CEO Coach

As Gillian and Anne warp up 11 years of CEO Coach they address the essential elements of real leadership. Every CEO must lead with empathy, structure, and comfort with not knowing all the answers. While the duo is leaving CEO Coach, they are not going far. Watch this space for Gillian and Anne's new podcast 'VC Confidential', launching soon. Meanwhile, all the CEO coach podcasts you know and love will to be available right here on WMR FM.Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne share some excellent tactical advice from Cascadia Capital in a recent Geekwire article. In addition to exhibiting strong empathic leadership, there are several additional actions CEOs can take to ensure durability through this crisis. From stabilizing your finances to protecting your team, these insights from Cascadia provide valuable guide rails as you plan for today, tomorrow, and long after.Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In times of crisis, like right now, CEOs find themselves frustrated by general advice. “But what do I DO!?” entrepreneur leaders ask. Leaders always deal with ambiguity—it’s timeless and comes with the job. During crises, ambiguity becomes exponential. As fear becomes contagious across organizations, leaders must manage their own responses to ambiguity. Gillian and Anne talk about how to do so in your company...Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne return to talk real-time tactics entrepreneurs need right now to weather the uncertainty and unpredictability during this global pandemic. From leading with compassion to stashing cash, they list actions and resources to help you stabilize your team, your business, and your profitability. What do you need to do right now? How to make hard decisions. What do you need to do to plan for the long game?Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne and Gillian welcome guest Lindsay Tabas, The Lady Engineer (which she trademarked 15 years ago) and product market-fit expert. Her e-book Start Before the Product’s Ready, subtitled ‘The Unavoidable Market Part of Product Market Fit’, which pretty much says it all in her view. Lindsay guided User interface and User experience design for many companies and their products before launching her own consulting group. Her near two decades engineering tech products tell an intriguing story, and even frustrating at times. For example the deep ‘bro’ culture in tech, and how hard it was to raise money for her own startup. Meanwhile, observing product development misfires, she saw a big need for tech to change the way products are created Her mission is simple: help founders sell the right product before they build the wrong one. Lindsay tells what steps founders need to take, and how to bring successful products to market.Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne address just why marketing managers struggle to create demand for products, as recently reported. They take a look at those products and the process for creating successful ones. Because without that success, how does all the rest come to pass – the stable economies with good jobs? Spoiler alert, product development today succeeds today not by ‘creating demand’, but rather, by listening to customers and hearing what problems they are trying to solve. And then ask why your customers should care about your product, as Steve Jobs famously did. How will it change their lives? And most important, is that change something they care about? As Eric Reis, the Lean Startup guy, said the question isn’t “Can this product be built?’ but, “Should this problem be solved with a product we can build?” and then “Can we build a sustainable business around it?” Gillian and Anne break down the steps to getting the answers right.Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne and Gillian talk about raising capital, which is the hot topic on everyone’s mind when they talk to them, especially women. There is a bigger hurdle for women: perceived bias against them as founders. When the stats clearly show that women-led teams run capital efficient, profitable companies, returning more value to investors than all-male ones, and more ROI at exit, women still get just a tiny slice of venture capital. They found some encouraging news in recent reports from Crunchbase and The Angel Resource Network indicating that funding for women-lead startups from angels in Seed and Series A, and VC’s at later stages is indeed inching upward, even though more than 80% of funding continues to go to all-male teams. They close with tips for listeners to help them organize their capital raises better.Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne and Gillian talk about how to raise capital other than by equity – that is, providing shares in your startup to investors in return for cash. Somewhere in start-up school, all budding entrepreneurs hear about is raising funds with equity. Why do other forms of funding their startups seem to be news to them? What’s more,. recent research by the Center For American Entrepreneurship crunched years of Pitchbook data and found that less than 4 percent of VC-funded companies have a successful exit in 8 to 10 years, such as an M&A or IPO. Were the VC’s wrong about the potential of the other 96%? Not at all. They were wrong about the appropriate funding methods. Many companies can become successful, sustainable businesses without holding out for the big 10x return in 10 to 15 years. Listen to the many benefits of using debt, revenue sharing, dividends or royalties to finance your growth.Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne look at pattern matching beyond gender lens issues, reminding listeners that good pattern matching habits can be learned. While it is true pattern matching may keep investors from investing in women. But women can develop good pattern matching habits that will help move capital their way. That’s why they examine pattern matching beyond the gender lens. In other words, taking something holding women founders back and turning it around to work in their favor. It's about following the pattern of companies that have accomplished whatever you want to accomplish. Understand their path and the path of similar companies. Follow that roadmap – not slavishly, of course. But be aware and be mindful of what your colleagues are ‘doing right’ in the capital raise area of the business. In this episode you will hear specific actions you can employ to turn the tide your way.Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Early stage companies need Executors. There are so many Wizards out there. Gillian and Anne provide clarity around the value of finding and working with a brilliant Executor so they can experience the kind of personal and corporate financial success they dream of. And Executors are the key to that success. We talk endlessly on CEO Coach about Wizards and Executors. In truth, it’s hard to remember a business conversation in which Gillian has not mentioned the winning duo of Wizards and Executors. Just in case this is the first time you've heard of it, here’s the meaning of this "tribal-speak." Wizards are the idea people, often technologists, even inventors. They are focused deeply on the ideation, design, development, and production of the company's product. Executors are the 'business people.' Executors literally execute on the ideas of Wizards and build companies around them. It takes both Wizards and Executors to build a truly powerful tech company. Hear why you want an Executor sharing leadership in your startup as early as possible, and some tips on how and where to find yours.Start Your Free 14-Day Free Trial of The Buzz CRM - https://thebuzzcrm.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne talk about raising capital, because “How do I do that” is the question they get most. So they discuss how to hack, or leapfrog the process, starting with your deck. Or, rather , decks. As you will learn from your research -- which is your first step, of course -- you will need different decks for different potential investors. Hear how to meet your listeners where they are. Because the devil is always in the details, they share some hacks and tips that will optimize all the efforts you will make in getting your documents in order to get that capital raise. Fundraising takes a huge amount of time out of your work life. Minimize wasted time: get organized before the show. The best part about these tips is that they will serve you before and well after your capital raise.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne & Gillian continue to examine the issues raised in the latest study on the rise in venture funding for gender diverse teams from the Center for American Entrepreneurship, and why it remains a fraction of funding raised by all-male teams. The study analyzed the performance of first-funded startups over 13 years and found that success was very similar between women-led teams and all male ones. Both had near identical rates of securing second and third rounds of financing and near identical rates of exit. Does such evidence of the business case for gender-diverse founding teams spell ‘opportunity’ for US venture investors? The CAE’s conclusions about this were many, but a main one was that more women VCs -- currently around 9% -- would move the needle, as would more peer support for female founders. Listen to the results of a University of Pennsylvania examination of how men and women performed in ‘The Startup Game’ online. Spoiler alert: sounds just like real life.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Though women-led startups receive far less first-round venture capital than ones led by all-male teams, they perform equally with their brothers in landing second and third rounds and exiting successfully. So reports Rebecca Lovell, Chair of the Center for American Entrepreneurship and Director of Seattle’s Create33 workspace, as she unpacks the findings for us in the new CAE study that took a deep dig into 13 years’ worth of Pitchbook data. While it is true a big gender gap exists for founding teams with women in leadership, CAE made another surprising finding: VC funding gender-diverse leadership teams increased since 2005, from a low that year of 7% to 21% in 2017. That said, that number is only 16% of the $83 billion invested those years by US VC’s. What factors cause this and what can be done to fund more high growth, high performing opportunities led by women? Rebecca Lovell teases out some of the answers from her group’s analysis of the data.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Seattle investor, founder and startup advisor Dan Kihanya joins Gillian and Anne to talk about his new podcast “Foundersunfound.com” with which he expects to create greater awareness of underrepresented founders. “We will focus on storytelling. Under-represented founders have super powers,” he says. They deal with all the craziness that normal founders deal with and then on top of that, these founders face additional hurdles of disadvantage and bias. Dan and co-founder Deborah Drake believe that bringing out the stories will reveal the strength and resilience to form good business cases for support. Who are they, why they are solving their problems in the way they do? Dan’s father was Kenyan and his mother from rural Maine of Scottish and Irish ancestry. His parents taught him to work hard for what he wanted, and he believes being of mixed race heritage served him as an advantage. The podcast is live, with two new interviews with African American founders.