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Trinadad chamber of commerce event where I got to meet some local business celebrities . . . . . #business #trinidad #entrepreneurship #mindset #startuplife (at Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9W8_dBpCXR/?igshid=1jbd41eqd0xzj

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Received an amazing hat today from oigetit the fake news filter....great job ! https://www.instagram.com/p/BzMugj9pw2v/?igshid=1i2l2hoe5oq57

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[14] Startup Growth Done Right

Ralph is a proven senior executive with 20 years of diverse blue-chip leadership experience across strategic finance, corporate strategy, and operations at companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 100 companies globally. Over the past 7 years, he has also advised extensively high growth technology companies, helping them navigate through early-stage strategic and operational growth.

Currently as the Chief Financial Officer at Jyve?”

Throughout his career, he has strategically built companies, teams, and partnerships that sustain strong growth. He has also successfully helped companies scale, transform, and exit; completing 80+ strategic transactions and exits for $90+ billion of M&A value and raised $60+ billion of equity/debt capital.

Ep 14 SVS transcribe

 Shawn Flynn  0:00 

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes. On today's episode, we have Ralph Liang, who is a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley, who has since gone on to create his own company at age ships. It's a company that helps startups grow. So let's learn a little bit about him.

 Show Announcer  0:23 

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes, we interview experts and entrepreneurs to give the world access to the knowledge and experience that is here in Silicon Valley. Our mission is to create opportunities for those who seek them and tell you to become the next Silicon Valley success

 Shawn Flynn  0:44 

Rao. Thank you for coming on Silicon Valley success. And thanks for having me. Can you give a brief introduction of yourself who you are what you're up to?

 Ralph Leung  0:52 

Sure. So as you mentioned earlier, I found that Ada ships but a year and a half ago at chips is a growth and innovation platform focused on helping corporations find innovation and startups helping them grow and scale. Prior to that it's been almost 20 years honing my career in a variety of strategic roles. Everything from being an investment banker in New York, and in Hong Kong, helping tech companies and FinTech companies from being a principal investor, Principal m&a person, as well as being a strategy consultant.

 Shawn Flynn  1:20 

Wow. So tell me about how that 20 years of experience kind of leads into Ada chips. How did that help you with what you're doing now? Right.

 Ralph Leung  1:28 

Well, that's, that's a good question that's at that was the real foundation of how I founded the company, as ships know, when I took a step back and look back into my career and thought, what have I learned over this, this 20 year path, right? I've worked with amazing leaders from enormous companies like Alibaba to work with earlier stage startups, all throughout Asia Pacific, and even in the US. And I learned a significant amount of seeing companies make mistakes, seeing companies grow. And then scale seeing companies go from being an early stage startups to a growth equity company to become a public company.

 Shawn Flynn  2:01 

Okay, some of that lingo that you're saying right there, some of the audience at home may not know it was growth equity, short, and all that.

 Ralph Leung  2:07 

So early stage startups which which I understand a lot of your people on the show talk about is

 slightly later than two guys talking an idea or you actually have a product, you have an early stage business, but you're finding that early traction, early business growth equity is primarily in the phase right after that you've raised a few rounds of capital are raising money. So we can focus on scaling the business, right, not to prove a concept to prove whether it works or not. And then right after that, you know, some people some companies tend to go public, right, if they choose to go public listed on NYSE or NASDAQ, for example, they become publicly traded corporations

 Shawn Flynn  2:44 

interested. So when do you step in and start working with those companies?

 Ralph Leung  2:48 

On the leadership side? Yes. So at chips will typically step in the earlier stage of the business. What will work with people with technically, oftentimes, technical founders, okay, have a product, they have some early revenue, they have proven that there was a market fit for this, or they don't have a business built around it. So

 Shawn Flynn  3:09 

an accelerator is that still too early for you? Or is that the right time?

 Ralph Leung  3:12 

That's typically the right time, right? So they've gone through either an incubator program and accelerator program, they have something built, but they don't really have a team to focus on the business, they don't have the capital to hire a bunch of C level executives around them to build a business. So he would come in and we help build that real business for them. Okay, tell me more about how you help help them build that business. Sure. Okay. So when you when you take a step back, right, peel the onion on what makes a business successful. Okay, you have to start with a product, you have the core product, and that's what they ideally should spend time focusing on building and making sure there's product market fit, whether it's by themselves through an incubator and accelerator program, okay, but around the round the product you have to think of how do you go to market? So how do you sell this? How do you sell the product? How do you take it to market what really is your market,

 Shawn Flynn  4:01 

this isn't necessarily just a physical product, right?

 Ralph Leung  4:04 

software, it could be software could be, you know, something you see on Shark Tank, it could be, you know, it could be anything, but something that somebody would pay money for cable service doesn't matter, then you think about how you go to market, how do you sell it? How do you build your core competencies around the functional areas around it. So any good business beyond the product and selling you have to think finance, you have to think accounting marketing, you think branding, you think advertising, you think legal, right? You think HR and recruiting talent, and infrastructure and operations, all of these elements that that really formed around the product, that's what he focuses on. Now, every company is a little bit different. Some companies may, depending on the founder of the founding team, they may have certain expertise on certain areas. So we usually spend time studying the company working with the founding team, understanding where the biggest gaps are, when come in to help them out in the areas

 Shawn Flynn  4:55 

now, now, everything you just mentioned there, you can't do that alone. Obviously. Tell me about your team.

 Ralph Leung  5:01 

Sure. So we, we what, let's take a step back. Right. There are plenty of great players in the market, especially in Silicon Valley that help startups right, yeah, look at the list of incubators, accelerators, just one every four blocks. So there are definitely a lot of players in the market, the way that we want to differentiate ourselves is taken, taken execution approach to helping startups grow. So not an education approach, which is typically the approaches that accelerators incubators to that they follow. Because they weren't big batches, Oh, we don't run big batches. And we go bespoke one on one a companies a year maximum on the startup side, we take a very hands on execution based approach to helping them scale.

 Shawn Flynn  5:42 

Okay, so tell me about when you meet one of the stars for the first time, what does that look like, you just sit down with the founder and go, Hey, I saw your product and you're not doing anything with it. I think we can make you guys something or is it they come to you, like, hey, we've tried all these things, we don't know what we're doing.

 Ralph Leung  6:00 

It's a combination of both right. And, and there's three elements. So we we haven't done any advertising and marketing, everything's through referral. Okay, so usually comes through some of that we, as a friend of yours, a friend of a friend, someone that we worked with, in the past, they come through a referral channels, you know, they say, hey, so and so has a has company, you know, he or she started a company, they have a great product just came out of whatever accelerator program,

 they're thinking about doing a series A or Series B fundraising, or they're really struggling trying to get in front of a large corporation to try to sell that big enterprise deal, right? Then, when we sit down first meetings like this, this just one on one get to know each other? Well, first, we have to see we get along, okay. Because if, if you don't like me, and I don't like you. So yeah, this is not working out at

 Shawn Flynn  6:43 

three take that

 Ralph Leung  6:45 

you know, but it's do is the understand each other, okay, just to see, we get a law giving you a chance to understand what it is that you're struggling with what you are trying to accomplish, right. And then after this first meeting, then we have a second meeting, what typically they do is they start up with send us information, right?

 Shawn Flynn  7:01 

So this is typical, what type of information is your market information?

 Ralph Leung  7:04 

Or no, we just be your typical diligence pack, right. So, again, what will diligence pack for companies that we have that haven't gone through a certain stage yet, I don't expect them to have a lot, but I do expect them to have at least some semblance of a business plan. Okay, not necessarily the traditional 50 page Word document business plan that people very familiar with, it could be a set of slides that they've used to capture note.

 Shawn Flynn  7:26 

So like a 15 Deck slide, that would be enough for you to

 Ralph Leung  7:31 

give me something, something to show that you've thought about your business, I thought about your product, thought about your roadmap, right? Doesn't have to be fully baked, does not be fully developed, that's what we would help you with, okay, but give me something where I can go home, study your business with my team, my understanding where your challenges are, give us a chance to assess where what we think about your business, right, because we approached it just like we're investors, really, because we only, we only spend time with a company's maximum, you know, same way that a VC would have X amount of capital them to invest in premium content. So you have to be very picky about who you want to work with. And this is a long term partnership. It's not, we're not consultants, right? We don't come in, do a three month McKinsey style project, and then we take off, but you never see us again, that's not how we operate. So we operate as it were partners together, which means we're in it for the long term, which also means we have to get along well, we have to really believe in the business believe in the founding team

 Shawn Flynn  8:23 

interested. So let's go back Say, say you've met that startup, you get along with them, you want to help with them, the first thing they say to you is we don't have money or we're trying to raise money right now, what information does a startup founder need to know about raising capital?

 Ralph Leung  8:41 

That's That's a really good question. And I think there's, there's a lot of confusion in the market, depending on the stage, right, just based on the stages that we talked about before, I think with with technology these days, a lot of people can look up Cora, they can go to Google and just just look up, what do you need in the fundraise deck? Right? What do you need in a picture tech and they follow certain guidelines. Now, my advice to founders that are going through this process is take a step back first, understand, fundraising is not a one shot deal. It's an ongoing effort. As you continue to grow the company and your your goal is not to raise money, right? Your goal is not to raised to send me get my a round, let me get my seed round, your goal is to build a business? And also what do you have to do to build a business successfully over time? I think that's the first step that any founder needs to think through before they think, Okay, how do we raise money, I get that there's pressure, if founder doesn't, you know, they have three months of runway left, six months runway left, does that mean amount of money to keep your lights on for the next

 Shawn Flynn  9:42 

X number of mine? Okay, so they only have three months of runway, right? They even have time to respond in there.

 Ralph Leung  9:47 

Well, that's the first mistake, I would have pointed them out, right? If you only have three months of runway, that means you started planning a little bit too late, but you always have to start thinking about it from day one, as you're thinking about building a product, you'll think about how do you have your sources of capital for how long and it's an ongoing process, right, always think about is an ongoing, long term process.

 Shawn Flynn  10:06 

So how much of your work with the the startups is actually just sitting there and saying, this is your next one year roadmap? Let's break it down step by step, right?

 Ralph Leung  10:14 

It's it's a large portion of what we do, we help them think very strategically about how to build a company, right? We try to get them away from short term, you know, let us sell X number of products get 10,000 users raise $5 million, right? These are very short term goals, we help them think about what is a three year roadmap and then you back into right if for us to be this when we grow up in three years? Okay, in two years, here's what we want to do in one year, this would be what we want to do. And how do you back into what do we have to do today to set us up to we can get you the three year mark? Not the six month

 Shawn Flynn  10:50 

mark. Okay. So a lot of it is goal setting.

 Ralph Leung  10:53 

Oh, yeah. It's think thinking about what the goals are. But also, what is the execution roadmap, like, how do we actually accomplish what our goals are, rather than just saying, you know, what, in three years, I want to be number top three in the market? Yeah, you know, that's, that's not a goal.

 Shawn Flynn  11:07 

If someone came to you with this dream, hey, I have a three year plan. And, and as you're talking to a person, their three year plan is just that goal at the end,

 and working step by step backwards. There's just, you know, so much information there is not there. What happens in a situation like that.

 Ralph Leung  11:25 

So I mentioned earlier, our typical vetting process, right, we don't take applications, but we have a 2.5 meeting process. tomorrow's meeting is what we talked about is the let's just get along, right? It's just understand each other, what our priorities are, what our values are, what drives us, okay, second meeting is we have a follow up with deep dive into the business based on what you send me Okay, we look at your pitch deck we look at whatever materials that you have, we look at your XL models, right? So we understand your finances and we understand your roadmap. Okay, if that's the worst and then the last point five a meeting you know, we discuss what are working arrangement under scope of work is gonna look like to answer your question though, what happens if someone or founding team says we have a very ambitious goal in three years, we have no idea how to get there.

 Typically, we would, we would get a good sense of that during the first meeting. Okay. And if it's that far away, then we think that's company like that may be a little too early for us. Okay? Because we typically work with companies that have done enough, enough of the legwork enough of the struggles to really understand building companies not easy You can't just you know, outsource a hired gun to come and do it for you, you have to go through the struggles yourself. But at the same time, we also understand that you don't have to do it all by yourself. So once you've done enough to get the product into the market, get some early revenue early users are the pilots you know and you're free to accomplish that chances are you would have thought through what your roadmap is going to look like even at a high level then we come in and actually stress test that model for you. So how important is it for the founder to be coachable in in this situation, it's extremely, extremely important, right? Because if you're not coachable, then why have us with you anyway, right, then we just become a hired gun to simply you want to work with the team. But this is it's the same thing as the way that a VC would think about it, right? When I invest money into a company where the founder of the founding team would not listen to any of the advice or they just looking for a check. And you know, and and some VCs may may may be okay with that, but I'd say most of them would prefer to have work with founders who are coachable because building businesses are hard, right? No one really knows all the answers. So you have to work with the team,

 Shawn Flynn  13:26 

how important is it for the CEO to have kind of a financial background? I your backgrounds from investment bank? Yes, go a little bit more detail about that aspect of it, just the financial model and how important it is for founder where they could maybe develop this area, just basically to have a conversation with investors? Because I guess, and if they don't know, the cap table, or kind of the structure? Yeah, that meeting might be lost?

 Ralph Leung  13:52 

Oh, it's it? That's a good question. That's so I'd say most of the founders that we work with, don't come from finance, or don't come from finance, or not former accountants or investment bankers, or anyone in that world. They're typically product folks, right? They Okay, you the engineer, so the product managers, they know the product, right? Because they have an idea, they have an idea, they want to come with something. So they have the product to answer a question, I would say it's, it's not critical, it's helpful. It's helpful, because, like you said, right, when you're it's typically the CEO, the founders who pitch because the investors want to hear from the CEO, they want to hear from the founders, they want to, they want to feel confident that the CEO, the founding team, has an appreciation for finance, for cash flow for working capital, because the number one reason why talk about working capital, what is it working capital is how much money you got coming in, and how much money you got going out on a net basis, are you working capital positive, which means you're collecting more than you are spending, which gives you more runway or vice versa, you're spending a lot more than you're collecting, which means your time is going to run out soon, right? So any founder has to have a basic appreciation of managing cash. Interesting, right? So you don't have to be finance PhD to, to be a good founder, but you have to have an appreciation for the importance of managing your money.

 Shawn Flynn  15:10 

How important is it that the CEO has that, that respect, I guess for for money, and versus a CFO say there's a team of four CEO, CFO, CTO, sales guy? I don't know. Yeah, CFO, CEO, that that kind of relationship right there, right. Okay, so

 Ralph Leung  15:31 

let's unpack that question. Oh, yeah. Right. For typical startup, at an early stage, you're not going to have for sea level titles.

 Shawn Flynn  15:38 

Oh, four guys have named themselves right level titles, right. So

 Ralph Leung  15:42 

if it's nice team, though, if it's a nice team, nice been the team where, you know, the CEO, the CFO and you name the other c Suite's they have complementary skill sets, that would be very helpful, but in my opinion, it's still very helpful, the CEO, right, and the person who is who is building the business to have some basic understanding of it. And again, we're not talking accounting principles are not talking revenue recognition, and, and those deep detail finance and accounting topics, you know, but in depreciation on how to manage money, because ultimately, that's who investors are going to trust.

