Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference

Thursday I attended the "Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference. I was lucky enough to attend this event for free by helping Sean and Kimbro record the sessions for Grid7. Very soon all the sessions from the conference will be online at Grid7. It was my pleasure to work with Clay and his team from Arizona Corporate Broadcast Company (AZCBC) who handled all the audio visual for the conference. They were great!

For me, the conference was very enjoyable and motivating. These are my notes and may be a little scattered but will help me remember the event.

Announcement:
Lahn Safko, Robert Scoble, and Chris Heuer are writing a book about social media using social media. We were asked to contribute to the book by going to the site - ContentConnections.com/SocialMedia2007. Thy hope to get the "largest collaboration ever to get into the record books."

Keynote Speaker: Pat Sullivan - founder of ACT & SalesLogix, current CEO of JigsawHealth.com
Disjointed lecture and all over the board at first. My notes...

• PC is going away and being taken over by gadgets.
• Microsoft will go away
• Now is the best time to start a business and be first (so was the 80's & 90's).
• Do one thing really, really well. Infusion Software - help people sell on the internet really, really well.
• Jigsawhealth focused on a star product (just like Apple & the ipod) in Magnesium with SRT. They have a "19% conversion rate" through the web, see Inc magazine 500, when average us < 2%.
• Google is scary, because of the information they can collect about people. "Do no evil" mantra. Sergey decides what is evil & Pat doesn't trust one person. See "The Google Story," a book about Google.
• "There just isn't much VC in Arizona." You CAN do it here! Money comes to a great idea no matter where it is.

Eventually, he got to the meat of his presentation, which was about raising money.

"Pat's Top Ten Tips for Getting Money for a New Business"
1. Do you need money?
2. "I'll lose control" - to get money, you'll have to give up some control. But if you're good, you won't lose all control.
3. How do you know you can raise money? You have sales. You have convinced toehr people. You are the best at something.
4. Do a roadshow - talk to as many people as you can in a short amount of time. Build a sense of scarcity (do it all in one timeframe to get leverage over the VCs).
5. Sell, don't educate - "You are your pitch." CEO is chief salesperson.
6. Throw a perfect pitch - 1 minute pitch, <10 slides
7. Sell your secret sauce - why are you different, how can you sustain it
8. Forget about your financial projections, it doesn't mean much.
9. Don't say "no one can do what we're doing" "no one is doing what we're doing"
10. Recognize a "no" - "We think this is interesting...stay in touch", "We'll get back to you."
11. Recognize a "yes" - meet the whole team, take them to dinner, term sheet

Bonus advice - Have a great lawyer. You need a strategist.

Keynote Speaker: Mark Canter - CEO Broadband Mechanics
The title of the presentation was "Inspiring the Troops - advanced course in the school of hard knocks." My notes are incomplete as I was only able to attend part of this presentation. But one of the impressions I got was that Mark brought some baggage with him. At one point he said, "Ning was my idea and they ran with it. It would be nice to get some credit."

• Invest in health
• Make your business personal.
• How do you define success? Happiness. YES!! Set your own metrics - 5,000 people or 500,00 people.
• Get your priorities straight. "Money is not the most important thing. Changing the world is." YES!
• The blog is all you need. It is your voice, your marketing tool.

After Mark Canter spoke, Francine Hardaway was on stage and said this priceless quote, "I spend my summers in Half Moon Bay making those important connections so you don't have to."

Session: Real Estate 2.x - How real estate is changing (not just in Arizona)
This was a panel of men in real estate who answered the audience's questions. A few of websites they mentioned were propertyshark.com, vflier.com, zillow.com, and residentialtoolbox.com.

What is the future of real estate? What's your prediction?
• David Miller, Chicago Title - There's a lot of pent up demand for a home, but people are waiting for the tide to come in. Problems with submarket loans are a wall street problem and making normal people worry artificially. Believes seeing a correction in the market. Last week saw new orders double. Estimate 200K people looking to buy homes. By the end of the
  Volume of transactions in 2007 is inline with 2003. You can't compare to 2005, 2006 as a baseline.
• Steve Groves, blogger - From Portland, OR so can't speak to Phoenix. Heard estimates of turnaround in mid-2009 from a conference in August.
• Brendan King, - From Canada...sees listing. Time of listing is elongated. But there are people moving to Phoenix. Have to improve in 16 months - 5 years.

