So You Built It and They Didn't Come. Now What?
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So you've burned thru several million dollars of Venture Capital funds, replaced the VP of Sales three times, added 17 more features that each round of salespeople you hired (and fired) insisted their prospects must have before they would buy-then didn't, now what?
You're running out of runway and it seems Board meetings are every two days now. Your investors are smart people and they gave you all of that money because they were completely convinced you and your company would be successful.
You're certain there is a market for your product. You even have a handful of customers who've paid for it. But those “Wow’s” aren’t converting into sales.
How did this ever happen? Where did things go so wrong? More importantly, how can this be fixed and f-a-s-t?
Well, we could spend as many months figuring out what mistakes were made as your team did making them. But the priority right now isn't figuring out what went wrong, it's figuring out what to do next.
“When the student is ready,
the teacher appears.”
Chinese Proverb
This book is a practical guide with true stories on Now What? by successful entrepreneurs who’ve seen it all – and in some cases, been there themselves:
Jill Stelfox, CEO of Defywire, Inc
Tom Wheeler, Managing Director of Core Capital
Tom Kenney, CEO of Verve Wireless,VC for PayPal
Ed Marram, CEO of Geo-Centers, acquired by SAIC
Michele Perry, CMO of Sourcefire
Bob Darabant, former VP of Sales, Netscreen
Brien Morgan, Managing Partner of Lerota Capital
Rick Stamberger, CEO of Smartbrief
Bill Atalla, CEO of TriStrata Corporation
Steve Crummey, CEO of Sentito Networks
Babak Pasdar, Chairman of igxglobal
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About the Book
When you look at all of the innovation that has been added to the world in just the last one hundred years, it is absolutely astounding how far we’ve come. Start-ups endeavor to capture that innovation and make its benefits available to those whose lives will be forever improved by it.
Yes, there can be great wealth and fame for those intrepid entrepreneurs who dare beyond the dream, to actual execution. But there is also great risk and no guarantees.
Today the barriers to starting a company are almost too low and that can seduce an entrepreneur to build without truly thinking the idea through to its rightful conclusion.
· It’s just full speed ahead – of the competition
even when there isn’t any.
· It’s millions of investment dollars spent
on a product with no customers yet.
· It’s build it and they will come.
Well, what if they didn’t come? What are you going to do now?
This is a far different situation than when you were driving the original idea, selling the vision, seeking and getting the intoxicating “Wow’s", when everyone would talk to you and everyone was chasing you to share his or her sage.
But when you’ve built it and they didn’t come, when you have that epiphany that maybe they aren’t ever coming, when the buzz and the fervor turn into fear, uncertainty and doubt, where do you turn?
Well I’ve accepted that I can’t get to every start-up’s CEO before he builds a product with no orders for it. He wouldn’t listen anyway as most are too busy building to listen then. But what I can do is help him figure out his Now What? when it happens. This book is not about theory. It’s true stories with practical advice on what to do next.
Getting it right creates jobs, provides for the future of the families involved, brings products to the world that can forever improve lives and bring benefits to our global economy. It is with great courage that these Executives so candidly have shared their own true stories of how they came to their Now What moment and what they did to get it right. No one told them, now they openly will tell you:
I hope, as we all do, that you never need this book. But if you do, know that you aren’t the first and you aren’t alone. We’re all here to tell you what no one else would tell us.
About the Author
Jackie Bassett is CEO of BT Industrials, Inc. specializing in Security. She was one of the first 100 employees at Netscreen Security; which started in 1997, successfully IPO'd in 2001, then was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2004 for $4Billion.
She started her career in Investment Banking at State Street International and holds an MBA with a concentration in Entrepreneurship from Babson College in Wellesley, MA.
She currently serves on the Board of Advisors for Ask The Experts-Teqwork, the sunset group of Mario Morino’s Netpreneur; is active in the D.C. Technology Council and the MIT Enterprise Forum.
As an active member of Business Executives for National Security she works with other CEO’s of Global 500 companies to design and deliver Corporate Security Awareness Programs.
She is regularly introduced to emerging security technologies and guides start-up companies to find who really does want what they've built.
As subject matter expert she designs and delivers Corporate-wide Security Programs and has also written courseware focused on “The Business Value of Creating a Culture of Corporate Security Awareness”.
For more information, please go to: www.btind.com