 Shawn Flynn  16:14 

It's interesting that you brought up the word trust, we had a guest on last week's episode, Bill, who talked about how important trust was in the wholesale cycle, right. So it's kind of interesting how that gets repeated. He brought up in business though trust factor

 Ralph Leung  16:29 

absolute, especially for early stage companies, right. So going back to the phases that I talked about early stage companies, growth equity, when you're older, and then public, or just large corporations, when you're in the early stage, it's all about trust. And you have to believe that the founding team has the ability to execute, that they're coachable that you can trust the founding team to deliver, right, because you're early, you don't really have much more than the founding team to be able to teach, to get investors to be comfortable. When you're a more developed company, then you can actually look get business results. You look at KPIs, you could look at what the company has accomplished, and what's in the growth and pipeline, but when you're early stage

 Shawn Flynn  17:08 

trust is critical. Interesting. And let's go back to you to your life's roadmap. Okay, I'm kind of curious about it. So you form 88 ships. Yes. What was the desire to form it? And why not stay in the investment banking world? I mean, it's Yeah, cushy area. For my understanding you I died depends on your heart attack. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my Ico Can you

 Ralph Leung  17:30 

know copy of it? That's a good question. But why wants to take a step back and start and start eth ships? Yeah, it's the I reflected on my own career path. You know, after 20 years of thinking about where do I want to spend the next 20 years working, I actually add the most value be the most impactful to people I work with the companies I work with is it continued to do more deals which I very much enjoyed right, working with very large corporations around the world, I learned a ton from add significant value or is it to take that knowledge take that skill set and work with earlier stage companies that typically don't have access to the same caliber of help typically don't have access to the same type of advice right, someone or team who has worked with fortune 100 companies and say, hey Sean, this is this is not how you do it or have you thought about this or to put in that level of sophistication much earlier than you typically would be able to afford but to set you up for success right its name for your show

 Shawn Flynn  18:27 

with that yeah, if you want more information on Silicon Valley successes please visit our website Silicon Valley successes. com also on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn but with that let's go back to Ralph and learn a little bit more so so Ralph, tell me a little bit about you know what startup some of the mistakes they make early that might cost them later well

 Ralph Leung  18:51 

soon. So let's talk about fundraising for a quick sec. Perfect. I think oftentimes, startups think about valuation, right. And for whatever, whatever that's worth, maybe just people focused a lot on on the internet, or

 Shawn Flynn  19:04 

even come up with their valuations

 Ralph Leung  19:07 

depending on the stage of the company, right? You can you can, you can add, you can have a variety of metrics where you can peg it to, you know, how many users you have, how much revenue you have, what your monthly recurring revenue, you know, startups typically aren't profitable, right? So you're not able to use this your traditional valuation metrics that later stage companies would use right here, p multiples, and all these other multiples typically doesn't really work for jargon. People can look up on Google. Yeah, so you know, so, but for early stage companies, you know, it's a little bit looser, but all kind of comes down to economics, one on one, supply and demand, right, depending on how much investors Believe in your company in the future potential of your company,

 you know, how many investors are flocking to it, you know, it's supply and demand, they could potentially drive up valuation that your company itself may not be able to defend. So to answer your question, typically I see as as a common mistake because early fans are so focused on I want to maximize my valuation right away right away. So even before they can really defend it, because going back to what I said at the beginning of the show, is fundraising is not a one shot deal. You got to think of it long term, but you have to think about fundraising in parallel to building a business long term if you overstretch on your valuation too early, what does that set you up for in your next round, potentially a down now potentially flat round or your pressure to deliver because you you a call it you got such a high value talking

 Shawn Flynn  20:32 

about down around flat round real quick shortly. So

 Ralph Leung  20:35 

let's say, you know, Sean, yet you have an amazing company, you did your very first round at a $10 million valuation. So investors said, You know, I want to buy 25% of your company. Yeah, at a $10 million valuation. But that's more than what you really deserve today, because you have for users, people are just investing in you, because it's Sean, right? 97 users, right? 97 users, you know, so that's, that's quite a lot of money per user, your that's, that's a very high valuation. Now, fast forward six months, you say, you go back to these investors and say, You know what, we need more money because we need to grow, they'll say shot, where have you gone with your 97 users? Well, I've gone from 97 to 100, I think, Well, okay, that's fantastic. But from evaluation perspective, you haven't really accomplished that much more. So I'm going to invest either at the same valuation and Australia flat round, while I would say, you know what shot I gave you all this money, you just kind of blew it, and you didn't really grow your user base, even generate much more out only invest, instead of a 10 million valuation, I'm going to value at 5 million. Wow. So that's it down.

 Shawn Flynn  21:38 

So you have to give up a ton of your company then to get the same amount of

 Ralph Leung  21:41 

money if you can even raise around because these these just red flags all over the place, which goes back to should you have taken that validation? That 10 million? Maybe, maybe not

 Shawn Flynn  21:51 

right? What's your opinion, then of startups taken

 raising money? Maybe too early? I mean, should they try to raise as soon as possible to early when they're about to run it? Should they wait to they're about to run out of money before accepting a tech or should they from day one beyond the road trying to raise things?

 Ralph Leung  22:12 

I would, I would recommend the latter, right. I'm a huge fan of planning. And I and I understand when you're building a business, especially for startup things don't work out as planned, more often than not, right. But having a plan. being thoughtful, having a roadmap is super important, in my opinion.

 And then you still piecing putting the pieces together as you go along. Right? Okay, but having some plan to go for, right, just like you're jumping off a cliff and trying to build the plane at same time. But having a plan before you jump off the cliff would be helpful, right. So as you in terms of raising money, same thing, don't wait until the last minute because people can smell you're desperate. Right?

 Shawn Flynn  22:48 

So before we had, I think it was episode nine, we had a Groupon that talked about pivoted and the importance of pivot as a startup. Okay? How important is that? See, you have that three year plan, you've worked it out, these are the steps to get there after your water. You go, Okay, guys, we're not where we should be the markets telling us this. Yes? In your opinion, how important is it to pivot? And what happens in that situation? Do you then alter that whole three year period? I know it depends on the situation, right, case by case, right. But in that situation pivoted and your team coming in reevaluate everything. How does that go

 Ralph Leung  23:24 

to get it depends on why you're pivoting. Okay. Right. Is it because your original strategy failed, right or something has changed? Or is it because the market dynamic has changed is because you found other opportunities that may be a better product market fit for you It depends right are you being proactive or reactive to something good or just something bad so that's that's my investment bank every answer to your question devil it really depends but the my my what I would say though, it is very important that the founding team is open minded like you mentioned earlier, they coachable right open minded coach both to consider pivot and maybe it doesn't have to be a full pivot. Maybe you can just be you know, slight turn.

 Shawn Flynn  24:05 

Okay, so a little bit of recap on what we've talked about today. So far, we've had Ralph Leo vest and bacon background. He's not a founder of 88 ships. They have a full team that comes in and helps these companies actually plan out their goals. three year plans, step by step work with coachable founders, founders have just possibly gone out of accelerators or have some type of product market fit. We've talked about raising funds, and what kind of a mindset what they need to know a little bit of information, what they need to have prepared. overvaluation flat rounds. Down rounds. We've talked about run runway, a lot of a lot of terms that were thrown out there today. So go back in this episode, and go on our website for more information on those terms, and to review things. But with that being said, Rob, what have we missed on this conversation? What one important question Do you often get asked?

 Ralph Leung  25:00 

So I would recommend for founders when given the opportunity to to have help, right? think really hard about receiving that help. As in Yes, it may cost you a little bit today, right? Or Yes, it may be it may come early. And you may feel like you're busy with so many things like getting the right type of help is super important to supercharge in that growth. Well, then, question

 Shawn Flynn  25:23 

on that one. I don't even know if it's if it is the right type of help. Well,

 Ralph Leung  25:29 

number one, as you're building company, you want to try to surround yourself with really good people. Right, that includes your advisors that is at ships, right. So that could be a plug. But as you're thinking about building a team around you, a could be immediate team. It could be your advisors could be a board members, definitely your investors, this becomes your sounding board as you're thinking about, okay, am I bringing in the right, help, this could be full time, senior hires Junior highers consultants, you know platforms like ours that would come in because these, this type of help can really supercharge the growth of the business, right. And I've seen many, many times where founders are saying, you know, we're very much interested. But we're so busy with something super myopic, super narrow, super myopic, and they're forgetting about the force.

 Shawn Flynn  26:15 

So Ralph with that we have about a minute left. Can you talk about one how people can contact you who your ideal client is, and anything else you want people to know?

 Ralph Leung  26:27 

Sure. My contact information is Ralph at 88 ships. So that's eight, eight sh, IPS. com companies. I typically work with all technology based, there are three sectors that I typically focus on. One is consumer tech, the others internet, which includes marketplaces, and that works. And the third is FinTech. And in terms of the stage of the business, we typically work with fairly early stage companies that have raised a little bit of money themselves. So their initial seed round a couple million dollars that have a product in the market ready, they're generating early revenue or pilot with a client that feel like they have figured out the product market fit and they say, you know what, we're ready for that next stage that's really focused on growth rather than fit. That's where we come in. And supercharge. We're out.

 Shawn Flynn  27:11 

This was an amazing episode. There's so much information so everyone at home, please visit us at Silicon Valley successes, and we look forward to the next week's episode. We have some amazing guests and we're here to help you. We want to make sure that you become the next success.

 Show Announcer  27:26 

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful and your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes. com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember, we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

 Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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💰Sales Done Right, Best Advice for Startups

Phil Solk is a managing partner at Opero Partners. Providing strategic advice and hands-on implementation services to companies seeking to significantly enhance their growth trajectories.

He is a seasoned executive (former C-level, VP and directors) with functional expertise in marketing, sales management, operations, product & technology development, finance strategy, funding & M&A.

We interview him on Sales techniques, best practices, and advice for startups.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

💰Sales Done Right, Best Advice for Startups

Phil Solk is a managing partner at Opero Partners. Providing strategic advice and hands-on implementation services to companies seeking to significantly enhance their growth trajectories.

He is a seasoned executive (former C-level, VP and directors) with functional expertise in marketing, sales management, operations, product & technology development, finance strategy, funding & M&A.

Shawn Flynn 0:00

This week on Silicon Valley successes we have Phil sock who is a business to business sales consultant here in Silicon Valley many years experience and he's got a lot of great information that's going to help startups around the world. So stay tuned.

Show Announcer 0:21

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes. We interview experts and entrepreneurs to get the world access to the knowledge and experience that is here in Silicon Valley. Our mission is to create opportunities for those who seek them and help you to become the next Silicon Valley success.

Shawn Flynn 0:42

Welcome back to Silicon Valley successes so filled Could you please introduce yourself?

phil 0:47

Yes, thank you, Sean. So I've been working in high tech in Silicon Valley, and a couple other parts of the country for large companies and a lot of startups. And over time I saw the pattern and what makes top line revenue grow. And so a couple folks and got together and more recently started a consulting firm to help companies grow their top line revenue

Shawn Flynn 1:11

interested. So Phil, I just want to go right into the questions. So I've heard of b2b sales. I've heard a b2c but what's the difference?

phil 1:20

I think the easiest way to get at that is, is talked about the longer version B to B to C. Okay, tell me about that

Shawn Flynn 1:28

business to business to consumer. Sorry, I should have been a little clear at the beginning. Yeah, all works.

phil 1:33

So let's say you sell software to a restaurant to help them run their business better. Okay, that part is b2b, but your software might also affect consumers, like making reservations, or giving feedback. So even though you're selling to a business part of your functions, go to the consumer. So that's B to B to C, when you get involved with their

Shawn Flynn 1:55

customers interested. So is there any difference though, between b2b sales Peter, see, sales are b2b to see sales,

phil 2:03

there are more alike than different, because in b2b, b2c, or b2b to see your primary customer and concern is still the business you're selling to. Okay, regardless of whether you get involved downstream with their customers

Shawn Flynn 2:15

interested. Now, if I was a salesperson, though, if you're saying it's pretty similar, the sales I mean, how, how do I actually go about it? Can you walk me through the steps of meeting that client?

Yeah, just walk me through it.

phil 2:32

Yes, what tends to work is not come across as pushy, that's rule number one, okay. Because you're having trying to have a dialogue and develop a customer might be a better term than selling. And so if you want to develop a relationship with someone,

it's really helpful to understand what problems are trying to solve, okay, because it's something that's easy to talk to. And obviously, if you don't have a really firm understanding of the problems, it's going to hurt to continue to build credibility with that prospective client.

After you've got a thorough understanding what problems are trying to solve. You don't want to jump into what's in it for yourself, keep the conversation going, and stay on their side of the table. So you can ask them questions like, what have you tried, I didn't want to recommend something that they're already convinced doesn't work, even though it may work. Okay. So it's a good transition to continue the conversation going. And then the next step is still the stay away from your company and my customers, and how wonderful we are, okay, talk to them about what capabilities they see

that would help them solve their problems. Okay, the longer you can stay on the same side of the table, the better the trust will develop, and the more likely you'll be able to connect with that particular customer. So when you go into this meeting with this customer, and you'd mentioned the very beginning you're trying to, to find learn about them, how much research Have you done about them prior? Have you looked at their website? Have you asked some of their customers? How much research Have you done before that meeting as much as you possibly can, but it does gauge on how many customers you have to work with per day. Okay, so if you're like setting up for someone, and you meet a customer, a prospective customer, once every two weeks, just do a lot of research. Okay. But sometimes you have to try to reach out to 10 prospective customers in a day. Oh, wow. So you got it's all over the board, depending on the nature of your business. So matter is proportionally to sound competent, and to start with the impression that you're knowledgeable, and you've done your homework so that they do trust you. Because contrary to the illusion that people buy from people they like in the b2b world is people really buy from people they trust.

Shawn Flynn 4:50

Interesting. So then, let's go to the second part you'd mentioned. So the first was to find out information about the company. And then the second part you'd mentioned was to ask them questions? Is there like a list of questions you normally go through? Like, these are the five questions? Is that a 10? Or how do you go about talking to the person without semen, I guess intrusive or making him uneasy, that you're just kind of trying to steal secrets or something,

phil 5:20

also, you have the concern that even if they tolerate questions, if you keep asking them, eventually, they'll get disengaged.

And it varies a lot by the product. But the idea is, or the service because you need to be pretty knowledgeable about those and know the typical problems that people are going to mention. So you might ask some swift called situational questions about the size of their company, or some things you couldn't find out that are really critical, okay, in your research, but then you need to jump in and and talk about, hey, what types of problems are you working on? And what Where did your interest in talking to us come from, so I can kind of help out and provide useful information. So it is different if you're the one reaching out to them versus them reaching out to you, there's all kinds of nuances. And the key is to be proficient enough in the area to be able to have a flexible conversation where you can get their point of view out. And the reason that the CEO is so critical to top line revenue growth is it starts at the top, okay. And they need that feedback, not only to know how to connect with prospective clients better, but if they're going to guide the how the offering or the product or the service goes, they have to have a first hand feedback. And so they're the most important people to get this process started as they bring on sales, people will feel people will have that domain knowledge provided to you.

Shawn Flynn 6:39

Okay, so let's go back to second. So the CEOs, most important, so if this is an early stage company, early stage startup, say there's four people on their team. Mm hmm. So the CEO how much the sales process say they have a b2b product. Mm hmm. And how important is sales skills for him, and when he talking noise trying to grow the company. Talk a little bit about that, please?

phil 7:03

Well, it's very rare that a CEO and lesser than multiple companies would have that skill,

Unknown 7:10

okay.

phil 7:11

And it's totally fine for them to hire someone with that expertise and employee or consultant because they can't create the process while they're trying to create the company.

The key is not for them to become the most effective sales people, okay, but to understand what their customers really want, and that sales professional or consultant can help them with their knowledge of how these things work, and how to give them feedback in these meetings. But fundamentally, they need to learn to a certain level in order to really understand and refine what market problem they're trying to solve.

Shawn Flynn 7:46

So if later or in these means that they're getting a lot of feedback, and the feedback might be negative, how important is it that the CEO is able to listen to that feedback and possibly pivot the company for the company's success? Or should he just kind of brush it off and go to the next potential client?

phil 8:08

It's kind of funny, because

there's someone who's been in 13 startups, and now we teach you Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia. Oh, and Stanford MBAs are pretty talented people,

but

there are certain of it, and I'm going to go with their judgment, okay. And he went to the administration resigned in the middle of the sense semester, why the students were supposed to talk to 10, people didn't even have to be prospective clients with their business idea. And he found they were just frightened to do it, even these really talented people. And the only solution he had is he went to the next class and announced anyone who doesn't see 10 people, I will flunk them in the class. So that solved the problem. But it was more a competing fair thing, as opposed to getting the CEO comfortable with getting that feedback which you need, even in a big company on the way in order to lead the company.

Shawn Flynn 9:06

So how important is confidence then, as a CEO,

phil 9:11

well, conference, it's kind of an elusive thing, okay. But they're really persistent. People

aren't afraid to make fools of them cells frequently. So it's just more of a persistence thing, then I'm feeling comfortable. Because again, for most CEOs that are doing startups, they have no experience space to feel comfortable from.

