What is a Start-up friendly?

Hi all, Yipe. This is Raymond To and I am honored that Florence has asked me to break the champagne on her boat called PeerFX. The last 6 months have been fun working with her and Julien,the other significant part of the team...and this is a great launching topic I want to share with those of you who want to consider working for a start-up. In my 17 years of recruiting and HR consulting, there is only 1 thing that makes any start-up work and that is "you gotta believe". I am not saying the drink the koolaid kind of belief but one based on research, creativity and follow-through.I am biaised in that most of my clients are start-ups but I really like working for them because the people who work there are in it to change the world! How cool is that? We all have limited time on this earth so why not maximize it by investing your time in changing the world?Another insight I would like to share is that you have to be a problem solver! This is not a cliche. I hate it when I work with an anti-start-up person who asks me "how do I solve this?" That is the wrong question! IMHO, the right question is "I saw this problem and here are my suggestions for potential solutions. There are pros and cons to each option but I recommend this one"If you ask any CEO or executive team member of any of my start-up clients, they will tell you this is the type of attitude they expect if you are going to fit in a start-up.A word of caution: Not all start-ups make it to the next stage for a variety of reasons. 90% of them fail. Most don't make it past 2 years. My attitude though is "so what!?" because the journey is worth it and imagine all of the lessons learned along the way.Do you agree or disagree? I welcome some insights or debate.

The General Pitch

From my chat with an individual seasoned in entrepreneurship today, I realized that I have been giving "The General Pitch" for the past year. There are two big flaws with what I have been doing.

1) The General Pitch: here's what investors hear all the time.

• Our potential market size is above $10 billion dollars;
• We are curing a BURNING PAIN for our target segment;
  
• Our adoption rate is going to be AMAZING;
• Our financials display a hockey stick ramp up;
• We'll reach break-even within 2 years;
  
• We're going to exit by acquisition.

The recommendation I got today is to send the key reading material to the investor prior to the in-person meeting. You reserve the face to face time to resolve the nitty-gritty details, which is where the investors reveal their true objections of why they're reluctant to write you a check.

2) Not hiring an actor.

Number 2 is really true. I should hire someone that looks like a banker to do my pitch for me. It's a credibility thing. Investors can deny this all they want, but once they see me get up to do a presentation, they have already imprinted in their head that I'm young and enthusiastic, which equates to inexperience in their books.

I spend the next 20 minutes they've allotted for my presentation fighting this stereotype. It doesn't help that I spend these precious minutes giving The General Pitch.

This is why I should hire an actor to do my pitch - it has worked before from what I've heard - any takers for this deal? :)

Well, live and learn. At least I'm glad that I came to this realization.

A Warm Welcome to PeerFX Guest Bloggers!

Hi Everyone,

Since this blog exists to help other start ups and small businesses by sharing our experiences and stories, I thought I would add an additional element through the help of Guest Bloggers.

Start ups and small businesses face difficult issues right now with tough economic times, but we think there's a huge opportunity for us to get creative and do MORE with LESS.

Our Guest Bloggers will share their experiences and opinions from their fields and you can watch for their posts on Monday of each week. We are starting officially TOMORROW so the purpose of this post is to extend a warm welcome to our first guest - Raymond To.

Raymond To has been recruiting and offering HR consulting to technology companies here in British Columbia since 1992. Applying the training received from his CMA and MBA, he founded GO Recruitment in 2002 and immediately set out to change the way companies could benefit from a different kind of service. He was recognized in 2006 as one of Business in Vancouver's "40 under 40" winner.

His post will be give you insight into the employment industry; I look forward to reading it and I hope you do too!

FREE Stuff Attracts Skeptics

We spent an hour and a half searching for video screen capture software for my Macbook.

We went through 5 different "FREE" downloads and got progressively more depressed as each program replayed our video screen captures with a watermark of their logo.

Maybe we were too tired to catch on...but...we finally figured that it wasn't actually FREE - the catch was that they hope the watermark logos SMACK right in the middle of your videoclip will entice you to pay for the full version of the software.

WHY DO YOU CALL IF FREEWARE THEN?! (this is me with bloodshot eyes at 9:30pm and still trying to find the FREE software).

The point is...I had totally forgotten to do what a usual customer would do, ask: "What's the Catch?"

Applied to our own situation, after we go through our pitch of significant savings, online booking and locking in the exchange rate at the time you book...we get these skeptical looks and then the question: "So...what's the catch?"

So here it is:

Just because we're saving you money does not mean we're not making any money. We still take a percentage transaction fee. That's it. We just don't have the crazy overhead that financial institutions have. We don't have to carry currency reserves either (oh thank you P2P model). You find it hard to believe that we can live off such thin margins but that's exactly what we're doing.

That's reasonable right?