Avoiding Death by A Thousand Cuts

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By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Inside view of a watch

Since you can never create more time, be sure that you are not wasting it here.

Time.  You never seem to have enough of it and it is the great equalizer of companies of any size whether they realize it or not.  In a startup, you have a limited amount of time to get everything done so that you have a strong product launch before your funds run out and your investors are on to the next thing.  In a larger company, time is just as crucial but the consequences of wasting it are less apparent.  Without a sense of urgency, established companies can slowly sink into mediocrity after weak or failed product launches, poor BD and other important growth enhancing activities.

The biggest time waster of all at any size company is the useless meeting 
Startups will become established companies so establishing a sane and productive meeting policy at the beginning will save you from this death by a thousand cuts (meetings).

If you are looking to drive success at your company, here are some things you can do to assess the effectiveness of your current meetings:

  • Do the math:  How many people attended the meeting (N) x average hourly salary (S) x length of meeting in hours (H) = $ cost of the meeting (N x S x H).  For example:  A meeting of 5 people for one hour would cost you $500 if the average salary rate were $100 /Hr.   Was this meeting worth it? If you find it hard to answer this question and need some of the best assignment help services AssignHelpServices.com is there to help.

Use this calculation to help eliminate useless meetings from your schedule and to negotiate yourself out of them with your supervisors if possible (sometimes this discussion can lead to the transformation of a useless meeting into a useful one).

  • Establish a policy of providing a meeting agenda with each invitation:  – This simple step helps to reinforce the policy of hosting only purposeful meetings.  This discipline also has the beneficial effect of reducing the number of meetings in total as well.  Having difficulty preparing an agenda for a meeting is the first sign that it might not be important enough to schedule.
  • Less is more: When conducting a meeting where decisions are needed – think, what are the fewest number of people we need to invite – then communicate to the rest of the team.  The more people that are in the room, the more opinions there will be and ultimately the more difficulty there will be to come to some consensus.  When key decisions are being made, feedback from a broader set of people and other important inputs should have been conducted earlier to provide the information that the final team needs to make a good and timely decision.
  • Watch behavior:   How many people are checking their cell phones, tablets or laptops during the meeting?   Did those people really need to be there?  A meeting that holds true value for the participants will also hold their attention.  If what you or others are doing on your computer during a meeting is more important than the meeting, perhaps you should have sent your regrets instead.  This behavior can also be a good indication that it is time to wrap things up (Not every meeting needs to occupy the entire time scheduled to it).
  • Watch your own behavior:  Finding yourself wanting to check your messages or put the final touches on your presentation might be signs that you are not spending your time appropriately.  You should be working on those things with all of your brain rather than attending this meeting.

Take home message
You can’t create time but you can prevent it from being wasted by establishing a meeting and communications policy that makes the most efficient use of everyone’s time. The same goes with time management while doing your homework – when you are stuck with a writing assignment, it's easier to request write my essay online help from pro writers instead of sitting for hours in front of a blank file. If you are at an established company, use these tips to boost your own and your team’s productivity.  If you are at a startup, use these insights to make sure that you are getting every bit of value out of everyone’s time and effort as well as to establish the culture and habits that will keep your organization lean and mean as the company successfully grows.

Picture Credit:  JD Hancock via photopin cc

The Startup Founder Effect: The Genetics of Success

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By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Black Antique Car

Founder Henry Ford’s leadership style affected his company both for good (ushering in the age of the automobile and for bad (decisions that put it into second place behind General Motors.

The ‘Founder Effect’ was discovered by Ernst Mayr in 1942 (Wikipedia) as part of his seminal work on population genetics.  It basically states that many of the traits that you might see in a given sub-population of individuals can be attributed to the genetics of the first individuals that inhabited the space (especially when the niche is isolated).  This can help explain the sometimes quirky existence of traits that may appear to have no real value for the survival of the species (e.g. higher rate of polydactyly (extra toes and fingers) in Amish communities than that observed in the general American population).

What has this got to do with my startup?
Well just like the isolated communities mentioned above, the ‘genetic imprint’ of the founder of any company has especially strong effects in the early days of the company which may persist far into the future even when the founder(s) are long gone.  The culture of the company, the personalities and formal structure of how things are accomplished come from the founder.  Some of these factors are beneficial and in fact can be traced to the very reason behind a company’s success while most others disappear into oblivion.  However, sometimes these quirks of the founder can largely lead to the eventual failure of the endeavor.