Shawn Flynn 9:30

Okay, for people at home that don't really have too much for sales background, we pulled some questions from from some startups. And one of the questions that came up was, you know, any misconceptions in the industry, for example, the importance of being able to close a sale, how important is that?

phil 9:50

Well, it's still a wide misconception in the industry today, that somehow closing

Shawn Flynn 9:57

someone for people that don't know Queen, little bit closer means Okay,

phil 10:02

that's a good thing. So

in the b2c environment, it's easy to talk about is like, you kind of want to buy some shoes now. And if you get pressured a little bit, you'll make an impulse buy. Okay, so it's like, would you like those in brown or black, right, and you're creating pressure on the prospective client. And impulsively they might say, brown and they buy it and you're in great shape their most people don't bet their jobs in the b2b environment on being pressured. And the number one complaint is that the vast majority of sales people or pushy Oh, and so it breaks the relationship very early on. And so studies including one of 38,000 sales call showed trying to pressure and using closing statements to get that by is really correlated to losing the sale. Oh, but it's still a popular misconception.

Shawn Flynn 10:54

Yeah, do you have any stories of aggressive sales people?

phil 10:58

Um, I think the one that confuses people the most is there are certain companies that are well known in the valley. We won't name names that hired super, ultra aggressive sales people, okay. And even after they stopped growing, it's so ingrained in their culture, that they're alienating people left and right, okay. And what's happening is in the beginning, there's so much pull for their product, and you're trying to capture market share. And you can hire pretty much anybody and just aggressively fire anybody who doesn't meet their number because it's less important that you about alienating prospective clients than capturing market share. Because your product speaks for itself. Oh, and so that's a little of how this closer mentality gets continues on

Shawn Flynn 11:45

to try and say the the product was in such high demand, anyone could have sold it. And they basically hired aggressive people thought they were doing a great job because of how much they were expanding. But in reality, it was the product and that's situation.

phil 12:00

Yeah, and there's a lot of, particularly in Silicon Valley, more than any place in the world. There's a lot of disruptive technologies, which are a fraction of the price all new function much more accessible. So that situation happens much more frequently here.

Shawn Flynn 12:17

interested. So back to a startup founder, so startup founder, he was the one doing the sales b2b or b2c. But now they've grown a little bit they, they've gotten some funding, and they're ready to hire their first salesperson. What should that see, you'll be looking for in that salesperson. And let's go back to that CEO really doesn't have sales experience. I mean, he tried it, they've tried it,

phil 12:42

but they still haven't, they haven't got a long track record.

Shawn Flynn 12:44

But now they have the budget to hire that one guy, what kind of questions should they ask, what should they look for? How can they get the best person,

phil 12:55

the people that close the most business, whether they're starting in sales, or very advanced,

always are able to get them their prospective clients or customers side of the table,

they've learned through trial and error, that pushing people isn't something people like. So one of the big characteristics are folks who have really good communication skills to kind of figure out what's going on when things don't work and actually are empathetic and they're not just faking, being interested in the prospective customers problems, because customers, customers, and people in general, genuine in general are very, very, very savvy about when somebody's being genuine or not, okay, if you're not genuinely empathetic, you're not going to, it's not going to come across. Additionally, it's helpful that they've had how to college one real world job, because that's kind of an eye opener, okay. And even better still, if they've been under quarter pressure, some personality types in just very, very distracting to them. And if they have those qualities I mentioned earlier, and they've had those two experiences, you've got good odds of having success.

Shawn Flynn 14:08

Okay, how difficult would it be for a small startup, though, to recruit that person reverse? I'm guessing most of them would go to a corporation or someone that has, you know, bigger expense account?

phil 14:22

Yeah, well, the people who have really pro proven track records are typically not going to go into a startup unless the customer traction is overwhelming.

Unknown 14:32

Okay. Can you talk about customer traction? Yeah, that is,

phil 14:36

you'd be just the CEOs, ideas so powerful that even with their limited experience, and selling just like the example those Silicon Valley disruptive companies, yeah, people just want to buy it because they're already know what the problem is, they're already looking for capabilities. And, and they already can't find them. So in the attic stream, just going out and talking to people without sales skills, you'll make sales, okay. And then there's a big spectrum all the way to something that people don't even understand. And so the more traction the more people are wanting to buy the product without all the skills, but just because it's so needed in the market, that's what sales people are looking for. Because then they can apply their skills and boost the company's revenue and earnings dramatically.

Shawn Flynn 15:22

Okay, one of these sales people say, you hire one, you found him super talented, not sure how you got him. But you got him?

How much leeway how much autonomy should the CEO give him?

phil 15:37

Well, really good people like that are really many CEOs, or CEO and development type people. And so they're very creative. And they if you have a product that's got good customer traction, and they're not selling things that your company can't deliver what you discover,

you want to be able to, to give them leeway. But you need to make sure that their incentive incentive plan is very aligned with the company's so the typical problems that they're measured by revenue, and you're measured by profitability, yeah, their incentive 10 times more than you are to discount. And so they're going to do that to maximize learning, just like the CEOs trying to maximize their earnings. Okay, so aligning the compensation so then everybody's when, when we eliminate a lot of headaches,

Shawn Flynn 16:29

interested, and back to the questions that that we pulled, someone's brought up sales hostage, do you do you know what that is? Can you go into detail, I have never heard that that term before.

phil 16:42

If you talk to CEOs who've had on successful experiences, even startups, they know exactly what it means. And the most extreme example I know is a founder was very, very technical and passionate, he had a way that hospitals could quickly tell

there are people was going downhill, even though people were noticing. In fact, the poor fella lost his wife to the situation.

And he came up with a method that hospitals could use to do this. But he really was so uncomfortable with trying to sell that he hired somebody, and that person actually was executive and they hired a few people could sell. And the problem is, is that person kept selling. And every time he would sell more, he would ask for a greater piece of the pie. And then they the founder, got in an increasingly awkward situation where as a revenue grew, he was more dependent on this person, to the point where almost none of the Prophet was coming to the company. And he couldn't fire this fellow. And so basically, the company was bound to collapse after the Commission's and unpaid and so he basically was in a position to lose his company, because he didn't get involved. And this sales executive had complete power.

Shawn Flynn 17:58

Wow. So for more information on that, please visit Silicon Valley successes, visit us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social media channels. But let's get back to the interview. So Phil, that was an amazing example there. So how much

control could a CEO take back in a situation? Or how does he put boundaries there, so something like that that hostage sale situation doesn't happen?

phil 18:26

Well, the only one I know about is what we talked about earlier, which is you can't be afraid to go out there not to deliver the bunch of the revenue, but to stay enough in contact with your prospective buyers to know when the head of sales is really doing it properly. And to be in a position to take it over. If need be, as long as the person working for you knows they don't have a monopoly on growing the company, you're in a much stronger position. And of course, aligning the plans to make sure that it's a win win when we talked about is also really important.

Shawn Flynn 19:04

So for a salesperson, what type of compensation should a startup give that person should be equity? Should it be base plus commission? Should it be 100%? commission? What What can the CEO gift specially of an early stage company that doesn't have much money?

phil 19:24

Yeah, well, the more customer traction you've got, when you're hiring the person, the more the equity will be attractive without customer traction, you know, a good sales representative is going to be looking more for commissions and dollars.

Unknown 19:40

Okay.

phil 19:41

The other thing too, is, the more convinced the candidate is that they want to be part of your company, the more they'll display an interest for commissions over base, and they'll take more commissions more leverage, because that's their way of telling you, I think I can get a lot of customers and I'm willing to bet my compensation on it interested.

Shawn Flynn 20:04

So with that, what advice would you give for for an early stage founder about sales in general, or anyone at home that really doesn't know anything about sales were kind of just start

phil 20:18

again, I would just learn by get comfortable going out and talking to your target market and understanding thoroughly about what their problems are very thoroughly looking at objectively of, of what you can deliver, and what you might be able to deliver. And then make sure there's a very clear definition for success with those early customers and get that feedback and keep improving the value provide interesting. So,

Shawn Flynn 20:44

so far today, we've talked about b2b to see sales. We've talked about the CEO and some of their sales skills. We've also talked about hostage situation with sales. We've talked about compensation for your sales rep, and recruiting sales rep, we've talked about about many areas, what questions do you normally get that we've missed today?

phil 21:09

I think all of those, we've covered the vast majority of them, but the one is how to put it, I put together enough materials and content

to get the sales people I do hire up to where they're profitable, because once a salesman is breakeven, you can hire another one. So you want to get that learning curve to be as small as possible,

Shawn Flynn 21:34

what are ways to shorten that learning curve?

phil 21:37

Like we've I don't want to harp on it. But I like being out there to understand what works

spending the time to figure out how someone who doesn't have your background can be not as proficient as you but more proficient and what works and doesn't work as you watch them come up to speed?

Shawn Flynn 21:56

And then what sales advice would you give someone that has five or 10 years experience in sales,

phil 22:05

there's this effect where after you've been successful for a while, and you're making a living in sales versus a lot of people who can't and that you've learned all there is to know

so you can ask your prospective clients and the people who didn't buy from you, you know, did you feel I was genuine? Did you feel I understood your problems? Did you understand? Did I make it clear where we might provide value? And overall, did you build trust with me? And they'll tell you, if you really want to know

Shawn Flynn 22:40

how important is it, I'm just going to go back to that question of hiring the salesperson to have that person already have an established network in that area that you're selling.

phil 22:53

Yeah, the challenges and let's see, there's all kinds of different markets. But let's talk about someone with a start in a lot of the tone. The challenge for someone started with a startup, assuming there's not huge traction, in which case you can attract anybody there is someone who really does have that network can everybody will claim to has too many options. And they will go to the place where the customer traction is most established. And they don't have to create the sales process and do all the things we've talked about. So that's the key is don't rely too heavily on the network. Because you really won't know how strong it is. And a lot of people who have a network, what that means is they've sold to them in the past. But that doesn't mean that they've built a lot enough trust coming with something new, it might mean that the company was really desperate and needed the product. And they actually alienated the customer interest. So it's very hard to assess networks ahead of time. People who really have them have lots of options. So just be careful with that becomes too dominant, you're hiring.

Shawn Flynn 24:02

And another question about the CEO and the first sales hire, what type of KPIs key performance indicators should they set for that salesperson, how to go about thinking those up making that those dates in that that quota.

phil 24:19

So the first person you hire is the one who's going to be kind of like your guide in the wilderness they've been to selling so they know what our fees are, and they know how to read signals better than someone just a request for request for prize for press for quote, this is where they mail out all these big documents, and let everybody beat themselves up to win the business, right. So they know all the link of as just demonstrated. So that's that first person, that first person is working with you, and you'll be involved with them very intimately. When you get to the next person who's going to try to learn the map, that the KPI is really how many sales they close and building them a ramp that's realistic. So month by month and month, the level of business they need to develop is accelerating, okay, because you're trying to get them within whatever you know, your training time to be, or what you can afford that if they can't get up to being profitable, and whether that's 6090, you know, four months that they know that it's not going to work out.

Shawn Flynn 25:26

And then for a CEO or a startup founder, what's the one piece of advice, most most powerful advice you could give them?

phil 25:36

Don't be afraid to go out and talk to your prospective clients. It's the only way

Shawn Flynn 25:40

right and Phil, we got a minute left. Could you tell the audience once again, how they can reach you

what type of consulting you do your ideal client, all that all that jazz?

phil 25:51

Yes, certainly,

my clients are. Typically b2b clients are almost exclusively actually. And they took basically, occasionally it'll be an individual CEO who's got something working really well. And they're ready to hire two or three people because they not only know what they're doing, but they're ready to externalize it so they can bring people on but typically it's three or four sales people up to about 40 above that it's very complicated to change fundamentally how they're approaching things

if they want to reach me my email address because I love to have coffees with people you can tell I'm kind of enthusiastic about the topic and they can just email me at Phil at Oprah partners. com. Could you spell that out, please? Certainly. That's o p. r EU partners, all one word.com.

Shawn Flynn 26:42

That's great. And Phil, I want to thank you for for coming on Silicon Valley successes. This is an amazing episode and there's a ton of great information so everyone at home. Our next guest is Ralph Lauren, who is former investment banker who founded 88 ships. So we look forward to for Next Episode. Thank you guys.

Show Announcer 27:04

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes. com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember, we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

✔Sales Talk 101, What your start-up needs to know Ep12

Versatile business development representative with ten years of experience managing books of businesswithin different industries and verticals selling B2B services to enterprises of all sizes.

Shawn Flynn 0:16

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes. I'm your host, Sean Flynn. I've worked with incubators, accelerators, angels, VCs over the years and I've been excited about helping the startup ecosystem and doing this this TV show here and on today we have an amazing guest we have wit Hallett who is a sales consultant that works with companies at all stages and we're going to find out a lot of tips and tricks and knowledge that will help startups at home for sales and marketing so with that let's start the show

Unknown 1:07

so welcome

Shawn Flynn 1:07

back to Silicon Valley success is now with Can you please give an introduction a little bit about yourself?

Whit Howland 1:13

Sure. Of course my name is what Howland I have been selling in the greater bay area for about three and a half years and in sales for the bulk of my career. And I've recently joined up with an accelerator selling accelerators, French tech hub, okay, out of out of the dog batch witches and city selling for different startups that are primarily French by origins trying to enter the US marketplace. So they could be a startup, it could be anything from data analytics platform to cyber security, to act to, you know,

some type of IoT device so the the products that I'm selling or representing can range and the nature of them but they're all the companies are looking for

quote unquote, US market share. So they're all trying to gain a foothold somehow in the US marketplace. And that's what I assist them in doing.

Shawn Flynn 2:08

So you help these French companies, these early stage startups that want to enter the US market, you help them with their sales here, make introductions, that right

Whit Howland 2:18

in a way, yeah, so I am a sales consultant. So I maybe make introductions is, I would say, I wouldn't necessarily say make introductions, as much as I would say, try to gain the market share. So it could be the end customer that I sell the product to,

it could also be some type of partnership or co distributor ship deal that would in in essence, distribute the product, but it wouldn't necessarily be the end user that would be buying from me. So it's whatever strategic decisions strategic sales decisions are made from the owners and in Paris or in France and how they're entering the US. It should be noted that I'm not only a sales console, I'm a sales consultant for

French tech hub. But I also do sales on my own. So I represent companies outside of French companies trying to sell in the US.

Shawn Flynn 3:09

Great, so I guess let's start with French tech hub, or just companies from France coming to the US and then talked about Kennedy's here. So how do you talk to them about sales strategy? And what's their initial idea of entering the market? And how do you kind of work with them to give them more of a realistic idea of how to go about things in the pipeline, and the sales channels, all that stuff,

Whit Howland 3:34

the first thing I try to keep in mind always is time, I need them to be realistic. quite frequently, I'll say I create sales leads the objective of sales factory is to get sales leads, right?

Quite often, I think I have them in my front pockets. Okay, I don't, I'll tell you the first one to admit I do not, if if you show up tomorrow, and ask them ask me for those leads, I don't know exactly where I'm going to get them, I'm going to try to source them different ways. But I don't just because you showed up, it doesn't mean I know where to go. So that's the first thing I would say is time, you got to be very realistic with what is appropriate, and what's inappropriate in terms of that. And, and the second thing I would say is be concise, Be as specific as you possibly can for what it is that you're going for. If you want

any business, in any market, in any industry, that's going to be a lot more difficult if I have my first statement is time is your is the first thing you understand. And you want any business at all, it's going to take a lot more time to get any business at all. But if you can specifically say, I need a certain market segment out of I need five of these 100 companies, or I want these top 25 companies, these are the guys that I'm going for, then it becomes much, much easier for me to isolate and figure out who I need to contact at those companies, how I can network into those companies, how I can cold call those companies, for example. So those would be the two things I would say Initially, I run into time and then being as concise as you possibly can.

Shawn Flynn 5:09

Well, tell me about time, I guess, what are the steps that might take time? And how long would they take.

