Frank Gruber:
Ever wish you could get inside an investor’s mind to know exactly what they’re looking for when they talk to early-stage companies? Well, now we’re going to do just that, as investors and investor relations experts tell you how they approach relationship-building with founders before they’re looking to raise their next round.
Hello everybody, I’m Frank Gruber. I’m the co-founder and co-CEO of Established, a consultancy that helps organizations with innovation, startup, and communication strategies. Our mission is really to help, wherever and whenever possible, discover, promote, foster, connect, build, and fund innovation that can change the world for the better.
We have a program called Startup of the Year, and that’s what the letters here stand for. It’s a year-long program focused on finding startups with diverse backgrounds, and we pull them all together for the title of Startup of the Year and an opportunity to build relationships and potentially receive investment from our other arm, Established Ventures.
Myself, I’m a venture partner with Next Gen Venture Partners and have invested in over 25 companies. I’ve got a great panel here today. We’re going to be talking about building relationships with investors before you actually need their money, and how to build that digital Rolodex beforehand.
To kick it off, we’ve got Jomayra Herrera from Cowboy Ventures. She’s a Senior Associate with Cowboy Ventures. She has been there for a little while now and focuses on early-stage and growth-stage companies, both as an investor and an operator. Jomayra, you want to share a little bit more about what you’re up to?
Jomayra Herrera:
Yeah, happy to. Like you mentioned, I’m at Cowboy Ventures. We’re a seed-stage focused fund investing across multiple categories and sectors, generally leading or co-leading rounds, and we’ve been around for about eight years now. Before this, I helped build the family office for the Jobs family, and I focused on early- and growth-stage investing, like you mentioned. I started my career on the operating side.
Frank Gruber:
Excellent. And you are a Florida lover, I found out?
Jomayra Herrera:
I am a Florida native. I don’t know if I would describe myself as a Florida lover, but I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida. I’ve been in the Bay Area for about 10 years now.
Frank Gruber:
Excellent, excellent. All right, next up we’ve got Brendan Schmidt. He’s with Sierra Ventures and joined in 2017, and leads business development operations for the firm, as well as a number of other things. Brendan, you want to share a little bit more about what you’re up to?
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah. Well, I’m also a Florida native, from Jacksonville. Sierra Ventures has been around for almost 40 years now. We’re really excited, we just kicked off our 12th fund and started investing out of that in February. It came in at around $220 million.
We have what we call a “come early, stay late” approach, so we tend to back founders at the seed or A stage, but what’s really cool is we get to work with them all the way through exit. We joke that we’re bad party guests because we come early and stay late.
Mostly, our sector focus is next-gen enterprise software and emerging technology, and we’re pretty geography-agnostic. We back founders all across the U.S. and other parts of the globe. Thanks for having me today.
Frank Gruber:
And last but not least, we’ve got Frank Williamson. Another Frank, which I’m not used to seeing so many of on the same call. Welcome, Frank, from Oaklyn Consulting. He’s based out in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Oaklyn Consulting is a different kind of investment banking firm for private companies. Frank, share a little bit more about what you’re up to.
Frank Williamson:
We help business owners complete mergers, acquisitions, capital raises, and do a lot of investor relations for people as they’re planning to raise money or planning to get major deals done, joint ventures, distribution deals, and other things like that.
Frank Gruber:
Excellent. Also a Florida native?
Frank Williamson:
Unfortunately not. For this panel, the only Tennessean in the context of this conference too.
Frank Gruber:
Nice. I am not a Florida native either, but do love freaking things I’m talking about.
All right, so we’re 50/50 on that.
Let’s dive in. We want to help folks learn how to build relationships before they need them. So let’s go around the horn. Whoever wants to jump in first, I want to figure out what the ideal situation is for a founder or C-level executive to connect with you throughout the process of trying to raise a round of funding. What’s the best way for a startup founder to connect with you?
