Entrepreneurship workshop, yerevan - team building
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Valto Loikkanen is an international serial entrepreneur and portfolio entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience. He is the founder of Grow VC Group, which provides various services to support startups and develop startup ecosystems globally. This includes consulting, infrastructure support, investment market data, and digital investment marketplace solutions. Loikkanen discusses his experience mentoring startups and developing startup support programs. He emphasizes the importance of setting a clear long-term target and milestones, developing the right team culture and structure, and balancing operative and strategic roles within a startup.
Entrepreneurship workshop, yerevan - team building
- 1. Entrepreneurship Workshop Yerevan, Armenia Valto Loikkanen Grow VC Group ++ www.growvc.com ++ @growvc ++ Copyrights © Grow VC Group 2015
- 2. About me
- 3. My Evolution As an Entrepreneur ● Entrepreneur ● International entrepreneur ● International serial entrepreneur ● International portfolio entrepreneur
- 4. As an Entrepreneur ● 20 years as international Serial Entrepreneur (US, EU, Asia) & Portfolio Entrepreneur, with personal hard earned success & failures ● 17 years experience in developing web based tools for various business processes ● 6 Years of developing equity crowdfunding and other digital investment market solutions globally ● 5 years for Startup Ecosystem development combined with online support tools, platforms & metrics ● For two years, being part of three EC Horizon 2020 Groups: ○ Access to Risk Finance, ○ Spreading Excellence & Widening participation ○ International Cooperation
- 5. As a Business Advisor ● 10 years of startup mentoring ○ with 2000+ one to one mentoring sessions and workshops ○ with 1000+ entrepreneurs and hundreds of startups around the world at various development stages and industries ● In parallel 10 years developing Startup Support services, with entrepreneurial mind and lean methodology (fast ideation, implement and measure cycle) ● 5 years of “living lab” development for Startup Ecosystem in Finland with City of Helsinki
- 6. About Grow VC Group "The global pioneer of securities crowdfunding, peer to peer marketplaces and new investment models."
- 7. Grow Advisors provide consulting and knowledge resources for Digital Investing Marketplace and Startup Ecosystem development Ecosystem Back-end infrastructure and Support to manage, measure & peer benchmark Startup ecosystems Deal Index offers Visibility to Professional & International Investors and real time investment Market Data Digital Investment Marketplace Back-end solutions and Development Other Grow VC Group Companies & Services For Economic Development
- 8. Local Investors & Equity Crowdfunding International Growth $ $$ $ i ! % ? ! $ i Local Startup Ecosystem International Investors & Multinational Corporations Talent, Startups & Support Services Grow Advisors provide consulting and knowledge resources for Digital Investing Marketplace and Startup Ecosystem development. Ecosystem Back-end infrastructure and Support to manage, measure & peer benchmark your ecosystem. Deal Index offers Visibility to Professional & International Investors and real time investment Market Data. Digital Investment Marketplace Back- end solutions and Development $$$ $$ $$ Talent & Investments Growing Startups $$$ The leading global pioneer of digital investment market solutions for private securities. Other Grow VC Group Companies & Services For Economic Development Peer Benchmarking
- 9. What is a Startup?
- 10. A B C D High Growth Ambition and very scalable business model Low Growth Ambition and/or Non Scalable business Market validated business model Unvalidated business model "a kiosk" "new startup" “New Startup”
- 11. Startup stages
- 15. Build / Release Validate / Iterate Ideation Scalable product or service idea for a big enough target market. Some initial business models for how it would make money. One person or only a vague team; no confirmed commitment or no right balance of skills in the team structure yet. Concepting Clear and meaningful target with direction for at least 3 years with milestones how to get there, -> 3, 6, 12, 24, 36 months… Team of two or three core founding partners with balanced ownership. Can also already have some extended team with lighter commitment (stock options and or cash compensation) Commitment Committed and balanced founding team. Able to develop the product or service (Minimum Viable Product) without dependency of uncommitted external resources, or already an initial product or service in place. Existing signed shareholder agreement between founders, with milestones, committed time and money use, for at least 2+ years with vesting. Validation Can demonstrate some user growth and or revenue (initial traction). Continue to attract additional resources (money or sweat equity) for equity or future revenue. Looking for clear market validation (Product Market Fit), to move into scaling. Scaling Showing a clear, growing and measurable user and or market traction in a big or rapidly growing target market. Can and wants to scale fast. May have attracted significant funding. Establishing Achieved great growth, that can expected to continue. No longer needs to struggle to get resources and can acquire those easily. Continues to grow and often wants to culturally continue behaving like a "startup" for as long as possible. Founders exit or continue business as usual. Minimum Viable Product This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. www.startupcommons.org Vision > Target > Mission Growth Idea / Team Fit Product / Market Fit Business Model / Market Fit STARTUP DEVELOPMENT PHASES ● Business Model Canvas ● Co-founder Team Building Scale / Expand -2 -1 30 21
- 16. Startup Team
- 17. Startup Team ● Founder’s Role ● Effective Startup Team Structure and System of Incentives ● The Art of Hiring and Getting Hired
- 19. Team Building “Toolkit” ● Vision -> Target (10+years) ● Mission ● Attitude & Culture ● Shareholder Agreement (SHA) ● Extended team members ● Advisors & Mentors
- 20. Set a clear target!
