Entrepreneurship

Pick an Industry with Lots of Waves

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I can’t remember where I got the advice but I can’t forget what I learned. It goes something like this…

You can be the best surfer in the world and if there are no waves, it doesn’t much matter. However, you can be just an ok surfer but be in a place where there are lots of waves and chances are, you’re going to catch one and have a good ride.

When starting a company, pick an industry where there are lots of waves!

I think the main point for an entrepreneur (surfer) is to pick a growing industry with lots of demand (waves). I’m not suggesting jumping into something that just has a ton of competition, which validates that yes, there is actual demand. Rather, think about big macro trends that are going to disrupt industries over the next 5 to 10 years and create lots of waves!

When thinking about a new venture, I would look for big trends that will impact a very large number of people and companies. One example is self-driving cars and the disruption it will cause not just to the automobile industry but to all adjacent industries that are part of the driving experience such as commercial real-estate, security, safety, and many more.

Enjoy the Ride!

 

My interview with FreshBooks

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I was recently interviewed by the team at FreshBooks (where my company is a happy customer by the way). Big thanks for helping me to share the Cooleaf story!

Here is the link to the original article: https://www.freshbooks.com/blog/customer-stories-company-culture

Customer Stories: Meet John Duisberg, Co-Founder of Cooleaf

If you take care of your employees, your employees will take care of your customers and your customers take care of your business.

Sounds simple, right? Yet so many companies don’t seem to get it right.

Enter Cooleaf.

Cooleaf helps businesses achieve better business results through a data-driven approach to company culture.

As many startups do, Cooleaf has evolved and pivoted over time. Launching in 2011, the business was initially a health and wellness solution. Then, it shifted to focus on employee engagement. Today, it offers an Agile Business Execution platform that helps businesses achieve their goals and improve business performance with sophisticated analytics.

John Duisberg is one of 3 Cooleaf founders. Many lessons have been learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey and he shares some of those insights with us.

Meet John and learn more about the evolution of Cooleaf.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR COMPANY, COOLEAF.

Cooleaf is focused on helping forward-thinking companies create a culture of engagement so they can attract and retain the best people for their business.

These days,companies need to connect their people to their brand in a more meaningful way. If their own people aren’t passionate about the mission and core values of the company, then how can your customers become passionate about it?

So, Cooleaf exists to help companies strengthen their brand’s value proposition in order to better connect with their employees. This way, they can strive to be a top workplace environment.

HOW DO YOU DEFINE CULTURE?

If you ask ten people what culture is, you’ll likely get ten responses. I personally believe that culture is something that has to be organic—it can’t be manufactured; however, you can be intentional and thoughtful in how you go about building culture.

We work with the leadership teams of our clients to find out what the mission and objectives of the company are. We dig deep to uncover their core values—what they want their people to live and breathe day-to-day. Then we ask ourselves: How can we help our client build a community that brings those core values to life?

AS EXPERTS IN THE AREA OF COMPANY CULTURE, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE CULTURE LIKE AT COOLEAF?

We’re a small company now, so everyone works in the same room. It feels like a family. There are about 5 full-time employees at the moment and we’re all in it together, which is really fun.

The challenges come as you grow. We want to focus on preserving that entrepreneurial feel as we grow. We want every person to feel like they are an owner of the company and are invested in its long-term success.

WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE YOU STARTED YOUR BUSINESS? AND WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO QUIT YOUR DAY JOB AND START OFF ON YOUR OWN?

I worked for a healthcare technology company. I was very successful and I enjoyed what I did.

I worked with one of my now co-founders. At the time, we would have those coffee shop conversations and daydream about starting a business one day. But nothing ever came of those chats. Then, he left to work at another organization. At his new job, he met our third co-founder where those coffee shop conversations continued.

It started going beyond the coffee shop conversation when my former colleague introduced me to his new colleague. That’s when we actually started to take next steps like investing our own money and starting to design stuff.

We were all still working full-time jobs. Slowly but surely, we continued to put in more resources and build up our business. There were some things I wanted to have in place before I felt comfortable enough to go off on my own.