Whit Howland 5:16

So what's going to take the most amount of time is understanding what your value proposition is, to the US market, what who it is you're going to sell the product to and where you're going to sell it. So what market or what industry what sector

quite frequently, sales in Europe is different than sales in the United States, elsewhere in the world, that many people quite often want to know everything that the company does, and they want to know A to Z, right, they want to fully vet the startup, or they want to fully vet the technology before they do anything at all here in the US, it's a different sales cycle. If I come to you, as a salesman, I am very quickly trying to identify what your need is, and that's what I'm going to sell to, right, this is my product, and it's going to solve this need that you have. And therefore we have a what I would call attention and we have a buying motive

that I think is one thing that's a big difference sales in the US versus sales elsewhere in the world. And so coming here, you do need to understand that mentality. But you also more than anything, need to understand the mentality that, you know, there will be a market capability and there will be

the need to know that you are going to enter the market in the appropriate way. So you need to enter you. So going after the the the appropriate customers,

Shawn Flynn 6:39

okay, so a startup came to you and said, this is our product, we want to get connections to these companies. And you looked at it and said, realistically, no, you should go to these companies? Or how would you talk to them to actually give more of a realistic or more guidance from years experience here that they might not have?

Whit Howland 7:00

Sure. So I would say a lot of it has to do with strategy and and coming up with before you go out contacting potential customers before you go selling to those customers coming up with a strategy for who's the right market who's the right customer fit. So quite frequently, that and that does happen, they'll often say, I'm ready to go into sales. And I go, and you go back through the list, and they have no sales support documentation, or they have no ability to deliver the sale if you were to make the sale, right? If I were to pass you a lead, and then the worst thing a salesman can get if I pass you the lead is, oh, well, I can't deliver that sale for another three months.

Do you know what kind of work just went in for me to get that lead for you how much how much effort that is, that's a lot of time and blood, sweat and tears. And nonetheless, My blood, sweat and tears. And so not having the sale that not having the support to deliver the sales. Something else that I look for, I looked very closely at it, will the company be able to deliver the product and service that they say that they have. And it's quite oftentimes it's not by no fault of their own. These are startups. So what you're looking for when you sell for a startup is maybe a little bit more mature of a company maybe a Series B or series C, as opposed to a seed round and a company that's the seed or series a what if a seed company or an A round company comes to you and says, Listen, our MVP is now ready. We want to go to market what's your advice there?

Can I see the MVP?

First step is what information you say you say I'm ready to go to market. So So what makes you think you're ready to go to market and walk me through that step through that sales process? One of the great thing is one of the one idea that I have is quite often to do a role play with me. So if I were going to buy that product and I were to sit in that sales meeting, how would you sell it to me? How would you position the product and just just be me like you and me talking right now sell it to me as you would anybody else and see how well the sales pitches and whether or not you maybe have some of the appropriate documentation in that role play what I'll ask for I'll ask for maybe a use case or I'll ask for white papers which is sometimes maybe not lacking but sometimes it could be better so to speak.

Shawn Flynn 9:24

So the documentation would you recommend the founder do it on his own or would you recommend them finding professionals, copywriters or that to work with or how would you recommend them creating these documents the sales sheets

Whit Howland 9:38

I think acculturation what they call is acculturation. So what one word means in France doesn't in French doesn't necessarily mean the same and direct translation to English.

Or there's a certain way of interpreting a phrase or a common saying over in France, as opposed to how it would be said here. I don't necessarily know that copyright is now necessary all the way you don't necessarily need to go get a lawyer who can be pretty expensive to copyright something, but certainly taking the advice from somebody who is a native speaker of the language I would recommend

saying if I said to a Frenchman a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush they would say what or if I said hey close only accounts with horseshoes and hand grenades. I said if I just nonchalantly today, horseshoes, and hand grenades and you know what I meant. Right, because closing accounts they would have no clue was in that language in that culture that those means those are there's a different way to say that right. So that's that's acculturation I think there's a big difference between translation and making sure you get it culturally correct.

Shawn Flynn 10:38

Okay, now, let's go for a start up here in the US that you're working with, short low from Silicon Valley we're trying to work with they come to you they don't have any sales material yet, how would you go about coaching them on getting that

Whit Howland 10:50

that that's almost where there would be a

tougher a breaking point is where I wouldn't necessarily sell for them right away. As much as I would say, this is the type of insurance that I would like to see before I sell that would be kind of a red flag for me, if you don't have white papers, if you don't have if you don't want

Shawn Flynn 11:08

my markers wondered, for people out there,

Whit Howland 11:10

a white paper is a something that you might pick up at a trade show just a one page PDF, right up on whatever the product or services that you can easily hand and if I were to read through it, it would give me a good I would have a good understanding of what the product is or services that you're attempting. So

Shawn Flynn 11:29

tell me about sales cycles.

Whit Howland 11:32

Sure, sales cycles are one of the critical parts of a sales process. It's understanding how long it's going to take you from day one conversation, one to finishing the sale to completing the delivery of the product.

sales cycles are maybe one of the things that are very well and misunderstood in the world of sales. quite frequently, somebody will say, I have a three week sales cycle and react, they just really wish they had a

reality. They've got a six month sales, I think that's what you have. So that's essentially by definition, what a sales cycle is. And then they are critical to the process.

Shawn Flynn 12:12

Okay, could you break down a sale cycle.

Whit Howland 12:16

So a sale cycle is going to essentially be a start to finish aware what it takes to initiate a conversation, and to close a sale. So if I were selling a product that require me to meet somebody face to face, my sales cycle, maybe, let's call it two months. So I would make my initial phone call, I would set up an appointment within the first two weeks of MONTH one, I would try to get some type of buying at the first meeting of why they wanted the product or what their motivating factor may be to buy the product and other words, What's the need that they're going to meet.

And from there, there would be a quote process. So you've probably by the end of month one, maybe send a quote, welcome back and give you some feedback on the quote towards the middle of month to you should be ready to send a final quote, or send a final proposal. And in a two month sales cycle, maybe through the course of three or four meetings and two quotes, you have a standard sale, that's basically what a sales cycle is.

Shawn Flynn 13:20

Okay? And then what's kind of your view. So there's two startup founders from maybe a team of three engineers, they're creating a product now they have to actually start making revenue, one of them goes, Okay, I'll start doing sales for the team. What would your advice be, if that group came to you? And they had no experience in sales before, no experience of sales, but they all have masters and PhDs. Oh,

Whit Howland 13:43

even better friends, family and LinkedIn profiles. The first place I start, who do you see? What you want to look for? Is know like, and trust. That's the answer you're trying to. That's what you're trying to get to. Who do I who knows me? Who likes me? who trusts me? Okay, start there. You can start with who knows like and trust the people they might not buy your product, but at least the listen to your sales pitch. Because they know they like and they trust you. If you have no experience in sales, and you're a bunch of PhDs and engineers you're going to butcher you're gonna you're gonna butcher the sales pitch quite frequently early on. So you really want to do it with people that won't call you out on it that won't force you to get to the end of the sale quickly will actually listen to the sales pitch.

Shawn Flynn 14:26

Great. So earlier on Silicon Valley successes I think was episode four we had doors Pickering with Silicon Valley speaks that gave a lot of tips on honing your your sales pitch. So if you want to watch that episode, please visit Silicon Valley successes.com. Once again, that's Silicon Valley successes. com for more information. And also visit our Facebook and check us out on LinkedIn. Now, let's get back to whit, whit please tell us a little bit more about maybe a founder, they have a team they've raised some funding, they want to hire a sales person, what attributes or qualities should they look for in hiring that person? What should they expect from him or her

Unknown 15:08

dog in a specific industry that this will say

Shawn Flynn 15:13

it's an IoT IoT company, IoT device of some sort, okay,

Whit Howland 15:19

so the attributes of somebody that you're looking for in sales,

it can vary if there are technical expert, if there is there's a need for that technical expertise of some type within the IoT world, you might be looking for somebody with a little bit more experience, and maybe not as not as much cold calling. For example, if you're looking to hire one person, I would say almost 100% of the time, if I'm going to hire a sales person, I'm looking for the person itself, who was going out and representing the product sales is one of those things that I can't, you know, if I'm your boss, I'm not going to show up in your bed and wake you up in the morning. You got to get up and you got to do it yourself. And it's it is unforgiving. I know many people think sales is an easy thing, or, oh, salesmen aren't that bright or they're not. You know, they're only there only reiterating a regurgitating whatever it is. The company told them to say, and I die I'm a sales I disagree, of course, but might be right. But what I do think is that because they have that mentality, because they have that genre about that reputation. Quite often people think, well, you can just get any salesmen out there that are a dime a dozen. So I would go for somebody with a little bit if I'm a startup of three selling in an IoT world

probably somebody that has a little bit of experience in sales but for the most part has the tenacity to go out there and actually build a book of business actually build a group of clients that will buy this product because that knitting nitty gritty Enos that you know, you call it the stick to witness that common the phrase and sales is very, very difficult to find it is a tough commodity, fine.

Shawn Flynn 17:03

Okay. Now, how should a startup founder that doesn't really know much about sales kind of measure the progress of their sales person, like, for example, I was eavesdropping in a conversation earlier about one startup that had a sales representative, and then just fired that person. I didn't hear the whole conversation. Yeah, but I think you heard so I was

Whit Howland 17:25

in I was in the conversation. Yeah?

Shawn Flynn 17:26

Could you tell a little bit about that without giving any names without see main from your opinion?

Whit Howland 17:33

Yeah, so the story to catch the viewers up is basically a founder of a company fired a salesperson that they had that was making appointments for them,

I don't have all the details from my perspective they were making, they were scheduling an appointment a day, based off the time and the numbers that I was shown, I broke it down to meaning that they in a one month period, they worked for 14 days, and they scheduled 13 appointments in my if you were going to do that, depending on what you're scheduling an appointment for? I'd say that's pretty good.

And I'd say I would be very happy if I was the founder getting 13 appointments in a one month period. And the other question that I would kind of ask the founders, exactly how many appointments were you hoping to get out of this

appointment setting is and very unforgiving thing to do. You sit at a phone all day, and you sit there and you smile and you dial dialing for dollars, it was another way to put it I and so what I heard in that story is the founder was the apparently the founder said it seemed like they were wasting time it seemed like from the clock and the amount of time that they were on the phone versus not on the phone. There was a lot of 30 minute windows gaps where they were unable to see what the appointment setter was doing.

I've been on that phone before I know what it means to sit that chair.

I would say that's an overreaction by the founder. If you have somebody who's producing sales or producing your leads, and you have no other viable option to get those sales or to get those leads, I think very carefully about letting somebody go, who's actually producing numbers.

Shawn Flynn 19:20

Okay, so that's very interesting that appointments are kind of a key indicator of performance.

Another thing I'd like to talk about the marketing and sales team, how they interact, could you talk about that for early stage companies, because early stage company, the salesperson might also be the marketer might also be biz dev might be all these roles. Right? Right. Right. Right. Right. How do they balance their time, what type of

Whit Howland 19:46

what are you what we what you want to see from marketing, from a sales perspective, our leads that are qualified, that's already by qualified leads, it has to be some lead that makes a difference, somebody that will listen to the sales pitch, or somebody that will take the appointment. And as actually considered the product, there are plenty of marketing arms of company of marketing the arm of a marketing marketing arm of a company. Well, I appreciate that there are plenty of marketing arms that will deliver junk leads. And that's the most frustrating type of lead to go on. If you're a salesman, because you show up and you're expecting to sell a $50,000 data analytics product to a pet food mom and pop pet food store. It's like, where does lead come from? Who gave me this? I just drove an hour for this thing. So that's one of the areas where marketing and sales kind of meetup within a startup, but I would say is qualified leads, we want to make sure that the leads that you're bringing in the door, however it is, you're getting them LinkedIn advertisements, Google advertisements, they qualify,

Shawn Flynn 20:49

okay, what type of feedback? Should the sales team give the marketing team? If there's now two people say that the company's is big

Whit Howland 20:55

enough to have a

Shawn Flynn 20:56

few people? What type of information should they giving communication back and forth to actually help each other do more in their their

Whit Howland 21:04

what they want to talk about is why they're buying or why the say what the sales people believe, is the buying mode of and other words, What's the need for the marketing lead that I sent you, if I sent you a marketing leading their salesmen want you to come back and say, this was not a good lead? Because it didn't have this XYZ need? What is it that you're selling to? What are you selling for? And are you able to meet that within the marketing within the marketing arm? So are you identifying the people who are going to buy for the motives and the reasons that you think that they're going to buy for?

Shawn Flynn 21:37

Okay, how do you first discovered these reasons or mode is for them by and if you haven't sold any products, yet, you're developing your product value

Whit Howland 21:44

proposition to the market of course, what's your company what your product, your service do better? Different, we're not different, are not better than anybody else out there, are you copycatting another company? Or you just simply doing are you lift and you're the second one, which is not a bad company to be Don't get me wrong? But every successful but, you know, are you just the are you the second mover in the market, which is you know, again, it's okay to be but

somehow you have to deliver a need and no matter what as much as you want to say people buy because they really want or like my product that's nine times out of 10 not the case they bought it because they needed it. So what's the need that you're meeting that's that just goes back to the value proposition of the product itself or the service?

Shawn Flynn 22:28

So question on the value proposition. So say, say you have a general idea of how much you know, it'll solve the solution and how much money you'll save the client versus what's out there. How do you go about pricing your product, or set in terms or gifts, or promos or whatever like that?

Whit Howland 22:48

Yeah, pricing can be arbitrary quite frequently for especially for startups who said, you know, I'll take any business. So there's a really don't want to walk in and say that, but they how do you go about pricing it

you can use any number of methodologies. If I'm in a sales role, if I'm going to

Shawn Flynn 23:09

say, how much leeway should you give your salesperson to determine the price in a meeting?

Whit Howland 23:14

Well, I would give me 100%, but I would be of them I would I would play by ear and how comfortable your salesperson is talking about that. I often talk quite frequently about price and sales meetings, because I don't want it to be a hiccup later on. So quite early in the sales process, I'll try to ask a question of, you know, what's the value of what is the value of a product like this to you? Or one of the questions I'll ask is define success. I want the customer to tell me if they were to buy this product. How do they use it? Right? How does it How does it to define success within your world which are quite often gauge for me, at least in my mind, how much money they may be willing to spend or what's their overall budget?

But yeah, I asked the question very, very early on in the sales process. If somebody is unrealistic about what the purchase price of a product that I'm selling is, I don't want to spend too much time going after that lead

I kind of want to put them on the back burner to be honest

Shawn Flynn 24:14

interested in so to go over a little bit of everything we've talked about so far we've talked about qualified leads vers unqualified leads, we've talked about sales cycles, we've talked about getting information from other countries or companies when they establish their entities or their sales in another country to actually get the white papers, the promo material for that culture. We've talked about expectations and delivering expectations we've talked about if the startup team actually has sales experience for us not having sales experience the communication between the marketing and sales person talked about a bunch of things What else do you wish or knowledge that you think a startup out there should know about sales

and the tenacity of a sales mastery of the stick

Whit Howland 25:05

to his stick to it Ignis Yeah, made up word.

I think that more than anything, what I would be what I would tell advise somebody to start up to

start over i what i would advise a founder to go to, if I was going if they were going to start a sales team in the US

is I would come up with the sales funnel, I would, I would be very, very specific out of the sales funnel that I would want my sales team to have. So what a sales funnel is, essentially is, you know, if it takes so it takes XYZ to get one sale. Right? So then based off that one sale, I need so many I need so many quotes in order to get for if it takes for quotes to get one sale, then how many appointments Do I need in order to get four quotes? Okay, if it takes How many? And then how many phone calls Do I need to make in order to get that many appointments? So say, I need to make 100 phone calls. Yeah, to get

10 appointments, okay to get for quotes. Okay, and that breaks down to one sale. Okay, so then I know five, that's my sales funnel, then I know I go back out to my sales team. I say, Okay, now every week, you need to make 400 phone calls to brand new customers brand new prospects. And you need to start to start a conversation in order to get an appointment. Because of those 400 phone calls you make. You're going to get so many appointments, you're going to get so many quotes. And that's going to be what's required in order for you to get the sales

that would be the thing that I would point to first for a founder to come up with before they hired a whole sales team. Show me what a sales funnel looks like, for your product for your marketplace that you're selling to for you specifically, that could be a sales funnel that requires a six month sales cycle could be a two month sales cycle. I don't know but I would I would first look at the sales from

Shawn Flynn 27:00

okay with that we're almost out of time. But what could you tell the audience how they can reach you and get more information?

Whit Howland 27:07

Absolutely. Yeah, the best way to reach me is LinkedIn with Howland and LinkedIn profile. If you connect with me and shoot me a message I will be more than willing to respond to you and who's your best client to work with?