- 21. ● Without a clear target you can not plan or make a strategy to get there ● With target you can get focus ● Good way to define a target is to write a vision that is both clear and descriptive enough, but also flexible enough to last time ● Your strategy & plan to get there is your mission ● Clearly defined Vision, mission and focus will help you evaluate new opportunities, against if they take you closer or further from the target and act based on that Why Target Matters?
- 22. Target ● Without a target you can not start moving forward as you can not know if the direction is right ● When you have set the target you can start planning the journey to get there ● Just moving forward is not progress
- 23. No target ?
- 24. General Observations Of Targets ● Set too low ambition ● Too short term ● Does not take to account the competition factor over time ● Does not take to account enough external factors ○ markets changes ○ megatrends ○ financial turmoil ● Often nothing in between ● Wrong market timing (too early / late)
- 25. Why set a high ambition target ● Whatever target you set it will guide you ● Modest target may feel easier to achieve but you rarely would archive beyond your target ● Bigger target will force you to design and test more scalable tools and models of working ● And even if you don't reach it, it's still often more than with modes target ○ "Aim for the stars, land on the moon" ● Its very different plan to handle 10000 customers around the world than 100 at your city
- 26. Mission
- 28. Plan Start Target Plan to reach the target
- 30. What helps?
- 31. How to attack a high ambition target? ● Break it down it to milestones ● Design it backwards ● Design everything for scalability ● Its different to be able to handle 10000 customers around the world than 100 at your city
- 32. Setting milestones Start Target 1 2 3 4 5 Set milestones to help navigate
- 33. Setting milestones Start Target 5 Start by making them all from backwards from the target in high level 4
- 34. Setting milestones Start Target 1 2 3 4 5 Then from start to next 1 & 2 milestones in more detail
- 35. Take Action! Start Target 1 2 3 4 5 Take action on reaching the first milestone while keeping the focus on next one and the target.
- 37. But it actually becomes to this Start Target 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 If the milestones are reached the ambition grows and new target and milestones are set based on the pace, learnings market development etc.
- 39. Attitude ● If you have no right "get it done" attitude, no skills will matter ● But right skills with the right attitude is what you need
- 40. Company Culture ● Fairness, transparency, honesty & communication ● Team is key. It's more important than the idea you start with ● Good team can make success even from a bad idea as they learn, adapt and can find the right idea ● Bad team can't get even a good idea to work (unless being lucky) ● Those that do more are more lucky ○ volume always leads to more opportunities and faster learning
- 41. Building the best Team ● Look people that have other/better skills than you (to learn) ● Look for type A people ● Type A people are often motivated more by the vision, journey & challenge than the money alone ● Type A people look for other A people they want to work with ● Type B people have commitment issues and are less motivated by challenges and more about money ● Type B people look for type C people so they can look better than they are
- 42. Typical roles in a startup ● Core operative Co-founders (min.2 max. 3) ● Other founding team members/partners ● Other team & employees ● Advisors ● Mentors ● Board Members ● Investors
- 43. About titles in a startup ● Titles are needed for terminology and external communications ● Inside the founding team those should be considered as responsibility roles not hierarchy ● SHA is what matters
- 44. Operative & Strategy balance ● Separate operative and strategy people/roles (hats) ● and separate strategy and operative focus ○ operative focus = focus on action and reaching the next milestone ○ strategy = to stop, step back and re-evaluate the target, milestones progress & learnings. Adjust as needed ○ time for strategy review? ■ At the start ■ quarterly in the early days ■ once or twice per year on the mid stages depending on pace ■ High growth stage -> monthly
- 45. SHA (1st founders, later investors) ● Ownership structures ● Intellectual property rights (IPR) rules ● Commitments & Vesting ● Tasks & Roles of partners ● Competition clauses, Confidentiality ● Partner/shareholder entry & exit situations ● Buy Back Option in normal Partner Exit Situation ● Rules Governing Share Disposal ● Market Value Determination ● Communication among Partners to the Agreement ● Disputes and Governing Law
- 46. Success idea + plan + action + timing = reaching a set target
- 47. Success idea + plan (set of initial assumptions) + action ((volume x testing assumptions - failures) + (volume x testing improved assumptions - failures)) + timing = reaching a target
- 48. Valto Loikkanen [email protected] +358 400 421 551 (FIN) +1 415 854-0546 (US) Grow VC Group ++ www.growvc.com ++ @growvc ++ Thank You!