This Blog was started to promote my consulting business by sharing what I've learned from 29 years of independent consulting work and from lessons learned obtaining my MS in Technology Commercialization. But lately it seems to have morphed into a journal, nay, a sounding board for frustrations I've encountered while building Kronicity. One of my partners laughed that it would be great to have Kronicity fully developed to chronicle all these frustrations along a timeline. With any luck, that's 12 weeks away and I do plan to use it for that purpose.
Today's frustration deals with entrepreneurial experts - and who isn't one today. After all, the $12.95 latest "How to think outside of the box" book that literally ships to the newly minted expert in an actual freaking box is all it takes. They're usually 200 pages of mantras that could fit on a post card - easy to understand and repeat. I was actually able to mouth along with the objections of one self ordained expert as he quoted from one of the more popular best sellers. I reactively argued my point with a few of these fellows, but only a fool argues with a fool and I've come to understand that a polite and rapid exit is usually the best thing to do.
One of the latest in my long list of frustrations is from a so-called Venture Capitalist. He passed on Kronicity, as if I was actually considering him, citing we had too many partners and our target market was too difficult to work in. But I didn't have to argue with the guy. He'd already let loose the reasons not to.
First, he described how he'd made a mint from selling a tech-based company. Had he left at that, I'd have lengthened the conversation a bit. But I used a technique I've adopted years ago. I let him keep talking. He continued to describe how he knew absolutely nothing about the industry he operated in, that it developed in the early 1990s and the real kicker, that he started it as part of his dad's business at dad's request and, of course, funded by dear ole dad. I immediately thought I should be talking with dad. But I kept quiet and it got better. He then complained that I had too many partners to deal with. I have seven critical thinkers in my business including myself. He and his accountant then started talking about diluting the current partners as quickly as possible. Hello! I'm right here idiot! He then concluded with talk about how rich he was and how my financial needs were nothing to someone like himself.
This guy was telling me he was going to be trouble, would create a hostile environment and had an inferiority complex in our first five minutes. A few more minutes of complaining about how difficult it was to sell to schools made it obvious he didn't even understand our business model. We're free to schools.
As for it being difficult to work with schools, everything your dad doesn't fund is going to be hard dude. Obstacles are opportunities for entrepreneurs.
This may be the first of a series of posts as my encounters are so numerous. But, ending on a positive note, I've managed to avoid a host of these self appointed experts forcing me to be clever enough to fund Kronicity with minor investments in cash and major investments by qualified partners and collaborators. We're a better company because of this. And by the way, I believe there were nearly 50 equity partners in What'App that sold for $19 billion. You can dilute me all day long for those figures.
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