OK then, So What
There are both positive and negative stories told about companies that continue to be run by their founders as well as those that have replaced this team.  Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company, Steve Jobs and Apple, Thomas Edison at what eventually became General Electric are just a few examples of founders that continued to lead their companies beyond what we would call an ‘exit event’. They are like the next level of students who ask themselves "who can write essay for me".   Each person left their ‘genetic’ imprint (good and bad) on the culture and how that the company thrived.

We would general say that each of these men was extremely successful but what can be lost in the admiration of the companies that they each established is what were the lost opportunities, the alternatives not tried, the products that never saw the light of day.  Steve Jobs was famously known to have a tyrannical management style that equally pushed a slew of incredible technologies into the world and killed others, seemingly at a whim when they appeared to diverge from his own opinion of what was good or bad.  We will never know how many terrific and life changing things will never see the light of day when they were killed based on his opinion.  Edison was known to be equally intolerant to ideas that did not fit his vision for what he wanted (most famously he waged a marketing and commercial war to promote Direct Current (DC) over alternating current (AC) based on his own, it turns out flawed, view that DC was superior).  In fact this, in spite of all of the success with which Edison and his company is associated, character attribute or ‘Founder Effect’ drove one of his most brilliant scientists, Nicola Tesla, straight into the arms of his greatest competitor, Westinghouse.

As we can see, there are benefits and limitations to companies that are run by founders.

Some of the benefits are:

  • Passion and Vision :  This can be the very force that keeps the company both focused and on track in the face of outside forces that threaten to derail the company from its mission.  Raising money, building teams, facing skeptical customers etc. are a just a few of the things that put off lesser mortals.
  • ‘My Way or the Highway’:  Companies run by founders can introduce new innovations and develop whole new markets at a staggering pace.  A lot of this can be traced back to the single-minded drive of the founder.  He /she is not slowed down by gathering consensus at committee meetings as the company reaches important inflection points in its trajectory to success.  Having one ‘top-dog’ founder calling the shots can cut through a lot of the indecision and delay that can come from direction by committee.

Some limitations are:

  • ‘My Way or the Highway’:  The down-side of this style of leadership is that when the founder is wrong, there may be no recourse to alternatives.  Henry Ford was famous for stating “Our customers can have a car any color they like, as long as it is black”.  This shortsighted view of the relationship between a company and its customers (the ultimate bosses) soon left Ford trailing General Motors for virtually most of the early history of the automobile industry.
  • Making It Personal:  Edison had a personal feud with Westinghouse and this led him to the ‘take no prisoners’ focus on winning the electricity wars.  It can be argued that Edison and his company would have been far better off working together with Westinghouse than the time, money and effort that were wasted in trying to defeat the enemy.  It can be hard for some founders to separate their own egos from what might be best for the company as a whole.

What’s a Founder to do?
Should a founder fight to stay on with his company as it succeeds or make an exit and allow the company to grow under new management?  There is no right or wrong answer to this.  Obviously you want to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives of the founder’s influence.  If you are a founder, finding the time to take stock of your relationship to your company on a regular basis will allow you to achieve this.  The following tips are provided to help you with this critical assessment.

  • Has anyone told you ‘no’?  You may think that you have created a culture of openness but if you have not been told ‘no’ by your team, then you may have an issue here.  Remember, you can’t possibly be right about everything all the time and a good team should help you avoid mistakes.  If you are not hearing ‘no’ occasionally, then you need to work on helping your team feel comfortable doing so.
  • How are decisions made?  As you flesh out your team, make sure that you keep ‘delegation’ in mind.  This can be very difficult to do but you need to be thinking about brining on people that will take things ‘off your plate’ so that you can stay focused.   By keeping this concept in mind as you hire, you will make sure that the people who join you will be those that you can trust with the very life of the company.   If you already have your team, make sure that you are empowering them and that they are regularly making important decisions on their own for the company.
  • How are good ideas, not central to the company’s mission, disposed of?  One of the key attributes of a good Founder is to remain very focused on getting into the marketplace.  Good teams will have lots of good ideas (new product ideas, new markets to enter, new applications for R&D to develop etc.)  The key here is to be firm and respectful, but open-minded as well.  If you do this right you can keep the company focused while still encouraging new thinking.  Not an easy task.  If you do take the time to master this, these once rejected good ideas could one dayrepresent your next great product in the market.

