BeyondVC

Standard investor update for startups

I remember when we hired a new CEO for one of our portfolio companies and my tip to him was to overcommunicate.  We had a few large VCs on the board and a number of high-profile angels that could also help in various ways.  His job was to keep everyone up-to-date but also to know how to get help when he needed it and from whom.  Given today's excitement over seed investing it is not uncommon for many of today's entrepreneurs to have 5-15 investors in any given round.  How you effectively communicate with your investors is an important priority that if done right will give you major value add while also not taking too much of your time.

In order to help our new CEO, I reached out to all of the other investors, and we all agreed that if we all spoke to him a few days a week about the same information that he would not have time to run his business.  In addition, this would be redundant for the CEO since most investors were asking for the same basic information.  In the spirit of streamlining information flow, we worked with the CEO to put together a weekly email to provide us with the key metrics the company tracked along with departmental updates on key high priority projects.  We weren't asking the company to create something they shouldn't already have (key metrics, departmental priorities, cash balance) but rather we just wanted the data shared on a timely basis.  Over time, we all found that when we did speak with the management team that we did not have to spend a half hour gathering information but rather we could get right to the point and actually discuss the whys or hows on certain sales numbers, metrics, or prospects.  In the end, we were all much happier and more productive since we had the same baseline of information and could focus our energy on productive and deeper conversation on the business stategy rather than gathering basic data.

Over the last 6 months I have made a number of seed investments and have shared the following company update with them. Each CEO has had their own minor tweak but this should give you a sense of what investors may be looking for and how it can help you streamline your communication and focus on how to extract value from your many investors.  If you choose to update weekly then obviously it will most likely be a shorter piece with maybe only the cash burned and current cash on hand as the financials.  If you choose to send out a report monthly then it may be more like the form I have uploaded on docstoc. 

One other important note I forgot to highlight is that since many companies I invest in are web-based and therefore many of them have real-time metrics I can track.  Michael Robertson who started Mp3.com and Gizmo5 (sold to Google Voice) had one of the best real-time dashboards for tracking his business.  I could see number of downloads, minutes used, new paying customers, etc. whenever i wanted to by logging into the system.  Other companies have created an investor wiki or use status.net (full disclosure-a BOLDstart seed investment) or other communication platforms for investors to share ideas and information.  I only imagine this will even get only better in the future.

Anyway, enjoy and I hope to hear some feedback on what is missing or what may be too much information.

Standard investor update for startups

Scaling your management style

After meeting with a number of entrepreneurs I recently seed funded, it was clear to me that one of the major challenges founders face is how to continue to scale their management style.  My preferred seed investment is in an engineering driven/product focused team who can code and get product out the door under the release early and release often model.  I often find that these types of entrepreneurs get quite a lot done with few resources and really have a strong pulse on the customer and market.  However the unfortunate aspect for these technical/product founders is that as their product becomes more successful, they often spend less time on doing the things they love - creating great product and iterating.  Many founders will find that they have to spend more time meeting with investors to raise money and dealing with internal employee issues.  In addition, many founders will find that once they raise capital and hire more people, that their one room, one whiteboard open management style is hard to scale.  So the question is how to get everyone on the same page?  How do you continue to be open and yet layer a simple process to create a shared vision and accountability?  Given that, I am bringing back an old post from 2007 on scaling your management style.  I want to be very clear though - do not be a slave to process and keep this simple.  At the same time, I hope some of these suggestions help:

What makes a startup team great early on in terms of getting product out the door and rapidly refining and honing the product from live market feedback can also lead to issues down the road if companies and employees are managed on a similar basis.  What is easy to roll out in a 5 person company gets harder to manage in a 25 person and even harder in a 50 person company.  Take the test - ask your key executives what the 3 key company goals are for the month?  Are they the same or not?  How will they help contribute in each of their functions to delivering on the 3 key company goals?  If they are not on the same page and you have trouble getting them together, you may want to continue reading for some thoughts on how to improve communication and accountability.