Firstly, I wanted to have a live product, not just a concept. Secondly, I wanted to make sure we had some seed funding in place so we wouldn’t just be burning our own cash. Lastly, I wanted to have a 12-month runway to save up so I could support myself through the bumpy road of entrepreneurship.

Once I had those three things in place I felt confident to take the leap and go all-in on our company.

IN YOUR EXPERIENCE, WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO APPROACH SEED FUNDING?

Well as a first step, reach out to family and friends and ask: Is this something you’d be interested in?

When I reached out to potential seed funders, I didn’t just want them to contribute financially, but also to be on board as acting advisors. Because when they’re helping you become successful, they are more likely to buy-in to the achievements of your company.

Bring your seed funders in as strategic partners of your business beyond the financial means—that’s attractive to a lot of people.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE LESSONS YOU’VE LEARNED ALONG YOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY?

  1. It’s going to take 4x longer than you expect and cost 5x more. So prepare yourself. Things will come up and problems will arise. You have to be prepared mentally and financially to be flexible and roll with the punches.
  2. Get some traction in the market before starting to pitch your product. Before going out and pitching, figure out how to build a minimum viable product (MVP) really early on. Figure out if customers will actually pay for the thing you’re offering. That’s the ultimate test.
  3. It’s all worth it in the end. Even though it’s very hard and there are soul-searching days when you get rejected… Remember: When you finally get that win and see a customer enjoying your product—it’s totally worth it.

 

WORKING WITH 2 OTHER CO-FOUNDERS. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES THAT COME WITH THAT?

For us, it’s been a very good experience.

Being an entrepreneur can be very lonely. At times, you feel like you’re working on an island. So having co-founders can be very helpful in that respect.

 

Plus, different people bring different skills, a different network and different perspective to the table. Defining and understanding the roles of each person is really helpful. You’ll have to make decisions and move quickly in terms of the business and strategy. Being able to define your roles as co-founders is really helpful.

Keep this in mind: If you are going to work with co-founders, you’re going to be spending A LOT of time with these people, so there has to be professional respect there and you have to work to maintain it.

So, although there can be pros and cons to starting a business with one or two other people, I would absolutely recommend it. There’s a net positive that comes from that.

LOOKING FORWARD, WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AND COOLEAF?

It’s an exciting time for us. We have built out a very strong technology platform and we have validated it by bringing on customers over the past year. Some of them are very large customers like Turner Broadcasting for example.

The next stage is to grow and scale. We’re focussed on starting to build out a strategy around customer acquisition and how to make that a repeatable process. Investing in sales and marketing effort as well as developing from a channel partner standpoint.

As we head into the remainder of this year, I’m very excited about where we are and where we will go. We plan to be cashflow positive by the end of the year!

 

Scar Tissue

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“When you run a company long enough, you will get some scar tissue. After a while, you will go through so much that you don’t have any skin left. But that’s alright, scar tissue is tougher than skin.” ~ Perry Moss, President of Rubicon Global. 

Last week our hosting vendor went down causing our website to crash for about 15 minutes. Of course, during this time we were supporting one of our largest customers where they were preparing to use our platform to live-stream their employee engagement event around the world. Immediately my cell phone started blowing up about the issue while I’m trying to coordinate with our team to investigate the root cause of the problem. Meanwhile, I’m standing outside of a prospect meeting where I’m about to give a presentation. Talk about feeling a burning on the back of your neck from stress!

Later that day, I was meeting with Perry and openly sharing about what happened.  He then shared with me a story that was way more intense than mine and then he looked at me and said, ‘It’s just scar tissue. If you keep going and pushing hard you will get through whatever challenge you’re dealing with and you will look back and see that it made you stronger’.

I know with my company, the bar keeps getting raised and problems we were dealing with in the past seem trivial to what we’re working through now. However, I expect that six months from now, I’ll look back and feel the same way.

This was a reminder for me as an entrepreneur that there are going to be some really hard days but if I keep moving forward, continue learning, and constantly get better, I know that I will overcome the challenge. 

Pitching Cooleaf at 36|86

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I had the opportunity to pitch my company, Cooleaf at this year’s 36|86 conference in Nashville. The conference is designed to highlight the best startup companies in the southeast and to connect investors and entrepreneurs. There was a $50,000 prize for the winning startup pitch along with lots of press. I have to say, the conference organizers did a really nice job and I’d recommend it to other entrepreneurs.