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne discuss a recent report in the Washington Post that power reveals who we really are and people with certain tendencies will gravitate to certain types of professions,  examining what kinds of tendencies lead people to become entrepreneurs of lifestyle businesses, scalable but privately held businesses, and scalable funded businesses. Given that far more women resonate with looking at capitalization stacks instead of simply asking for equity investment to grow their companies, what implications does power have for startups and investors. Women are far more willing to look at the nuances of capitalizing their companies and women are FAR more likely to resonate with the idea of self-funding (what can I sell today to pay for what I want to build tomorrow?) than men.  They want to use OPM (Other People's Money) with the limit of liability stopping at the corporation they are attempting to build. On the flip side, about 90% of women resonate with the idea that they may not have to raise equity. Women are far more concerned that they will be ousted by their male equity funders than men.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne discuss the defining characteristics of a successful advisory board and how they will benefit your startup. In your early stages you will have ad hoc advisors to help get through the thorny startup underbrush. Advisors are valuable to a startup from the beginning. Whether they are experts in the field of your product, or markets for it, or financial management. All of these support founders by allowing a sounding board for decision making. Or providing a high level view, since we know day-to-day startup operation is usually deep in the weeds. Your advisors will be your counsel, your experts. Find ones who have done this before. 2. Your advisors will lend their good names to your efforts. Find the best you can. Reach high! In the early stages you call on them when you need them. Later you may formalize your group of advisors into a board with periodic meetings and reporting, and then you may be compensating them.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne discuss the defining characteristics of a successful advisory board and how they will benefit your startup. In your early stages, you will have ad hoc advisors to help get through the thorny startup underbrush. Advisors are valuable to a startup from the beginning. Whether they are experts in the field of your product, or markets for it, or financial management. All of these support founders by allowing a sounding board for decision making. Or providing a high-level view, since we know day-to-day startup operation is usually deep in the weeds. Your advisors will be your counsel, your experts. Find ones who have done this before. 2. Your advisors will lend their good names to your efforts. Find the best you can. Reach high! In the early stages, you call on them when you need them. Later you may formalize your group of advisors into a board with periodic meetings and reporting, and then you may be compensating them. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne chat with Seattle investor Dave Parker, founder of ‘6 Month Startup -- Ideation to Revenue’. Dave breaks down the three components of a startup in to creating value with your product or service, delivering value to customers, and capturing value, i.e. profits for your company. In this interview he talks about the third, capturing value by describing a dozen-plus ofcommon ways to make money with your product or service, including four to avoid. Listen in for a fresh helping of clarity on finding the right revenue path for your startup.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne discuss the differences between management and leadership from a metrics perspective. Metrics seem to be all about management. But leadership is setting the metrics to be tracked by the company teams. What metrics matter? That’s a good place to start, with tips from frequent muse Mark Suster, General Partner at Upfront Ventures and a brilliant author on the subject of launching, growing, and managing tech businesses from an investor’s viewpoint. (Bothsidesofthetable.com) A few months ago, he published a Twitter stream that addressed the difference between vanity metrics and what leadership should really be thinking about as they grow their companies. Gillian and Anne unwrap and share each Tweet. Suster’s wisdom is well worth a good listen.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Where to find capital is the number one question heard from founders at almost every stage of entrepreneurship. For that reason, Anne and gillian keep an eye on progress toward gender equity in venture funding and the numbers coming in for 2018 ain’t pretty!  TechCrunch reported in November that women led startups received 2.2 percent of funding. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that is the same number as 2017, reported then by PitchBook. No progress. This despite a decade or more of data indicating that diverse teams and women founders outperform the men-only ones, by large margins – by 63 percent more in a well-known report from First Round Capital. Fewer than 10 percent of VC decision makers are women. Fully 74 percent of US VC firms have no women investors -- stunning, considering the volume of voice around this subject this past year.  Anne and Gillian discuss what can and must be done to remedy this situation, and increase the flow of capital to diverse founder teams to improve outcomes across the board.