Here are some simple steps you can take to create a more fluid organization.  First, institute a weekly management meeting.  Yes, like you, I have an allergic reaction to the word meeting, but believe it or not, simple processes can help tremendously.  It is a great way for the CEO to get input but also guide the team to focus on the same company goals for the month or quarter.  Secondly, have key team members provide a weekly dashboard report and list of key goals to accomplish for the following week.  At every weekly management meeting, have each team member discuss progress against his/her team's goals and what they will be working on for the following week.  How does each of the departmental goals contribute to helping the company meet its goals?  Once again, this all may seem simplistic and a giant waste of time versus managing the next product release, but you will be amazed at the number of companies I meet that have not gotten to this point and consequently seem to have different ideas of what the business is and how to get there.  In addition, having weekly management meetings and clear weekly goals with simple yes/no criteria goes a long way towards creating an action-oriented culture of getting results.  If a VP doesn't deliver consistently, all of the other executives know and they also know it is time to make a change.  No one wants to be the manager that is known to overpromise and not deliver.  There is also a real difference between a manager having weekly individual meetings with their CEO vs. openly discussing theirr priorities and completed tasks with their peers.  With respect to cross functional communication, rather than complaining about engineering, for example, sales and marketing can now understand engineering priorities and what it may take to adjust and rearrange some of them to meet the revenue targets for the quarter.  Trust me, there are many more factors to a company's success and failure, but please don't make an allergic reaction to scheduled meetings and a simple lack of organization your cause for execution problems.

In fact, we can skip the word weekly report, and instead just say lay out the 3 things you were supposed to do this week and where you stand on them.  One other important point to note is that make sure that everyone on your team understands if they hit a roadblock on any of their goals to come to you immediately to tell you what the roadblock is, a couple ways to potentially resolve the issues, and then to discuss with you.  Clearly this is a methodology that can scale as you grow your team and business.  Good luck and remember to keep it simple.

The consumer Internet business is not easy

It's not easy to build a service that everyone loves and even harder to build one that gets 3000 new users a day on an installed base of 2 million users.  Once there you may think of yourself in the drivers seat as having built a successful company.  Unfortunately, this is where the need for revenue comes to play.  As a startup you can only raise external funding for so long before you generate your own cash flow to pay for operating expenses.

Given these facts, I was quite saddened to read the blog post today from Todd Agulnick, Co-Founder and CTO of Xmarks, Inc.  In the post which I believe is a must-read for all entrepreneurs, Todd lays out how he started the company, built it, and tried multiple times to create a revenue model from the incredible number of users and data he amassed over a few years.  As Todd states:

We spent the next year turning over every conceivable rock looking for ways to use the data in our corpus that would prove compelling to our users and revenue-generating for us. Some of these ideas, like SearchTabs, saw the light of day; others never made it out of the lab. Our “SearchBoost“, service was an upsell to advertisers: pay us a fee and we’ll add a mark to your ad when it’s displayed to our users, showing the bookmark rank of your site. Our tests showed that we could boost ad click-through rates by 10%. We built it and it put it front of potential advertisers. Many were interested, but ultimately the feedback was negative: our user base was too small to be worth their time and attention.

As evidenced from above, it sounds like Todd and his team tried every conceivable way to build a business out of their awesome product.  If you are an entrepreneur you have to remember that building a consumer Internet business is not easy!  Even though Xmarks  jumped over 3 of 4 huge hurdles -building a great product/service, amassing users, and growing quickly, it was still not enough to build a scalable revenue model.  Does this mean that I expect entrepreneurs to have a sustainable revenue model from Day 1?  Definitely not but on Day 1, I do want to hear about the various ways you may generate revenue in the future.  I also want to point out that advertising will most likely not work for your business unless you can generate a significant amount of traffic, way more than you even think you are going to need today.  And finally like Xmarks, it may not work the way you dreamed it would but please take all of those lessons learned to your next startup as you will be all the wiser with the experience you had.

EMC buys portfolio company Greenplum - more behind the story

Congratulations to Greenplum and Scott Yara, Bill Cook, and Luke Lonergan in particular! It has been quite a roller coaster ride over the last 10 years and there were a number of times we stared at the abyss only to come back stronger.  This is a story of great people and incredible perseverance.  The great news is that we leveraged two strong trends early on - the era of big data and the need for cheaper and better solutions and the fact that hardware is a commodity and the value is in the software.  We also leveraged the open source database platform PostgreSQL as the initial foundation for our technology. After all these years, I am glad to see that EMC and others have caught on to both of these facts.

Little do people know that when Dawntreader first funded Dali Media along with Impact Venture Partners and Primedia Ventures that the company was called Dali Media and then Metapa, standing for media to all places.  This was the year 2000 and the idea was that Metapa would allow any company to send any media asset over any content delivery network and our service would automatically transform the asset for viewing anywhere.  We did have some large initial customers but quickly realized that we were far from capital efficient in a market crash and that we would have to refocus and restart.

