Today marked the end of my twenty-ninth week of working from home (mostly). Here are my takeaways from week twenty-nine:

• Time management – This week I focused on being proactive about what I spend my time on. I noticed a big difference. I didn’t get as much done in certain areas, but overall, I’m happy with my progress.
• Podcast – I was invited to participate in a podcast this week. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into (this was a first), but I accepted. The moderator made me feel comfortable, and the other participants were great. We talked about mentorship, which I’m passionate about. A terrific experience!
• Students – As I said in a recent post, I really want to help entrepreneurial students reach their full potential. My earlier post led to a great conversation with a student today. I’ll continue looking for ways to help students.  

Week twenty-nine was a busy one (this seems to be the norm). Looking forward to refining how I organize my work next week.

I’ll continue to learn from this unique situation, adjust as necessary, and share my experience.

Yesterday I shared some ideas about how to position yourself to find a co-founder. If you’re like most founders, you’re a first-timer, and you may not have hiring experience. You’re ill-equipped to evaluate whether a potential co-founder is a good fit. So what do you do?

At CCAW I was in that situation. I was on a hamster wheel and desperately trying to get off. I was looking for my first in-office hire (we had distributed team members), and I was struggling. Trying to figure out whether a candidate was a good fit was much harder than I had expected.

At the time, I was subleasing office space from an EO Atlanta member. He’d been an entrepreneur for almost two decades. I regularly talked with him about things I was trying to figure out. Those informal conversations were invaluable. When I told him about my hiring problem, he made an amazing offer. “How about I interview one of your candidates and you sit in. I can show you better than I can tell you.” I happily agreed. I was able to watch him in action, and I learned a ton. He was able to help me realize the candidate wasn’t the right one.

Finding the right co-founder is critical. If you have someone in mind, consider getting input from credible people. If you and the candidates are having conversations or doing things together to get to know one another, consider inviting someone to join you—a credible entrepreneur would be good if you know one. If you’ve raised capital from credible investors, consider getting their input. Whomever you ask to join you, make sure they have a track record of evaluating talent or some experience with entrepreneurial partnerships. Your goal is to have them compensation for your blind spots.

Finding a co-founder is no walk in the park, but there are things you can do to make it a bit easier (notice I didn’t say easy). Getting the perspective of credible people can help you avoid a bad partnership and quickly confirm when you’ve found someone great!

One of the mistakes I made early was choosing to be a solo founder. Over the last year, I’ve been intentional about sharing with early founders the importance of having a founding team. Some still think the solo route is best, but most tell me they want a co-founder. But finding one is easier said than done—especially for nontechnical founders seeking a technical founder.

Nontechnical founders who want to build a technology company face a dilemma. They can’t build the product. They must find a technical co-founder (or a senior developer they don’t have to manage closely). Otherwise the company never progresses beyond the idea stage. Technical solo founders face a host of other challenges, but they can at least build the product. Putting the product in users’ hands can generate traction —a powerful recruiting tool. It’s easier to recruit a co-founder when you can show that you’ve already acquired customers or users.

So how does a nontechnical founder find a technical co-founder? There’s no silver bullet, but a good start is to hang around the hoop. The hoop is anywhere good technical talent might be found: meetups, conferences, pitch competitions, slack channels . . . you get the idea. Colleges are also great resources. Loitering around a school won’t help, but you can reach out to computer science professors and leaders of student clubs. If you’ve got a good idea, can tell a story, and talk to enough people, the odds are in your favor.

The difficulty of finding a co-founder is a problem I’ve heard about often enough that it warrants deeper thought. I’ll discuss it with others and, I hope, come up with a more comprehensive set of ideas for solving it. If I do, I’ll be sure to share it!

Today I was asked an interesting question: do I complete against other investors for deals? I decided to share my thoughts (based on limited experience). Some things to consider:

Rounds – Investment rounds frequently aren’t filled by a single investor (for one reason or another). Investors often work together toward a common goal of providing enough capital for the round to be closed.

Expertise – Many investors are great in one sector (e.g., healthcare) and good in lots of others. When an investor comes across a company in an industry they’re not great in, they may seek the perspective of one who knows the sector well.

Awareness – Investors sometimes make each other aware of founders and companies because it’s impossible to know all of them.

Stage – Investors often focus on a specific stage of investment. Outlander Labs is pre-seed, for example. Other stages include idea, seed, and series A, among others. If two investors are focused on the same industry but different stages, they’re probably not competing.

Community – For investors to do well, the overall community needs to do well. Investors know this, so they tend to cooperate rather than compete with each other.  

LPs – Venture capital funds usually raise money to invest by obtaining capital commitments from limited partners (LPs). The relationship between LPs and venture funds is important. Great LPs can be helpful to funds. They can be sources of deals and also provide expertise. Sometimes LPs can be invested in multiple funds, which is useful because having LPs in common can be a relational bridge between investors.

