Today the news hot off the press is that Livebookings* has raised $16m / £9.5m in VC funding thanks to an investment into the company by Wellington Partners.
You can read the full story here.
(* Livebookings is Europe’s largest online marketing and reservations service for the restaurant industry. We help restaurants fill their tables by delivering customers through a free online booking service and network of high-profile partner websites. I say "we" because they’re my employer, too.)
For me personally I can reflect on a summer that was dominated by the fund-raising round and the due diligence process that followed. I feel very lucky to have been involved. I met many VCs myself and the process helped us really refine our business plan, check, double-check and re-check the assumptions and think carefully about our long term strategy. We’ve also received some great input on how to improve our business operations.
Raising capital in the summer months is always more tricky as so many people are away, and doing so in a recession at break-neck speed is an extra challenge. However, it does have the added benefit that we now have a solid foundation of a three year plan in place and so preparing a detailed operational budget for 2010 will be easier.
So, what did I learn from the summer of fundraising?
1. Ask for help to refine the pitch
The pitch we made was rehearsed several times with existing investors who had a feel for what a future investor would need to know. What are the key assumptions that need to stand up for the investor to buy into the growth plan? Address these issues face on.
2. Keep it simple
If we’re not careful, our business can come across as complicated. We really had to focus on making it straightforward as possible to explain the “what”, “why”, “how” and “when”. Using visual aids in presentations is vital to convey meaning, and being able to visualise concepts with pictures is essential.
3. Build and test a very detailed supporting business plan
The business plan that our team prepared was very thorough with lots and lots of assumptions building up a very thorough view of the business over the next few years. It was a collaborative effort and took weeks to nail down. I noticed that what was important here was not to just create the plan, but to be able to talk around some of the key ratios such as cost-of sale, revenue per unit, marketing efficiency and traffic source, share and conversion. Knowing these numbers is the core of the pitch.
4. Prioritise the fundraising process but protect key people
In a fundraising round, you have to be prepared to drop everything to answer investor questions, travel to a pitch, answer follow up questions and provide supplementary data. It means dropping everything else, so you need a part of the team that are focused on running the day to day business so it doesn’t grind to a halt.
5. Show your passion
People buy people and if you’re not excited about your business, how will someone else be? Enthusiasm is contagious, so show the world what makes you tick and why your business is exciting. If it’s not exciting, what are you pitching for?
6. Enjoy the ride
Despite the hard work involved, I really enjoyed the process. I will be the first to hold my hand up and say that there are others on the team who were much more involved than me, but when I did participate I looked forward to the investor meetings. It was a privilege to meet smart people who could think about your business from different angles and help you refine your approach every time. It was a great experience and I was very happy to be involved.
If you’re out there raising money for your business right now, I wish you all the best, and every success.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Learn Something New Every Day
You learn something new every day, so goes the saying.
We all have different things that make us "tick". For me, one of the strongest motivators is learning something new, either through experience or through reading.
Here's a little snippet I picked up yesterday. I was reading Peter Hargreave's book "In For A Penny", the story of how he and his business partner built up their business from scratch starting with just a telephone and a desk in a spare bedroom. Now the business (Hargeaves Lansdown) is one of the biggest financial services firms in the UK and is a listed public company.
Aside from picking up on their business principles (best service, best prices, best information), their company culture (put the customer first, the company second, yourself third), and their innovative real time trading platform for private investors, one little snippet of trivia grabbed my attention.
When you come to cash in your pension on retirement, one option is to buy an annuity with your pension fund (I knew that already by the way). This annuity is a fixed regular payment that you receive for the rest of your life. The life companies that sell these policies assess your risk profile. High risk, you can buy less income with your money, low risk, you can buy more.
The interesting thing is that the more money you have in your pension, the more risky you are to a life company. Why? Well it seems statistically that people with more money live longer. Maybe this is because they can afford a better lifestyle and health care, I'm not sure. As they live longer, then the life company has to pay out the fixed sum for longer, so therefore large pension fund owners will find it more difficult to get a better deal.
I thought about this for a moment on the train. First of all, I was disappointed that if I did make the effort to save harder, I would get a worse deal. However the upside is much more interesting; work hard to accumulate a bigger pot and you might live longer. I'd never thought of life expectancy as a reason to work hard, but there it is.
But how to be successful? One of the other books I read recently was Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers". Here he looks at the truly successful people in their fields and looked at what patterns stood out.
It seems that you need "enough" education (not necessarily the best), "enough" talent (pure talent will not cut it on it's own), fortunate circumstances (luck), and the most important two ingredients of all: focus and effort.
This was encouraging. I'm a great believer in making your own luck. Work hard, see obstacles as opportunities and take control of your own destiny. Sure, life throws you a deck of cards, but even with an average hand you can play a good game.
Learning is great, and knowledge is best enjoyed if shared. Therefore at work recently I took the initiative to start a library. The two books I mentioned above plus another twenty or thirty from my personal bookshelves start the library stock. I've asked colleagues to also bring in their books to loan to the collection. I've bought library cards to put in the front of each book and developed a system for withdrawals and returns. I hope it takes off. I'm looking forward to sharing ideas and seeing the team grow through learning.