To be honest, I try not to do too many pitch competitions because they really don’t move the needle for your business.  It’s good to do every so often though to keep your edge. Believe me, when you have to be on stage in front of a couple hundred people and deliver a pitch describing your company, it forces you to be on point. I think it’s also good to feel that nervousness in your gut which is a reminder to me that I’m living!

My 3 Lessons Learned in B2B Sales

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I have a background in product development. I’ve never been responsible for generating revenue until I started my company, Cooleaf. What I learned is that sales is hard. Really hard.

We’ve been through a lot at Cooleaf and we’ve had some really nice wins along with our share of rejections. The wins are so more meaningful because you know how hard they are to achieve. And it still hurts your soul when you’re rejected. Anyone who says it doesn’t is full of it.

Here are three lessons I’ve learned along the way. My hope is that you can take my lessons and apply them to your own startup.

  1. Sell to buyers that have budget and authority

Sorry to all my HR friends but HR is one of the worst place to sell into inside an organization. Exceptions can be made of course but in general, HR is a poor buyer because they are not a revenue generating part of the organization which means they have less authority when seeking budget. My advice is to NOT sell into a cost center for a company. Instead, pick a buyer such as head of sales or marketing who are in a direct path to revenue for their organization. I know for me, if my lead sales rep. came to me and said that if we buy this new software it would help them sell more, I would be interested.

  1. Make it easier to say yes by limiting the number of people who need to say yes

Top down sales slows your sales cycle significantly. When the whole organization has to adopt your product, it means that more people will be involved in the decision making process which means inevitably, you will experience a longer sales process. We’ve started working directly with team leaders such as a VP of X and offering a solution directly for them with their team. Our goal is to make them a champion to grow our product inside the organization. Even C-level people don’t want to make a decision to buy some new software unless they know their people will value it and adopt it.

  1. Remove the budget barrier

One of the most common barriers to a sale is the line, ‘we don’t have budget’. Well, why not just temporarily remove this barrier by offering a free trial or pilot of your product? I’ve found that one of the biggest fears a buyer has is that if they buy, what if the product fails to get adopted inside the organization. It’s less about the money and more about them looking bad that is the real issue. By letting them use the product first through a trial, it eases this concern. However, you have to be careful because people value what they pay for and that last thing you want is for the buyer to say that the trial didn’t workout but in reality it’s because they did not commit to using your product.

I’m still learning every day but these are a few of the lessons I’ve found meaningful. I hope you do too!

How Companies can Accelerate Innovation

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For companies looking to accelerate innovation, why not open up a competition for smaller companies to bring ideas, new technology, and entrepreneurship to offer solutions for business problems at your company? This is exactly what Citi did.

I recently had the opportunity to present Cooleaf as part Citi’s Smarter Worklife Tech Innovation challenge. Here is the summary of the challenge from Citi.

“Digital Innovations are affecting every part of Citi’s business including its internal operations. 

Smarter Worklife Challenge enabled by Digital Acceleration within Citi Fintech invited selected technology companies to a crowd-sourcing initiative to identify innovative human resources technologies to improve “Employee Journey”. 

We received 133 submissions from 21 countries, out of which selected 19 Finalists presented their solutions to Citi Leadership at a Demo Day in NYC on February 11, 2016.”

Cooleaf was one of the finalists to present in NYC near Citi’s headquarters. Each company had 8 minutes to present and there was a strong emphasis on sharing a live product demo. The attendees of the event were a combination of Citi executives along with other executives from Citi partners such as PwC who were interested in what solutions would be presented.

We were assigned two RMs (Relationship Managers) that were subject matters experts at Citi that helped give guidance on our presentation and how best to align Cooleaf’s solution to solve specific problems that would most likely result in interest from Citi’s leadership team to do a pilot.

Here is a video of my presentation.

Citi has a huge volunteer and community service program where hundreds of events are organized each year around the world. The challenge for Citi is to maximize awareness about these events for employees to engage in them. There is also a challenge in managing the logistics of employees registering and communications for each local event. We found that much of the logistics are done manually and Cooleaf could add significant value by automating internal processes for Citi while also helping to maximize awareness and engagement into the existing programs that Citi has invested in.

