For the entrepreneur, life is often “just-in-time”. With this in mind, the typical Founder is likely to delay putting together a pitch deck until if or when they decide to go for external funding. I would like to present a contrarian view as to why creating a business pitch is actually one of the things they should be doing, even if they aren’t looking for funding today.
What if your Startup doesn’t fit into a maturity level box?
One thing I recommend founders to do is to think of the company as being a portfolio of projects, and the founder as being the strategic owner of this portfolio. Each specific product or service that the company is offering is a project in the portfolio that sits under the umbrella of the company. Then they can look at the maturity level of each project and the company itself. For example, a company that is offering a service to a customer base and at the same time is thinking of how they can translate that service into a SaaS product offering, may already have a good problem/market fit for the company itself, be in efficiency in terms of delivering the service and be just starting validation for the SaaS service.
Girls Raising event successfully showcasing startups with female founders
This week I went to a Girls Raising event in Toronto. The group’s premise is: if companies which include female founders are often more successful than less diverse companies, let’s support companies that include women founders, and give them an opportunity to hone their message and receive effective feedback.
Why is the Canadian Tech Entrepreneurial Dream too often just a wish for a multi-million dollar exit?
When listening to Canadian would-be entrepreneurs, it seems that quite often you hear their dream is to start a company, grow it to the point where some other larger American company comes along and buys it, enabling the original founders to walk away with millions of dollars.
True Innovators welcome competition
The concept was put forward simply. When what you are developing is so innovative that you are developing something not previously envisioned, having other players do something similar helps build credibility for your product. If you are the only one exposing a novel idea or product, then people may not listen. If there is more than one voice promoting new concepts, then the market may be more willing to embrace and adopt the new ideas.