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Every entrepreneur dreams of selling the company and cashing out. It is almost a trope that founders need to have their exit in mind from the earliest days of their startup. While many are on a mission to solve a problem and make better ways to live and work together, the business of business is business, i.e. making money for the owners. If you have investors, they expect a return on the money they put in your company. Sure, they have gambled on a highly risky asset class, but they do so anticipating gains on their money. Gillian and Anne outline the basics every founder needs to know: when and how to prepare for sale, whom you need to engage for support, and how to find a buyer and pitch your startup.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne chat with Amy Margolis, founder of The Initiative and The Commune, an accelerator and coworking space for women launching cannabis businesses in Portland, Oregon. Noting the lack of women on boards or management teams in the emerging cannabis industry, she set out to provide women a comfortable work environment, business management coaching, and access to capital from a carefully curated set of investors, including institutional funding. Ms. Margolis has been an attorney for more than 17 years and is the founder of the Oregon Cannabis Association, one of the largest state cannabis trade groups in the United States.  She has been recognized Cannabis Business Executive(CBE) on their Political 100 and is recognized as one of the 50 Most Important Women in Cannabis. Elle Magazine refers to Amy as “Pot Power Woman” and Herb.co lists Amy as one of the 10 Most Influential Women in the Cannabis Industry.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne and Gillian talk about different dimensions of financial models --  or more clearly, how to paint the best financial portrait of your startup -- you need more than one dimension. This is not a one-size fit all situation. In fact, financial modeling is like a Rubik’s Cube. You know, the puzzle that starts with four colors all jumbled on all four sides, which you have to sort so that each side is its own color. There are at least three different ways to look at your startups’ financial situation: current customers, potential renewals, and sales pipeline, A clear financial picture of a startup comprises at least three different approaches that should be expressed separately in different sets of books. The point is to have better information on which to base decisions. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne Gillian review the critical elements for your pitch decks, and the two most often included by novice founders that are unnecessary, and sometimes even counter productive. Too many times founders present their marketing message for customers instead of the information potential investors want to hear -- specifically, how will you make money for them? Or social change, if impact is their focus. Listen for step-by-step tips on how to build your deck for maximum effect.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Marcia Zaruba O’Connor joins Anne and Gillian to talk about how startups can best approach hiring and benefits and how to build your staff and compensate them, when and what benefits to offer, and how startups need to think about planning protection from legal liabilities in staffing, especially in our current #metoo days. They look at what happens after a startup attracts the necessary talent, what can they do about compensation and benefits, especially, early stage startups that are pre-revenue and likely not yet funded. Listen for equal parts encouragement, hard truths and scary legal stuff in a wide-ranging conversation, including when and how to let new hires go.  Marcia is CEO of the O’Connor Group, staffing consultants based in the Philly area, who advise companies nationwide on how to create a recruiting and/or HR function or improve their processes, starting from company culture and core values.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian Anne chat with Eveline Buchatskiy, co founder of One Way Ventures, a fund for investing in startups by immigrants. What was the business opportunity she and her co-founder discovered? While managing Techstars in Boston, they noted their most successful investments were founded by immigrants. They decided to focus on the persona – the immigrant, especially  founders whose immigration experience is highly formative. The very fact that a person has left their home to immerse themselves into a new language, culture, and environment creates character. Dealing with a lot of ambiguity adds to character. You have no Plan B. You develop ability to cope with change, grit, determination, drive to succeed, and you work with limited resources in an optimized manner. You do a lot with very little — all positive things required for entrepreneurship.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Now seems like a good time to address keeping your team motivated. Near the end of Q3 post-summer spirits may be flagging, especially if your company is progressing more slowly than you thought it would back in the enthusiasm of Q1. Gillian and Anne talk about how to revive employee motivation. You start the year with a plan, and sometimes the execution doesn’t go according to plan, or you discover your assumptions were off the mark. Or you hit a period of rapid growth, a mark of success for sure, but so unsettling for your team. What to do to keep your team motivated? On the bus? With the program? On track? Gillian and Anne have plenty of tips, with help from their friends at First Round Review, and researchers at Google.