Shawn Flynn 27:23

Who would you want to reach out to you

Whit Howland 27:25

anybody that's in renewable energies, or the renewable sector that has a

that has a product that's being sold or could be sold to the utility sector.

Shawn Flynn 27:36

Great. Thank you for your time today. And once again, that's Silicon Valley successes. For more information, please visit our website, Silicon Valley sex successes. com or Facebook group, check us out on LinkedIn. And stay tuned as next week. We're going to have some exciting guests. they'll provide you information to help you become the next success.

Show Announcer 27:57

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes.com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember, we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

🤔The Truth of a Startups Financial Forecast

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

👍Korea Startups and Monday, Doing business as a startup Ep 11

Show Announcer 0:26

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes, we interview experts and entrepreneurs to give the world access to the knowledge and experience that is here in Silicon Valley. Our mission is to create opportunities for those who

seek them

and tell you to become the next Silicon Valley success.

Shawn Flynn 0:49

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes. I'm your host, Sean Flynn. I've been in Silicon Valley a number of years now working with startups, incubators, accelerators, investors from all around the world. And today we have two amazing guests with us. They come from Korea, UAE. And Chris. They help companies from Korea landed Silicon Valley and companies from Silicon Valley or the US go to Korea. They help them with the struggles, give them advice, make introductions, all things that they need to help them succeed. So without further ado, let me introduce our two guests. Do you have Chris Could you please give a brief introduction of who you are? Do you know Would you like to start Yes, this is June so I am Creative Problem sortable and side project designer to have the company and the governmental agency and sort of, say in South Korea, so I'll founded my company because I'm Susan 2007. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Youm 1:42

And Chris Oh, hi. I'm Chris

Shawn Flynn 1:45

Oh, well,

Chris Youm 1:47

well, personally, I'm Peter like, I do code

for Chrome extension. I'm the one who taken care of all the or technical interests are like starting from like international radiation engineering to like investigating new technologies for like a question extension. So yeah,

Shawn Flynn 2:06

that's what I'm doing. So the name of your guys company is cosmic station. Yes, that correct. Now, could you tell me about some of the advantages or tools that you give startups or companies that work with cosmic station?

Actually, first how'd you come up with the name cosmic state? Right, so

Junhwan Kang 2:25

actually, when I named the customisation inspired by international space station Oh, so you know, so when the when people to make a deal goal to do to do dream and so how many people will collaborate with you something? Okay, so I'm gonna make the customization

consists of multinational agencies and protect designers and the companies to help entrepreneur

Shawn Flynn 3:00

so you had from day one this world view your mind open? Yeah. And then how did you meet Chris or Chris Were you the one that went to June Hall about this project?

Chris Youm 3:12

Oh, well, I mean, basically, I met him when I was in Korea in Korea I was I mean when I was in Korea I was an illustrator and I I needed or job so that's the chance that I needed to be in Korea Do you

Shawn Flynn 3:29

know what were you doing and create that time?

Junhwan Kang 3:32

Yes. So yeah, actually solo CD estimate to make brand awareness, the CDP vendor openness around the world, okay. And so when they estimate how to do so I hope for digital. How about making the content movie content as apt I pitched the idea. So solo CD is so provide the font I made a 17 episode on a new trouble and all equal in China or, you know, so when I tried to make the video content I got noble lights from so along the bottom, okay, Switzerland and novelist and then I invited five with directors, okay, to medical 17 episodes was I built a multinational team, make the video content and own out on YouTube and all your cool Indeed, I collaborated with the drama fever, okay. When the drama people founded in 2010, and I'm remember this Chris in San Francisco. I invited him to maker is freemium is the owner of the platform. Okay, I'll be the WordPress

Chris Youm 4:58

Yeah. So basically on once I moved into the San Francisco from Korea, I don't there was another chance that was that that and on I have to him to build up the site based on based upon the WordPress

Junhwan Kang 5:13

well, and is know when we should be the project in the workplace. And we develop the voting system. Okay, and it's a combined Twitter and we you know, it's a very interesting point, this video, YouTube view. Lucido 108 million Jews

Shawn Flynn 5:37

Oh, wow. 108 million. Yeah. So this is amazing. So it sounds like for the last 10 years, you've been involved with multinational operations between other countries and Korea. Yeah. So you've seen firsthand all the problems and possibilities that these companies have faced. And so with that you have this amazing background for what you're doing currently. Is this correct? Yeah, yeah,

Chris Youm 6:07

just say Yes, that's correct. Okay.

Shawn Flynn 6:09

So tell me about some of the problems the company might face when go into Korea

Junhwan Kang 6:16

Yeah, so definitely everyone know is how to overcome the language barrier also the good Korean people had difficulty to make the communication with the

American based entrepreneur okay full speak English okay. You know so

Shawn Flynn 6:41

as the American team have to have someone that speaks Korean you business in Korea or can they hire someone there? Or is it translators efficient? What's your recommendations? I'm

Unknown 6:54

honestly

Junhwan Kang 6:56

even though America startup companies hired people

can speak Korean justice speak Korean means

stage of pink, one side, you know, a side actually, when somebody want to do business at the new land, okay, what do they need the language and how to get familiar to culture and how to make a business network. And so how to deal with

some law problem is the average every business field has a different culture and default the system

Shawn Flynn 7:41

and an earlier episode of Silicon Valley successes, we didn't meet with two experts in cultural

diversity and inclusion. And they talked a lot about culture. Yeah, but you'd mentioned right there about business marketing. introductions. Yeah. Can you talk about the importance of knowing the key players and in a new country in a new city to get business done? Yeah. how important that is.

Junhwan Kang 8:11

So can I say just how about think outside the box? It's, it's a good point. And so even though somebody know the person how they go, how they work with them, okay, so so essentially everyone know all great people, but they are big,

you know,

indeed, many people contact them. Okay. And so how do v found the hidden gem Okay, is related to the language barrier communication barrier, even though they are great people is that they are very shy and they cannot speak English Okay, so you know how to build the system how to build a network connect with them how to bring them into the darkness okay. Yeah. Interested in so I'm gonna tell another point instead, you know,

so we are developing the program its name check for. Okay. So, name cultural collegian chakra okay and is a very interesting point if you guys launched the company in Korea will launch the product in Korea is vice versa is a Korean company wanted to launch a product in America market go What is the first thing is informed your name

Shawn Flynn 9:47

way so yeah let's go back so if a company from Korea yeah wants to set up an operation the US or from the US to go to Korea yeah step number one is get a name that yeah that fits yeah that translation or that that country yeah give me examples

Junhwan Kang 10:06

yes even though they didn't translate to the name into English what into Korea there is just to launch the product because I have was around the three is episodes

Shawn Flynn 10:19

examples. Yeah, see examples. So

Junhwan Kang 10:22

all right,

Shawn Flynn 10:22

Tommy, tell me one or two or all three guys

Junhwan Kang 10:26

inside supported the Korean based company they incorporated in LA was in Boston okay. habit or is HQ in Korea. Okay. But they launched a name. And so the 3d printing company

Shawn Flynn 10:43

okay. 3d printing. Yeah,

Junhwan Kang 10:44

when they launched the product and they did the crowdfunding campaign. The name is still PS

even they launched the crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter level they didn't what bs means.

Shawn Flynn 11:05

Oh, wow. Okay, how about one more example more

Junhwan Kang 11:08

up tempo and inside supported I had the watch TV the company the company developed a smart flow

Shawn Flynn 11:16

part smart flower pot. Yeah. Okay.

Junhwan Kang 11:19

It's not proper means So Joe so with a smartphone application controlling air circulation and so the lighting and the water tank is overweight and so their target audience was so

funny 20 and 30 aged women okay and so had the children

yeah they brought the name Willie

Unknown 11:50

Willie garden Really? Got to know we'll

Junhwan Kang 11:55

have a couple of Yeah, yeah, indeed. It really is a kind of you know, it's how we sold it to this name. When this name was popper sold under the Willie has the name is the way the old man Okay, so the target audience I think we're good. Okay.

Shawn Flynn 12:18

So step one. Yeah. Make sure your name translates or change it for that new country. Yeah. What are some of the next steps for a company coming from Korea here from here to Korea? Or even better? Yeah, tell me why a company from Korea would want to come to us an early stage company or this is core company from us want to go to Korea very early. Why

Junhwan Kang 12:47

I'm possible. So I'm going to tell why Korean based startup company want to break into America. market makers eat food. They make us meaningful, successful case. Okay. They will get great benefit from Korea government.

Shawn Flynn 13:06

So what so a company from Korea? Yeah. enters the US market. Yeah. Maybe raises 50,000 on Kickstarter. Yeah. Can they get benefits from the Korean government than 50,000? Yeah, yeah.

Junhwan Kang 13:21

Right. Right. So if they get the $50,000 in crowdfunding campaign, yeah. They may eligible to get they may get the chance to draw in the r&d project with Korea couple months around 3000 thousand dollar 300,000 300,000

Shawn Flynn 13:41

yeah so you could take 350 thousand you raise hear from investors you know go back to Korea yeah and possibly work with the Korean government yeah and get another 300,000 yeah to research and develop that product and row

Junhwan Kang 13:54

yeah right in so in other hand you know it's a very unique

startup supporting program in South Korea

Shawn Flynn 14:03

Oh Tell me about some of these startup support programs

Junhwan Kang 14:05

and so they called they named it keeps

Shawn Flynn 14:09

tips

Junhwan Kang 14:10

tips is kind of tip of the iceberg

yeah pizza mean so when some investor angel investor so embarrassed to certain Rania answer is a clickable and gave with the phone to establish kind of matching point. Okay, yeah,

Shawn Flynn 14:29

so $100,000 from an angel here in the Chinese are not sorry, sorry. The government will match give 100,000 to the startups

Junhwan Kang 14:40

isn't it? I'm not sure it's a non voice a little bit different they have the

keeps program is that every year the Korean government as

just so much either angel investor Wow. To take care with startup company plenty of stuff to make a success for the global south. Okay. You know,

Shawn Flynn 15:06

so sounds like the Korean governments very supportive of start online. Tell me the startups do they have to be the founders Korean? Or can they be a US team that partners with a Korean team or a US team that opens up an office in Korea what are the requirements for these companies to then I guess work with you guys who would then work with them to go to the Korean government

Junhwan Kang 15:35

is so there are there are 2.2 way to waste waste into the one is a medical collaboration project with the Korea based company okay to make is some r&d project and then it would they make a successful case with these successful case and so in some movie shipped to America

Shawn Flynn 16:00

Okay, ya

Junhwan Kang 16:01

know, so just kind of slowly Yeah, I mean, I don't

Chris Youm 16:05

think adding on the purse or or opinions like I had one interesting example I mean it's kind of a story that my friend actually faced so my friend she um, she uses a to plan her own startup which is in our trip sector and she wanted to build your own team and she wanted to have have got some funds from basically from Korea because she is from Korea but she wasn't here so basically she has established our company here and go to go back to Korea to have fun and and one day she went to to the or one of the government programs representatives and she had on meeting with them and she explained all her plans and and benefits of startups you're on and she wanted to get a fund from them but the reply from their side which is government side Korean government decided was a simple on if we have got any fund from USA because you register to your company in USA because you are come from the USA. So if you have got any funds from USA at first, like 500 startups or or why continue to grow? Okay, well, then they were they say they willing to give an extra want to her well, so it is scary. Yeah, it was a very interesting moment.

Shawn Flynn 17:38

That's interesting. So to find out more information about do Hawk Chris and a lot of the other people that had been on our show, please visit Silicon Valley successes. com. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, but once again, visit Silicon Valley successes. com. Now back to Chris in general. So the Korean government will actually use Y Combinator 500 startups and a lot of these incubators and accelerator programs in Silicon Valley and just use that as a way to kind of that or screen the startups to give them funds

Unknown 18:15

yeah well okay.

Chris Youm 18:17

That was the truth

Junhwan Kang 18:18

Oh wow. Mia is one of the elements to it so how to support how to collect your startup companies okay you know so you should know say indeed there are very specific is things this year and new patrons the renamed the Minister of cabinet. Okay, from the small middle enterprise, they add SMB sn s. m. e S. S. startups, small medium enterprise and startups ok. I see me that they are willing to they are likely to show how Korea government boosts startup companies. Okay.

Shawn Flynn 19:10

So these startups Yeah. How early can they go to the Korean government? And can they go with just an idea more they really need to have either gone through an incubator accelerator, raise some type of money or already had a partnership. Yeah.

Junhwan Kang 19:28

And so we already so had the partnership and so we have little, very professional teams in Seoul, South Korea. Okay. So we already so collaborates with the team in New York in San Francisco so

Chris Youm 19:46

yeah, personally I think that that may depends on case by case yet because um yeah as I gave an example case or she she didn't have developers okay she I mean she was the only one who planning and food or looking for the chance but um, but what once if if we should cut our fund from here then getting x extra funds from Korea couple months warranty picked up for

Shawn Flynn 20:22

Okay, so just a if I'm a start up here in Silicon Valley, I have no Korean members of my team right now. But I've already raised say, $300,000 and I need another hundred $200,000. Can I then go to Korea, say hey, I'm going to set up an office here. Hire one employee and then go to the Korean government or work with someone like yourselves to go to the Korean government to try to get that last hundred thousand. Is that possible?

Junhwan Kang 20:56

Coming to you? If you are just a single you are great idea. I'm gonna ask you contract, right. Plus in Korea. Ok. And then make the way so they are all a way to make it

right. So, but in order to check please write posts,

so solution and so. So honestly, so I just this morning I got the grace. Great opportunity from product school. Okay.

Unknown 21:34

So great products. Classical. Yeah. Okay.

Junhwan Kang 21:36

So they have founding their founding the community manager community organizer in every city around the world. Wow. They asked me so we discussed about the and so they asked me to be city to city organizer. So he means the startup company has a great community Solar City. Okay. And so, you know, even though they are great process, but the gray person needs such as a single but he put a great person is a CEO of a company, they will ask a lot of money. Okay. means just looking for community. Okay, so just through the community, the checkup, deal idea will be validated in the company or Korea. Yeah.

Shawn Flynn 22:28

So how important is it knowing the right community groups or knowing the right contacts in Korea for a startup to succeed there.

Unknown 22:39

So

Junhwan Kang 22:40

you know,

in general, there are a lot of community similar to so American based community service because it was somebody has caused this vehicle not just informed the holiday and co founder community indeed, but they're very concerned with seen considerable deals. So just American based company is searching Google but

like the China they are a deep they are to

Shawn Flynn 23:18

cows. Very popular in Korea. Yeah. Canada. other social

Junhwan Kang 23:21

media plan. Yeah. Right. So there you have it for the comments. The online community if entrepreneur was a company contact so little bit. ly community in not in Facebook, but in naval also in calculus in band Day May when it comes to collaborate with companies

Shawn Flynn 23:46

interested? Yeah. Okay. So to recap on what we've talked about. So far, we've talked about your company helping startups or companies from around the world enter Korea, more Korean startups go outside to other parts of the world, specifically San Francisco, New York, we've talked about how one of the first things companies should do when entering a new country is make sure their name fits. We gave a couple of examples from the flower pie and the 3d printer. We also talked about how the Korean government supports a lot of startups and how if you have a partnership with the team in Korea, you can get funding for your research and development. If you raised funding in the US and you go to Korea, the government may match that I did. We've also talked about the Korean government might use 500 startups, Y Combinator and other incubators and accelerator programs in Silicon Valley as a vetting process to see if they want to give you money. But you've given some great advice on how it's so important to make sure you're talking to the right people this whole time and some of these people there are extremely busy and there might be language barriers, yeah, is very important to go through a company organizations such as yourself to reach these people and also companies here have to know to use right social media tools when they're in Korea, which is a cow and and the other Yeah, what advice other advice would you like to give a company out there that you wish someone told you? Or you really think they need to know? Yeah, yeah,

Chris Youm 25:24

I think I can go first maybe, well, I have been like internationalization engineer for good amount of the years in here and add in San Francisco Silicon Valley so I will just say like bring up

well planned internationalization strategic is the best because like just in case I mean let me give you an example like holidays on holidays like for the social games The holidays are chance to get our extra revenue by selling the game items okay but are like a holidays a different country by country Okay, of course we do have with the holidays that has the same date like Christmas but like our Thanksgiving Thanksgiving in America is just it is big but just two or three days ago three days of the holidays but in China it's all an entire week is the holiday yeah and they spent this time I mean Chinese penta like millions and

Shawn Flynn 26:35

Singles Day first of all their holidays don't match up with the US that don't match up

dude why do you have any last minute things you'd like to say and then with the last we got about a minute please talk about yourselves one more time and your company yeah real quick

Junhwan Kang 26:51

yes so for sober I'm gonna ask her entrepreneur to get interested in Cape content a pop up a drama so why am I Why do I ask them so about things so actually why the Korea in in your city called your content is spread over Asia market okay it's cool it's kind of a stepping stone awesome

Shawn Flynn 27:19

yeah what's the best way to reach you guys

Chris Youm 27:20

yeah we have a LinkedIn and we also have our with psycho Versa Yeah, it's a website

Junhwan Kang 27:25

customization does page

Shawn Flynn 27:28

all right lot more information please visit them cosmic station dot space. You want more information, Silicon Valley, please visit silk advice. successes.com. Our next guest is Whitney Howard, who will talk about sales and startups. All right. Looking forward to senior next episode. Thank you.