Jomayra Herrera:
I’m happy to take a stab at that. For us, we like to focus on accessibility. We always say founders can reach us in any way. We have a [email protected] email where anyone can submit their pitch and deck. We respond to every single person who sends us an email and falls within our criteria. We promise that everyone gets a look.
So we focus on accessibility. In terms of the ideal way to reach us, I think most people say this, which is that it’s always great if you can find a way to get some kind of warm intro, especially through a referrer that we know and trust. That could be a founder in our portfolio, someone we’ve co-invested with, or an operator that we think highly of and really respect. We take those referrals super seriously.
But at the end of the day, what we care about is accessibility, because there are a lot of great ideas all across the country and we want to make sure we see them. We have an open-door policy.
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah, same thing, Jomayra. It’s pretty easy to figure out our email convention, just first.last name at sierraventures.com. We’re definitely mindful about responding to every entrepreneur, knowing what it’s like being in their shoes. But it’s human nature to gravitate toward some of those warm intros.
As a CEO or founder, it’s critical to do your homework. You’re going to work hard and be persistent. Find any medium you can to reach these folks. We even joke that one of our portfolio companies used to be in the building and literally did an elevator pitch to one of our managing partners. So there’s no shortage of ways to get in front of investors.
But work smart and do your homework. Otherwise, you’re going to spin your wheels in the wrong direction and take away time you could be using to run your business. Be more efficient in the fundraising process by finding a winning intro.
Frank Williamson:
Frank, I think you two have such good advice for people. One of the things we tell folks we work with is to remember that the close ratio when you’re talking to investors is something like 1 percent. So go out getting to know people with that idea in mind. There are going to be 99 no’s for a yes.
Then think about how you make your time efficient. To Brendan’s point, how do you make your time efficient so it doesn’t get wasted and the investor’s time doesn’t get wasted too? Know your metrics, get your material together so the pitch makes sense to someone who needs to put in money and get it back.
And third, probably know that you’re recruiting. What you’re going to get at the end of this is money and a business partner. If you’re not interviewing someone who’s an investor at the same time they’re interviewing you, you’re missing an opportunity to pick up someone who could be a great asset to your business, or you may end up with someone who’s not the best fit.
Frank Gruber:
Yeah, that’s a great point. You don’t know where anything’s going to go. Anybody could end up anywhere at some point. They may be an investor today and an operator tomorrow, then back to being an investor, or maybe a startup founder. Who knows. People jump around a lot. So I think that’s a great point. You never know where anyone’s going to end up.
My thought is always to treat everyone the same, with that same amount of respect, and obviously try to build a relationship off of that.
So I’m curious to dive in deeper. How do you then build a relationship? You guys have a limited amount of time, so what’s the best way for startup founders who are trying to build a relationship with you, aside from just pitching you? What are some tips around that? I think that’s harder these days, especially with everyone being a little bit more at home.
Jomayra Herrera:
I can take another stab at that. One way is obviously spending some time and grabbing what is now, these days, virtual coffee. Just getting to know each other.
Even though we can’t meet in person a lot, and people say we lose a lot through that, I have found that in some of the deals we’ve done over the past couple of months, I’ve actually spent more time with founders than I normally would have because there’s so little friction to hop behind a Zoom. I can email them or text them and say, “Hey, can we talk about X, Y, and Z?” Then we get on Zoom for 30 minutes. Or, “Hey, why don’t we just get on a Zoom and do something a little more social to get to know each other better?”
So in some ways it’s easier to build relationships because there’s less friction around scheduling and finding the right time and place to meet. That’s one way.
Another way is that I have founders who put me on their monthly or quarterly update list, so I’m getting information about how their company is doing. It’s low friction on their end and low friction on mine. It doesn’t take a bunch of time for either of us, but it helps us maintain that relationship over time.