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The National Bureau of Economic Research reports there’s “robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, especially those near retirement age.” Based on evidence from over 40,000 job applications, they also found that there is “considerably less” evidence of age discrimination against men.” Anne Gillian explore another discouraging trend  and take a look at whether that is true in tech, where the majority of employees are young and male, as well as whether the same can be said about startups. Is age the new ‘culture fit issue? With some surprising observations, they talk about how to deal with age discrimination, and why you want to.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What makes you tick? Where are your team members happiest and most productive? These are questions you must understand, first about yourself and second about your team. In the beginning, everyone has to wear many hats, but as your startup grows your team expands and so does opportunities to focus on the work that really makes the most of everyone’s talents. Enter your organization chart, which may be a new concept to you as an entrepreneur. Some on your team will aspire to leadership roles, while others will prefer to be Individual Contributors. Both are valuable and will contribute to your success. Gillian and Anne discuss how to determine who is which and find the right seats on your bus for everyone.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

There is growing evidence that indicates that impact investing supports the conventional bottom line with better returns for investors. In other words, investments in impact companies are returning higher ROI to their investors than companies that don’t take into account the social impact of their work.Early VC firms seeking for-profit companies that provided a social benefit were largely investing in environmental sustainability. There were notable exits: Tesla, SolarCity, NestLabs and 7th generation. Since 2001 such companies have invested $13 billion, and $10 billion of that since 2010. The trend emerging  is funding not verticals, but demographics -- underserved races, regions and economic levels, like TPG Ventures and Breakthrough Energies, both with backing from Bill Gates, among other leaders.  Anne and Gillian take a closer look at impact investing in 2018 and reflect on what they have discovered. What is the ‘double bottom line’ and why is it important? How does entrepreneurship support national security? Who are the leading impact investors active today? What does this mean for founders?Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Carlee Price, investor and advisor to early stage companies joins Gillian and Anne to talk about her just-launched a consultancy – Pique Ventures – that provides a novel service to founders who are in the idea stage of their company development. That’s super early in the game. Listen as they dig in a bit on the subject of vetting ideas for early stage ideas. How should you be looking at vetting your own ideas before spending a fortune to develop a product or service? Carlee Price draws on her background on Wall Street, her experience as an entrepreneur, investor, and advisor to all come into play to launch own consultancy. Hear solid tips on how to determine whether your startup idea has any chance of success. Hint: it’s all about the data and how you analyze yours.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You hear it all the time ‘The CEO’s Prime Directive is to build value for her company’. Gillian and Anne take a closer look into what this exactly means. Build value for whom? Investors, certainly. They expect that. That said, focusing on the next quarter’s stock value or revenue growth alone does more harm than good over the long run. For whom else are you building value? What about your other stakeholders? Who are they? The definition of ‘Build Value for your Company’ is far more complex than simply adding dollars to your bottom line. Pleasure, satisfaction, social standing, independence, joy, relationships, connection to the community of consumers you serve and the vendors you support, your ability to support your employees financially and reward them emotionally, socially, and intellectually as well. Value is not about money. Listen to what every CEO needs to know about building value for all, and not least , at the end of the day-- herself.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Professor Brianna Caza, an organizational psychologist at the University of Manitoba has studied early stage founders to find what helps them avoid ‘creeping strain’ and maintain high performance at their work -- in a word, thrive. Her findings, published in Harvard Business Review and academic journals may seem counterintuitive, yet her research shows clearly that founders have the ability to create simple management techniques that preserve their own energy and passion, even in the most turbulent times in their startups. Hear how she describes her findings and tips to Gillian and Anne. Bonus discussion: women receive a great deal of pressure from society at large and individuals closest to them about what they SHOULD want, do, and be. Instead,women need to determine what gives them joy and energy and what they need to make that possible.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Remember elevator pitches? Well, elevators may not be the only place you find the venture capitalists you want to tell about your company. There are lots of other places you may get 30 seconds or a full  minute, if you are lucky, to pitch someone who has the resources to move your startup forward. Gillian and Anne discuss how to make sure your 1-minute pitch remains focused. How to hit all the items on your punch list. How to approach such people in the first place. Gillian has a fool-proof method and she has never been turned down, but it’s no shortcut.Listen in for tips on how to perfect your ‘elevator pitch’ and how to get that follow-on meeting in their office for more than just a minute.