Enter Phase II where we made a number of changes and ended up using our software for some data anaytic projects.  Frankly we did this to keep ourselves around long enough to figure out what to do next.  Luckily we had a number of large paying clients that allowed us to sustain ourselves with a little extra cash from the founders and my fund.  Enter Didera (backed by Hudson Ventures) which had a database clustering solution which would allow us to take our data analytics solutions on to commodity clusters.  We bought that company in 2003 and invested some more capital.

We launched an initial prototype, landed a few customers, and brought in Mission Ventures as a new lead investor for the restart of the company.  A few months after closing that round, we changed the name to Greenplum.  This is also when we had to stare at the abyss for the third time.  Although we had a couple of great customers, we discovered that our software would not scale to the desired level.  I vividly remember the day that Scott Yara and Luke Lonergan came in to the room to tell us that we had serious problems and that we would have to start development over and scrap the old architecture for a new one.  Our initial reaction was disbelief and then anger as we saw our venture money and the team's efforts go down the drain.  However, what we also saw was a founder and team full of integrity so Mission and Dawntreader along with the founders decided to pump some more money into the company.  It was a painful process as we had to let go of the sales team that had built initial momentum and we had to hunker down and restart.  However I see that moment as the critical turning point for the company as well.

9 months later we had rebuilt the architecture, relaunched, and landed a couple more great customers.  Enter Sierra Ventures and our first big round of capital which also allowed us to bring Bill Cook as CEO.  The one moment that stands out in my mind was when we were interviewing Bill for the CEO position.  Since he was based on the west coast, he had already met with the other investors.  We started with a phone call and within 15 minutes, Bill decided to get on a redeye and meet me for breakfast to continue our interview.  What I saw in Bill and the rest of the team was how to get deals closed and the desire to do what it takes to make things happen.  Needless to say Bill brought that same culture to the company which took us to where we are today.  Eventually Meritech came in and led a new round and then we were off to the races. 

However, the moral of this story is that sometimes your startup won't grow in a straight line and many times you may take one step forward, two steps back, and then 5 steps forward again.  Secondly, from personal experience, if you have the right team who is passionate and understands how to be flexible in the face of difficult market conditions, you can still build a great company.  When we sold GoToMyPC to Citrix, we also restarted the company from the initial business model that we had and did a complete 180 degree change.  I am not advocating that you try to do this but only proving the point that entrepreneurs will probably fail on their initial model and may have to make changes to their business.  Success can be attained in a big way under that scenario so don't quit.  The guys at Dali Media, Metapa, and Greenplum surely did not and created a phenomenal exit for all involved.  Best of luck at EMC building a killer business in this new era of Big Data!

P.S. There is much more to this story and many more lessons to be learned - I will do my best to share some other tidbits in the future such as how companies are bought and not sold, how our partnering strategy helped us grow, how we dealt with competition, etc...

4 Types of CEO Behavior when Dealing with Boards

As I have stressed over the years, it is imperative for board members and their management teams to have open dialogue.  If you are a CEO, I encourage you to share more rather than less information.  One of the best tools that a number of our CEOs use is a weekly email summarizing by department what their goals are and what they have accomplished during the week.  In fact, they even share that email internally so everyone in the company knows what is going on.  For board members this eliminates redundant questions and allows us to focus on the issues at hand instead of fact gathering.  And yes, everything is in there - good or bad.  I have written some prior posts on this topic such as "Communicating with Your Board" and the "VC-Entrepreneur Relationship."  Along these lines, I would also say that I have observed that CEOs tend to fall into certain patterns of behavior when dealing with their board.  To that end, I have attempted to summarize some of these patterns and the pros and or cons related to them.

1. Yes-Man: This is pretty self-explanatory.  Whenever the board tells the CEO to go into a certain direction, he/she does.  If it means the board telling the team to launch a Facebook or iPhone app just like everyone else, then they do it.  Initially for the VC this may seem great but in the long run this can be quite detrimental to the company and value of the business.  If the VC/board member is dictating everything from strategy to product features, then what is the CEO and management team doing?  At this point, you are running the company and not the entrepreneur.  What this means is that it is time to get a new CEO.