Learn something new every day. My new mantra.
We all have different things that make us "tick". For me, one of the strongest motivators is learning something new, either through experience or through reading.
Here's a little snippet I picked up yesterday. I was reading Peter Hargreave's book "In For A Penny", the story of how he and his business partner built up their business from scratch starting with just a telephone and a desk in a spare bedroom. Now the business (Hargeaves Lansdown) is one of the biggest financial services firms in the UK and is a listed public company.
Aside from picking up on their business principles (best service, best prices, best information), their company culture (put the customer first, the company second, yourself third), and their innovative real time trading platform for private investors, one little snippet of trivia grabbed my attention.
When you come to cash in your pension on retirement, one option is to buy an annuity with your pension fund (I knew that already by the way). This annuity is a fixed regular payment that you receive for the rest of your life. The life companies that sell these policies assess your risk profile. High risk, you can buy less income with your money, low risk, you can buy more.
The interesting thing is that the more money you have in your pension, the more risky you are to a life company. Why? Well it seems statistically that people with more money live longer. Maybe this is because they can afford a better lifestyle and health care, I'm not sure. As they live longer, then the life company has to pay out the fixed sum for longer, so therefore large pension fund owners will find it more difficult to get a better deal.
I thought about this for a moment on the train. First of all, I was disappointed that if I did make the effort to save harder, I would get a worse deal. However the upside is much more interesting; work hard to accumulate a bigger pot and you might live longer. I'd never thought of life expectancy as a reason to work hard, but there it is.
But how to be successful? One of the other books I read recently was Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers". Here he looks at the truly successful people in their fields and looked at what patterns stood out.
It seems that you need "enough" education (not necessarily the best), "enough" talent (pure talent will not cut it on it's own), fortunate circumstances (luck), and the most important two ingredients of all: focus and effort.
This was encouraging. I'm a great believer in making your own luck. Work hard, see obstacles as opportunities and take control of your own destiny. Sure, life throws you a deck of cards, but even with an average hand you can play a good game.
Learning is great, and knowledge is best enjoyed if shared. Therefore at work recently I took the initiative to start a library. The two books I mentioned above plus another twenty or thirty from my personal bookshelves start the library stock. I've asked colleagues to also bring in their books to loan to the collection. I've bought library cards to put in the front of each book and developed a system for withdrawals and returns. I hope it takes off. I'm looking forward to sharing ideas and seeing the team grow through learning.
Learn something new every day. My new mantra.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Asia By Bike - The YouTube Video
This has absolutely nothing to do with ecommerce or management or anything like that.
This is the reason we all have for working in the first place - to get out and ride! As someone very wise once said, work to live, don't live to work!
My brother and wife recently got back from an amazing 11,000km bike ride across Asia. This short YouTube video gives you a great taste for the amazing adventure they must have had.
You can read about the full adventure at http://asiabybike.blogspot.com.
This is the reason we all have for working in the first place - to get out and ride! As someone very wise once said, work to live, don't live to work!
My brother and wife recently got back from an amazing 11,000km bike ride across Asia. This short YouTube video gives you a great taste for the amazing adventure they must have had.
You can read about the full adventure at http://asiabybike.blogspot.com.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Why I Stopped Tweeting
In February I asked myself the question "To Tweet Or Not To Tweet?"
For 3 months I embraced Twitter and evangelised it's benefits. I tweeted several times a day every day until one day I stopped. Completely. I even went to the trouble of removing every tweet from my timeline.
Why?
It's taken several weeks to figure out but there are several reasons;
1) The catalyst was a blog post that I read called "Why Twitter Is Evil". Ironically I found this post via Twitter. It was this post that got me thinking.
2) I had always seen my Twitter account as an experiment. I wanted to understand how individuals and companies were using it socially and commercially. In my line of work I need to know. I now felt sufficiently knowledgable on how all worked and I'm impressed at the power of the network to pull reach and build reputations. My learning curve had slowed.
3) Maybe I have Adam Smith's genes because I take a view that many things in life are some kind of economic transaction. Inputs and outputs. You put effort in (or money, a proxy for effort) and you get a reward (or not). Twitter was consuming a lot of time and energy versus the return (knowledge, contacts) that I was getting.
4) Information overload. I'm a busy guy with a large family and plenty of things to cram into every day. There's only so much information I can take. It's invariably limited in depth. I,be realized I'd rather spend 30 minutes reading one quality article in a magazine or a newspaper than dip into 20 trivial tweets hoping to find a nugget.
But really, it's mainly a survival tactic. I either do something well or not at all.
So long Twitter.
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Twitterquette - Good Manners For Twitter Users
14 etiquette tips for Twitter
It's 2 months to the day since I started using Twitter. During that time I've gone from a complete novice to gaining some experience and starting to learn from that experience. Like any new communications channel that humanity discovers, it takes some time for us to develop social etiquette (in this case "Twitterquette"). We start to develop a sense of right and wrong and our own little set of do's and don'ts.