Show Announcer 27:46

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes.

We hope you found the information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web, Silicon Valley successes.com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember,

we want to help you in your journey to become the next

success.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Diversity and Inclusion with startups. Today’s guest Irma Zoepf and Ceser Teague go into detail about the importance of having a wide perspective, and input from many different sources at any stage in a company’s life, even when it is just an early stage company with a very small team. We talk about the problems and opportunities of culture and language training and the awareness of communicating with different groups from around the world and how opportunities are available to those who really try to learn and listen with who they are trying to do business with.

Cesar Teague

Founder of RESONATE and the Accelerate Program, based in San Francisco.

Experienced in training & coaching in the areas of value selling, presentations, and leadership.

He specializes in working with multicultural teams globally, being a multicultural professional himself, and volunteers at the S.F. RenCenter and Silicon Valley Ignite Academy helping entrepreneurs.

He’s also certified as a Master Trainer with the American Society for Training & Development.

Finally, he’s completing his PhD in Organizational Leadership from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology;

Received his MBA from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, and

Bachelor of Science in Business Economics from the University of San Francisco.

Irma Zoepf

Irma is a strategic and collaborative entrepreneur committed to create and develop healthy cultures in the workplace and the community. She founded theZbridge, a boutique coaching business specializing in leadership, diversity, inclusion and in developing high performing cultures. She partners with leaders in startups and social entrepreneurs. Irma founded the Lean In Latinas circle in San Mateo County that supports professional Latinas in the Bay Area. She serves as a board member at Upward Scholars, a foundation that empowers low-income adults to prosper through education. Irma has a bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering from University of Sonora, Mexico and an MBA from Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain. She is certified as Diversity Executive by the Institute of Diversity Certification.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Diversity and Inclusion in Startups, With Cesar and Irma EP 10

Show Announcer 0:02

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes, we interview experts and entrepreneurs to give the world access to the knowledge and experience that is here in Silicon Valley. Our mission is to create opportunities for those who seek them and help you to become the next Silicon Valley success.

Shawn Flynn 0:22

The topic of today's show is one that's been constantly in the news and it's one that if a company faces and is able to overcome, it's been proven that they have advantages over their competition. The topic we're going to be talking about today is diversity and inclusion in the workplace. My name is Sean Flynn. I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley for quite some time working with Angel groups, incubators, accelerators, startups at all levels. So with that, I'd like to introduce our guests season. Irma

Cesar Teague 0:51

Cesar, could you please give a brief introduction of who you are and what you're doing? Sure. So I'm Cesar Viana Teague, founder of resonate in San Francisco. And I typically work with multicultural business owners, small business owners who are challenged with finding clients and then figuring out how to present the client so they can secure funding or they can secure more projects with them. Interested in Irma. You please introduce yourself. Yes, yes, thank you for having us. I'm very excited to discuss diversity and inclusion.

Irma Zoeph 1:24

My name is Irma Zoeph and I'm the founder of The Z Bridge and we do diversity and inclusion at its core.

I'm originally from Mexico, but I have been living in the US for 12 years. And most recently in the in the Bay Area for three years where I've been working with companies, startups, mainly and social entrepreneurs to build their culture and and to develop and integrate their initiatives related to diversity and inclusion

Shawn Flynn 1:58

interested so going to start off I guess the big question is why is diversity and inclusion important Cesar?

Cesar Teague 2:08

Well, I think since I'm focused on multicultural I am a multicultural person rampart, Asian part American part

Venezuelan and so I think the having those different perspectives is, is key. So when you have diversity, I think that you're going to be able to get different feedback from people, different perspectives, that's going to add value. And research has shown that there are statistics out there that shows that it proves that having different perspectives and different coming from different environments, different cultural makeup is going to add value to any conversation and community.

Shawn Flynn 2:50

So a company a startup, when they start thinking about this, when they're a team of two people, five people, 20 people wait till they raised their a round B round, when when should this actually kind of influence their thought process?

Irma Zoeph 3:07

Well, it can start as early as you want. As soon as soon as they have ready for more creative creativity and innovation, they can start thinking about the gathering diverse thoughts and perspective that will help them with their business as sister said, it's very important to, to create these or enable this space where you can gather the information and and when we talk about diversity, it could be diversity of thoughts and in any in any way. So, you know, racially if we talk about multicultural, but also gender also, you know, where you were raised? What, what you studied, or where you work, everything matters in terms of when you bring to the table for your business.

Shawn Flynn 3:58

Okay, then question was that I just have four or five person team. We all met each other in college, university, we just graduated, we're all engineers, we decided to build a product, Is there much diversity there? And

where should where should they try to outreach to to get more input more outside views to that group? Any ideas on that?

Irma Zoeph 4:24

But I can all right. Yes, absolutely. I mean, as, as I said, and the diversity of thoughts come from anywhere. So if you start with your friends, you know, thinking about something, just expand your horizons, look out there, what it's missing, where are you getting your product or your service? What What do you need to know like, say, if you are based in the US and you are trying to reach you know, the Indian population his followers of this show, I really just wanted to that out there. So, you know, it will be great if you know about the quarter and it will be great if you if someone from your team it's either from there even better or if you know about what they like how they think and how you could reach them better

Unknown 5:17

and would that just be reading a book on on that country or a history book or how much knowledge what I need for that area to consider myself Well, well

Unknown 5:30

well knowledgeable that were culture group

Irma Zoeph 5:33

as, as almost everything it comes with experience. And that's from the books I mean, the book can teach you the maybe a little bit about the language a little bit about what they do what they like, but it's really interacting with each other. When we learn the most, you know, I've been seeing a lot of

value added to a company when it it really expand their their perspective with with different cultures and people and their culture samples with very successful companies. Like, for instance, you know, if we talk about CEOs, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, he is from India or if we talk about Elon Musk on several companies he's from South Africa or the the the former CEO of PepsiCo. She's a woman she's Her name is ingenuity. And she's from India as well. So you can see how their perspective have enabled their company and he got cascades down. What about early stage companies, early stage startups? Do you find that maybe there's less minorities that are starting startups and Silicon Valley or they have challenges when they're here verse? How is that ecosystem

Cesar Teague 6:54

was? I would say that, you know, it's a good question. I think that just a backup for I don't think you start a company, we're saying, okay, I want to create a multicultural or diverse company, yes, doesn't quite work that way. Right. Essentially, you're looking at expertise. And the folks on your team may come from different countries that would provide and bring to the table the expertise you need, whether they're from the Philippines where they are great in the call centers, whether you're from India, right, with a technology that they have in the advanced skills that they have, which is why there's a lot of folks who come here. But the bottom line is, everybody comes here to Silicon Valley, because of the fact that this is where the money is that right, they come here. And so some of the work that I'm doing and my work, for example, currently, I'm working at a startup and based in San Francisco that's in a co working space called galvanized not well known when you talk about a little bit about

Unknown 7:45

the startup that you're you're sure,

Cesar Teague 7:47

yeah, so it's in the CO working space based there. And because your question was spot on, I think within galvanize of five for building, you have Google launch, you have IBM, they have a school on the third floor, that's, you know, that I think they just bought hacker one. And so there's just, I mean, I'm hearing every day Norwegian, German, Russian, Indian, I mean, I'm hearing all kinds of languages and the teams within the building, and the synergies are great. And I think there's something to be said there for that. Now, the company that I'm helping specifically, it's called meeting pulse. And what is meeting pulse do meaningful was actually founded here at a hackathon four years ago, which is amazing. So they, they founded the company at a hackathon over a weekend. And they received like, you know, a week later, $50,000 in funding, because they want one of the prizes, but it was really great. And so the founders originally from Russia, and grew up in the East Coast, I think, came when he was 11, and grow up. And then and so what they're doing is they're doing a platform and some tools for audience engagement audience meaning internally for employees, and externally at events. And so you use your mobile phone, you can use an iPad, and and so this is what they're doing to expand and essentially increase communication and collaboration between the teams. Okay. And one of the aspects that they just released is this translation feature. And so if you're right, you're the CEO of the company, or you're the leader of a team, and you typically most teams are working virtually now. Yeah, no secret there,

the the communication barriers are increase, it's a lot harder. Yeah, right, to get this collaboration, because of the time zones and the languages. So now, if you're leading a team, and you want to have a team meeting, and somebody isn't quite comfortable in the English language, well, you're probably not going to speak up as much as anybody else may dominated, right. So the particular application which a lot of startups are using, is that people can send in their questions in their language, and it translates it immediately into English so that the person who's moderating the questions can see this and respond,

Shawn Flynn 9:59

how big of a Do you think language plays a part in, in in the diversity of Okay, let me let me step back actually, what do you think's more important, the language or the culture barriers to overcome that

Irma Zoeph 10:14

comes together? I think that it's it goes in here. And as Caesar said, The language is a big factor, especially in the workplace, but so is the quarter so as as a leader as a thoughtfully there, you need to think about alternatives to to make it easier or more equitable for everybody in one of these applications that he's

Shawn Flynn 10:43

detailing it's a it's a big example of how organizations can be more useful or more resourceful for everybody. So there wasn't that language barrier, how many more resources do you think a startup would be able to access I would get, it'd be easier to outsource to overseas teams, it'd be easier to hire people globally, as that was mentioned, have team meetings, get your product into new markets, it sounds like your product would have many applications. It says,

Cesar Teague 11:13

Yeah, it has, it has a lot of applications that of course, part of it is also if you are going to come to Silicon Valley and you're going to try to raise money here, typically, that needs to be done in English. And so part of the work is also polishing up the presentations and, you know, the pitch decks and doing that sort of thing, which there are a lot of people who are very good at creating that the content, yeah,

Unknown 11:37

the delivery is another matter. So you have to be you have to be able to do both, right? It's worse if you're working on that. Are there any cultures that you'd say might have more difficulty speaking out and presenting to investors or

Shawn Flynn 11:53

speaking up in a meeting? Or how does that work exactly, if there is someone that's more shy, more reserved cultural background,

Irma Zoeph 12:02

but there are research on that topic and some some researchers or people segment segment that the, the country's you know, kind of like in general, one country could be more introverted, and in general, another country can be more extroverted or they embrace for instance, trees or they embrace sometimes, you know,

innovation, and some others are followers. But other researchers have found that that is not really key, that termination for a startup or for someone to succeed, you know, if you kind of generalize the country because, you know, everybody's different, and everybody has different perspectives. And an opportunity is honestly interesting. And before before the show, Cesar we had a chance to talk you'd mentioned that you have a sales accelerator program with marketing, could you talk a little bit about that, and the diversity and what people can get out of that program?

Cesar Teague 13:06

Sure. It's the it's called the accelerate program, you know, so I know, we chatted about some of the work I'm doing, helping, you know, minorities and or minority business owners, I should say, and multicultural business owners and so on. Because that's my, that's what I am. I want to focus on that. So the accelerate program really helps folks accelerate their sales. Because when you're a startup and the small business, you're wearing multiple hats, and therefore you're not focusing, and when you don't focus, you know, what happens to me, it's all over the map. And so the program essentially helps folks to go from, you know, connecting, finding and connecting with their ideal target clients, which there's a number of services that do that, you know, that you've heard about, I'm sure a lot of people receive information from lead setting an appointment setting services, okay, so that's part of Part A, Part B is looking good. Now that you have this ideal target client, you identify them even connected with them predominantly through LinkedIn as the work that I'm doing interest what do you do with it now? So then why also helped in terms of the presentations and looking at the sales process and tools that are people are using to maximize their closing ratios and the deal flow that they have?

Unknown 14:16

Can you go back said, closing ratios? Can you talk a little bit about that terminology, just case no one knows,

Cesar Teague 14:21

shorter. So our closing ratio is just purely the fact that you know, out of how many people you've been able to present to how many of those actually turned into a particular deal, or turn into a client, a long term client, and there could be many reasons why. So the idea is to raise that up into increase that and there's many sides of how to do that. So that's part of the accelerate program, we're helping a company with that aspect of it, plus some other social media work. So just, you know, posting videos relevant to the company and that sort of thing. So that's why it's an accelerator program.

Shawn Flynn 14:54

So the videos that are posted the the sales training, is it tailored for different ethnic groups, or because I'm guessing a social media post here in the US probably wouldn't have the same effect as a social media post in China,

Cesar Teague 15:08

correct? Absolutely. Right. So it's, it's geared here, mostly in the US, because most people are here, they're trying to tap into the market here. And what's interesting is that in the US, it's, people are very accepting of risk. So it's a very high risk tolerant society, right, so and so people are willing to try things, they're more prone to adopt

different types of tools. And so this is what people come there, but still, your messaging is done here, right. And so you're targeting ideal clients based on industries based on profiles, these are different things that we look at, when we're working on a day to day basis, trying to outreach to or to do outreach to particular client groups interested.

Shawn Flynn 15:55

And Irma, can you tell us a little bit about when you have a new client will, kind of the onboarding process is, what does that look like, when you're first meeting them, and the steps you take?

Irma Zoeph 16:06

Sure, so, you know, if we talk about small business, for instance,

sometimes Usually, the leadership or someone from the CEO or someone from operations comes to, to me, and, and with this

request of, I want to have more diverse, you know, board members, for instance, or I want to have more diverse and network have to reach more clients. And so first of all, is just to assess where they are, what they need, and what they want in less than two exams, or see, it's a lot of that analysis is a lot of a lot of analyzing what they're doing, and how they're how they're working. You know, if we talk about recruiting, if we go directly to their employees with, you know, I know that it doesn't apply when you have three employees, but if you have, you know, more than 10 or 20 years, you start talking about, okay, where do we reach where our future employees, and then it's just start thinking about it on how do you promote people, and again, thinking about the employees, but then if you want to think about your board members, and if you want to say, you know, have a very diversified group that will help you, then you need to start working on where to reach those people to like, where to find them, and how to integrate them, and then how to make them work effectively. Because if they have with very different backgrounds, if you don't work with them

in a in a, you know, in a cohesive way, it can backfire. You

Shawn Flynn 17:49

really, really so by adding more diversity, there's been instances that you've seen where it actually backfired. And there was less communication, less ideas being exchanged. Exactly what happens in a situation like that, then

Unknown 18:03

what you need to look for help. And

Irma Zoeph 18:08

it's, it's true, I mean, it's, um, when you start thinking about diversity, you need to have quarterly intelligence, that's why they call it so it's called to communicate effectively how to work effectively, regardless where where you're coming from, or what is your background, or whether you like, or not, like just being more impartial and focus on on the work on the results and that everybody wants the same thing, despite where you're coming from?

Shawn Flynn 18:37

Is there a way for an individual to kind of train themselves to become more aware of the situation around them? Is that part of I mean, I'm guessing that would be part of sales training, as well as marketing is kind of read by language and know the scenario, would you How would you coach someone in that either? Yeah,

Irma Zoeph 18:58

I think that it's therefore self awareness. And then from there, everything is possible. But you need to be aware of where you are, who you are, and then and then what you want, and how you present to everybody to the rest of the world, right. And as a leader, or someone that is just, you know, leading a group at a company, you need to think even farther away, you know, not only about yourself, and what you present and what you, you know, show to your company, but also, what do you want from your employees? And how do you delete them?

