Fighting the good fight....

In a start-up we often get a diligent board and a passionate CEO. A less common situation is a passionate board and a diligent CEO. In both cases in start-ups the vision of the company is driven, necessarily, by people with blinders on. They essentially have tossed away any disbelief in their approach to their vision.

My question is in about how to amend such a vision when the team of a start-up realizes the board and CEO are barking up the wrong tree?

Whether you are the head of engineering or the head of sales or any other such team member -- if you begin to see that the direction of the start-up has not been set correctly how can you alert leadership and help them course correct without getting fired or being considered a drag on the business?

I've seen several attempts at this and the ability of the wheel house of the company to hear the sounds coming from the engine room is often lacking.

So how does a QA Director or a VP of Sales or such a team member open the ear of the board? In a team of ten or so people one would think this would never be an issue and yet I see time and time again the engine room conversation is never heard? Is this a structural defect in start-ups that can't afford to hear about their own potential flaws? Is it a necessary evil of the hard charging all steam ahead nature of a start-up? When is a course correction too late? Or is it never too late?

These are the kinds of questions I think teams in start-ups often face. Questions that usually don't or can't get answered.

The odds...

Once upon a time when I was thinking about growing up to be a serial entrepreneur I heard the following:

"One in a 100 start-ups get to the seed funding stage. One in hundred of those get to a Series A. One in a hundred of those that get a Series A or a Seed round get a Series B or an exit..."

This was followed by "One in 10,000 start-ups get to a public offering..."

A sane person would say that these odds suck.

I, of course, said, I like those odds. I am not unlike many of the extreme skiing, surfing, shark-diving entrepreneurs who believe the long odds make ourselves the favorite. I am amongst a large crew of start-up guys who believe the world conspires in our favor when the odds are longest. I actually believe that the odds tilt in my favor because I am involved. If the typical odds for a "normal" entrepreneur are 1:100 then I believe the odds for ME are more like 1:5.

From my experience with others in the start-up arena this prospect of success despite the odds is a common thread. For some it is their belief in their intelligence, or their technical acumen...for others it is their belief in how they read the marketplace...for still others it is their belief that they can sell anything...and for still others they believe they can build great teams and great teams can do anything. Whatever it is that the serial entrepreneur brings to the table they think they bring it in spades.

Old Stuff that is cool that still hasn't been built...

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6877137.html

One of the patents I worked on at a doomed start-up called Aurigin is now out there in the free patent universe. I believe alot of the ideas once "pending patent" are worthy of review. If I was in a sector and starting a new technology business I would at least window shop the world of expired and untended IP.

For example this piece of IP: System, method and computer program product for mediating notes and note sub-notes linked or otherwise associated with stored or networked web pages
is still a very interesting consumer service.

At the time we called it codename WEBSTER because you could surf anywhere annotate anything, share the links and annotations with anyone. Very fun, social browsing stuff...but in 1998...in an enterprise start-up focused on Pharma and Chemical the idea of a consumer service as a marketing function for the business was considered beyond stupid.

Of course in hindsight, WEBSTER was the future and the core business a dead end.