Old Pueblo, New Economy

Lessons about the art of valuations: * Listen to and take into consideration expert investor perspectives: Active angels are  seeing 100 or more presentations a month, and as a result they know what valuations are normal, expected and reasonable. * Ensure you are able to explain your valuation:   Being able to back up the value of the company with evidence will be extremely important, especially if you are outside the realm of normal, expected or reasonable valuations. * There needs to be room for growth: As Brian said, smart investors know not to eat the whole apple. If an investor takes half of the company, what’s left for the entrepreneur?    “The best investors have a very open dialog with founders about a fair valuation and reasonable sized portion”.   Ensure that as you’re putting together your valuation and offer you leave room for growth. Episode Mentions: * Books and Papers * EARLY-STAGE FUNDING: OPTIONS, SOURCES, AND CONSEQUENCES [https://www.startuptucson.com/post/early-stage-funding-options-sources-and-consequences]: A community-based white paper for aspiring and first-time founders * Startup Community by Brad Feld [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15822571-startup-communities] * Hedge: A Greater Safety Net For The Entrepreneurial Age by Nicolas Colin [https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Greater-Safety-Net-Entrepreneurial/dp/1718917082] * Organizations * Sunquest [https://www.sunquestinfo.com/] * Madden Media [https://maddenmedia.com/] * University of Arizona [https://www.arizona.edu/] * FORGE [https://forge.arizona.edu/home] * UArizona Center for Innovation [https://techparks.arizona.edu/UACenterForInnovation] * Desert Angels - Joann MacMaster [https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannmacmaster/] * Community Investment Corporation - Danny Knee [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-knee-968794/] * Community Investment Corporation - Carie Davis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/cariedavis/] * Startup Tucson - Liz Pocock [https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizpocock/] * WeFunder - Johnny Price [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnypriceinsc/] * John Deerie - Center for American Entrepreneurship [https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-dearie-b34565155/] * Kauffman Foundation [https://www.linkedin.com/company/kauffman-foundation/] * UA VC - Fletcher McCusker [https://www.linkedin.com/in/fletcher-mccusker-38707265/]

The key lessons covered in this episode are: * Your go-to-market plan will be wrong: If you operate with this belief, then it’s critical to build a learning engine to find a beach-head and ultimately a G2M strategy that works. Legalbreeze has built a learning engine that allows them to review customer data and insights from experiments they run every 72 hours.   They aspire to get this down to a 24-hour cycle which will allow them to learn three times faster. * Changing consumer behavior is really difficult:  Use the learning engine you’re building to measure whether behavior change is occurring with your beach-head customers as well as engage with them personally to understand why or why not.   If the evidence (data + insights) from customers suggests that customers are not changing behavior then pivot to a different customer segment based on the same evidence. * Explore broadly:  Utilize curve-ball Experiments to help find alternative customer segments.  A great example of this is Legalbreeze skipping digital marketing temporarily and handing out fliers in person to better understand customers.  These guerilla marketing and face-to-face methods are amazon tools to learn lots from customers really quickly.

Dr. Fox is an active early-stage investor and has assisted numerous businesses by providing capital and guidance. He has also founded several successful businesses and has served at the executive and board level for multiple companies. He is a former adjunct instructor at the Eller College of Business of the University of Arizona and holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. Marty was extremely gracious with his time and insights, and here are some of his most important suggestions for entrepreneurs: * Don’t take money from someone you don’t have a strong relationship with.To support that, here are three tactics for deepening relationships: 1. Practice empathy - Similar to how you take the time to deeply understand your customers, you should also take the time to deeply understand your investors.   Why are they investing?  What’s important to them?   What outcomes are they after?   Do you have the right chemistry to work together for the next decade? 2. Give consistently, receive occasionally - When we are consistently giving of ourselves it ensures we’re surrounded by a support network that truly cares and wants to see us be successful.  Think about times when others have behaved in this way:  How did YOU feel? “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?‘” – Brian Tracy, Author 3. Show and prove you think of others - Simply remembering some small detail or important date can deepen those personal connections between two people.   Perhaps an unexpected call or text from you “Hey, I was able to apply that suggestion you made to me last week and will let you know how it goes.  Thank you!”.  Shifting our lens from being constantly focused inward to being frequently focused outward will do wonders for deepening our relationships. * Avoid over-diversification -  My recommendation for entrepreneurs is that they get uncomfortably narrow about your first early adopter customer segment.   The more specific you can get, the faster you can move.    To hear a great entrepreneur working through getting specific, check out the Mentor Me Live episode with Aaron Gopp from Patte [http://www.oldpuebloneweconomy.com/working-through-a-pivot-with-aaron-gopp-ceo-patter/]r. See you next week!

Welcome to Mentor Me Live.  I’m grateful to have the opportunity to help Tucson entrepreneur and film-maker, Jeff Brack.   Not only has Jeff directed, written, and produced short and feature films, but he’s also launched a highly successful premium dine-in movie Theater Chain, Roadhouse Cinemas in Tucson, Scottsdale, and Colorado Springs. We’re going to work together to figure out how Jeff can acquire funding for a new feature film he’d like to bring to our region. Lessons: * Develop Relationships by building empathy * Learn the market of investors * Marty Fox episode * Abundance Mindset * Anything is possible, just need to get creative about it https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2020/10/09/4-ways-to-practice-empathy-at-work-and-why-its-crucial-to-your-career/#535f1d2921cd [https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2020/10/09/4-ways-to-practice-empathy-at-work-and-why-its-crucial-to-your-career/#535f1d2921cd]

We have an extremely exciting show today with CEO of the Desert Angels, Joann MacMaster.   Joann has served as a startup founder, mentor, investor, and educator. She’s passionate about regional ecosystem development and recently received the Larry Hecker and Sherry Hoskinson Lasting Community Builder Award and this year the 2020 Women of Influence Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The key lessons from this conversation are: 1. Diversity in entrepreneurship is critical because the people and cultures of customer-bases are very different, so the problem-solvers must also be very different in order to understand the challenges people face around the world. 2. Diversity goes far beyond gender and skin color. There is a diversity of backgrounds, skillsets, thought, age, geographic location, experiences, etc.  So don't just think that diversity and inclusion mean women and people of color. It's much deeper than that. 3. It is unfair to bucket all minority groups into the same category. Women in tech have unique needs and interests different from women of color. Is there an overlap? Sure. But to bucket, all women into the same category for programs and resources misses the mark. The same goes for all other under-represented groups.   Get specific about who is under-represented and develop a strategy to engage them. 4. As a founder, be sure not to think about Desert Angels as a single entity - many different individual investors and affiliates.  Go engage, and learn about the members individually to move your startup forward more rapidly. Good luck and see you next week! Shoutouts and Mentions * Angel capital association * UArizona Tech-launch-Arizona * UaVentures * Mike Sember * Bluestone Ventures * Diamond Ventures * Community Investment Corporation