Instigator Blog

I was very glad to see that someone recorded the recent Blitzweekend presentations. Stephane Daury did a great job recording everything, and I’ve enjoyed watching the presentations I didn’t see.

I gave a presentation at Blitzweekend about starting a company. It was a mixture of a few things including:

• how Standout Jobs started from within the Montreal tech community
• my personal history, and use of blogging & social media to build a reputation locally and beyond
• raising capital - the difficulties, tips, etc.
• my current struggles with balancing the 20,000 foot strategic view and day-to-day issues

The presentation is a bit longer than I intended it to be, but I’m pleased with the results. A bit more practice would have helped, and more point form notes instead of what I had written up to use. But I hope people enjoyed the presentation and got something out of it. Anyone?

Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more about Standout Jobs, where it came from and some of the lessons learned so far (and you want to see me “in action” - after all, who wouldn’t?!?!) please check out the presentation and let me know what you think.

How do you maintain a 20,000 foot strategic view of your startup and business, while frantically managing the day-to-day efforts?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because it’s something I’m dealing with now. Immediately after launching Standout Jobs, things accelerated incredibly. And that should be the goal of every startup. Prior to launching you’re focused primarily on product development, but after launch there are a million other issues to deal with. Acceleration is good. It’s certainly better than the alternative! But how do you manage that - most of which involves day-to-day issues (like acquiring customers, customer support, managing the team, handling bugs, etc.) - while still keeping an overall eye on your strategic vision and goal?

Click to continue →

Young entrepreneurs don’t have a lot of experience. That’s a given. And in many cases this is rarely brought up as an issue. But in certain industries (especially in “older industries” or B2B-related industries) that lack of experience will be a sticking point. At least for many people inside the industry.

It’s certainly been a point of discussion around Standout Jobs. We’ve received a fair amount of good press, but one of the sticking points we see consistently is our lack of experience in recruiting. None of the founders are recruiters. We haven’t lived the last 15 years of our lives in HR.

Experience is valuable. There’s no question about it. But it’s not a guarantee of success. If that was the case, very few startups would ever succeed. And there are ways of getting around a lack of experience.

Click to continue →

When a startup receives financing it will need to setup a Board of Directors. The Board probably existed beforehand, but was made up only of the founders. Once funding takes place, the angels or VCs will want a seat at the table. There’s no surprise there.

But there’s another kind of board that’s equally important. In some ways it’s more important (although it doesn’t have any control over the business), and that’s the Board of Advisors.

What many first-time CEOs might not realize is that they may need to setup an Advisory Board as a condition of receiving financing. Venture capital firms like to see CEOs with strong support (beyond the Board of Directors) and that’s what the Advisory Board is there to do. It’s unlikely you’ll have an Advisory Board before you get funded, but it will very likely come up after.

Click to continue →

Launching a startup isn’t easy. But what you quickly realize is that the real work comes immediately thereafter.

Our launch of Standout Jobs at DEMO was a big success. We generated plenty of buzz, brought in some great customers and the product held up to the initial onslaught of traffic, users and feedback. And for about 1 day I felt like everything was under control. Oops…

The honeymoon ended pretty darn quickly.

Click to continue →