Session: Women as Entrepreneurs
Be passionate about the mission of your business.
Treat people right - example, many of these women paid for full health care for their employees.
Brag about the things you're good at! You'll get good attention for it.

Keynote Speaker: Dan Morrison - IT Toolbox
Background in management consulting then moved into IT. Built IT Toolbox in his living room and recently sold the business after 9 years.

Lessons Learned:
1. Many paths lead to success - A good idea and an entrepreneur who will do anything to make it succeed.
2. Pros/Cons to bootstrapping (not taking VC)
   PROs: make all the decisions, choose your own timeline, growing from cashflow makes you do good decisions
   CONs: slower growth, limited access to experienced resources, VCs can be 2 years ahead of the market
3. With some things, there really is no substitute for experience. Knowing good employees and how to manage & coach them. Knowing which key metrics to measure.
4. Find trusted advisors with experience & utilize them, specifically a lawyer, accountant, banker.
5. Join an executive network (YEO,YPO, Vistage, etc.) - Other CEOs have the same problems and you can learn from their experience. Group holds you accountable for your actions/commitments.
6. Understand your value (and challenges) as the entrepreneur - Know your vision & believe in it, even in the face of conflicting advice.
7. Do the job of the CEO - Set the strategy, build & develop a team to execute the strategy, manage operations, cultivate key business relationships (lawyers, bankers, customers). Stop doing what you were good at and start being the CEO. Create an organization that can succeed with average people. Then put above-average people in it and achieve unusual results. You can't scale your company by creating roles that require rock stars because there isn't a good supply of those people.
8. Success is directly correlated with (and limited to) the number of highly talented people on your team. You must have good people.
9. Steps to Successfully Sell a Business:
   • Value is optimized when multiple parties are interested.
   • Hire a good investment banker and attorney.
   • Prepare the offering documents.
   • Send the deal to market.
   • Select a winner.
   • Complete due diligence & close the deal.

   Generally takes 4 - 12 months during which time the business can not slip

10. Selling Lesson: The highest bidder is not always the winner. There are multiple factors in choosing a buyer - how much money, certainty to close, cultural fit.
11. Selling Lesson: Micromanage due diligence
12. Do not lose faith. Trust yourself and your idea even when other people don't (but don't ignore new facts).

Session: Exit Strategy - Selling the Company
Zenter, Wayne Crosby & (unfortunately I didn't catch the other gentleman's name) - Online presentation software aka the "Powerpoint killer." Company was founded in January and sold in June to Google. Enabled by Y Combinator.
Technology was very important. Did not reuse existing technologies (open source libraries). Wrote everything from scratch. That was what Google was ultimately interested in.
Limelight Networks - Bill Rinehart, "Be careful what you wish for because it might come true."

Keynote Speaker: Ingrid Vanderveldt, Club E
I missed much of this speaker as I went outside to take a phone call. But what I did catch was a story about being too busy to connect with another entrepreneur that wanted her help. When he finally offered her an introduction to someone she found valuable to her business, she made the time for him. The moral of the story was entrepreneurs need to figure out what they can provide for another entrepreneur in order to get what they want.

Keynote Speaker: Michael Gerber, author of the E Myth

• Today is the age of the new entrepreneur.
• Language of the new entrepreneur is the language of meaning. What is the meaning of your business? If the meaning of my business doesn't meet the meaning of my life, why am I doing it? Furthers the good of rather than the consumption of.
• What do we sell and do we want to be identified with it?
• New entrepreneur dreams about what is impossible because they are moved by the impossible.
• In the Dreaming Room - Michael's new business to help people get unstuck. The reason to come to the dreaming room is because you don't know what you want. It costs $3000 because it is a business.
• Michael was wearing a yamika and told how it kept himself mindful. "Remember Myself" - that's the moment you create

Michael was a great speaker in that he knows exactly when to pause. Great cadence. While he was speaking, I went to look for his book. Turns out the Phoenix library has the E Myth Revisited available for download on the web (for PC users only).

*Update* - The recording of all the sessions can be found at http://www.grid7.com/archives/190_podcast-29-arizona-entrepreneurship-conference-2007.html