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Picture Credit:  Gemma Grace via photopin cc

Building a Powerful Contact List: Key Tactics for Making the Random Walk a Little Less Random

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By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

red leader of blue group

Build a powerful contact list by focusing on key individuals first.

Building up a substantial contact list is crucial to any startup especially as they approach the commercial launch of their first product or service.  This list will be used by your commercial team to recruit alpha and beta evaluators, find strategic partners and of course uncover customers.  One of the key things to keep in mind as you create this list is that it is the quality of the people on this list rather than the ultimate number (although you need this list to grow very large eventually) that is most important.

Why quality is crucial
First, what do we mean by a quality contact.  This is an individual that has shown some interest in your product or service by asking you to:

  • Put them on your mailing list to keep them informed
  • Exchanged business cards with you at an event you both attended (they asked for yours first)
  • Has reached out to you via your website, phone or perhaps by visiting a poster or vendor booth you hosted at an industry event.

People that you connect with in one of the ways described above will have a higher chance of being valuable to you and your company in the future including becoming some of your first customers.  Simply scanning the badge of everyone that visits your booth at a tradeshow to grab some free swag might provide a big number of contacts that you can put on a spreadsheet but now you will have to sort through all of them to find the quality contacts just described.  You have better things to do with you time.

The Random Walk
The highest quality contacts that you could have are those that you have had a chance to sit down and connect with on a one-on-one basis.  If you establish a strong connection during these meetings, these folks can turn out to be your strongest advocates and will go out of their way to help you with referrals, advice and other valuable inputs.  However, the problem here is that you need a significantly larger number of contacts to insure that you have a broad enough reach that will ultimately return the kinds of contacts that will become satisfied customers.  It is not possible to reach all of these people individually.  Reid Hoffman (Cofounder and Chairman of LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha provide an excellent discussion of how to successfully build your network of contacts with sufficient depth and breadth in their book ‘The Start-Up of You’.  All of the people that we would consider high quality contacts would be rated as first degree connections (depth) on LinkedIn.  The contact lists of your 1st degree connections represent your extended list (breadth) that will have the size you need to drive your commercial efforts.  In LinkedIn parlance, these are 2nd degree connections to you.  As an example of the reach of this extended network, a list of 300 – 400 direct connections (LinkedIn 1st degree connections) gives you access to over 6 million indirect connections (LinkedIn 2nd degree connections).  Whether you use LinkedIn or not, the compelling size of these indirect connections is real and worth the effort to cultivate.

This is Doable
It is likely that between the founding team members, your advisors and other strategic partners that you will be well on your way to developing a list of hundreds of quality (1st degree) contacts.  Be sure to seek out opportunities to meet with new people on a ‘one-to-one’ basis as much as possible.  You never know who these people are connected to and what valuable introductions they will provide.  Looking forward, that is can look like a very random process and it is.  You can increase the likelihood of making meaningful connections by attending events that you think will attract the people you would like to meet (industry events, tradeshows, lectures, CEO groups etc.).

Selected Tactics for Building your High Quality Contact List:

  • Reach out to friends and family.  Not all of these will be relevant but this is an easy first step.
  • Review the alumni contact list from your alma mater and professional school and reach out to prospects via e-mail, phone or ‘face-to-face’ (best).  Remember, don’t just stack you list with names; you need to know that they are at least a little bit interested.
  • Ask for referrals from those you meet.  Always ask the people you connect with who they would recommend that you meet and ask if they can introduce you.  Be sure to return the favor as much as possible as well. Give and take here can really pay off in the long run.
  • Be prepared to make connections anywhere and everywhere by being sure to keep a few of your business cards with you at all times.  You never know who you might meet at your spouse’s business party or at the grocery store.
  • An effective Marketing effort will bring in a number of high quality connections as well as leads for your sales force.  Don’t confuse a quality connection with a sales lead.  Sometimes a sales lead will also be a quality connection but that is not always the case.
  • Host or sponsor events in your industry.  Providing a technical talk, hosting a workshop or having an Open House event at your facility are excellent ways to quickly build your list of contacts.

Picture Credit:  © Suravid | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

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Eliminate This Risk to Your Sales Momentum

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traffic cone

Avoid the ‘out of stock’ pothole on your road to success.