The last thing I’ll note is that I think there is a difference between building a relationship when it’s super early stage versus later stage. We focus on seed stage, so the time from when they start to when we invest isn’t that long. Sometimes there isn’t much time to build a relationship. But when I was focused on growth stage, sometimes I would build a relationship with founders for one or two years in advance of financing. That ranged from visiting offices, meeting management teams over time, doing more social events, having them come to our offices and meet the rest of the team.
So the other thing to think about is how you build relationships, especially at later stages. That’s where I get a little more concerned, because not meeting in person there feels more stressful than at the early stage.
Frank Gruber:
That makes a lot of sense. Those are some great tips for today and what we can talk about a little bit more later. Great advice. Anybody else want to jump in on that?
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah, I think there are two sides to this. How should a CEO be thinking about this? When we think about what a CEO’s priorities are week in and week out, it’s really threefold, in this order:
Number one, do not run out of money. That is your number one job. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to secure funding. You could have a bootstrap business and be very successful. But you are the chief fundraiser of the company.
Number two, if you don’t run out of money and you raise a good amount of money, you can hire the best talent.
Then from there, you can build the best product.
So all of them filter into each other. I think it’s an important practice, week in and week out, to schedule some time for investor relationships.
The number one thing I see if I meet a founder who just raised their seed and they’re going to their A is this: how are they going to stay top of mind with me? Jomayra, you mentioned quarterly and monthly updates. Those are great. I think sometimes they’re too long in the body of the email, so it’s always good to put the top three to five bullet points in the email and attach anything more detailed. If they want to read further, they can.
If you’re doing a webinar or panel that’s thought-leadership driven and you’re getting really interesting customers participating, I may join that and say, “Hey, really love the content. Let’s connect afterwards for a 30-minute call.”
And it goes without saying, if you’re building a good relationship and you’re really clicking together, it’s okay to reach out on an informal basis. Maybe there are a couple of non-work-related things you bond over. You can say, “Hey, how did that vacation go? I saw your post on LinkedIn.”
There are a lot of different pieces to staying top of mind, but the biggest thing is really differentiating yourself. There is a lot of noise coming at me day in and day out, so how are you going to stand out enough for the investors to continue building that relationship and stay in touch with you?
Frank Williamson:
I think these guys are telling super stories around which the headline I hear is just remember people are busy. Jomayra, I love your point that some things actually are working better on Zoom. There’s no driving to go meet for coffee. You can actually get there. At least I’ve found a lot of conversations tend to jump into the business stuff a little bit faster than they would if we were just meeting for coffee. Maybe that’s right for this kind of relationship.
It’s great to have good personal rapport, and obviously you can’t do it without it, but in the end it’s a business relationship that everyone’s trying to build.
You’ve probably all heard that when you’re looking for money, ask for advice, and when you’re looking for advice, ask for money. Do you still believe that’s the case with everything that’s going on? We find it’s a pretty good way to approach it. Just don’t forget the point. As long as everyone knows what’s there in the end.
When people are out looking for advice, they tend to share both the good and the bad of what they’re doing. They share the challenges they’re facing to get from one place to another. As long as that challenge can be solved with more money, it leads to a good money conversation. Sometimes the challenges are not solved with more money, in which case don’t expect that outcome at the end of the meeting.
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah, I’d add on to that. I think it’s okay to be vulnerable as a CEO. You’re not going to have everything figured out. As investors, there is going to be a collaborative part of the relationship at some point, so it’s okay to get the gears running on, “By the way, I don’t have everything figured out, but I was thinking XYZ on the vision two years out.”
I think as well you can figure out whether this is a partner you want to be married to for the next five to seven years or whatever it may be.
The other part of it is you’re not in this alone. On the other side of it too, in terms of how to think about the strategy, it’s okay to go to your previous investors, your advisors, and your board members. It’s going to be daunting. Each round is going to be a huge win and a success when you close it out, and you should celebrate that.