In my opinion, the answer to the question, at least from a high level, is “no.” I’m sure there are exceptions on a deal-by-deal basis. I don’t see other investors as competition. I see them as peers working toward a common goal: helping great founders and companies reach their full potential!

In college, I had a nice side hustle. It was just me, working with a network of installers and vendors to complete customization projects on my friends’ vehicles. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was on to something. The problem I identified for this side hustle was the same problem I would solve with CCAW years later. Hindsight is 20/20, but I wish someone had helped me understand that I’d stumbled on a problem that a big company could be built to solve.

Today I spoke with two bright college students. They’ve launched an early version of an app and are about to start getting feedback from customers. They’re inexperienced and have a long way to go, but I was impressed. They’ve managed to put together a team of twelve people, build a product, and pitch venture capitalists. All while finishing their undergraduate degrees. When I think back to where I was at twenty . . . well, these two founders are light years ahead.

The opportunity wasn’t a good investment fit, but I wanted to help these two grow. Instead of giving them a cold “no thanks,” I (along with my team member) used the second half of the meeting to coach them. I asked them questions that got them thinking about their problem and solution from different perspectives. We discussed alternative ways to achieve their objective. We gave them honest and candid feedback.

When the conversation ended, I was excited. Not about where they are now, but about their future. These two founders have entrepreneurial drive and hustle for sure. They need coaching and mentoring to help them reach their full potential. Hopefully our session today was a step in that direction.

After reflecting on this and my own journey, I’ve decided to find ways to spend time working with entrepreneurial college students. I’m not exactly sure what this will look like, but I know it’s something I want to do, so I’m going to make it happen. I have a new project! I’m excited to give back and help entrepreneurial students head toward success.

Friday marked the end of my twenty-eighth week of working from home (mostly). Here are my takeaways from week twenty-eight:

• Groove – This week, I felt like I was in a good rhythm and beginning to hit my groove. Looking back at my calendar, the week was busy with lots of meetings, but it felt less hectic. I’m starting to get used to this new pace and seeing early signs of balance.
• Giving back – I write daily, mainly in an effort to help others. This week I had conversations with five unrelated people who mentioned that my writings are helpful. This felt great! It was encouraging. I’m happy that others find value in my thoughts and experiences.
• Education – I participated in some meetings that educated me on topics I want to master. They reminded me how important it is for me to be intentional and seek out ways to continue to better myself and work toward goals I’ve set for myself.

Week twenty-eight was a busy week, but it didn’t feel as busy as it was. I’m looking forward to settling further into my new groove this coming week.

I’ll continue to learn from this unique situation, adjust as necessary, and share my experience.

I had a good conversation with a friend today. We both advise early entrepreneurs. Today we talked about things we’ve learned and best practices. Since we’re doing the same thing in different ways, we can help each other by talking through our experiences and sharing our perspectives.

One thing I’ve learned that I told my friend about has to do with asking versus telling. When you’re experienced, you can see things that novices can’t. When someone’s in a difficult situation that you’ve been in, the natural inclination is to help them avoid the pain that awaits by telling them what they should do or shouldn’t do. This can be helpful, but it’s not the best approach. You’ve set them up for future pain. Yes, you’ve helped them avoid pain today, but you’ve scotched their opportunity to learn. The next time they have to deal with something similar and you’re not around, they won’t know what to do.

When I work with entrepreneurs, I ask questions. My hope is that by thinking through the answer, they’ll connect the dots and learn something that will help them avoid pain both now and later. If I’ve had a relevant experience, I share it with them, of course. But my questions have been more helpful. I’ve noticed that entrepreneurs who’ve answered them feel like they’ve figured out what to do themselves, through learning, which is powerful.

If you want to help people, don’t spoon-feed them information—encourage them to reason . . . analyze . . . think. You’ll be fortifying them against future tribulations.  

Early in my founder journey, I had an overwhelming feeling that I had to have all the answers. I felt like it was expected of me. Whenever the team asked a question, especially about direction, I thought I should know the answer. I worried that they would lose confidence in me if I didn’t. As I worked with suppliers, it was the same. I felt like I had to have an answer or they would look at CCAW differently. Even when speaking with entrepreneurial peers, I felt the same self-imposed pressure. It was ludicrous.

As I settled into running a company and leading a team, I became more self-aware (partly through reflection on failures and partly from people pointing out my shortcomings). I realized there were things I was really good at and felt confident answering questions about. Other things I was inexperienced in or just plain bad at, and I wasn’t well equipped to answer questions about them. As I matured, I stopped trying to come up with a good-sounding answer that would let me squirm out of the corner I was in when the true answer was “I don’t know.”

