When you are leading a small team, with a product roadmap you dream up, the grind of startup life looks different than others.
12 years ago, I joined forces and invested a small amount in a tech platform I wanted to help build. That startup, Pancake Technology, formed more officially when we brought on a third partner a year later. By 2011, I was full-time as a partner at a startup, running all things marketing.
I had a young family, I was my own boss, and I created our roadmaps, our product brands, and everything. I was on top of the world!
By 2014, I sold my shares after transitioning out and starting back in agency life. I learned a few lessons, the first of which was that startups are all about timing. Bill Gross, founder of many startups and IdeaLab, has a great TED Talk on what makes a startup successful.
Timing is everything. In the case of Pancake, we built a cloud-based app for a specialized industry, mobile notaries, when we partnered with someone. I call this era my “great miss” in market. While I branded it as NotaryBridge, and overtook top Google search results through intense SEO, we gained steam.
At one point, a national association wanted to consider purchasing the platform from us. We declined, because of the traction we had. But here’s the thing. NotaryBridge was for mobile notaries and title companies what Uber is for drivers and commuters. The worst part? Uber was founded just months before NotaryBridge. Lyft didn’t even exist. And the tech was the same in concept and speed.
While timing can deem success from a product entry and concept standpoint, a platform is only as good as its talent. But my definition of talent combines raw ability along with a competitive mentality. Senior leadership has to have this to succeed.
I spent some time developing the marketing ecosystem and demand gen engine for VOMO, a volunteer management platform. I was running a global digital presence for demand generation for a billion dollar enterprise before I transitioned to VOMO. I made the move because I saw the talent they had and the lack of talent that the industry had.
The CEO, Rob Peabody, had a vision that worked well with something I had been dreaming up but from the donor side of the fence. More importantly, his passion came across. He lived and breathed the platform, and certainly still does! And he surrounded himself with talent across tech development, customer support, operations and others.
Because of his talent and the team’s collective efforts, they hit Series A funding and continue to grow the platform to a national level today.
An idea is just an idea. Startup life requires knowing the toolkit required for you to be successful in your niche. Toolkits include everything from the right network of players, the right marketing tech stack, the right technology for your platform and so forth. In the case of VOMO, they switched the technology it was built on, entirely, after the first few years. It simply couldn’t support the volume they knew they would need. And it paid dividends.
In another case, I was on my way to building a platform that my team and I called Kate. It was going to transform the real estate experience and become a remarketing platform for realtors who would know a lot more about who is actively most interested and how to communicate with them via technology in real-time during tours. I connected with top realtors from Keller-Williams, connected with two senior-level software experts along with a senior-level technology guru.
But what I lacked was any real toolkit of how to bring the product to market. I didn’t have budget. I didn’t have a way to build a marketing stack that would hit the audiences needed. So, it remains just another idea I dreamt up over the years.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to revenue. The customer determines current success, and your ability to pivot when needed determines your long-term landscape as a startup.
I have a business partner who started givingMD and is in its 5th year as a company. She’s the most flexible I’ve ever seen when it comes to listening to a prospect’s needs, finding solutions and seeing to it that the goals are met. Having worked alongside her at givingMD, the barriers could have taken her grit and worn it down over the years. But she refuses. And last year, the agency had a record year for revenue and things only look up.
Knowing that ideas are only as good as a customer’s needs is one of the most important pieces for a startup leadership team.
All companies have a focus on turnover. Employee satisfaction and recognition is high on every HR department’s radar. Shameless plug: To keep employee morale high, consider bulk gift cards from Blackhawk Network. And enjoy the site while browsing. That was a major piece of real estate for me.
Back to startup world, turnover takes a different form. It’s in the form of continuity of what you’re dreaming up, where you’re going next. A few years ago, I put into action a team that began building an Amazon-like marketplace for donors, allowing them to browse local and national nonprofits and make monthly gifts in one transaction to any organization or cause they wanted to support.
The data proves it a worthy platform. I’ll eclipse $100M in digital fundraising revenue this year from my time helping nonprofits. The insights all point to this as a need for all sides of this equation.
My team kept getting to 75% complete, and I had a full marketing plan, funding plan and everything. But we’d hit the 75% mark, then a developer would leave. Or a designer would move on. And it crushed us. I had to table that concept for a later date.
If you want a thriving startup, one key I always recommend is to find a book or two that your team all reads, aligns to and refers back to in times of crisis. This worked at givingMD, Pancake and VOMO for our executive teams.
When your contractors and your other full-time staff see a leadership team in alignment, you’re going to get much better buy-in from those on the front lines reaching your customers, building your product and selling to prospects.