But it shouldn’t feel too daunting. Ask for help from your support system in getting those warm intros, or at least figuring out, of these 200 investors, who are the 50 or 100 we should really be spending time with?
Jomayra Herrera:
I think it’s super important to ask for advice and be vulnerable. One thing we look for is self-awareness. It’s really important for you to know what you don’t know, because that’s a super important and valuable characteristic as a CEO and founder. You have to be able to know when you need to ask for help.
One thing I will note, though, is that we have a lot of founders who reach out and say they’re asking for advice, but really what they want is to fundraise. What I’d rather do, for everyone’s sake, is that you’re upfront and say what you want to do is raise money. Then during the process, you can also share. We think about the process as collaborative, where we can talk about some of the challenges you’re facing, do some brainstorming, do some whiteboarding.
But it’s really important, because one thing we already talked about is that everyone is super busy and time is a zero-sum game. So be upfront. Say, “Look, we’re raising this amount of money to achieve X, Y, and Z milestones. This is what we know. This is what we don’t know. We’re looking for a partner to help us get there.” Part of that process can be about advice, but don’t veil a search for advice when what you’re really looking to do is fundraise.
Frank Gruber:
That makes sense. So I guess the cat’s out of the bag, though. Everyone knows that phrase in the startup world and uses it. So you’re saying be more upfront if you’re really looking for money.
Jomayra Herrera:
Yeah. If you’re looking to fundraise, there’s nothing wrong with fundraising. That’s your number one job as a CEO, as Brendan just mentioned earlier, to not run out of money. So let’s have that conversation.
Frank Gruber:
Makes sense. All right, so now that we’re talking along those same lines, I wanted to figure out, you mentioned email, Jomayra, and Brendan you did as well. How would startup founders find you if they didn’t know how to do that? Back in the day, when we could do bigger events, we actually created one years ago that hosted events all over the country where we connected people. Things like this would normally be in real life and in person.
So what are some tips or tricks for people to walk away with so they can find investors like you?
Jomayra Herrera:
I think now, in the age of social media, it’s probably easier to find investors than ever before. I can only speak to our fund. All of us are on Twitter, and all of our Twitter DMs are open. I get a ton of deal flow just through my Twitter DMs. All of us are on LinkedIn. I’m less likely to check my LinkedIn messages, but people can reach us there.
Many of us write, and at the end of our blog posts we say, “If you want to reach us, reach us at [email protected].” So if you don’t find our email out there, that’s more concerning to me, because we put it absolutely everywhere. We make it as easy as possible for you to find our information. That’s our orientation. I know not all firms are like this, but that’s really what we focus on.
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah, I saw an interesting tweet the other day where a startup founder said they had about tenfold more interactions with VCs on Twitter than on LinkedIn. It goes back to LinkedIn being super saturated, with messages coming in day in and day out. I still check them, but the core message here is to leave no stone unturned. Twitter, LinkedIn.
Even though I gave that example of the elevator pitch, I wouldn’t show up cold to our office. Not today anyway.
Obviously, events, when that gets back up and running. If you can get access to an event and the attendee list is mapped out, look at the top five or ten people. It may sound a little creepy, but figure out what their face looks like. Go on LinkedIn. Maybe even have a cheat sheet going into that, because we all know how events work. You talk to one person, you look up again, 30 minutes are gone, and you only have another 30 minutes.
And then emails. We’re not shy about it. It’s [email protected]. You can kind of figure out the same convention, but try each way. Everyone has their own system, and they’re bound to respond in some way.
Frank Williamson:
Right. I got an email yesterday from an insurtech company that’s about at the point of Series A. The VP of Finance there said, “Can you give me the names of two VCs who might be interested?” I did a quick scan through it. Within a reasonable radius of these guys, relatively early stage, there are about 150 firms that have some interest in doing insurtech or have done other companies like it.