2. No-Man: The No-Man is the CEO who gets ultra defensive whenever a board member asks for information or provides thoughts on how to help create more value for the business.  He/She always says no at any board suggestion and many times does not even have a good reason for saying so.  They say no simply because they don't give a crap about their board and they want to run the show and take zero advice. Saying no is not necessarily a bad thing as many board suggestions may end up having you chase your tail but as a CEO I would encourage you to use some tact when dealing with your board.  That is where CEO behavior #4 comes into play.  In the end, if a CEO is a No-Man then ultimately the board will replace him/her in the long run because it will be impossible to work with one another due to the hyper-defensive stance taken by the CEO.

3. Yes but No: This is one of the worst behaviors.  The Board asks the CEO to research a certain path and the CEO agrees.  The Board checks in 2 weeks later and nothing has happened.  The CEO consistently tells the Board it will do something but his/her actions are the complete opposite.  In fact, this inaction is really a Big F-U to the Board and tells us the CEO has no spine to disagree with the Board and probably does the same with his management team.  This kind of behavior is simply unacceptable and ultimately results in dismissal as well.

4. Open-minded: This is the best type of behavior.  This type of CEO usually says No immediately when something doesn't make sense and gives reasons why.  When he/she agrees with a suggestion, it is duly noted as well.  Finally, when this CEO does not understand something, he/she agrees to research further and get back to the board.  No our feelings are not hurt if you say no.  In fact we will respect you.  At the same time, we may have a few nuggets of wisdom to share as well so keeping an open mind is beneficial to all.  And if you don't know whether you agree, researching further can only help get a better answer.  This behavior is definitely conducive to a strong board relationship and will keep you in the CEO seat longer.  Yes, this does not mean that you can execute but this is definitely one measure of the many that board consider in their CEO success profile.

Ok so I outlined 4 CEO behaviors when dealing with boards, only one of which is positive.  At the end of the day, the Board-Entrepreneur relationship is a give-and-take one.  Both sides have to be willing to express their thoughts (diplomatically) and have an open dialogue.  The Board does not know your business better than you and if you disagree, tell us immediately.  If you agree, tell us immediately as well.  We all don't have time to waste and dancing around a topic does not help anyone get a better result.  As an entrepreneur, guide the board as well-tell us where you need/want help.  This relationship will have friction at times but don't let it get personal.  Friction is good-that is how everyone gets to a better decision point.  I hope this helps.  Remember the management team is running the business, not the board, and the board is there to help guide you strategically and make sure you don't make the same mistakes we have seen from numerous other companies.

Is it a feature or product?

During the last month I have spent more time looking at Angel investments as I believe it is a great time to start a business.  However, one key question I keep asking myself after meeting with entrepreneur after entrepreneur is whether or not what they have is just a feature of a larger product offering, a standalone product in and of itself, or a business for the long term with multiple products.  Each path provides a unique risk reward perspective for both investors and entrepreneurs.

To be honest with you, many of the companies I have met with seem like features of a broader product offering.  That is not bad in and of itself as focus is key when starting a company and going to market. As a start-up, you always want to be the innovative player with the new easy to use technology.  However, just being the mobile version of what is already existing in the market is a cause for concern as it doesn't take much for a larger competitor to replicate that effort and use its marketing muscle and existing customer base to freeze a start-up out.  Sure, you may get some customers early on as you are the only one, but in the long run you need to think about what broader feature set you will offer to be a true standalone product. 

A product is typically a couple key features tied together to solve a problem for a customer.  This means that you can provide more value to your customer and consequently extract more dollars from your end-user.  The opportunity for many companies that are just features is a quick flip, but the risk is if that doesn't happen the large player may just develop the feature in-house leaving no exit for you.  The more seasoned entrepreneurs know that starting out with a killer feature is just a launching pad to bigger and greater things.  They know it is just a go-to-market strategy that is part of a larger vision and a step towards a broader offering down the line.  These entrepreneurs know that they may never get there, but also understand that without this they have a limited market and return opportunity.  yes, I know start-ups are inherently uncertain and many times it is difficult to even calibrate how big the market is, but don't forget to lay out the broader vision beyond the initial killer feature when building your company.

On the flip side, what I don't advocate is coming out of the gate as a complete and whole product solution.  This brings you right into the crosshairs of large, incumbent players and makes your life much more difficult as you have to sell against a much larger salesforce with significant marketing muscle.  While your goal may be to grow to that kind of solution, start highly focused, features are ok, but have a broader vision to show a path towards building a great company.