Our proposed pilot for Citi was to create a branded web and mobile employee community platform that is part of the employee on-boarding process. When a new employee joins the company, they would quickly have access to many types of employee resource groups inside Citi to build connections with other employees based on common interest and to also be plugged into the many volunteer and community service opportunities that Citi sponsors.

I’m very proud to say that Cooleaf was one of the eight companies chosen to participate in a pilot with Citi but also one of the three companies selected to receive a cash award!

These types of events are great to help promote innovation. The large company wins by having many smaller companies compete to offer the most innovative solution to a business problem while the smaller companies have an opportunity to then work with a large customer that they most likely would not have had. In addition, there is a great PR opportunity.

I hope to see more of these types of events in the future and would be happy to share more details with anyone interested in hosting this type of event for their company.

How Social Learning will Disrupt Traditional Corporate Training

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If you have a corporate job, you most likely have experienced being required to take some type of online training courses. If you’re like me, you try to get through them as fast as possible so you can focus on your real work.

The crazy thing that I’ve found in the corporate world is that even as important as knowledge and learning are for the business, the way it’s facilitated is as if people are back in grade school.

Once an organization is large enough, say around 200 employees, they may have a Learning Management System where employees take quizzes and training courses. The reality though is that people are busy with their work so these training courses are only a required nuisance to ‘check the box’ than actually learning.

Real people learn from real experiences. I personally find it so much more valuable to look someone in the eyes and hear about how they dealt with a situation in a real-world setting.

Companies have a huge untapped asset regarding the knowledge and experiences of their people. The big question is how to effectively share knowledge in a way that is meaningful for both the individual and the business.

I believe the best way to share knowledge inside an organization is through Social Learning. Think back on the last time you went to lunch with someone you looked up to. That person may have shared experiences about a problem that you are dealing with. This intimate conversation has your attention and you’re engaged because someone is sharing knowledge about a topic that matters to you.

What if we applied this same scenario inside a company in a way that is more scalable? Instead of a lunch meeting, what if that person with experience and expertise shared their knowledge with 10 to 15 other employees in a meeting room. What if the business determined certain skills and knowledge that was critical for employees to have in order to achieve company goals and scheduled a series of such events to focus these topics?

A learning focused organization is a critical competitive advantage. Technology can help maximize knowledge sharing to occur across teams that is aligned back to specific business goals.

I believe there is a huge opportunity to disrupt the current stale model of corporate training. Organizations that invest in social learning across teams will benefit from employees that are engaged in learning skills and knowledge that better themselves and the business.

At Cooleaf, we’ve found that our product works very well to organize and manage employee knowledge sharing events. One customer example is Daugherty Business Solutions, who uses Cooleaf to create team events focused on sharing knowledge about specific skills and other categories that help grow their business.

Below is a snapshot of Daugherty’s community dashboard and a sample knowledge sharing event.

Screen Shot 2016-01-24 at 11.14.33 AM

Screen Shot 2016-01-24 at 11.17.33 AM

 

What It’s Like Inside A Top Startup Accelerator

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500 Startups

My company was recently accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator program which, is one the most exclusive in the world. There is approx. a 3% acceptance rate. For the last couple months, I’ve been spending every other week in Silicon Valley at their HQ in Mountain View, CA. Needless to say we’ve been pushing it hard and earning a lot of sky miles.

500 Startups is a micro VC and as part of the program, they invested $100K in our company. There is also an investment made with their network of mentors and CEOs who are there to help you grow and keep you accountable.

There is a lot of hype from the outside about these accelerators. I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted to do it. After all, we had an existing business with customers and revenue. I was worried that we would get there and would be told to start over and redo our product.

What I found was different than what I had expected. We have barely talked about our product. I guess the assumption is that you already have a solid working product; otherwise you would not have been accepted into the program in the first place. The main focus is on how to scale your business. They push you for growth and then hold you accountable each week for hitting specific growth metrics.

