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My Approach to Jobs: Consult With Before Joining

My job resume reads long when considering the several startups I co-founded. But as a full-time W2 employee, there’s been four since college. There was IBM Global Business Services, Chainnovations (acquired by Chainalytics), SalesWise (including Burner Rocket, acquired by VLG Marketing), and now, AUTIT. In each opportunity since IBM, though, I never applied. They came from deliberate, sometimes cold, outreach from me. What set these job acquisitions apart from traditional hiring processes was that each started with consulting as a test of how we would work together.

I’ve applied seriously three times since my initial post-college job at IBM. Two of those, I withdrew my application after initial rounds. My experience ranges from large corporations (including my co-op with UPS during college) to early-stage startups. The two opportunities I withdrew from were companies between 50-100 employees. They were firmly in the growth stages. My interests lay in building early companies rather than just scaling.

When evaluating new opportunities, I’ve been fortunate in timing of companies in their stages. But also, I have enjoyed showcasing my capabilities while also evaluating the company’s fit – creating a consulting arrangement first. Here’s how this process has worked out for me:

  • Chainnovations. I worked with IBM Global Business Services as a Logistics Consultant straight out of college 2008. However, the economy was tanking, and in March 2009 while I was in between projects, I was informed I would be let go in 30 days. Turns out 36% of my group was joining me. Within 30 minutes of that call, I looked up the company my friend worked at. He mentioned months before it was a very small company, like a startup. I figured I could give this a try and learn as much as possible, so I could learn about starting a company in the future. I called the number on the website. Turns out, I was talking to the CEO and Founder. Since I had 30 days of pay till being let go from IBM, I offered him free work as a “test drive”. He agreed, and within 30 days, I had an offer to join. I had a job before I was let go from IBM; whereas, many of my fellow IBMers took several months to land on their feet.
  • SalesWise. After Body Boss, I started a consulting shop called Five Points Digital to figure out my Next Big Move. I consulted on sales process improvement projects to supply chain to app and from website build to project management. I wanted to network and find problems to help inspire my next startup. Problem was that I didn’t unearth that aha idea. At the end of 2015, I ended the consulting shop, and made the decision to join an early-stage startup to learn how to scale. Almost the exact next day at a coffee shop in Atlanta Tech Village, I saw the CEO and Founder of a startup I had met two months ago while I was consulting with another company. I told him I was looking for my next steps after I finished writing my book. We sat down and agreed on consulting work for a month to evaluate working together. During my time, I focused on helping launch marketing campaigns for the company’s new product while providing input on a sales structure. Within two weeks, I had an offer from the company to join to which I accepted.
  • AUTIT. This is fresher given I just received and accepted the offer two weeks ago. After the sale of Burner Rocket, I was transitioning out of the company the rest of the year. That meant Jan 1, I would no longer be employed. I had been evaluating options for my Next Great Move since the acquisition anyways. Problem was that I didn’t have any ideas or problems I was passion about. Nor was I excited about the macroeconomics for 2019-20. I also recently got engaged. 2019 was going to be the year that required greater stability. Thus, I was on the lookout for other full-time opportunities. Serendipitously, I read about a startup in the supply chain space having raised $2.7M seed round. After a quick review on LinkedIn suggest they were extremely early-stage. I dropped a couple messages to the CEO and COO over the next week expressing my interest to speak to them. I eventually got a reply from the CEO to sit down. Subsequently, I met with the other co-founders (COO and CTO), and we agreed on consulting for the next two months. I had started a different supply chain consulting project for the rest of the year. I was only able to offer AUTIT a handful of hours to which they were eager to try. However, the supply chain contract never fully took off, so I was able to shift my time over to AUTIT. With the supply chain work cancelling, the AUTIT team offered to bring me on full-time earlier. Within 1 month of our contract, the team extended me a formal offer.

Quick notes: It was after Body Boss and before SalesWise when I consulted with several companies. A few companies and I worked together to explore working full-time after our initial contracts. However, none of those materialized into full-time positions. Those initial consulting arrangements allowed responsible parties to realize we were not good fits. I learned about how teams worked together, trajectory of the companies, etc. Early consulting allowed me to dive in without risking longer term objectives.