By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Your team has pushed hard to get a successful product launch.  There is intense focus on Sales & Marketing to take the ball now to close on ever greater numbers of sales.  There is nothing like being ‘out-of-stock’ to put a crimp in your sales momentum.  With a little bit of post-launch effort, the risk of this happening can be minimized.

STEP 1

  • Assemble a team made up of some of the technical people from your product development team, someone from Operations and a product manager.
  • This team will initially be tasked with the following:
    • For Consumables – Identify all critical raw materials.  These are key components like antibodies or other biologicals or chemicals that are critical for the proper functioning of your kit or reagent.
    • For Instrumentation – Identify components with particularly long lead times.

For consumables, pay especially careful attention to sole suppliers of a critical raw material.  What would happen if this company went out of business or decided to discontinue the product?  Alternatively, what would happen to your business if they doubled the price of this component?

Use Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) to  help you and your team assess not only impact of what delays in instrument components  or loss of a source for a key reagent would have but also how likely it would be for that to happen.  This will allow you to compile a prioritized list with the biggest risks to your business at the top.

STEP 2

  • For Consumables – Have the technical team find an alternate source for the critical raw material.  This alternate source might be more expensive but it is much better to have a validated alternative source than to run out of it when your demand is growing.
  • For Instrumentation – Make sure that your agreement with component suppliers include options for rush shipments.  Find out what the lead times and additional costs are for this.  With good Sales forecasting you should not need to exercise this option but it is good to have this in place (just in case).  Consider keeping some additional inventory of critical components to buffer risk.

You cannot eliminate all of these risks to your business but it is far better to know what they are and have contingency plans in place in the (hopefully) unlikely event that some of them come to pass.   Remember that some of these risks can be mitigated by solutions provided by your technical team and others using business tactics.

Picture Credit:  © Foto.fritz | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

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International Team Leadership: A Real Life Case Study in How Not to Be the Ugly American

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Dartboard with flag darts

Cultural sensitivity is like getting agreement to the same set of rules for a game. Once you have mutual understanding, you will work together and succeed as a team.

By :  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Taking the time to meet with and understand the culture of your international partners goes a long way to boosting you entire team’s efficiency.  The following case study demonstrates the value of cultural sensitivity when leading an international team.

Case Study:  (some details intentionally left vague to provide anonymity for those involved)

Situation:
Senior executives at company headquarters in the US wanted to have several new products commercialized from a company that they recently acquired in Scandinavia.  The effort was to be led by a US-based Project Manager with R&D, Operations and Finance team members split between the US and Scandinavia.  This product was originally being commercialized by the Scandinavian team alone prior to the acquisition.

Soon after project kick-off, the effort began to run into delays and missed deadlines.  Team members would be absent from critical meetings, deadlines would be frequently missed and resentments seemed to be growing.  This was a project that was on its way to a spectacular disaster.

How we saw them
The US members of the team seemed to feel that all of the project problems were coming from the Scandinavian side.  We would send them plans, proposed work solutions and data.  We felt that we would either hear nothing in return or there was an extreme lack of urgency.  We felt that there must be some resentment among our Scandinavian colleagues since this project leadership had been imposed on them and that they were actively looking for ways to sabotage the project.

How they saw us
The technology and science behind the product we were commercializing had all come from years of work that was originally done by the Scandinavians.  They felt that the US side of the team was arrogant and pushy.  We were seen to be constantly questioning the quality of their science and imposing unrealistic deadlines. To them, the US team seemed to be bent on placing the blame for delays and problems on them.

Getting back on track
The project leader traveled to the Scandinavian site and spent time getting to know each of the individual project members.  Several meetings with the US part of the team where held while the project manager was with the Scandinavians to begin to rebuild trust across the entire team.   This allowed for some mutual understanding to be made between the US and Scandinavian team members and also helped to establish a way of working together that both sides supported.  We finally became one team with a single purpose (Our Team).  Ultimately, we all successfully commercialized our product on time and within budget.