The response is just to set aside the time to reach out to all of them and do the research. Find who funded other companies like you. Find who funded your competitors. Instead of asking for two introductions, do the work. You can reach everybody relatively easily, and with a little persistence, just like Jomayra and Brendan have been saying. You need to set aside the time to make your network big.
Frank Gruber:
Let’s dive a little deeper into that, because I agree. The tools are out there, you all have said you’re accessible, and your intros are out there. But if I’m a novice and I don’t know anything about startups, I’m new to the area, or whatever, what tools do I use specifically? Obviously I would start with Google, but let’s say I don’t even know what that is. How do I get started? How do I find those 150 investors that are in insurtech if I’m totally oblivious to the world?
Jomayra Herrera:
Google is a great resource. You can also go on Crunchbase. You can get a pretty cheap account, and I think they even have a monthly free trial. You can search investors that have invested in the sector, or have invested in a particular company or its competitors. You can pull that list, export a CSV, and all of a sudden you have a list of those investors. Then for each of those, you can go online and try to find their email or their information.
Most of them have an info@, hello@, or hi@ at the very least. Or you can find them on Twitter and DM them.
Twitter is another resource. You can actually search particular hashtags. There are a bunch of lists out there of fintech investors, insurtech investors, consumer investors. You can search for who are the most common investors in those categories.
CB Insights also does a lot of reports on the most active seed investors, the most active fintech investors, and so on. Those are a couple of resources to look at.
Brendan Schmidt:
Definitely, if you can get Crunchbase, PitchBook, or something like that, I think it’s going to save you a lot of time. If you don’t want to go that route, a lot of times investors will put that they’re part of a company. So if you’re looking at a similar company, maybe later stage, go to that company. Usually one of the VCs will have a board member there, so you can kind of know who led the investment from the team.
Also, on the website for a lot of venture firms, it’s like, “This is who led the deal.”
The other thing is to look for common connections on LinkedIn. With some of these investors, it’s about trying to find common ground. Who went to your school? Who is an investor you may share connections with? You can do advanced search if you pay for LinkedIn Premium. Or maybe you used to work at the same company. I find these kinds of warm points can warm up cold outreach, and it does wonders in getting people to respond.
Frank Williamson:
My experience is that almost every investor I know is an outgoing, friendly person. That’s who the industry attracts. So as you start to make the first couple of calls, at the end of each call be asking who else you should get to know. You’re going to get some really nuanced information, maybe a warm intro. Plan to network your way through the investor community.
Frank Gruber:
That’s a great ask to remember. I think that’s great advice. At the end of that conversation, they know other folks who might be interested. Great point there.
And I think the one we hinted at slightly, I don’t remember who said it, is other entrepreneurs. You can navigate your network of other entrepreneurs and startup founders who have been invested in by other investors. They are probably your biggest champions because they know you and can make a nice warm intro. I know that doesn’t always happen, and you’re not connected to a lot of people, but if you are, maybe build that network up first and then go that direction too. I think that’s one way to get into some of the other investors that may not be as accessible.
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah. At our last LP meeting, we actually broke down a pie chart of where deal referrals came in, and there was a good chunk that was from entrepreneurial connections and referrals.
Frank Gruber:
Right. And they’re probably not going to refer a company or person they don’t believe in. So I think that’s the other thing. It’s a little bit of a vetting process for you as well when you start to hear that.
All right, so I think we hit that one pretty well. I also wanted to touch on this and get your take. There are online platforms like Gust and AngelList, and I know those were used quite a bit. I don’t know if those are still as readily used, but I wanted to get your take on some of those platforms for finding you and other investors.
Jomayra Herrera:
I’ll just speak for us. We actually just prefer that you go direct to us as opposed to trying to use some kind of intermediary. I think NFX also has a site as well. Those are fine. We don’t hold it against anyone who wants to use them, but for us, we try to make it relatively simple for you to reach out to us directly, and that’s where we get most of our deal flow from.