Since joining the program we have quadrupled our level of sales outreach to build up our customer pipeline and are developing a repeatable sales process. Having a level of accountability each week where you have someone asking simple questions such as ‘why didn’t you hit your metrics?’ or ‘you didn’t have time to pick up the phone and call that prospect, really?’ all hit home hard when you’re looking someone in the eyes and you know there is a high expectation for you to deliver.

It’s not all roses. Things could be organized much better. It’s one of those deals where it’s totally up to you to get what you want out of the program. There are lots of resources available to you but it’s up to you to go get them.

We actually don’t spend the majority of our time at the program when we’re traveling there. Much of the time we spend visiting prospects in the Bay area based on our sales efforts. The amount of learning that we have done in such a short period of time has been phenomenal. There are a lot of talented people in the Bay area due to the strong startup ecosystem. We just brought on a new strategic investor after being there for only two months.

I absolutely would recommend the 500 Startups program for other entrepreneurs. The program has pushed us out of our comfort zone in a good way while providing guidance to scale our company. We’ve learned that there is no silver bullet. Growing the company into our vision is in front of us if we hustle like hell and go out and get it!

Taking Your Team on Tours of Duty

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I recently read The Alliance, which was co-authored by Reid Hoffman (founder of Linkedin). In the book, the concept of employees taking a ‘tour of duty’ at their job was articulated as the best way to maximize the employee and employer relationship in this new age of the workforce. The Alliance

Back in the 50s and 60s, there was an expectation that you find a job and stay there for your career. Both the employer and employee bought into this mindset and as a result, both thought more long-term.

Now days employees have a much shorter view of their time at their employer. This is especially true in competitive work environments where there are lots of career options for employees to choose from.

The idea of an employee taking a tour of duty with a company is focused on establishing a short-term (1 to 2 years) goal where the employee is willing to invest their time, skills, and passion to achieve a personal goal such as growing a specific skill set or solving an interesting problem while their work results in significant value  for the business.

The employer wins because they get a highly engaged employee committing to a specific project or strategic initiative for the business while the employee wins by achieving a personal goal that is important for their career.

Once a tour of duty has been completed, perhaps the employee takes on a new tour of duty at the company in a new business unit or a new strategic project. It may seem counterintuitive, but I believe it’s in the best interest for both the employee and the manager to have an open conversation about the employee’s career path even when that path may lead to leaving the company. The reality is, an employee may leave your company regardless but at least you have the right of first conversation.

Are You a Service Company or Product Company?

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service vs product

It’s a funny thing what you learn as you work to grow a company. We have pivoted multiple times at Cooleaf and we’re still learning every day. What matters most is traction and solving a problem for a customer that is important enough that they are willing to pay for it. That is easier said than done.

For some time we were troubled about being a service based company. At our core we loved technology and wanted to be a tech company. We transitioned into focusing our messaging to prospects on the product. What we learned is that people don’t buy your fancy product. They only buy a solution to their problem.

After building an incredible technology platform, we found it hard to sell. It was great to demo and we would get very positive feedback but the contract would never close. Our product would allow a customer to execute on an employee engagement strategy in great depth with extensive product features that we would tout. The problem was most of the prospects we talked to weren’t that great at creating an employee engagement strategy and they did not have a burning need to have a tool to manage it.

I find a similar analogy with marketing automation products such as Hubspot, which is a great tool if you know how to use it. We purchased this tool and let it sit on the shelf for about six months while we figured out our marketing strategy. It didn’t matter how many features the tool had, until we had our strategy in place we were not going to get value out of it. We found the same thing with Cooleaf and our customers.

Based on these learnings, we have embraced a services component to our company that lives in our Customer Success Manger role. By our team working with many customers in different industries we have learned best practices to achieve the greatest results that a customer is seeking. We now focus on the front-end strategy with a new customer that we call our on-boarding period which is basically a short project plan to lead a customer to being successful using our product.

We’ve found that some of our customers just want to be told what to do. I don’t blame them. It’s not their core business and they want us, ‘the experts’ to show them the best way to achieve their goals.

In the sales process now, I focus on understanding the customers end goals and share about how we can help achieve them rather than sharing product feature after product feature. This has been a lesson learned for me that I hope helps other founders to find their product traction.