Leighton Ventures

I have a client that has an issue; a very common issue for startup companies. They need money to grow there business. As you know, it’s a long road to securing a round of capital. It takes time, energy, activity, and contacts.

How do you get some momentum going?

Well, I was digging deep, deep into the vault and found a dusty old Excel list of VCs I had compiled.

This list turned out to be a great resource for the CEO of this startup food manufacturing company. I know VC funding is all about relationships and personal introductions. However, if you are a one man band running a company on a shoestring budget and you need capital yesterday, you will need to generate activity and interest in the quickest most cost efficient manner. Try emailing a list to generate some interest.

Tips on your email:

• Short, sweet, and hard to beat
• Include the why
• How much capital are you trying to raise?
• Add a link to a landing page with more information and a form

Lessons learned are coming soon.

There are a lot of good VC list resources: Capital Vector and Growth Think are two I am aware of. Also, check out local VC networking groups and conferences. There are always events happening as companies are looking for investment capital.

Selling vs. Effective Marketing

Confusion on this issue will always exist. That’s why so many companies have marketing departments and sales departments.

The only reason you need both is because the marketing department is doing such a lousy job differentiating the business and products, the sales department has to hit the streets and do the educating for them. That’s why selling can be such a tough job.

Source: Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch

Au contraire to Neil Patel’s post Want to be successful? Learn how to sell!, I believe effective marketing is much more valuable to an individual and business’ success. Neil’s post outlines some of the characteristics of a great sales person. All of which I would consider short term success, besides customers become warn out from a sales person’s antics. You should simply just need closers.

Indeed sales are always being made and persistence does pay off, but launching, testing, monitoring, and tweaking effective marketing tactics is much more fruitful to companies and the sales are just the results from your marketing efforts. This includes all of the following benefits of an effective marketing program: product / service communication, good customer service, happy customers, empowered referral sources, and challenged employees.

Nowadays, companies should focus on precise marketing strategies and tactics to implement and test. Yes, that sounds obvious. However, there is no better time than now to start planting marketing seeds and capture market share.

If your marketing department isn’t clever and effective, don’t bring in sales people or business developers for a short term solution to drum up some business. Look to hire a more creative marketing person that can more effectively market your business, products, and services. Marketing can turn your pipeline into a never ending “closing machine”.

Are “good times” gone? Did someone really turn the light off at the end of the tunnel?

Here’s the Sequoia Capital presentation outlining what went wrong and what’s going to happen for startups and venture-backed companies.

What are your thoughts on the Sequoia presentation?

I don’t think the light is turned off at the end of the tunnel. I think it shines as bright as ever for some.

In fact, I think now is the time for you and your company to roll up your sleeves and get the marketing going. Marketers, This is Your Time to Innovate and Lead, Not Hunker Down gives you an “optimist’s” perspective of proactive marketing and drowning the fear factor.

Over the next 6-10 months, marketers should be thinking about low-cost, high-impact marketing strategies. Focus on driving revenue and building / keeping a flat revenue line this year and your company will be considered a winner in these economic times.

Slide #109 is important.

Here’s some inspiration my friends working on startups.

An example of a misleading management tool is the ordinary monthly sales chart.

People think up is good and down is bad, but what if the chart goes up less than the same month last year? What if that continues for 12 months? When will you finally notice that your growth has slowed to a crawl? Too late is the answer. A simple tool called the trailing 12 months chart (T12M) will forever solve this problem. Where ordinary charts regularly lie to you, the T12M always tells you the truth.

Well, I have found this T12M chart to be very insightful for forecasting and understanding my business and my client’s businesses. In fact, utilizing Excel is nice. But, there is a better, more interactive way of looking and documenting your sales.

Why not make notes on why sales went up, and went down? Below is a link to an easy way capturing this data to help CEOs track their company’s monthly sales, per Kraig Kramer’s T12M.

Creating your T12M Spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Google Spreadsheet

Adding an Interactive Time Series Chart

Interactive Time Series Chart

Check out the tutorial on creating an Interactive Time Series Chart.

Now you can use the power of Google Finance for your company’s monthly sales and trailing 12 months sales numbers. Simply rollover the line graph and the top right of the gadget displays the value.

You can also make notes to document the reason why sales increased or decreased so you can track all the necessary variables. For example, in October 2008 this company obtained 4 new clients and bumped the sales to $16,000.

Let us know if you need Leighton Ventures to customize your company’s T12M chart.

Many entrepreneurs consistently work towards growing their startup company, refining their business model, growing revenues, and sustaining the company for a proper (and lucrative) exit.

Well, as you begin to launch your startup, you should know what your getting into and what the exit will be.

Consider YouNoodle.

YouNoodle will calculate what your startup be worth in 3 years? Their sophisticated model analyzes information on startups before they get funding to help predict their outcomes. If you know a startup you can take the Startup Predictor test free!

Many of the people I surround myself with are positive thinking entrepreneurs. And, many of us can relate to the rollercoaster ride of emotions that comes with being an entrepreneur.

I encourage entrepreneurs, investors, and other risk takers to read Tim Ferriss’ guest blog post on Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work for You.

This article is an articulate way of defining what life is like for a lot of us entrepreneurs. Also, it reminds us that as entrepreneurs we are on a journey to success. We need to enjoy and learn from the bumps and enjoy and leverage the successes along the way.

To me, entrepreneurship as a lot “learning and leveraging”.

As the post concludes, enjoy the ride instead of fighting it.

Welcome to the new Leighton Ventures website.

We’re going to start blogging about marketing, web design and development, startup companies, raising capital, and applications. We will be providing more ideas, resources, and information on these core topics.

You can also bet that we’ll add some insight on other topics as well.