Before AUTIT (and after Burner Rocket / SalesWise), I applied to Google. This would have been a good opportunity to be a part of a company that was at the cutting edge of technology. Meanwhile, they would pay well and make up for the deficits of working in startups over the years. This would have been a deliberate move to learn and build up a seed fund for a future company. However, this hiring process didn’t go too far.

What’s all this mean to folks looking to make moves? Paths can be very different than the traditional apply-interview-offer format. My path has been relatively the same the last several positions. My motivations have changed, but I have aligned goals to the process I felt would be most advantageous to the value I would bring. I don’t “interview”. I don’t “apply”. Though I keep an updated resume together, I have not used it much – certainly not for my last several positions, not even during our early talks. I know my value, and it does not fit on one page.

Figure out what works for you. Then, try to control part of the process to put you in the best position to achieve your goals.

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New Chapter! Joining a New Startup – AUTIT

Big news! I’ve joined another early-stage startup here in Atlanta called AUTIT.It’s been almost exactly three years since I started consulting with SalesWise which led to full-time employment in February 2016. But I officially close the SalesWise (and Burner Rocket) chapter in my life today as I officially start with AUTIT.

SalesWise has been a tremendous journey where I learn so much. It’s odd looking back trying to piece together if I learned as much as expected, more, or less? All I can say is that I learned in every aspect of the growth side of business – from marketing to sales to customer success. Though, we did not scale as much as we all hoped, I got to experience real, structured processes to drive growth. I got to create a whole new go-to-market strategy that became its own product and business (that was later sold – Burner Rocket). I spoke to hundreds of sales leaders and their team members and got to understand what made sales leaders successful. I got to understand what they assessed from their sales professionals. I got to work with executives from marketing to customer success. I sat in on Board Meetings and met highly successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Then again, I got to learn a lot about what did not help drive growth. I learned about misalignment in product positioning as well as the criticality of customer discovery for true pain. I learned the side effects of taking on moderate venture capital early on. I learned the traps of building based on financial proformas from a top-down rather than a bottom-up model. The careful scrutiny of burn rate was more apparent than ever.

And of course, I got to experience growing a completely new idea into a product and into an acquisition with Burner Rocket. I experienced the negotiations processes with some due diligence. Burner Rocket was successful not just for us, but for many of our customers, too. It’s now a checkmark in my many boxes for success.

I could go on and on about the incredible almost-three-year ride at SalesWise, especially talking about the relationships I’ve built and forged. However, it’s important to now translate those lessons learned and continue to forge those relationships to this next chapter at AUTIT.

I will explain how this opportunity came in a future post, but for today, I’m excited about the prospect of blending my diverse experiences into a single entity. AUTIT dramatically reduces inventory costs through data harmonization for the world’s most complex supply chains. Here, I can leverage my experiences in supply chain and consulting as the industry and personas while coupling my technology and startup experience into this new role at AUTIT. Here, I am employee number 7. I will start this journey as a Solutions Architect – building the bridge between product and growth teams. That’s simply the title to get the job requisition passed. However, I will also help handle marketing, product management, account / customer success, and be involved in the sales process. The title is focused, but my role is multi-faceted. Perfect.

It’s a good story on how I came to this day. I’ll save that for another day. For today, cheers for new chapters that continue to build on the story.

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Getting Ready for the Next Life Chapter

Since selling Burner Rocket, I’ve been working on finding the Next Great Move. This could include starting another company, joining another early-stage startup, or go somewhere where I can make good money – save and pursue my own company later with seed funds. However, now, I’ll need to consider a big next phase in my life – marriage.

My last post was supposed to go out on Wednesday per usual, but instead, was published on Saturday – three days later. Why? Because I was proposing to my then-girlfriend on Wednesday up in New Hampshire in the snow. (!!!) Yup! I’m going to have to edit my timeline soon.