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne Gillian revisit bias from a fresh perspective -- how are your unconscious biases affecting the decisions you make in your business, for example in forming your marketing strategy, or seeking funding. They look more deeply at the definition of bias, which is actually a neutral attribute, and find it is hard wired into each and every one of us. What to do? They surface the question asked by Rand Fishkin (full disclosure, Gillian’s son and co-founder at Moz.) “How is my cultural conditioning biasing me.?” From there Anne brings up another new perspective on gender bias, this one from Jennifer Palmieri, Communications Director for the US Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, the first woman to be nominated by a major US party. Palmieri questions whether we are on the right track to end bias when we expect women to be and act according to the rules men have set, and she asks if there is a better way. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It’s not news that women founders got a miserable 2% of venture capital last year and have averaged 20% of all VC deals each year since 2006. Despite that dreary reporting, Anne and Gillian have found some signs of forward momentum in studies by PitchBook. They are small changes in a few major cities, but progress nonetheless. Listen to further findings on whether women VC’s tend to fund women startups and if not, why not, according to some striking new data crunching from PitchBook. Last, this episode will tell you about some surprising new research from Columbia doctorate fellow Dana Kanze on how best to overcome gender bias in funding. Spoiler alert, it’s not as easy as firms’ bringing on more female VC’s.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

When do you take money out of your startup? When do you start planning for that happy day? Gillian and Anne discuss key signs you may notice along along your startup road that indicate it is OK to take some cash out for yourself. Indeed, it is a good idea, and an even better idea to plan for your partial liquidity event from the very beginning. Doing so will keep you focused your startup’s finances, as well as your product and customers, and on track building value for your shareholders and yourself, expeditiously.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Flash: the startup failure rate is considerably less than the 90 percent we hear about all the time. Since 2001 the total number of startups returned 1x or less to investors was at or under 60 percent, according to Cambridge Associates as reported by Erin Griffith in Fortune in June 2017. Still that’s only somewhat good news -- it still means more than half of all newborn companies do not make it to adulthood . . . or a fully realized corporate experience. According to Cambridge, a very small percentage of failure comes from disaster or other forces beyond your control. Hear how to avoid the rest.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne describe a new venture capital fund they are forming to fund startups with at least one woman in a critical and strategic leadership role. Hard numbers show that diverse teams return more shareholder value, so it’s time to change the sorry state of funding women founders.They are looking for unicorns in quiet spaces. Hear what that means and why gender-lensed investing benefits everyone.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne and Gillian host Drexel University’s Katherine Jordan who directs the program there funded by the Coulter Foundation, a nationwide resource for developing and commercializing biomedical engineering advances from the very early stages to venture funding. In the course of her career as a fund manager, she has reviewed around 150 startups and funded about 30. Hear how the program and fund she manages work at Drexel, and how she reviews and evaluates applicants. Many attributes she seeks for her founders are similar to those of startups everywhere, such as a great team. That said, some are unique to working in an academic environment and require targeted approaches to join together academia and entrepreneurship.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne take a full look at an entrepreneur’s CEO journey and lay out strategic and tactical insights to help them plan their company’s futures. Where do you start and how do you get going, and maintain momentum. Who is likely to buy your products, or even your company? When will your investors expect an exit and how will you get there? Hear how to find likely investment partners, whether strategic and essential to their business, or tactical, i.e. ‘nice to have’ and what the single most important number you must have at all times.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne and Gillian kick off the new year with a fresh look at whether women founders are receiving any more VC backing, and they are sorry to report the situation has slipped downward instead of improving, despite hard numbers that show women-led enterprises return more shareholder value, and outperform their brothers by nearly two-thirds. Yet women founders received less in both dollars and deal flow in 2017, and Latina and black women a tiny fraction of that. The driving forces behind this dispiriting trend and lack of improvement are closely linked to bias, comfort zones and desperately out-of-whack power balances that are similarly behind the sexual harassment now coming to light. Your hosts explore how the numbers rolled and who is leading the commentary and why time’s up in funding as much as elsewhere.