Examples;
- Don't talk loudly for long periods of time on your mobile phone on public transport.
- Don't speak on the telephone at the dinner table if you have guests.
- Don't sent large volumes of email to people you don't know to sell Viagra.
- Do reply to people if they take the time to write you a letter / email / leave a voicemail.
- Do credit the source of your story when writing a new article.
So how about Twitter?
Twitterquette - version 1 (after 2 months, March 2009, UK)
Here are some tips I'd recommend that new Tweeters think about when using Twitter.
Notice that most of them are relevant to all forms of communication, not just Twitter, I just explain to detail relevant to Twitter.
Twitter is a continual conversation that you can dip in and dip out of. It's like a 24 hour party. You can stand on the sidelines and watch, you can entertain or you can introduce people. Just like any social event, understanding the unseen social rules will help you have a great time. Bear in mind who is at your party. Are they work colleagues, industry aquaitances, or true friends and family? Who is following you? Who do you want to follow you?
My experiences (and advice) are around the assumption that most of the people following me are mostly work-related.
So, here we go...
1. Give credit where credit is due
If you read a tweet that you like and want to tell others, rather than just plagiarising the source, use a "Retweet" to pass the message on. The syntax is as follows;
RT @username message-content
2. Say thank you for a referral
If someone re-tweets one of your tweets, send them a direct message to say thank-you. They are more likely to do it again if you say thank you.
3. Keep 1:1 conversations to direct messages
If you are having a conversation that is only relevant to you and the recipient, rather than use the public timeline to do so, use the direct message feature on Twitter; especially if it's a conversation that will last several tweets.
4. Don't hog the bandwidth
Just because someone follows you, it doesn't mean they want to receive 30 tweets a day from you and have you dominate their feed. There are a few people that I follow that send out so much trivial mush that I am now going to unfollow them. Clearly there's a balance somewhere. I've found (personally) that I can take 5 to 7 tweets a day from 1 person before I start to turn off.
5. Ask for favours, but do so sparingly
If you have a good following, you can use that to your advantage. You can for example ask people to RT (retweet) a message if it's that important to you. It is is a great way to build traffic or awareness. However, I got a little annoyed by a blogger who was constantly asking people to "digg" his latest article just so it would hit the first page of digg.com. In real life we give favours and receive favours. It's a balance that if upset means you take advantage of goodwill and lose some of that goodwill. Just like real life, use your network & friends sparingly, for what's important.
Tip; if you want to have your tweet retweeted, leave enough characters spare so that the RT @username will fit in without truncating the message. For me that means working to 120 characters, not 140.
6. Cite your source
If you didn't write something, don't pretend that you did. Cite your source (as in using a re-tweet) or make it obvious that you didn't write the content.
7. Recommend others
If you like following someone, why not recommend them? On Twitter, there's a custom of doing this on Friday and including the #followfriday hashtag to explain what you're doing.
An example; #FollowFriday @cindyalvarez (for product management nuggets of wisdom), @thetafferboy (for SEO tactics), @manne (for restaurant news)
8. Be positive
No-one likes a drainer. Sure, get things off your chest if you have to but do so with humour. Don't burden the world with your worries and troubles. Share love, not trouble.
9. Add your own content, don't just re-tweet
Some users are great at finding good material on a topic and then just re-tweeting it. A few twits that I follow do this, and I follow then because they are consistent in being fast and frequent in their subject niche. Generally though, I appreciate a few original thoughts as well.
10. Follow others that follow you
If someone follows me, I generally check them out by looking at their bio and their tweetstream. If I am sure I would not be interested I don't follow. Otherwise I follow and if it turns out later it's a waste of time, I unfollow. If in doubt, follow.
11. If something pleases you, say so
See a tweet that makes you laugh, smile or gets you interested in something. Now and then it's nice to reply to the source and just say so. It will make the source feel rewarded for making the effort and will more likely continue to feed you in the future.
12. If you want someone to follow a link, tell them why they should bother
As most links in Twitter are shortened, and as so many are posted each day, take the time to describe the destination content and why it's interesting.
13. Stay on topic
You need to decide who you are. Are you a corporate voice or are you an individual? Are you using Twitter for your current job, for your (general professional life) or for personal stuff only. Decide and decide quickly. Then, decide what areas of interest you will post on and stick to it. People that are interested in those areas will follow you.
14. Be real
I do like to hear the occasional snippet of non-work related stuff, even if I follow you because of your professional interests. Think: if you go to a professional networking event; no one jumps straight into work, there's always some related chit chat about sport, the weekend or what's in the news. Too much personal stuff becomes trivial, but it is always nice to see something of the person behind the machine. I find a 75% work interest / 25% non-work interest is a good balance in the working week and vice-versa at weekends.
It seems to me that the first rule of Twitter is therefore NOT always to answer the question "What are you doing?". Great Twits are much more subtle.
You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/davidcnorris.
(My interests are; ecommerce, marketing, restaurants, product management, cycling, skiing, movies.)
Other blog posts that I've found on the same subject:
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