Frank Williamson:
This might be a good place for us to weigh in. The work we do with relatively early-stage companies is explicitly not to act as an intermediary for them. Probably one of the big pieces of advice we give people is: look, people are looking to back you. You’ve got to go make this call. We can help with what good looks like for materials, but to the extent that there are people who are tempted to go find an intermediary who’s going to do some of the sales work of capital raising for a CEO, don’t. It doesn’t help you to have somebody else in between. You’re going to need to get out and do this yourself. There’s no cylinder.
Brendan Schmidt:
One hundred percent, Frank. Great founders are able to sell their vision and passion themselves. It doesn’t rule anything out, but if someone comes to the phone and the CEO or founder is not leading the discussion, maybe it’s an intermediary, then something might be a little off about the situation. But every situation has its own caveats as well.
Frank Gruber:
Let me ask you a follow-up to that. We’re talking about raising. What about when you’ve already built the company and now you’re looking at the exit side of it, maybe an M&A strategy? How do you guys feel about bringing somebody on to help build those relationships? Is that a different set of circumstances?
Frank Williamson:
If I can speak, that’s a place where a really collaborative approach to who’s going to make what calls makes a huge difference. Sometimes there are situations where you’d rather someone else raise the idea in a relatively anonymous way, but there are other times when there’s a really strong personal CEO-to-CEO relationship.
I think startup founders and CEOs end up doing lots of fundraising conversations again and again and again. People just don’t do sales of companies that often in their careers. So having at least a guide, and probably also someone who can be an intermediary for you, does make a big difference at sale.
The other thing some people don’t realize is just what a bear of a project it is, and how much difference it makes that you are incredibly well organized when you go to start those conversations. That leads to getting some kind of help. We do it for people, but a really experienced VP of Finance or CFO doing it, or in some cases one of your investors doing it, makes a huge difference in terms of how efficient and effective a company sale is.
Jomayra Herrera:
I totally agree. I think it’s fairly common, when you’re pursuing the sell route, to hire a banker and get some support, because as Frank mentioned, it’s not something you do very often. A founder might do it once in their life. So making sure it is an efficient process and that you have all your ducks in a row is really important. It’s such an important point in time that you have to get some support and some help.
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah, I agree. It’s a completely different situation than the fundraising conversation we were just talking about. Completely different skill set, type of transaction.
But I will say, even if you’re a seed founder, it’s okay to plant seeds that early. It’s always in the back of our heads who the likely suspects are that might end up buying this company if they don’t go the IPO route. So it’s okay to make those intros early as a founder. Think about, “What companies should I start building relationships with?” because later in your cycle they may need that part of the product portfolio going forward.
Frank Gruber:
Great. All right, so let’s jump into this. You’ve now connected with these startup founders, and maybe they’ve raised some funds from you or others. How do you want to stay in touch with them? We mentioned newsletters and things like that to keep people updated. Are there other ways or best practices for entrepreneurs who want to stay better connected with you all?
Is this post-investing?
Jomayra Herrera:
Yep. At least for us, it depends on the firm. We only make about eight investments a year, so each investment is a pretty high-conviction one. That allows us the time to actually be action-oriented.
At minimum, we have a quarterly board meeting for most of the companies we invest in, but more likely we are talking on a monthly cadence in a formal way, and then in an informal way probably once a week, if not more often. It ebbs and flows depending on the time of need. For us, we very much say you can reach us any time, so we tend to be pretty open in terms of communication. We also host a lot of events for our founders.
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah, similar approach. We do about 10 to 15 new investments per year. When we back founders, you’re immediately part of the Sierra family. So it’s really a collaborative approach across the team.
Like Jomayra said, quarterly board meetings. A lot of our partners do monthly calls with the founders. We always have an open mode of communication. I sit on the business development side of things, so I’m basically an extension of 50 to 60 companies, helping with go-to-market and customer acquisition efforts, and things like analyst relations.