Some Lessons Learned:

  • All meetings were held in English.  The Scandinavians seemed perfectly fluent in English so it was with some surprise to learn that their own confidence in speaking and understanding English was low.  Their slowness to respond to questions and demands for information were not being delayed by a willfulness to obstruct the team’s progress but more from a fear of either providing the wrong information or not looking competent.
  • The culture of the Scandinavian team was to work by consensus.  On the other hand, individual initiative was rewarded and appreciated on the US team.  Someone being singled out for a particularly good job was a good thing for a US team member.  The same thing was seen as embarrassing and even offensive to a Scandinavian team member.  This is why the US style of giving ownership of parts of the project to individuals was not well received by our Scandinavian colleagues.
  • National pride was extremely important to the Scandinavian team members.  In the US, individual achievement and a successful commercial launch for the company were rated much higher than national pride (this in spite of all of the hoopla around ‘Made in the USA’).  With the US now owning the company, a successful product launch was no longer seen as important since this was not perceived as a success for their country.  Regardless of these differences, both cultures prized success for the team.  Once everyone felt that we were all on the same team, we worked hard together to succeed together.

The ultimate outcome
Once both sides of the team learned more about the cultural differences between them, new ways of working together that respected these differences got the team back on track.  Ultimately this project was able to launch earlier than expected.  Simply imposing the project management style that had worked well in the US on our Scandinavian colleagues resulted in a dysfunctional team.  The value of making the effort to understand the culture of the people that you will be working with is not only good advice for international teams but also for domestic teams as well.

Some Tips for Managing International Teams:

  • Plan some travel in your budget – Ideally it is best for there to be an opportunity for all of the team members to meet face- to-face at the beginning of the project.  If this is not possible, make sure that at least the team leaders can spend time working with the international team in person.
  • Alternate meeting times to accommodate time-zone differences.  Nothing is as arrogant as forcing your international team to stay late or get up early just so they can make a meeting that is within normal working hours for you.
  • Many things can be done remotely once a connection has been made and trust established.  Build trust and understanding early to leverage the effectiveness of this way of working.
  • Take the time to find out what motivates your overseas colleagues as well as what they might find offensive.  Paying attention to these details can make all the difference between a successfully executed effort and a disaster.

Picture Credit:  © Starfotograf | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

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Building Strong Technology Companies One Royalty Deal at a Time

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By:  Robert Benson, Ph.D.

How to write license agreements to ensure monitoring and auditing is as simple as possible.

Team on puzzle pieces

Solving the puzzle of royalty terms need not be complicated. Having a good understanding of the motivations of both parties in a royalty arrangement will help to get a deal where both parties begin seeing profit.

This was the topic of a seminar (“Licensing Compliance – Getting What You Negotiated – Pitfalls and Best Practices”) hosted recently by MATTO (Massachusetts Association of Technology Transfer Offices).  This event was mainly attended by tech transfer professionals from Massachusetts-based academic institutions.

There was a focus on three clauses in licenses that tend to breed complications. Two clauses – concerning combination product and royalty stacking –are responsible for many “difficult-to-audit” agreements and a third clause – which refers to royalties paid by a sublicensee to the licensee on sales of licensed products — makes it difficult for universities to predict royalties from sales. The licensee and licensor generally take opposite sides on these clauses.  To simplify things I will refer to the licensor as the “university” and licensee as the “company”.  These three clauses are all changes from a straight royalty on sales of licensed product, i.e., sales times royalty rate = royalty.

Combination product language refers to a situation where the licensed product is sold as a combination – that is,  at least some of the product’s value and therefore its sales price is due to a non-licensed product or item, An example is a drug (licensed product) sold pre-loaded in a  syringe (non-licensed product).  The company doesn’t want to pay the royalty on the sales price of the non-licensed part of the product.  Combination product language is a solution often suggested by the company and agreed to by the university.  There are lots of ways this can be handled.  The most common is to multiply the sales price by something like A/(A+B);  A being the price of the licensed product (the drug) and B being the price of the non-licensed portion (the syringe) when each is sold alone.  This simple example works well, but what if the syringe is custom-made just for this drug and has no separate price B? There are lots of times where A and/or B (and C and D, as things get complicated) don’t have sales prices that are easily determined.  In such cases having this type of combination product language in the agreement can lead to all kinds of difficulties, including litigation, to determine a fair royalty amount.

