investors Archives - Titus Capilnean

There is an increasing amount of noise out there about what a growth hacker or a growth manager (please don’t confuse these two!) should do to drive 10x growth in organizations. I’ve seen a lot of tactical suggestions, examples and strategies, ranging from PPC, A/B testing, to branding and sales organization setup, but very few talk about the WHYs, the reasons behind all the tests and the activities, the larger picture, the strategic intent. Sure, you can argue that it could be all for growth.

Growth for growth’s sake is not sustainable and is a bigger danger to a company than not having growth in the first place!

Here’s my take on it. Every Growth Manager who is building a sustainable oranization must focus on the following 3 elements:

Product Marketing

Business Development

Investors & Other Key Stakeholders

1. Product Marketing

The Growth Manager needs to understand the customer and be able to work with the product & sales teams to develop benefit statements and compelling stories.

They own the message, the brand and the marketing strategies, channels and budgets and are responsible for lead generation, PR, thought leadership, influencer relationships and all other brand building activities. They own the paid, earned , owned media mix and drive brand awareness both industry-wide and to customer segments.

Here’s a very good definition given by Openview Partners:

Product Marketing also focuses on understanding the market and market needs, but with an emphasis on understanding the buyer of the company’s products and services. Product Marketing is responsible for developing positioning, messaging, competitive differentiation, and enabling the Sales and Marketing teams to ensure they are aligned and work efficiently to generate and close opportunities.

Deliverables: Product Marketing Strategy, Marketing Assets (website, branding, PR, messaging), Marketing Campaigns

2. Business Development

If a Growth Manager focuses on just the first point, then they are effectively a Product Marketing Manager. However, given the moment a growth manager joins the organization, they are required to step up and step in the business development process, as well as the marketing process.

That way, they learn two important things – first hand customer feedback on product marketing messages and materials that sales teams need in order to be successful. The feedback is very useful in refining and iterating on product benefits, narrative, angle, story, case studies, customer success showcases.

The materials needs assessment feeds into creation of product sheets, pitch decks, videos, websites, communication campaigns, email marketing, automation flows, lead nurture campaigns – any activity that the sales team needs “air support” for in the process of moving leads down the funnel to opportunities and active customers.

Deliverables: Business Development Strategy, Sales Funnel, Sales Pipeline Management, Sales & Marketing Collateral (white papers, product sheets, videos, presentations, nurture campaigns)

3. Investors & Other Key Stakeholders

To ensure healthy and sustainable growth, the last piece of the Growth Manager puzzle is resource & stakeholder management. They must always think two steps ahead of the game, making sure the team is ready to raise the next round, ready to bring in the right people to expand the team and ready to present itself in front of customers.

Growth Managers need to figure out how the company should look like, what it needs to become, in order to grow into that picture piece by piece. It can be the way the branding is portrayed, the way the website is designed and structured, the way you handle recruitment & employer branding and how all of these are externally perceived by stakeholders other than customers – i.e. investors, partners, future employees, peers.

Deliverables: Marketing Collateral, Investor Relations Collateral (decks, website, marketing and sales assets), Employer Branding Strategy & Collateral

If you are a Growth Manager today or planning to become one, you must keep your actions focused on all three of the elements to ensure consistent, sustainable results delivery. Hey, one day you could be the CEO of the company.

I have been involved with startups for the past couple of years and one of the most frequent questions that came to both my mind and in entrepreneurship community discussions is how to choose an investor. This is a two sided question, as both you as an entrepreneur and the investor must find common ground on most things to share resources – their money & influence vs. your company and future success.

So for the entrepreneur, it’s a process of research, pitching and due diligence, while for the investor it’s a process of deal sourcing, evaluation, investor branding, network and due diligence. Both sides need to do a lot before any deal even begins to travel through the pipeline. Since I value the experience of others, I pulled the best advice from several online forums & communities to cover the top criteria on how investors and entrepreneurs choose eachother.

It’s very much like marriage – successful ones always are backed by lots of work, lots of getting to know eachother, bad ones are spontaneous and crazy.

Jason M. Lemkin said on Quora that the entrepreneur should focus on what they need according to the stage they are in. In the early days, you will look at:

Help scaling from nothing to something. An investor who’s actually done what you’ve done for real can help you here 10,000,000x more than someone that hasn’t.

Help getting at least 1 great hire. Can the investor help? Hiring is always impossible.

Help with the next round. This should not be underestimated. Is the investor someone VCs like to follow? For real? And will he or she be able to help here?

Help with PR and promotion. Most investors can’t do this. But some can. This can help.

Help making you seem Hot (or at least, Cool) before you deserve it. Few can do this. But it’s super valuable.

Help being a true mentor. Related to the first point. Very few can really do this. But if you can get someone to really help you be a better CEO — this is worth its weight in gold.

Forbes.com, in a recent article, focuses on 4 key questions:

1. Do you click on a personal level?
2. What can they bring to the table?
3. What have they invested in before?
4. Do they usually do follow-on rounds?

While the first one is a no-brainer, given that you’ll be working together for several years, the second question is often overlooked when money shines bright. Look beyond the cash and check the points made by Jason Lemkin, check expertise, experience, network and resources. They will end up being more valuable than the cold, hard cash.

Here’s another great piece of advice from Entrepreneur.com backing what I just said:

Cohen: They should make introductions for you to other investors, customers and partners. They should be asking you what your issues are and how they can help. With my companies, if I know what your top three issues are on a regular basis, I’m happy.

Cnet.com had a piece about this from a few entrepreneurs that went through the successful investment process (the bold part is my choice):

“Pick investors who believe in you personally and who you feel you can be open with,” said Danielle Morrill, Referly co-founder and former director of marketing for Twilio. She advises companies to find investors they can trust and won’t abandon a business when it’s going through rough times.

Sales-Griffin’s final note is that it should never be about the money. “The real value is in the regular hands-on advice and strategic support,” he concluded.

Christopher Mirabile said on Quora that not all investors are created equal and went on to name several categories of sins related to investor behaviour. Helps a lot to have a red flag checklist when going through the hoops, although I don’t agree with him on all the points or the severity of them. Here’s a selection:

Deal-breakers:

giving you bad advice and insisting you follow it
lacking, honesty, honor, integrity and good common sense values
being bigoted, sexist or likely to harass or disrupt members of your team
being unable to make up their mind on whether to invest (or what strategic course to take) and always wanting another meeting

Red flags:

insisting on a board seat but having no value to add
failing to understand or keep current with the company’s technology or positioning in order to represent the company well
not being able or willing to introduce you to other investors or customers, failing to actively support and “talk up” your company, having no network or connections or networking skills to help you build the team
lacking business fundamentals or experience with sales, taking a lot of your time and requiring a lot of hand-holding
insisting on dilutive advisory shares or consulting fees for no, or dubious, value
being unpleasant, close-minded, inflexible and generally difficult to get along with
lacking knowledge of how to structure a round, lacking knowledge of how to stage capital into a company

And last, but not the very less least, Mikko Asaarela put together a very comprehensive list of questions investors should be prepared and expect to be asked.

1. Could you refer me to entrepreneurs who you’ve worked with who highly recommend you?

2. How many Founders/CEOs have been fired by the board from your portfolio companies? Can I talk to them?

3. How much return have the entrepreneurs seen from exits in your portfolio?

4. Can I talk to the founders of failed companies in your portfolio?

5. What kind of follow-on investment do you think the company needs to succeed?

6. What is your end game?

There is no quick win or recipe for success. Every company and every investor are different, so go through the process of getting to know each other, research online and offline, ask tough questions and work on your personal / investor brand beforehand. It helps speed up the whole thing.