In any case, I’m looking at three primary categories for what I do next:

  • Start another company. Pros: this is what I want to do. It’s what makes me the most excited. Cons: I do not have any clear interest in any one idea. Also, the SaaS market is highly saturated in marketing and sales, where I’ve spent my last two years. There is no clear wages here. (Danger given my upcoming nuptials and next-life-phase pieces like kids and new home.)
  • Join an early-stage company. Pros: continue to down the entrepreneurial path with some exit potential. Able to be a part of an early leadership crew to grow a company. Build something great from nothing/ little. If funded, can mitigate wage concerns. Cons: I would not be the entrepreneur, only entrepreneurial. How much of wage concerns can be mitigated? Will there be an ownership stake that enables some financial freedom upon a potential exit? Product-market fit may not be achieved and depending on leadership, leading the company to this point can take a long time… or never.
  • Join an organization that pays extremely well with learning upside. Pros: Can build up a cash stash to seed a future-startup. Will have less of the emotional roller coaster and be more even in stress-levels, likely. Can learn and network with vast resources and backing. Cons: Less entrepreneurial, if at all. Could be tied to golden handcuffs and never return to startups.

The point is to pursue one of these options early into 2019. Till then, I’ll continue filling my time with some consulting work to keep my mind sharp while learning and networking.

If you were taking a dive into another phase of your life, how are you evaluating your options? Why would you lean one way more than the other? What risks are you taking on?

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How do you define “entrepreneurship”? “be entrepreneurial”?

I was recently asked, “what is entrepreneurship?” and “what does it mean to be entrepreneurial?” I’m curious how you’d answer those questions. Before reading on, take a minute to think about it. Hold onto that thought (write it down, if you can, before you move on).

I don’t remember my exact words but I said something similar to:

Entrepreneurship is commercializing a solution to a problem using resources effectively and efficiently. Being entrepreneurial means the active commercialization of a solution while consuming resources effectively and efficiently.

From Merriam-Webster, entrepreneur is:

“one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” (Merriam-Webster, 2018) Entrepreneurship is the noun incarnation while entrepreneurial is the adjective version.

BusinessDictionary.com defines entrepreneurship as:

“The capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit. The most obvious example of entrepreneurship is the starting of new businesses.” (BusinessDictionary, 2018)

Then, you have Harvard Business School (HBS) who uses the definition from Professor Howard Stevenson:

“entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled” (HBR, 2018)

Let me parse out my definition to see how I got to it:

  • “commercializing”: The heart of an entrepreneur’s endeavor is making money and doing so at a scale that optimizes this.
  • “a solution to a problem”: Every innovation, idea, product, service should be in pursuit of addressing some problem. HBS’s Stevenson refers to this as opportunity. In layman’s terms, it’s “sale”.
  • “using resources effectively and efficiently”: I admit that this does not have to be a part of the definition. As I sat thinking about the definition I gave, there’s no rule to use resources like this. Entrepreneurs and startups can spend and drive up their burn rate all they want without a firm grasp of returns. That, of course, is not a smart way to build a business. Nevertheless I included this at first because it’s where my mind goes. There’s limited resources either money, time, or people.

Then, there’s the distinction of being an entrepreneur vs. being entrepreneurial. I look at entrepreneurs as the real risk-takers. They’re typically who I would also call the founder(s). Being entrepreneurial provides a broader stroke for those who do not take the initial plunge with the risks involved. However, there’s still a pursuit in commercialization, innovation (problem solving), and resource-consciousness.

Go back to those definitions you thought about at the beginning. Why’d you define those questions like you did? I’m curious – can you share your definitions in the comments below?

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Digging In On Complex and Simple Customer Problems

I sat down with a graduating senior from college recently to talk about startups. At first, I thought we were going to talk about the startup ecosystem in Atlanta. I didn’t know he had an idea that he wanted to pursue. Actually, he had three with two of them already in flight.

 

He had a lot of questions about how best to begin highlighting two ideas. One was a very complicated business. It would require building up significant trust between two markets. On the one side, it would have been a lot of manual work to move forward. Because of the idea, there would be significant legal implications. Read: there would need to be significant legal work upfront – not a cheap proposition.

 

Meanwhile, his second idea was based around a SaaS business with a single buyer. Here, he was already working with a friend technologist. The team was working on this idea with a free customer already – or at least, an agreement once the application was built. The pain point was a little clear, but could use some refinement and focus.