Royalty stacking occurs when a product is covered by IP held by more than one party.   For example a medical device may require one license for the device itself and a second license for the software to run it.   This situation would require separate royalties for each license.  The company may argue that under such circumstances the royalties are too high for them to be competitive.  Royalty stacking is one answer; both royalties are lowered as long as both licenses are required.  There are lots of way this can be done too. Typically one royalty is lowered by 50% of the royalty paid to the other licensor, with some limit as to how much the royalty can be reduced.

Companies like combination product and royalty stacking clauses because they lower the royalties.  Universities do not particularly like these clauses for the same reason.  And, in addition to lowering royalties, combination product and royalty stacking can be erroneously calculated (not always by mistake) thus lowering the royalties the university receives by even more.  Companies, too, have the added burden of accurately calculating the royalties, a task made difficult (and expensive) if lots of different products are being sold in different combinations and with different third-party licenses required.

The third issue discussed was how royalties on sales by a sublicensee are passed back to the university.  There are two basic ways this is handled. The first, usually favored by the company, is that a fraction of all payments from the sublicensee to the company be paid to the university.  For example 20% of all payments (with specific exceptions) from the sublicensee to the company will be paid to the university.  The company likes this because it gives them flexibility in structuring the sublicense.  The university usually accepts this type of payment but worries that royalties on sales by the sublicensees may be too low (the sublicense may not even have a sales royalty).  Since royalties on sales usually constitute  the bulk of any money coming back to the university, the university would prefer another approach,  in which the sublicensee pays the same (or greater) royalties on sales as the company and the company passes back to the university the same royalty the company would have paid if it had made the sale directly.

So was there a consensus on how to handle these three changes from a straight royalty on sales?  No — in licensing there is never a consensus because each license is distinctive, and every university and company is trying to accomplish something different with each deal (which is why I don’t usually believe in “express licenses” – a fashionable type of license that some universities are promoting).  However, quite a few attendees  said they would be willing, in some cases, to lower the royalty rate in exchange for dropping combination product and royalty stacking clauses and having a straight pass-through of the royalty on sales by the sublicensees.   If 5% is the usual royalty rate asked by universities, some said that they would accept a straight 3% on sales by the company and sublicensees without any reductions due to combination product or royalty stacking clauses.

I think this solution may work for the company in many situations but not all.  The big advantage is the simplicity of calculating royalties and performing audits and the certainty of the royalty stream coming back to the university from sublicensee sales.

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The Next Two People You Need to Start Up Your Startup

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Business leader and team

It’s a lot easier to figure out the startup puzzle when you have the right team!

By: Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

It seems that every week there is an article or post that bemoans the shortage of innovation in America.  However, this is not due to a lack of great ideas and the pace of discovery in the labs across the nation.  The problem is getting the right team to lead and to grow these ideas into commercially successful endeavors.

Don’t go it alone
Having an exciting technology or scientific discovery on hand is not enough to form a successful company.  You need a team of talented people to help you realize your vision.  However, going from one person (you) with an idea and a passion to assembling an effective team and moving forward can seem daunting.  The answer to this is not complicated.  The first thing you need to do is assemble your first board members.

Who are they?  Early Advisors vs. Active Board
Whatever you want to call them, you need others to help you take your idea to the next step along the way to a successful company.  The best way to begin is to gather a small, but powerful group of people that you can rely on to help you develop a realistic strategy, identify productive tactics and complete the critical efforts needed to get this off the ground.  You will find that there are many that will be more than happy to become advisors but far fewer that will become valuable board members.  You need both but you need the active board member more, especially in the early days when this is still an idea.  Here are a few ways to distinguish the two types of people: Table of advisor traits

Your board may typically only have 2 or 3 other members in the beginning which is fine.  You will likely have significantly more advisors at the beginning but some of these may migrate over to the board member column as things progress.  Your advisors allow you to get a breadth of guidance and ideas and your board will provide the depth you need to sort through all of the ‘suggestions’ and actually help you with the heavy lifting of launching your new startup.  In addition to this, it is a lot easier to share the burden of this effort with a committed team than shouldering it all by yourself.

Next Steps:

      1. Identify 10 people who have the experience, resources, talents and connections you need and ask them to be on your board.
      2. Schedule a kick-off meeting to discuss your ideas with them and to identify what commitments you might need from them.
      3. Agree on a regular meeting schedule
      4. Parse this initial group, using the table above and your intuition, into Active Board Members and Advisors.
      5. Continue to recruit until you have at least 2 – 3 board members.

Picture Credit:  © Suravid | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

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