Cesar Teague 19:32

Yeah, not everybody's comfortable doing that, right? So, I mentioned about the multicultural VC, we were chatting about that English is not necessarily the first language of a lot of people, right? I think I'm 45% of Silicon Valley founders are immigrants, right?

Unknown 19:46

Really

Cesar Teague 19:47

names and it's a pretty high stat, but not everybody's comfortable in presenting, if you can, you have to be here, you have to present the clients, you have to sell yourself you have, right, you have to pitch to audiences and panels, how are you going to do that? So that's part of the work that that I do. And I'm sure there's other aspects of that with helping folks with slang Your English is not their first language

Irma Zoeph 20:10

and vice versa. And then when Americans go to other places, other countries to they need to be aware of that the other countries they need to be aware, hot, like, like the essential part of the other culture, like, you know, what is what is expected? What is mass and must know how you treat people and work so you can work effectively. That's one thing it myself, I've had a lot of experience with meeting Americans here and take them to China. Are they in America? They go, I had a Japanese friend growing up for something. So I understand all of Asia like, Oh, god, no,

Unknown 20:46

don't sit too close to me during any meeting.

Cesar Teague 20:50

Oh, you raise a good point. Because even just the word Asian American, I mean, but it really doesn't exist because I'm part Filipino. But when you talk about Asian American, there's like 20 different groups comprise Asian American.

Unknown 21:04

Oh, and by the way, I'm half Japanese. Yeah,

Cesar Teague 21:07

there you go. So, yeah, there was a survey done of like, 190 countries, and only 10% of them were indigenous. So what does that mean? That means 90% of the world is multicultural. Wow.

Shawn Flynn 21:18

Yeah. So tell me, how did you guys decide to take this path for your careers? What led you in this direction to be this coach be this advice?

Unknown 21:29

Well, you got too excited

Irma Zoeph 21:32

what he was saying. Just made me think about it. And it's, um, it's, it's through all my, my previous experience. Basically, I'm also multicultural, half Japanese, half Mexican, and I have been working in Europe and in the US and Mexico. So, you know, working with with many quarters, it stays something with you. And, and I have been a minority in many places no finality of gender. I know, to raise either when I was living in Mexico, I was a minority invite, because I was Yeah, and then minority of my educational background, because I'm an engineer. So it's, you know, I'm not

Unknown 22:16

going to hear.

Irma Zoeph 22:19

So when I when, you know, throughout my experiences, I noticed that I didn't have the same opportunities I noticed as everybody else, or the same voice or the same recognition as everybody else. It's not that I wanted, you know, special thing. It's just like, let's be, you know, impartial and be equal and fair for everybody. So, it led me to start noticing these patterns. And eventually, you know, there is a whole bunch of people studying and working on these Luckily, on diversity and inclusion. And it got me very excited because he got me to the, my core and, and how I can help because I have been there. So,

leaders and organizations need need these tools. And because everybody has the same intention, right, the good intention, but sometimes we're not aware. So I want to be the tools that enable their for for making people's success succeed.

Unknown 23:20

Caesar Did you have a similar experience?

Cesar Teague 23:22

Yeah. So, you know, similarly, I like to be the catalyst for somebody else. And in terms of helping them to raise their awareness, because that's, you mentioned that earlier, that's really where it starts, right? So there's some tools out there, like the jewelry window that we look at,

Unknown 23:36

what's the window,

Cesar Teague 23:37

it's basically from two scientists that the there's, they share the name Joe and Harry and they put them together jar window. And it's basically helps you identify, you know, your blind spots,

that again, it's kind of tough to identify a blind spot if you're not aware of it. So it's all about raising awareness from there, and then and then really just, you know, working with folks to see, you know, what's going on with with them, you know, where are there, you know, limitations in terms of the cultural intelligence. So, they call that the CQ cultural intelligence, how can you How can you raise that with your communication, when you're communicating with employees or with customers, it's a really have to factor in a lot, there's a lot of things that you have to take into consideration and be wherever your assumptions because you know, what happens when you assume, makes it exact. So,

Unknown 24:30

we have

Unknown 24:31

edited on that. So,

Cesar Teague 24:34

yeah, so, it's, and I've been guilty of that myself, right. And so, you know, going going into another country, and even though I have experienced from different countries, and I've worked in different countries, and then training and coaching around different parts of the world, I'll still make mistakes, because I assumed that Oh, there's just like, back in San Fran. And people do it this way. Okay, for some little things, even as like the, the respect for timing, its contribution, you know, different people, different cultures view different things with respect to time. With respect to relationships,

Shawn Flynn 25:13

how many? What percentage? I'm just throwing this out there of deals or opportunities do you think businesses Miss because they don't understand the culture that they're trying to work with? Super question is a super question.

Irma Zoeph 25:28

I don't, I don't think that there is a right answer there. But there is a lot of missed opportunities. And you see it every day, you know, even even in not, you know, not even saying in organizations and, you know, enjoy daily interactions, because you are some one thing and, and it's really not, you may be miss a good friend, or maybe it's a good food or movie or something. So, it applies to everything.

Cesar Teague 25:55

Yeah, so when the mode of communication Sorry, I also the mode of communication as well. So, right value, we're talking some with somebody in person by phone by email, it's the email that gets you in trouble, especially because of that lack of the body language and the things in front of the communication goals right? So if you're a leader of a startup if you're working on that

Unknown 26:16

it's another thing you have to think about an interesting

Irma Zoeph 26:18

so I want to highlight what you said about that spot the blind spot

Unknown 26:24

see real quick and then we'll start wrapping up to go on

Irma Zoeph 26:27

well that the blind spot and also how your brain works with quick responses like with your first you know, intention and response and then you know, like once you digest you can really understand and then come up with better solutions. So it's better to take a few minutes before responding sometimes.

Shawn Flynn 26:45

Great Caesar, how can people get in touch with you

Cesar Teague 26:49

will resonate as the business and so the website is resume now.org. Interesting Irma,

Irma Zoeph 26:55

it's that the see bridge that calm it's my business and you can learn more about what we do and and how we can help help.

Shawn Flynn 27:05

Okay, so visit the website Zee Bridge. The bridge exactly, or my email your mom at the sea bridge. com. That's great. And I want to thank everyone for tuning in to this week's episode of Silicon Valley successes our guests next week. You'll be very impressed. There'll be a surprise for you. But with that being said, Caesar Irma. What is one thing you'd like to give advice or wish someone had given you told you a year ago or two years ago? Or when you started?

Unknown 27:37

Well, focus

Irma Zoeph 27:41

in leaving you and the perseverance

Shawn Flynn 27:43

great, that's great advice. Thank you guys for coming on the show today. Thank you and I look forward and for everyone at home. Stay tuned for the after show as well. You catch that on our YouTube channel.

Show Announcer 27:55

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes. com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

Cesar Teague

Founder of RESONATE and the Accelerate Program, based in San Francisco.

Experienced in training & coaching in the areas of value selling, presentations, and leadership.

He specializes in working with multicultural teams globally, being a multicultural professional himself, and volunteers at the S.F. RenCenter and Silicon Valley Ignite Academy helping entrepreneurs.

He’s also certified as a Master Trainer with the American Society for Training & Development.

Finally, he’s completing his PhD in Organizational Leadership from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology;

Received his MBA from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, and

Bachelor of Science in Business Economics from the University of San Francisco.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

🛑 Ep 10 Diversity and Inclusion after show with Irma and Cesar

0:00

Which on it kind of like comes difficult? It comes a comes naturally.

Yeah. Yeah.

0:10

Okay. Yeah.

0:13

That little like 30 or 10 second pause

0:20

this year. Just

0:22

Irma Cesar thank you for being on Silicon Valley successes as a lot of fun. And we learned a lot of great information. But you know, what do you wish you had time to say on this show that we just didn't have time to cover.

0:36

Irma, would you like to go first?

0:38

Sure. So

speaking of cultural intelligence, and talking about what makes you successful, as a leader, it's important to know your audience, it's important to know who are your clients, and with that, you can understand them better, and you'll can empathize with them. And not only that, but also just think on their shows, right? Like, what do they want? What What can I offer that they will like, and that will be very, very useful for your business.

1:16

Sure. No, yeah, I was thinking of a quote. And it was like, your, your network determines your net worth. So we've heard about this. And since you're talking about audience, and this is your network, you know, part of the work that I'm doing is to help build that network, you know, so you can, who is it that you're going to work with, because you can't work with everyone? So, you know, at the end, you asked about one piece of parting thought and I said, focusing well, focusing on serving those people that that you can work with, I think is is going to be key and of course you're going to find them first in order to find them you have to understand what is it that you're going to offer them and who is it that's going to resonate with you with your with the work that you're doing with

2:04

with the stars you work with? Can you provide some tips that you might give them to expand in their network

2:11

Sure, so one of the things that we do at resonate is just that we're helping them to expand the network focusing on LinkedIn which is close to 600 million professionals now right however not everybody's active on LinkedIn you'll find that some people just won't even respond because they're just not active there so building their ideal target client you know the profile and then looking for that by role by industry and then going after that on a consistent basis I think will help you to build your your network which now you can then present your ideas to so you're not wasting your time.

2:52

Irma. Any last anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up for the night

2:57

well yes I think think that for those out there that are you know making their way out to the to successful companies I think that is important to not forget

you know their values and what what makes them unique and because that at the end that's the strength that makes you you know who you are and will make you succeed so you know you we talked about being

Believe in yourself right we said that and and being persistent but also

make sure that you know, you present yourself us as you are

3:39

Caesar

3:41

died or anything else. That's great,

3:43

Caesar Irma. Thank you guys for coming on the show. Thank it's a lot of fun. I get to get you guys back on a future date. You're more updates on your class you're working with the startups you're working with and just update everyone in the eyes. I'm sure they're going to want to hear in six months or a year all the successes that you guys had what's good thank you guys. Thank you. Thank

4:01

you

4:04

and we cut

4:05

all right thank you.

4:06

Thanks for sticking around and

4:10

Dr.

4:15

ask you again. But so you have a separate

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🛑Ep 10 4/4 Diversity and Inclusion in a Startup, Incorporating new practices in the Team

0:00

And Irma, can you tell us a little bit about when you have a new client? What kind of the onboarding processes, what does that look like, when you're first meeting them, and the steps you take?

0:10

Sure. So, you know, if we talk about small business, for instance,

sometimes usually the leadership or someone from the CEO, or someone from operations comes to, to me, and, and with this

request of, I want to have more diverse, you know, for members, for instance, or I want to have more diverse network to reach more clients. And so first of all, is just to assess where they are, what they need, and what they want. And that's done through exams, or

data analysis is a lot of a lot of analyzing what they're doing, and how they're how they're working, you know, if we talk about recruiting, go directly to their employees with, you know, I know that it doesn't apply when you have three employees, but if you have, you know, more than 10 or 20 years, you start talking about, okay, where do we reach where our future employees, and then it's just start thinking about it, or how do you promote people and again, thinking about that employees, but then if you want to think about your board members, and if you want to say, you know, have a very diversified group that will help you, then you need to start working on where to reach those people to like, where to find them, and how to integrate them, and then how to make them work effectively. Because if they have with very different backgrounds, if you don't work with them

in a in a, you know, in a cohesive way, it can backfire. You

1:54

really so by adding more diversity, there's been instances that you've seen where it actually backed fired, and there was less communication, less ideas being exchanged. Exactly what happens in a situation like that, then

2:07

what you need to know for her, and

2:13

it's, it's true, I mean, it's, um, when you start thinking about diversity, you need to have quarterly intelligence, that's why they call it so it's called to communicate effectively how to work effectively, regardless where where you're coming from, or what is your background, or whether you like, or not, like just being more impartial and focus on on the work on the results and that everybody wants the same thing, despite what are you coming from?

2:41

Is there a way for an individual to kind of train themselves to become more aware of the situation around them? Is that part of I mean, I'm guessing that would be part of sales training, as well as marketing is kind of read by language and know that this scenario, would you How would you coach somewhere in that either? Yeah,

3:02

I think that it start for self awareness. And then from there, everything is possible, but you need to be aware of where you are, who you are, and then and then what you want, and how you present to everybody to the rest of the world, right. And as a leader, or someone that is just, you know, leading a group company, you need to think even farther away, you know, not only about yourself, and what you present and what you, you know, show to your company, but also what do you want from your employees? And how do you need them?

3:37

Yeah, not everybody's comfortable doing that, right? So, I mentioned earlier about the multi cultural piece when we were chatting about that English is not necessarily the first language of a lot of people, right? I think some 45% of Silicon Valley founders are immigrants, right? Really, I don't know names. And it's a pretty high stat, but not everybody's comfortable in presenting, if you can, you have to be here. You have to present the clients, you have to sell yourself off you have right you have to pitch to audiences and panels are you going to do that? So that's part of the work that that I do. And I'm sure there's other aspects of that with helping folks with slang Your English is not their first language

4:14

and vice versa. And then when Americans go to other places, other countries still, they need to be aware of that. The other countries, they need to be aware hot light, like the essential part of the other culture, like, you know, what is what is expected? What is mass and mass, no, call you with people and work so you can work effectively. That's one thing myself, I've had a lot of experience with meeting Americans here and take them to China, are they in America? They go, I had a Japanese friend growing up or something. So I understand all of Asia, like, Oh, God. Now

4:51

don't get too close to me during any means,

4:54

right? Oh, you raise a good point. Because even just the word Asian American, I mean, but it really doesn't exist because I'm part Filipino. But when you talk about Asian American, there's like 20 different groups comprise Asian American.

5:09

Oh, and by the way, I'm half Japanese. Yeah,

5:11

there you go. So, yeah, there was a survey done of like, 190 countries, and only 10% of them were indigenous. So what does that mean? That means 90% of the world is multicultural. Wow.

5:22

Yeah. So tell me, how did you guys decide to take this path for your careers? What led you in this direction to be this coach be this advice?

5:34

Well, you got too excited

5:37

what he was saying. Just made me think about it. And it's, um, it's, it's through all my, my previous experience, basically, I'm also multi quarter or half Japanese half Mexican. And I have been working in Europe and in the US and Mexico. So, you know, working with, with many quarters, it stays something with you and I, I have been a minority in many places, you know, minority of gender minority of race either. When I was living in Mexico, I was a minority invited because I was covered. Yeah, and then minority of my educational background, because I'm an engineer. So it's, you know, I'm

6:20

going to hear

6:23

so. So when I when, you know, throughout my experiences, I noticed that I didn't have the same opportunities I noticed as everybody else, or the same voice or the same frequency nation as everybody else. It's not that I wanted, you know, special thing. It's just like, let's be, you know, impartial and be equal and fair for everybody. So, it led me to start noticing these patterns. And eventually, you know, there is a whole bunch of people studying and working on this, luckily, on diversity and inclusion. And it got me very excited because it got me to that my core and, and how I can help because I have been there. So,

leaders and organizations need need these tools. And because everybody has the same intention, right, the good intention, but sometimes we're not aware. So, I want to be the tool that enabler for for making people succeed. succeed.

7:24

Cesar, did you have a similar experience?

7:27

Yeah. So, you know, similar, yeah, like to be the catalyst for somebody else in terms of helping them to raise their awareness, because that's, you mentioned that earlier, that's really where it starts, right? So there are some tools out there, like the jewelry window that we look at,

7:40

what's the window,

7:42

oh, it's basically in from two scientists, that they, they share the name Joe and Harry and they put the jar window and it's basically helps you identify, you know, your blind spots,

that again, it's kind of tough to identify a blind spot if you're not aware of it. So it's all about raising awareness from there, and then and then really just, you know, working with folks to see, you know, what's going on with them, you know, where are there, you know, limitations in terms of the cultural intelligence. So, they call that the CQ, the cultural intelligence, how can you How can you raise that with your communication, when you're communicating with employees or with customers? It's a really have to factor in a lot, there's a lot of things that you have to take into consideration and be aware of your assumptions. Because, you know, what happens when you assume that

8:31

Exactly, so,

8:35

we

8:36

did on that. So,

8:39

yeah, so, it's, and I've been guilty of that myself, right. And so, you know, going going into another country, and even though I have experienced from different countries, and I've worked in different countries, and then training and coaching around different parts of the world, I'll still make mistakes, because I assumed that Oh, there's just like, back in San Fran. And people do it this way. Okay. For some little things, even a slight The, the respect for timing, its contribution, you know, different people, different cultures view different things with respect to time. With respect to relationships,

9:18

how many? What percentage? I'm just throwing this out there of deals or opportunities do you think businesses Miss because they don't understand the culture that they're trying to work with? Super question is a super question.