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne quizzes Gillian on funding options for startups. They discuss traditional equity. Debt. Convertible notes. Convertible securities, also known as SAFE’s. Even self-funding. Which is best for you? Gillian explains the differences among all of them, and pros and cons for each illustrate. This is Part 1 of 2, because there was so much to say! Gillian Muessig and Anne Kennedy discuss how cities like Seattle are dominated by the Amazons and Microsofts at the top of big business, overshadowing mid-sized companies. They discuss the effect of employees that could be laid off in a city like Seattle and how the economy could suffer. They discuss how funding mid-sized companies could help avoid this potential problem.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Every startup needs a cap table, even if the only shareholders are the founder and perhaps a partner or two. As you grow, you will most likely be making awards of stock or options to advisors, employees and investors. You cap table is a summary of all transactions in your stock register, and therefore a complete record of who owns all the assets in your company. Gillian and Anne go over all the basics you need to know, as well as some online tools that make setting up and managing your cap table easy, so you can get back to the important business of growing your startup.Gillian and Anne revisit metrics to take a deeper dive into finding the right measurements in your business for clarity and intelligence-based decisions. Rigor is critical such as what to measure, as is a comprehensive look at event streams. There is place for the broad metrics that make everyone feel good, such as numbers of downloads or clicks on an ad. But other measurements will inform how you run your business. Hear how to find such deep metrics and who in your company needs to collect them, and who needs to know the results. Everybody in your company needs to collect metrics regularly. Some metrics require daily – or more frequent tracking. Others, often those for Boards of Directors, require aggregation and monthly, quarterly, and annual tracking. Who needs what, when and where deserves your attention to be sure that your teams have the power they require to optimize your success.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne and Gillian return with more questions to and answers from James Newell, partners at early venture firm Voyager Capital in Seattle. What do you need to bring and be prepared to defend when you get your audience with the VC partners? What can you expect to happen in the meeting. What might absolutely ‘scotch’ your deal? James Newell generously shares his take on all these and more. Hear his undeniably hot tips for founders who aspire to land venture capital.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ever want to ask a venture capitalist everything about how VC’s work? Gillian and Anne chat with James Newells, partner at Seattle’s Voyager Capital, early venture investors.a James willingly responds in enlightening detail to question about process, approach, multiples, due diligence and much more. What makes a VC listen? How do you know for sure a VC in interested in funding your startup? Find out here. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian and Anne talk with Luni Libes, founder and Managing Director of Fledge, a global impact accelerator which launches businesses that do good by doing business, here in the US and in dozens of countries around the world (Fledge.co). Luni has moreover connected impact investors worldwide on investorflow.org, and authored the six book series “The Next Step for Entrepreneurs”. “Fledge is Techstars for companies with purpose,” says Luni. Fledglings apply to attend programs in Lima, Barcelona, Vancouver BC, and Seattle, with Lisbon and Padua slated additions next year. Listen to how applicants are selected, funded and mentored, as well as Fledge’s unique way of bringing solid returns to investors.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gillian Muessig and Anne Kennedy discuss how cities like Seattle are dominated by the Amazons and Microsofts at the top of big business, overshadowing mid-sized companies. They discuss the effect of employees that could be laid off in a city like Seattle and how the economy could suffer. They discuss how funding mid-sized companies could help avoid this potential problem.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A unicorn is a start up that achieves a billion-dollar valuation. A scalable company is one that finds a way to increase revenues and profit margins without increasing overhead, or production costs. Startups that can scale may become unicorns, and starry-eyed founders and investors as well like to dream big. Here’s a dose of reality:  less than one half of one percent land the moonshot. On the flip side, many so-called Lifestyle companies become very successful, even though their founders have no intention of selling or going public. What benefits can these privately held companies offer investors to attract needed capital? Gillian and Anne detail several ways to provide investors sufficient returns to interest them.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anne  and Gillian continue their discussion of your funding options when you are starting a company, including some new takes on old methods, such as revenue sharing, and REIT-style investment groups. And, of course, when is it not a good idea to fund your startup yourself? Assuming you have the cash.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy