end users perceive storage to be infinitely cheap, and therefore in complete abundance. Rationing of storage is not appreciated nor tolerated very well.

While end users are almost never included in the purchase process, if the end user expectations are not met, negative brand associations may result. For example, if, during the transition of files from the old storage system to the new storage system results in lost or corrupt files, the end users are very quick to blame the new stuff, as the old stuff was perceived to “just work”.

It is important for a new storage player to ensure that they meet with all the customers and determine their expectations for the system. Failure to meet expectations, even with a “successful” engagement, will quickly drive the Customer Lifetime Value to Zero.

Over at Ask the VC (A must read for any entrepreneur pursuing VC financing), there’s an interesting discussion of whether or not you should capitalize your R & D expenses (you shouldn’t).

Commenter Phil Sugar chines in with funniest - and best - comment:

Usually the good push is to tell them we are going to capitalize all of the accounting expense this year. Once we get things set up we can fire all the accountants and reap the benefit…..watch the gears smoke.

Chris Gill of SVASE gave an excellent workshop on creating an Executive Summary. Chris has synthesized his experience along with that of Garage Technology Ventures (who’ve reviewed over 20,000 Executive Summaries), into a roadmap for a summary.

Some thoughts:

• On average, angels will take approx. 30% equity, and VCs 50% equity.
• The dropout rate between financing rounds is typically greater 50% - over half the companies never get their next round!
• The purpose of the Executive Summary is to get the next meeting
• Need to sell & excite!
• The reader wants information that’s important to them. Just as in resume writing, you may have different versions of the ES targeted at different audiences.
• Key founders/employees will have management contracts
• ES should be no more than 2 pages. In fact, it will always be 2 pages, as there is more information required than can fit on one page, and 3 pages is too long.
• The VCs read so many executive summaries that they do pattern recognition during review, and can very quickly decide on their interest level.
• There are 9 important sections to the ES. For the outline, and other useful entrepreneur tools, see the SVASE download page.
• The Grab is really the executive summary of the executive summary
• Write The Grab in the form of a story. It’s more interesting to read. And, more importantly, it helps the first reader to sell the idea to others.
• There are 2 sets of competitors - your product/service/market competitors; and other companies competing with you for Investor attention and money.
• There are 2 schools of thought on teams. The first says that team is everything. The second says the market is everything. In the second case, the investors can (and will) bring in a replacement team.
• There are 3 key roles in the founding team: CEO, CMO, CTO. More than one of these roles may be filled by the same person. However, it is extremely rare that all 3 roles will be filled by one person.

At the end, Chris left a handout, The Ten Commandments of Fundrasing. This handout has lots of good, basic rules for the beginner to follow. I’m not, however, a fan of the 10 commandments style of writing - Thou Shalls are hard to read, and require significant parsing to get to the meat.

SVASE is turning out to have a lot of utility.

I also spoke to Chris about a feedback review of my executive summary. He, unfortunately, doesn’t have the time to do feedback reviews. As an alternative, he suggested showing the executive summary during an SVASE breakfast blub meeting with VCs. He said that it would be very quickly apparent if the ES was generating interest.

So that will be my next step.

Chris Yeh (Adventures in Capitalism) today provides us with a long analysis of why Obama beat Clinton. Chris cites the usual differences:

• Superior fundraising
• Brilliant execution of 50 state plan
• Soaring eloquence
• post-racial

However, he maintains that there are 2 additional important differences

• Obama is principled while Clinton is positional
• Obama is transformational while Clinton is transactional

I agree with all of this. However, the real questions are “why is this important?”, and “how does this apply to entrepreneurship?” Chris answers the first question:

“It seems to me that when you see a cataclysmic event like the defeat of an overwhelming favorite with nearly every factor in her favor, it’s important to identify the true underlying factors.”

As to how does this apply to entrepreneurship - well, to paraphrase Chris, may times we, as entrepreneurs are defeated evening when we should win. And it’s important for us to analyze why, so that we can succeed (win) in the future.

Let’s take the key differences between the candidates and apply them to business and entrepreneurship:

• Superior fundraising - There have been many posts on raising more money than you think you need. By raising additional funds, it gives you latitude to deal with unpredicted - and often unpredictable - events. It also gives you latitude to correct your own mistakes.
• Brilliant execution of 50 state plan - In entrepreneurship, this is really developing and sticking to a long-term plan. And often sacrificing the short-term for the long-term. This is also the difference between building a burger (flipping your business) and building a business.
• Soaring eloquence - Translate this to speaking the language of your customers. This is really Sales 101. This is the motivation for getting an MBA - so that you understand the lexicon of your customers (both the end-users and the VCs).
• post-racial - Translate this to market timing. You have to have what the customers want when they want it.
• Obama is principled while Clinton is positional - According to Chris, principled = accommodating while positional = confrontational. In business, it always pays to (appear to) be accommodating. Confrontational attitudes must be used with caution and purpose.
• Obama is transformational while Clinton is transactional - This is another version of short-term vs. long-term. By being transformational, you’re projecting an image of building for the long-term. Transactional approaches project that short-term image, and your customers are left wondering if you’ll be around in the next week/month/year.

There are business and entrepreneurship lessons in national politics - and in most every other activity we encounter, and we should study and learn well from them.

When the army came calling as I graduated high school, I passed - I was more interested in flying, but with my eyesight (or lack thereof: -10 diopters), I wasn’t going to be a military pilot.  After college, I was still happy with my decision - especially since many of my classmates were in ROTC, and served in Desert Shield.

Now, all these years later, I’m starting to regret my decision.  There are many benefits to military service, including training in discipline, recruiting and leadership.  And the personal knowledge of having served the greater good.

Unfortunately, I’m too old for service today.  I’ve even looked into the WOFT - Warrant Officer Flight Training as part of the National Guard.  So, the military is no longer an option.

Regardless of my personal status, I must say thanks to all those who serve our country - particularly those who’ve paid the ultimate price.

Thank You!