Finding Your Venture

It’s been a while since we made an episode of Finding Your Venture. We’re back today to answer a really common student question from the course. Essentially the question is, “I don’t feel comfortable selling something we haven’t made yet.” And it’s a really common thing that comes up as the team is out pitching customers. I’m going to play this conversation I had with Bob Caspe – and I...

I don’t know an international student who has started a company and pursued it full-time in the U.S. after graduation. What’s stopping them? Well…the law. Immigration law makes it illegal for non-citizens to earn money in the U.S. except in very narrowly defined scenarios.  This the second in a two-episode series for international student founders. In the first episode, “ In...

International students make up about 15% of the student body at the University of Michigan. They bring interesting new perspectives from 50 countries around the world to our little midwest city. They pay higher than average tuition and in my experience they are some of the most dynamic, interesting contributors to our entrepreneurial community. The problem for entrepreneurship educators is that US...

When Duo Security sold to Cisco for $2.35 billion it was basically like the moon landing for the Ann Arbor startup community. Most of us had nothing to do with it, but we all remember where we were when we heard about it and still feel extremely felt proud of and connected to their success. Everybody does. It’s not just the money though, it’s how they did it. Everybody employee had equ...

Stories are 22x more memorable than facts. So telling a good story is essential for attracting customers, investors, co-founders, and employees. But what if your story is sort of weird and unconventional? And what about protecting your idea from competitors? The potential benefit of talking to people about the problem you’re solving and what you’re working on is enormous. Your biggest...

Is it better to start a company now, or get a job first? Students ask this question all the time and obviously there’s no right answer. The case for starting now is that you don’t have a lot to lose. Some day you’ll have a job making a lot of money and then it will be harder to walk away. The case for waiting is that you’ll gain experience and contacts in a job that will ma...

Raising money is time and labor intensive – it’s not possible to pitch everybody. So your goal is to find the right investors as quickly as possible. And here’s the secret: They are just like you. Investors are just entrepreneurs trying to make money. And if you understand their strategy then it becomes obvious whether or not your business is a good fit. You can literally ask the...

One of the first things every startup should do is form an advisory board. An Advisory Board is a magical mental construct that gives you access to all of the skills and experience you need but don’t have. It’s an excuse to regularly talk to smart people without paying them very much and if you’re not doing it then you’re leaving your best player on the bench. Kate Putnam i...

I used to think Mission Statements were just a nice idea. That was before I ever faced an existential crisis as a leader. In the moments when I had to lay off my friends, or got sued, or watched revenue fall off a cliff I had zero good options, no idea what was going to happen, and yet I had to make a decision and take action. In those darkest of moments the only thing that helped was remembering...

Being a leader means unlocking the potential of the people you work with. Some people are naturals at this, but the rest of us need to be intentional about it and work hard at it. And most of the time we don’t do it because it feels like a waste of time. That’s what this episode is about. You’re going to hear from Dawn Leaks who is the CEO of Lioness Magazine . Lioness is a media...

In this episode we explore the intersection of your personal and professional lives. As much as we all try to keep these things separate – it’s impossible. As the whole world starts working from home this fact has been on display in Zoom calls around the world. But it’s always been true. The people we spend time with at work and at home are crucial to our happiness and success. C...

Sometimes we’re the last ones to see and appreciate our own growth and potential. This is true for a lot of students who are becoming adults. Transitioning into the professional world is strange when you’ve been a kid your whole life. But the work you’ve put into school and jobs and learning about life hasn’t been for nothing. You know more than you give yourself credit for...

When you form a company the goal is to create something that will have a bigger impact on the world than you could have as an individual. It’s up to you what that impact looks like. For some people that means money. But impact is about more than money. Whether your goal is to dismantle systemic racism, fight climate change or to solve a problem that is interesting to you, forming a venture m...

Nothing makes me feel worse about myself than reading about somebody else’s giant fundraising success. Since revenue numbers for private companies aren’t public information, fundraising PR is the best way to pick at that scab of self doubt sitting in my subconscious. And I know it’s not the thing that matters. I know this. But I forget sometimes and need to be reminded. That&#821...

There are 7.8 billion people in the world and you just need a handful of them to care about your startup. So it makes sense that most people you reach out to are going to ignore you. But for a lot of us that rejection feels bad. And that’s why the #1 most common issue I see among rising (and experienced) entrepreneurs is that they haven’t pitched enough people to draw any conclusions a...

Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? It sucks. The list of things that can make you feel like an outsider goes on forever. Race, gender, sexual orientation. Your age. Every startup founder I know has felt like a misfit at some point and here’s why that’s not a coincidence : The world as we know it was built by ‘normal’ people – so normal people don’t...

Did you know that 0.05% of startups raise venture capital? Some startups require venture capital to succeed but most do not. And because focus is our only competitive advantage in the early days, it can be harmful to put too much emphasis on fundraising. Especially fundraising that is actually just thinly veiled vanity. Raising money is like buying gas on a road trip: sometimes you need to do it,...

I didn’t appreciate our legal system until my company got sued It’s a funny story now that I’d be happy to tell you over a beer – but at the time it was scary. I was afraid that we would lose our company, but I was even more afraid that I would lose my house and somehow put my family’s future in jeopardy. Neither of those things happened, and in many ways this is a re...

Of course you’re not qualified to start your company! You don’t have experience in the industry. You’re not a coder. You’re not a business person. You don’t have the money. These things might be true, and they can limit the speed or way in which you start a company, but they are challenges you can overcome if you really want to. The whole point of starting a company i...

There are a million things you have to do when you start a company And everybody is going to have advice for you. Do you have IP? Have you hired an accountant? Did you see there’s a company in the Valley that is doing that same thing now? It doesn’t stop, and it’s overwhelming. Your only hope is to somehow pick which things are most important, and focus on them first. This is lit...

The world is full of great business ideas. But your time on earth is finite so you have to make choices about where to invest your time. Your career might last fifty years and if it takes ten years to build a company then you’re not getting too many chances. But if you don’t go for it sometimes then you’ll never really start anything. It’s tough. All of the hardest decision...

Almost nobody wants to be a salesperson. The stereotypical salesperson is pushy and annoying. So it will probably be disappointing when I tell you that If you don’t sell, then your startup will fail. And really this is true for any ambitious person in any profession – even if you work in a big company, government, non-profits – to have an impact anywhere you have to sell yourself...

Marketing is just a giant math problem Well not completely – I just read that Kylie Jenner’s phone is the entire marketing department for her billion dollar cosmetics company. But that’s not normal. All of the other startups out there can make better investments in marketing by testing and tracking and adjusting along the way. Marketing is a giant math problem. You can map a cust...

You should only build products your customer wants to buy . So what strategies do the best companies use to make sure they do that consistently? I know that sounds really obvious but startups forget all the time. There’s so much to do you just get turned around. In class we talk a lot about customer discovery and we introduce the concept of user experience design because these are the best t...

Problems have more than one solution When you’re starting your company you’re going to be excited. You’re going to have a vision for what the company will do and what will make it special. You’ll start pitching the idea and becoming more and more invested in that vision. Startup mythology will encourage you to believe even when others don’t. Before you commit to the b...