Those three words are simple, powerful, and scary all at the same time. They’re scary because you’re admitting you have a knowledge gap. This can feel uncomfortable (it was for me), but it helps to think of saying them as acknowledging that you’re human. They’re powerful because they signal self-awareness, confidence, and honesty, and they give you the opportunity to learn something. And they’re simple because . . . well . . . they’re only three words.

Nowadays, when I’m asked about something outside my wheelhouse, I usually admit my ignorance (I still slip up, though). I try to turn it into an opportunity to learn. Usually I say something like, “Honestly, I’m not sure, but I’m actively seeking different perspectives on this. I’d love to hear yours.” People will tell me what they think, which adds to my fund of knowledge. Or they’ll admit they don’t know either, which reassures me that I’m not the only one.

When I speak with entrepreneurs now, I try to tell them what I wish someone had told me early on. It’s OK to not know. In fact, it’s normal. You’re human and no one expects you to have all the answers!

I’m often asked why I didn’t raise capital from investors at CCAW, instead choosing to bootstrap. I think people expect to hear some strategic thought-out reason. The truth is much simpler. I didn’t know any better. That may sound ridiculous. Let me clarify a bit.

Not raising capital forced me to be capital-efficient, but it also resulted in challenges. Most of them I didn’t recognize until much later. We had customer revenue from day one, so I viewed us as different from companies that burn cash for months while they build a product. Customer cash flows were fine in the beginning, but as I started to think more strategically it wasn’t enough. We had enough money to pay salaries and other operating expenses, but sometimes we didn’t have enough left to invest in strategic projects. And if we did, we didn’t have enough for the entire project.

I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t afford the appropriate resources for the entire time it would take for these projects to pay off. This resulted in a start-and-stop rhythm. We’d start, run out of money, and stop until we got enough in the bank to start again. This extended projects unnecessarily and frustrated the team. Really big projects can require people who work on nothing else. With some of them, it takes a year or two before you see an ROI. That means paying salaries for two years without a contribution to revenue or profitability. We couldn’t afford to carry salaries on the books that long if they didn’t result in revenue. Our large projects were understaffed at times or simply never happened. Strategic projects are what move most companies forward. We never had enough runway to execute properly on our strategic projects. We had too many conflicting draws on our limited capital.

With the benefit of hindsight, I’d do lots of things differently. Mainly, I’d think hard about the resources needed to implement my vision. That would take time, but I’d identify the first major milestones. The milestones would be early indicators of success. For CCAW, that would’ve been early signs of increasing revenue. I’d determine what people and resources were needed and what the time frame was. I’d put all that into a simple budget. That budget, along with my vision, would have been great tools for soliciting investor capital. Had I gotten an investor, it might have given me the breathing room we needed to start working toward my vision. Notice I didn’t say it would’ve been enough capital to make the vision reality—just enough to show others that my team had what it took to make progress. If we were successful, I’m sure additional capital would have been easy to come by.

Hindsight is 20/20, and I wouldn’t change anything about my journey. The situation I’ve described isn’t unique to me. I regularly speak with entrepreneurs in similar situations. They just don’t have enough breathing room to begin executing.

If you’re in that situation, considering identifying short-term milestones that will show you’re headed in the right direction. Couple them with a timeline and budget and you’ll have a powerful tool that will help others understand your vision. Asking for a small amount of capital (just enough to allow you to make some progress) de-risks you as an investment. You will still hear “no” from lots of investors, but you’re more likely to find one willing to give you a shot. There’s a lot to be said for breathing room!

When I started CCAW I was still working full time at EY. I was traveling every week, so I spent my evenings working on CCAW in my hotel room. Once I gained traction, that wasn’t enough. I began handling some things during work hours too. Over time I found myself working two full-time jobs. It pretty much sucked. I definitely wasn’t aiming for that, but that’s where I landed. I never heard any complaints from my superiors at EY, but I’m pretty sure they noticed. It took me longer to complete assignments. I was always taking phone calls. My focus just wasn’t there. I was running on fumes. I eventually went full time at CCAW when I couldn’t take it anymore.  

Over the years, the theme of focus resurfaced in different ways. I learned that focus was important not only for me but also for the entire team. I spent lots of time developing the company vision and identifying the single thing we should all be focused on at any given time to make that vision a reality. When we focused, we were a well-oiled machine that accomplished amazing things. When we weren’t, we weren’t as effective and didn’t achieve our goals.

Why? It’s pretty simple. There are schools of thought that encourage multitasking, but in my opinion people aren’t great at focusing on multiple things at once. It can be done, but the result is less than ideal.

Starting a company is hard. A lot of things outside your control have to go right for you to be successful. Focus is something you can control that increases your chances of being successful!