Market positioning for startups - focus, focus, focus

I was on a call yesterday with an inspired and talented management team.  As we walked through the deck, one point particularly struck me as I listened to their well-honed pitch.  The company was trying to boil the ocean and do everything for its customers.  While it was great that the team seemed to understand the market and the problem that their customers had, I must say that I started to lose interest by the fifth differentiating feature of the product/service.  One slide really highlighted the problem for me - it showed a feature list of 10 features and then showed 3 different competitors who were either already well established public companies or well funded startups that only offered 30% of what this angel-funded startup would offer.  In my mind I was wondering how an angel funded company could go-to-market against companies with billion dollar market caps or with $30mm of venture funding which were highly successful because they were incredibly focused on a subset of problems that this start-up was trying to solve. I know, I know, I always like entrepreneurs to think big but that must be balanced with how a startup goes to market.

You see, it is always hard for a startup to enter a market with an end-to-end product positioning as most customers expect large companies to cover this territory.  What most customers expect from startups is innovation and breakthrough offerings, not end-to-end solutions.  Going back to the call, my humble suggestion was for the management team to complete their beta test with their handful of customers and figure out which 2 or 3 features were the most compelling and differentiated offerings with respect to their competition and market.  They should then plan their go-to-market strategy with a more focused approach that emphasized a new and innovative offering instead of a "we do it all for you" approach.  In the long run, if successful, the startup could always add another feature or two as they grew their customer base but keeping the message simple early on is imperative to drive a successful product launch.

When to ramp sales

While 2009 was a tough year, I must say that it was nice to see a number of our portfolio companies have blow out 4th quarters for bookings and growth.  Despite that, I am still taking a cautiously optimistic approach to 2010.  There are still conflicting reports on the growth of the economy and it is unclear whether Q4 was the release of some pent-up demand of if it will be more indicative of sustainable new spending on technology.

Either way, I would like to caution those start-ups out there who are looking to aggressively ramp up their sales based on a great quarter (more on this from a post in 2006 on when to hire a vp of sales).  Yes, it is imperative to keep the momentum building but before you get too aggressive with your growth plans make sure you can answer all of these questions about your go-to-market strategy:

1. Do we have a clear value proposition and know which market we are selling into and who we are selling to in the organization?

2. Do we have the right product and are our customers satisfied? - selling is one thing but if the product has serious issues in production then ramping up sales could put a severe strain on the business moving forward

3. Are our sales repeatable or one-offs which means lots of customization of our product on every deal?

4. Is our quarter based on one or two lucky huge deals or based on a broader swath of customers?  Do we have a continually growing sales pipeline or did we run it dry for a big Q4?

5. Do we have a solid understanding of the full sales cycle from lead generation from marketing to the closing of the sale - it is important to get good metrics here to make sure that marketing is spending wisely and targeting the right areas of the market to build the pipeline.  You need to feel confident that if you spend more on marketing, you will get more leads which will lead to more sales.

6. How can we build a more leveraged sales model through resellers, partners, or OEM relationships - you can't do this without answering #1 above.  If you are solely reliant on direct sales then think long and hard about how to add more leverage to the model

In short, if you can answer these questions and the data and anecdotal evidence from the field points you in the right direction, then by all means ramp up your growth.  If you can't answer all of these questions in a highly positive light, then cautiously ramp your sales.  Too many times I have seen portfolio companies get overexcited about their growth prospects and then realize the product is not ready for primetime or that the pipeline has run dry and subsequently the startup overspends and needs to go through a layoff.  Overhiring and then cutting back can be quite negative for morale and can also be a huge cash drain and distraction for management.  Just remember to take a step back and do some analysis before you bet the company's future based on a good quarter or two.

Startups and financial models for SAAS companies

The other day I met with an entrepreneur I was advising as he prepared to raise his next round of funding.  In the meeting, he wanted me to narrow in and focus on his financial model.  Financial models for startups are important from a big picture perspective, but I never like to get mired in the full details as things always change in the early stages.  So first and foremost, I let him know that while it was nice to have a well thought out spreadsheet, that the most important thing was getting the product developed and the right team in place.  I don't invest based on detailed spreadsheet models - getting comfortable with the team, the problem being solved, and the market opportunity are more important in the early days.  Secondly, what is most important for me to understand is the expenses and what milestones will be achieved with this first round of funding and whether or not it would be suitable enough to raise the next round of financing.  Finally from a big picture perspective, I like to understand the unit economics of the business - can this really scale, is the company capital efficient, and are there high or low gross margins.  While the revenue model may change as well, I like to at least understand going into the investment that the entrepreneur's head is in the right place and that the economics work right from the start.