They kind of reach out to me and say, “Hey, can I get in front of XYZ customer?” and I get feedback for those guys, just opening doors for them.
I have a colleague that runs the platform. She does a really good job sending resources, putting on events for them, and helping them with different practices they should be implementing. Then we help with a lot of executive recruiting functions or any recruiting functions they need as they build out the team and grow as a company.
Frank Gruber:
Right. Frank, you’re a little bit different as far as the way you work with companies, so maybe phrase the question a little bit.
Frank Williamson:
We end up doing a lot of work for VC-backed companies that haven’t grown like people hoped they would, and they’ve been in the portfolio a long time. It’s time for that thing to have a new home. So we are often witnessing strained investor and CEO relationships, or even strained board relationships.
I’d say what we see that leads to better outcomes is, one, keep listening to your investors. There are going to be times when you get on different pages, but you’ve got to resolve that. They’re your business partners.
Two, keep a good dashboard that communicates two things. One is that you’ve got your arms around the issues that the business faces, whether it’s how fast you’re growing or whether it’s dealing with growing more slowly than people had hoped. Have a good dashboard to talk about and be on time and responsive about getting that material out.
It only increases anxiety and friction if you’ve got a set of investors who want to be communicating every month and then you go silent for three months. That’s not a good sign.
Just remember that your investors are partners in what you’re doing. Near the end of a hold, they might have different goals than you have because they eventually need an exit. But if you’re all working together, they can exit without ending your business. It doesn’t mean the whole thing is collapsing. You’re just rotating the investors. But stay close to people.
Frank Gruber:
Great. We’re almost out of time here, but I wanted to kind of do one more around the horn. Everyone close your eyes and think about your favorite relationship with an entrepreneur. If you could boil down the one thing that they do that makes it so great, then we’ll go around quickly and end on some final thoughts and how to connect with you all.
Jomayra Herrera:
I can go first. I think the most important thing is honesty. The founders that I think we have the best relationships with are honest and transparent.
I think the other piece is that I like frequent, informal communication. I would rather just touch base a couple of times a week in an informal way, and that allows you to build rapport and the social side, but also make sure we’re in sync on the business. Because the worst part is when an update is a surprise.
Brendan Schmidt:
Yeah, I would say I really like the entrepreneurs who, by the end of it, are giving me homework. Going into it, they know exactly what they want to talk about.
Honesty is great. So it’s like, “Here’s what’s going well. Here’s what I want to talk about in this 30 minutes.” Then at the end they recap and say, “Hey, here’s what we need from you.” That’s always great, so we’re not playing a guessing game. It becomes, “How can I help you? I’m going to spend an hour in my week helping you, so here are the three things that would be most impactful.” So being very direct and prescriptive in how we can work together.
Frank Williamson:
I’d say our twist on it is that people know their roles and they treat each other as peers. I think that leads to a lot of the things Brendan and Jomayra both talked about. The CEO knows he or she is the CEO, and the board members know they’re there to have money come in and money go out and generate a return. Everyone works well together on a common project with different roles.
Frank Gruber:
Great advice and great thoughts.
All right, one more around the horn. I want to make sure everyone can connect with you. Where can people find you if they would like to? You mentioned earlier, but I just want to make sure people have it in case they didn’t scribble it down before. Jomayra, Brendan, Frank, we’ll keep going in the same order.
Jomayra Herrera:
[email protected] is a great way.
Brendan Schmidt:
Twitter, Brendan… it’s kind of a wonky way to spell it, but I think you can see it on the Zoom, @_schmidt. And then [email protected]. I have a pretty unique spelling of my name, so I think you could probably find me on LinkedIn pretty easily as well.
Frank Williamson:
Right. You’ll find us on LinkedIn and on oaklynconsulting.com.
Frank Gruber:
Great. Thank you all for being a part of it. Really appreciate it. Great advice. Hopefully people are out there building some relationships based on your input and feedback.