 

After speaking about both ideas, he started to realize how much easier it would be to develop and build the second idea. Though the first idea was complicated, that’s not always a bad thing. If a team is able to get past the hurdles that makes the idea so difficult, there could be good upside. This is the case for many successful companies including Uber, Airbnb, WeWork, etc.

 

However, there was little customer discovery in the first idea vs. the second. They already had a business that was interested in a solution to their problem, and it sounded like there could be a strong market. This would be simpler to get off the ground while enabling the team to do the proper customer discovery. As it stood, the pain points were mostly known. However, this is where digging in to truly understand the problem would be beneficial. He and his partner should work with several stakeholders who are impacted to understand the grander problem – understand what other businesses and personas could be experiencing similar problems. And how big of a problem? Read: what was the problem costing the stakeholder/ customer? What’s the value of a solution.

 

There’s a lot to consider for the soon-to-be-graduate. However, digging in early on the details of a focused pain point will help the team be experts for real customers. Meanwhile, tackling a more transparent issue has the added benefit of being able to find, market, and sell a solution faster.

 

Whatever happens, don’t go broader. Dig in on a focused problem area. Set a grander vision once initial success is achieved.

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VLG Marketing Acquires Atlanta-Based Burner Rocket

VLG’s investment in technology illustrates a commitment to providing mobile, digital, and direct mail services that address ABM challenges.

ADDISON, Texas, Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — VLG Marketing LLC (VLG) announces the acquisition of Atlanta startup Burner Rocket for an undisclosed amount. The Dallas-based digital marketing agency continues to increase the diversity of its proprietary technology offering that addresses shifts in business-to-business marketing strategies with the advent of account-based marketing (ABM) and account-based selling (ABS).

VLG Marketing acquires Burner Rocket

Mail SIM-enable Android Phone, Call, Text, Track, Alert via Slack

The acquisition now gives VLG—known for adventurous mail pieces, unique, personalized websites, and its proprietary DialogEngine platform—the ability to offer its clients a direct mail experience like no other. The agency and its customers will be able to mail SIM-enabled mobile phones to prospects, delivering real-time, trackable content to targets at key accounts.
“We’ve always viewed technology as the key to staying ahead in an industry full of copycat solutions,” said VLG President Michael Simmons, “because it gives us the ability to remain agile and meet the unique needs of our customers in an ever-changing B2B marketing space.”
Burner Rocket developed technology that allows agencies to provision and personalize mobile phones for one-to-one marketing engagement. The startup provided marketing and sales teams with key insights beyond customer engagement through sales team follow-up—a long time challenge for non-digital direct mail programs.
“In VLG, we found a company that will take our vision for Burner Rocket to the next level,” said Daryl Lu, one of the creators of Burner Rocket. “This is a great win for the Atlanta startup scene, but also a win for marketing and sales teams as they continue to engage prospects innovatively and with authenticity.”
“After seeing low efficacy of existing marketing technologies, we leveraged economies of scale allowing us to ship full-service cell phones to key accounts. They open the box, we call the phone — crazy idea but it performed phenomenally to get into conversations instantly,” said SalesWise CTO Jason Parekh. “VLG has a shared commitment to pushing the boundaries of marketing technology making this a natural fit.”
Burner Rocket was spawned by another Atlanta startup, SalesWise, which was founded by Gregg Freishtat and Jason Parekh. SalesWise developed a business relationship intelligence (BRI) platform that unifies information from all silos, including enterprise calendar, email, documents, contacts, and CRM data. The platform circumvents manual data entry by automatically organizing and presenting the data in an elegant product, boosting sales enablement, follow-up and close rates.
Contacts:
VLG Marketing, Angela Shori, 972.792.9550 or hello@wefightboredom.com
SalesWise (Burner Rocket), Daryl Lu, 678.221.4358 or daryl@saleswise.com
Related Links
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Experimenting with New Ideas – TeamChatThing