Given my experience with SAAS based companies like GoToMyPC (Citrix Online now) and LivePerson (Nasdaq: LPSN), we also spent some time discussing key financial metrics for SAAS businesses that he should pay attention to as he ramped up his business.  Once again, no startup spreadsheet is going to accurately predict the future, but it is imperative to understand some of the key variables that will drive your business so you can prepare early on to have the right people in place and the right focus.  In my mind some of these key variables include new bookings, growth of deferred revenue, churn rate, cost of acquiring new customers, and obviously cash.  New bookings are a better indicator of sales growth for a SAAS company because typically contracts are signed for 1 year or more and the revenue is recognized monthly as the service is delivered.  So if a SAAS company signed up $1.2mm in bookings for December, it may only recognize $120k each month.  The remainder would go into deferred revenue.  Another area that is quite important is churn rate.  If your company churns or loses 5% of customers every month, then during the course of the year the company will have to replace a significant number of customers just to maintain status quo.  What this tells a company is that they while focused on adding new customers, they also have to make sure customer satisfaction is up to snuff and that they keep their existing customers happy.  Also if your cost of acquiring a new customer is high and breakeven is longer than the contract length, then your company will never be financially stable if you cannot keep your customers on board.  Finally cash is an important metric for all startups - watching the burn rate and being proactive about it can keep you fighting through the lean times and prepared for growth.  While many SAAS companies may collect cash monthly or quarterly, some collect annual fees by offering discounts by paying upfront.  This is a great way for SAAS companies to keep the cash coming in earlier so they can use it to fuel growth.

Washers, dryers and secret sauce - why naming your technology is important

Our washer and dryer was on the fritz today, and as I started to do some research on large capacity stackable units I started to get overwhelmed with all of the new terminology and features.  After all, isn’t a washer a washer and a dryer a dryer.  How many different combinations and features could there be?  As I dug deeper I found myself thinking about these appliances less from a consumer’s viewpoint and more from a marketing one and appreciating how these various companies could make a commodity product sound so exciting and differentiated.  Sure, all of the competing products had to check off performance, speed, and low energy but what really struck me was the marketing terminology they used to differentiate themselves.  Rather than just sell a steam washer or dryer LG had TrueSteam technology while Electrolux offered PerfectSteam on their site.  These appliances didn’t just balance well but LG used TrueBalance AntiVibration System versus the Perfect Balance System from Electrolux.  Other features included the Direct Drive motor from LG for better performance while the Electrolux offered WaveTouch Controls.  What this really helped me think about was how these various companies prioritized the features for their given market and how they differentiated themselves through their proprietary technology or secret sauce.  And yes, I immediately began to think about how looking at marketing in the washer and dryer world would apply to startups.

Researching washers and dryers reminded me of several meetings I had years ago with a marketing expert named Richard Currier.  His big thing was to take a basic technology, break it out into a few parts, and to give them sexy names.  For example when Sybase the database company was on the market it was fighting with Oracle and others and ended up capturing a big chunk of the financial services market because it leveraged an innovation it called Two-Phase commit.  Every sales person would lead in with the benefits of Two-phase commit and while other competitors may have had something like it, if it wasn't Two-Phase commit it wasn't good enough.  What Sybase did was take one of its secret sauce technologies (innovative at the time, standard now), named it, and leveraged the crap out of it with its sales force.  While the technology performed as advertised, naming it definitely gave it some cache.  

Coming back full circle, I had a conversation this morning with an entrepreneur who was going after an interesting segment in the online video and marketing world.  The company had some nice revenue for a bootstrapped operation.  However I mentioned to the CEO that it seemed more like a one-off consulting or agency shop versus a scalable VC-backable market opportunity.  As we dug into his technology deeper and as I started to understand some of the magic behind his platform, I recommended to him that he think long and hard about figuring out what the secret sauce in the backend was and how to name it so he could better market his services and compete against others.  While naming it won't in and of itself help him land more customers, I can guarantee that it will help his company sound more exciting and innovative versus companies that do not.  And in the end whether the deal is closed the sales prospect will certainly remember and question how important TrueBalance Antivibration and WaveTouch controls are to his purchasing decision.