I’ve been toying with a few ideas on the side these days. They’ve been all over the place including even speaking with Emory University’s Department of Technology Transfers. Hey, I’m an opportunist! I go after opportunities that I can bring to fruition and that sound exciting. I don’t always have experience in these areas. However, I’m betting on myself to figure it out as I go.
One recent idea has been in the SMS chatbot world. Specifically, how managers organize teams in preparation for the next game. Typically, this is done via mass email threads or annoying group texts. Then, players delay and delay responding. Oftentimes, the emails are buried. Then, managers must find subs should not enough people say they can make the game.
I immediately thought about using text messages as the delivery mechanism. SMS, specifically, might get faster responses minus the group messages (MMS). I’ve run into the problems of being a manager plenty of times in the past. I did not do the Mom Test. Instead, my friend and I just start digging into leveraging Twilio.
The problem is not overly complicated. The problem isn’t a big world problem. I don’t know how well to monetize. All this tells me I should not pursue the idea. However, I’m pushing on.
I’m pursuing this idea called TeamChatThing as a testbed to learn more about the SMS world and what’s available. What I like about SMS (short-messaging service, or text) is that aside from emails, phone, and face-to-face interactions, SMS is the next ubiquitous communication channel. SMS is something most people are so familiar with. There’s no need to push new users to download apps.
Team management aspect is a test. I want to test people’s responses and response times. I want to test the complications of RSVP’ing – specific use case. I want to dig into what’s possible to automatically respond and record responses.
Leveraging SMS for a chatbot is challenging. SMS is a stream of linear messages. It’s near difficult to create threads, let alone a simple response-question association. (Think about when two questions are asked on SMS and a single response comes in. Which question(s) is the response to?) SMS does not have much meta-data, either. SMS provides:
  • Phone numbers involved
  • Date & time
  • Message body
  • That’s it.

Complexity builds as players, in this case, are connected to different teams. Understand which team the player is responding to is tough.
It’s a fascinating problem. I’m eager to continue digging into what’s possible and the deeper challenges with SMS.
                                                                           
Yes, the way service is dubbed TeamChatThing. J

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The Amazon Effect Challenges A Long-Standing Web Metric for Success

I’ve been thinking about the Amazon Effect lesson from my customer discovery research of e-commerce from last week. There are a lot of tenets to the Amazon Effect including the rise of expectations of delivery, access to goods, etc. but the one I thought about most was.

The Amazon Effect has affected some of the longest-standing fundamentals of web. That is, time on site used to be a valuable metric. Amazon has proven that a winning strategy can be the opposite — get in, find what you want, check out and get out. Fast. Come back again.

The idea sticks out because it flies in the face of expectations and a metric that website owners typically watch for – “the higher the time on page, the better”. Amazon, however, is about getting folks in and out. This is the experience Amazon wants to build as it then drives consumers to come back.
As I let this idea marinate, one thing becomes clear – Amazon knows its “wow moment”. They’re not just focused on shortening the path to check out. They’re focused on shortening the path to the “aha!” and “wow” moment. That’s the experience. That’s about getting customers getting exactly what they want, when they want, how they want, and where they want (at home, largely).
Southwest Airlines is another company who challenged a long-standing industry paradigm. In this case, it was the airline industry’s paradigm of filling a plane. Southwest can tout its success with 45 straight years of profitability. Most airlines believed profitability and revenue necessitated every seat on a plane be sold and filled. It’s one of the reasons they oversell flights.
Southwest, on the other hand, realized their bottleneck and path to revenue was the plane. As long as a plane sits on the tarmac, the more underutilized the plane is. Thus, it’s not making money.
Southwest built their business on turn-around time – how fast they could turn a flight around, even if it meant the plane was not full. They flourished with the “10-minute turnaround” as other airlines were turning planes at 60 minutes – the time from entering a gate, loading passengers and cargo, and leaving the gate.
For Southwest, the wow moment is arriving at the destination realizing their fees were far less than rivals (in addition to above-and-beyond customer service).
Longstanding business practices don’t always make sense. Consumer habits and expectations continually change. Stay focused on the customer, and realize there are more ways to achieve success, especially, when ushering the market into a new era.
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Being Cautious and Re-Orienting When Credibility is Limited

I’m listening to Ray Dalio’s book Principles. At whatever page I’m on, he talks about being open while also being persistent. His point revolves around the principle for always learning. To learn, people need to be open to listening. And yet, people are quick to dig into their own ideas, even if they haven’t showcased success – myself included.
Ray believes successful leaders should be able to showcase at least three instances of such in some area.
It dawns on me on this site that I espouse a lot about entrepreneurship without several successes – if we classify a liquidity event as success (e.g. stock offering, being acquired). That could continue to promote the idea that success only comes from a liquidity event which is not true. From this standpoint, should readers even value what I have to say? That’s a humbling question.
Though, Ray describes the value inexperience brings with it including new, outside perspective. He also talks about gaining buy-in from others with experience like an “influential committee”. Gain the support of those with the credibility or cite sources with credibility to bring credibility to the inexperienced.
I form my own thoughts, while oftentimes, cite or bring in others to provide credibility because I need it. I don’t have the CV to persuade without.
This brings two critical thoughts:
  • I must be careful in how I guide and advise others. I can speak of my experiences and what I’ve learned. However, I should be wary of how I guide others towards whatever their ideas of success are if I do not have the requisite experience to do so.
  • Seeking a “win” is paramount to me. Then, I need to seek my next win. I am not in the upper echelons of successful leaders right now because I don’t deserve to be. Oh, but I want to be in the group who helps architect the future. But how can I join the group if I don’t have the credentials to be amongst them?

Especially the last point, it’s causing me to reflect on my path of seeking my next entrepreneurial journey. Should I continue seeking very early-stage startups (or my own) knowing there’s such a great chance of failure? More failures only mean I become successful at failure, right?

Or, should I join a venture that is beyond early-stage where I can learn scale and gain mastery?
I’m thinking. Should I lean one way or the other? In short: I’m not there yet.
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Entrepreneurship Is Full of Hard Work that Is Rarely Sought After

I posted recently about the importance to periodically check how a current role/ position fits into the greater journey – “Before Making Moves Based On Today’s Bad, Chart How All The Dots Align to A Path”. I took this to heart recently by reviewing my resume and updating my skills and experience. It’s made me aware of my career progression and my upcoming path as I head into my mid-30s. In short: optically, I’ve been rather stagnant.
Building a startup is incredibly hard work. Many startups do not come close to the type of success that is read about in the news or even the local startup digest. Entrepreneurship, though intrinsically rewarding, is not well-received professionally.
As I’ve had the great opportunities to lead sales at Body Boss Fitness, SalesWise, and SalesWise’s new product/ brand Burner Rocket, they’ve all been tough experiences to get through. Starting from virtually nothing and fighting to get scraps of the first 10 customers and then the next is rarely seen from the outside. The mind soaks up more information than what any “normal corporate” job may provide. However, it’s, in some ways, specialized. The bruises and cuts that I have felt by leading the charge for what a sales process may look like, what are the pieces of collateral that will help sell, how do we support our customers when we don’t even know the full metrics of what is working and what is not… those lessons are not always visible to the outside world. And yet, I know the incredible value that has been learned. I know the pains and the difficulties to get to where we are. I have good hypotheses for why we may not have grown at a faster clip, but from the outside, there’s little stock. Growing from 0-10 may not be as impressive as being a leader who hit the $2MM ARR quota from last year’s $1.5MM. Should that be?
Again, periodically looking through the portfolios of seemingly little accomplishments for early-stage opportunities, I can sense there’s a strain. There’s a pull and a fight between the desire to hop into a role where the hard work has mostly been done. Perhaps, there’s a need for an optimizer or a player to just “grow more”. It’s a struggle – to be a part of something so early that the chances of success are low. The challenges and rewards are greater. Or, do I take the easier route by following the path others have already trotted on before. In that way, perhaps I can have the requisite bullet points for others to note and say, “yes, he’s had that experience of hitting XX of quota”.
Being an entrepreneur and taking a real fight to creating something special isn’t always lauded. It’s rarely what folks are really looking for. But they’re the opportunities I’m looking for. It looks like I’m still on the right path.
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