9:33

I don't, I don't think that there is a right answer there. But there is a lot of miss opportunities. And you see everyday, you know, even even in not, you know, not even saying in organizations and, you know, enjoy the day interactions because you are some one thing and, and it's really not, you may be miss a good friend, or maybe it's a good food or movie or something. So, it applies to everything.

10:00

Yeah, so when the mode of communication Sorry, I also also the mode of communication as well. So, right valuable, you're talking some with somebody in person by phone by email, it's the email that gets you in trouble, especially because of that lack of the body language and the things in front of the communication goals, right. So if you're a leader of a startup if you're working on that

10:20

it's another thing to think about an interesting

10:23

so I want to highlight what you said about that spot, the blind spot

10:28

so real quick and then we start wrapping up but go on,

10:31

well, then the blind spot and also how your brain works with quick responses like with your first you know, intention and response and then you know, like once you digest you can really understand and then come up with better solutions so it's better to take a few minutes before responding sometimes.

10:50

Great. Caesar How can people get in touch with you

10:53

will resonate is the business and so the website is resume. now.org.

10:58

Interesting. Irma

11:00

said this the bridge that come it's my business and you can learn more about what we do and and how we can help help.

11:09

Okay, so visit the website Zee Bridge, the bridge to contact exactly or my email your mom at the sea bridge. com. That's great. And I want to thank everyone for tuning in to this week's episode of Silicon Valley successes our guests next week. You'll be very impressed. There'll be a surprise for you. But with that being said, Caesar Irma. What is one thing you'd like to to give advice or wish someone had given you told you a year ago or two years ago or when you started?

11:41

Wow, focus,

11:45

believe in you. And the percent aren't

11:48

great. That's great advice. Thank you guys for coming on the show today. Thank you and I look forward and for everyone at home. Stay tuned for the after show as well. You catch that on our YouTube channel.

12:00

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes. com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

🛑Diversity and Inclusion in a Startup, Taking on a new client Ep 10 3/4

0:00

And before before the show, Cesar we had a chance to talk you'd mentioned that you have a sales accelerator program with marketing. Could you talk a little bit about that, and the diversity and what people can get out of that program?

0:14

Sure. It's the, it's called the accelerate program. You know, so I know, we chatted about some of the work I'm doing, helping, you know, minorities and, and or minority business owners, I should say, and multicultural business owners and so on. Because that's my, that's what I am. I want to focus on that. So the accelerate program really helps folks accelerate their sales. Because when you're a startup, in a small business, you're wearing multiple hats, and therefore you're not focusing. And when you don't focus, you know, what happens, and it's all over the map. And so the program essentially helps folks to go from, you know, connecting, finding and connecting with their ideal target clients, which there's a number of services that do that, you know, that you've, you've heard about, I'm sure a lot of people receive information from lead setting and appointment setting services. Okay, so that's part of Part A, Part B is looking good now that you have this ideal target clients to identify them, even connected with them predominantly through LinkedIn is the work that that I'm doing interest what do you do with it now? So then why also helpful in terms of the presentations and looking at the sales process and tools that are people are using to maximize their closing ratios and the deal flow, but

1:24

can you go back said closing ratios key, talk a little bit about that terminology, just case no one knows.

1:30

Sure. So our closing ratio is just purely the fact that you know, out of how many people you've been able to present to how many of those actually turned into a particular deal or turn into a client, a long term client, and there can be many reasons why. So the idea is to raise that up into increase that and there's many sides of how to do that. So that's part of the accelerate program, we're helping a company with that aspect of it, plus some other social media works, it just, you know, posting videos relevant to the company and that sort of thing. So that's why it's an accelerator program.

2:02

So the videos that are posted the the sales training, is it tailored for different ethnic groups, or because I'm guessing a social media post here in the US probably wouldn't have the same effect as the social media posts in China,

2:17

correct? Absolutely. Right. So it's, it's geared here, mostly in the US because most people are here, they're trying to tap into the market here. And what's interesting is that in the US, it's people are very accepting of risk. So it's a very high risk tolerant society, right? So and so people are willing to try things, they're more prone to adopt

different types of tools. And so this is what people come here but still, your messaging is done here, right? And so you're targeting ideal clients based on industries based on profiles. These are different things that we look at when we're we're working on a day to day basis, trying to outreach to are to do outreach to particular client groups interested

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

🛑Diversity and Inclusion in a Startup, When should you pay attention Ep 10 1/4

0:02

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes, we interview experts and entrepreneurs to give the world access to the knowledge and experience that is here in Silicon Valley. Our mission is to create opportunities for those who seek them and help you to become the next Silicon Valley success.

0:22

The topic of today's show is one that's been constantly in the news and it's one that if a company faces and is able to overcome, it's been proven that they have advantages over their competition. The topic we're going to be talking about today is diversity and inclusion in the workplace. My name is Sean Flynn. I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley for quite some time working with Angel groups, incubators, accelerators, startups at all levels. So with that, I'd like to introduce our guests season. Irma Cesar, could you please give a brief introduction of who you are and what you're doing? Sure. So I'm Cesar Viana Teague, founder of resonate in San Francisco. And I typically work with multicultural business owners, small business owners who are challenged with finding clients and then figuring out how to present the client so they can secure funding or they can secure more projects with them. Interested in Irma. You please introduce yourself. Yes,

1:18

yes, thank you for having us. I'm very excited to discuss diversity and inclusion. My name is Dr. Matt and I'm the founder of super rich and we do diversity and inclusion at its core.

I'm originally from Mexico, but I have been living in the US for 12 years. And most recently in the in the Bay Area for three years where I've been working with companies, startups, mainly and social entrepreneurs to build their culture and and to develop and integrate their initiatives related to diversity and inclusion

1:58

interested so going to start off I guess the big question is why is diversity and inclusion important Cesar?

2:08

Well, I think since I'm focused on multicultural I am a multicultural person rampart, Asian part American part

Venezuelan and so I think the having those different perspectives is, is key. So when you have diversity, I think that you're going to be able to get different feedback from people, different perspectives, that's going to add value. And research has shown that there are statistics out there that shows that it proves that having different perspectives and different coming from different environments, different cultural makeup is going to add value to any conversation and community.

2:50

So a company a startup, when should they start thinking about this, when they're, you know, a team of two people, five people, 20 people wait till they raised their a round B round, when when should this actually kind of influence their thought process?

3:07

Well, it can start as early as you want. As soon as soon as they have ready for more creative creativity and innovation, they can start thinking about the gathering diverse thoughts and perspective that will help them with their business as sister said, it's very important to, to create these or enable this space where you can gather the information and, and when we talk about diversity, it could be diversity of thoughts in any in any way. So, you know, racially if we talk about multicultural, but also gender also, you know, where you were raised? What, what you studied, or where you work, everything matters in terms of when you bring to the table for your business.

3:58

Okay, then question was that I just have four or five person team and we all met each other in college, university, we just graduated, we're all engineers, we decided to build a product, Is there much diversity there? And

where should where should they try to outreach to to get more input more outside views to that group? Any ideas on that?

4:24

But I can all right. Yes, absolutely. I mean, as, as I said, and the diversity of thoughts come from anywhere. So if you start with your friends, you know, thinking about something, just expand your horizons, look out there, what it's missing, where are you getting your product or your service? What What do you need to know like, say, if you are based in the US and you are trying to reach you know, the Indian population,

4:56

his followers of this show,

4:58

I really just wanted to that out there. So, you know, it will be great if you know about the quarter and it will be great if you if someone from your team is either from there even better, or if you know about what they like how they think and how you could reach them better?

5:17

And would that just be reading a book on on that country or a history book or how much knowledge what I need for that area to consider myself Well, well,

5:30

well knowledgeable that well, culture group

5:33

as as almost everything it comes with experience. And that's from the books I mean, the book can teach you the maybe a little bit about the language a little bit about what they do what they like, but it's really interacting with each other. When we learn the most, you know, I've been seeing a lot of

value added to a company when it it really expand their their perspective with with different cultures and people and their culture samples with very successful companies. Like for instance, you know, if we talk about CEOs, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, he is from India or if we talk about Elon Musk on several companies he's from South Africa or the the the former CEO of PepsiCo. She's a woman she's Her name is ingenuity. And she's from India as well. So you can see how their perspective have enabled that company and you guys cascades down. What about early stage companies, early stage startups? Do you find that maybe there's less minorities that are starting startups and Silicon Valley or they have challenges when they're here verse? How is that ecosystem

6:54

was? I would say that, you know, it's a good question. I think that just a backup for second, I don't think you start a company by saying, okay, I want to create a multicultural or diverse company, yes, doesn't quite work that way. Right. Essentially, you're looking at expertise. And the folks on your team may come from different countries that would provide and bring to the table the expertise you need, whether they're from the Philippines where they are great in the call centers, whether you're from India, right, with a technology that they have in the advanced skills that they have, which is why there's a lot of folks who come here. But the bottom line is, everybody comes here to Silicon Valley, because of the fact that this is where the money is that right, they come here. And so some of the work that I'm doing and my work, for example, currently, I'm working at a startup and based in San Francisco that's in a co working space called galvanized not well known.

7:44

We talked about a little bit about the startup that you're you're sure,

7:47

yeah, so it's in the CO working space based there. And because your question was spot on, I think within galvanize of five for building, you have Google launch, you have IBM, they have a school on the third floor, that's, you know, that I think they just bought hacker one. And so there's just I mean, I'm hearing every day Norwegian, German, Russian, Indian, I mean, I'm hearing all kinds of languages and the teams within the building and the synergies are great. And I think there's something to be said there for that. Now, the company that I'm helping specifically it's called meeting pulse. And what is meeting Polsky meaningful was actually founded here at a hackathon four years ago, which is amazing. So they, they founded the company at a hackathon over a weekend. And they received like, you know, a week later, $50,000 in funding, because they want one of the prizes, but it was really great. And so the founders originally from Russia, and grew up in the East Coast, I think, came when he was 11 and grow up and then and so what they're doing is they're doing a platform and some tools for audience engagement audience meaning internally for employees and externally at events. And so you use your mobile phone, you can use an iPad, and and so this is what they're doing to expand and essentially increase communication and collaboration between the teams. Okay. And one of the aspects that they just released is this translation feature. And so if you're right, you're the CEO of the company, or you're the leader of a team, and you typically most teams are working virtually now. Yeah, no secret there

is the the communication barriers are increase. It's a lot harder. Yeah, right, to get this collaboration, because of the time zones and the languages. So now, if you're leading a team, and you want to have a team meeting, and somebody isn't quite comfortable in the English language, well, you're probably not going to speak up as much as anybody else may dominated, right. So the particular application which a lot of startups are using is that people can send in their questions in their language and it translates it immediately into English so that the person who's moderating the questions can see this and respond

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

🛑Diversity and Inclusion in a Startup, Language or Culture, which is the biggest Challenge Ep 10 2/4

0:00

How big of Do you think language plays a part in, in, in the diversity of Okay, let me let me step back, actually, what do you think's more important, the language or the culture barriers to overcome that

0:16

comes together? I think that it's a, it goes in pair. As Cesar said, The language is a big factor, especially in the workplace, but so is the quarter so as, as a leader so thoughtfully there, you need to think about alternatives to to make it easier or more equitable for everybody in one of these applications that he's

detailing it's it's a big example of how organizations can be more useful or more resourceful for everybody.

0:55

So there wasn't that language barrier. How many more resources do you think history would be able to access, I would guess it'd be easier to outsource to overseas teams, it'd be easier to hire people globally, as that was mentioned, have team meetings, get your product into new markets, it sounds like your product would have many applications. It says,

1:15

Yeah, it has, it has a lot of applications. And of course, part of it is also if you are going to come to Silicon Valley and you're going to try to raise money here, typically, that needs to be done in English. And so part of the work is also polishing up the presentations and, you know, the pitch decks and doing that sort of thing, which there are a lot of people who are very good at creating that the content, yeah,

1:38

the delivery is another matter. So, you have to be you have to be able to do both, right? It's worse if you're working on that. Are there any cultures that you'd say might have more difficulty speaking out and presenting to investors or

1:54

speaking up in a in a meeting or how does that work exactly, if there is someone that more shy or more reserved cultural background

2:04

but they are research on that topic and some some researchers or people segment segment that the countries you know, kind of like in general, one country could be more introverted and in general, another country can be more extroverted or they embrace for instance, trees or they embraced sometimes,

you know, innovation and some others are followers, but other researchers have found that that is not really key, that termination for a startup or for someone to succeed, you know, if you kind of generalize the country because, you know, everybody's different and everybody has different perspectives and in opportunities, honestly.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

✔Pivoting as a Startup with Jason and Sergio Ep 9

Sergio and Jason are Serial Entrepreneurs who have started several companies. In their life journey, they have had some great successes and many failures. From these life experiences we focus on the aspect of “pivoting” in a company. What it means, why do it, when, how it impacts the team, the investors and more.

Sergio Smirnoff is creative, out of the box positive thinker, fuses a background in design and academics with expertise in business. He was invited as a speaker at the Latam Design Encounter 3 consecutive years to share his experience in the field. Some of his work is published in international specialized books. He is a serial entrepreneur who began his own path more than 20 years ago funding his own marketing agency back in Argentina and from there jumped into tech startups. A path that brought him straight to Silicon Valley to seed his ideas on fertile soil.

Jason Nyeh is a Bay Area local, Entrepreneur Evangelist believes in learning and growing, building relationships and organizations that makes a difference, utilizing his “Why” and thinking beyond outside of the box creating phenomenal results.  He has held leadership roles in marketing, sales, business development, project management, training, and consultation in industries, such as Fintech, Healthcare, Medical IOT, Travel & Hospitality.  He is also an advisor and mentor helping aspiring professionals, startups, and entrepreneurs to be top players in Silicon Valley and other markets, such as China and India.  Self-motivated and stellar leader describe Jason’s personality.  In his leisure time, he loves traveling, networking, and volunteering in various communities.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

✔Pivoting as a Startup Aftershow SVS

Sergio Smirnoff 0:07

Hey, he'll welcome

Unknown 0:10

Sean. Sean. So, Jason, Sergio now that both of you have been on Silicon Valley successes, what do you wish we'd had time to talk about, or other information you think can really benefit startup founders, or the startup ecosystem, from your life experiences,

Jason Nyeh 0:28

and definitely are, we're probably start with the why we had mentioned before, different processes. So yes, pivoting is crucial. But also the process of the startup is also very important. What do you mean by process in terms of what are specific stages that within the learning curve

we need to know about. So then it will kind of streamline and removes that learning curve. So then it will be a lot faster to get into the market. So as all of us, you know, startups, we go through this entire huge curve to learn about everything. And, and, but if we, if there was a particular stages and processes, that's something that would be really crucial, especially within resources, where are those resources?

Sergio Smirnoff 1:26

So

I believe that now I mean, certain moment of my startup that is, like, things are like going crazy, and actually was talking with with Jason about that. It's like, sometimes you lose focus that everything that might happen is like, Hey, this is crazy if you take a look in perspective, but in the very moment, you feel like everything like is against you. And it's negative, because, well, I need to solve this problem. But actually, if you get through it, it's if you get a great outcome, it's not a problem, you're learning you're improving, you are taking advantage of opportunities is like, well, so actually, my background is in design. And we have this philosophy saying that, okay, if he has a solution, it's not a problem, okay. And if he doesn't have a solution is no problem either. Yeah. So when you say, well, that's the problem. Okay. Can you solve it? Yeah, well, it's not a problem. Well, doesn't have we did, we cannot solve it. Okay, so we need to change or pivot and we need to try to maybe a different angle, because in that way that we are trying to do it doesn't have a solution. Or maybe we didn't find it yet. So I would say we're talking with him about what was a crazy day, crazy week. And we are always like, losing the focus in what we are doing. Just for me, for example, just a chance to be here talking with you here at Silicon Valley. Well, it's a success itself. Yeah. So very grateful actually read it.

But I remember I remember for example, when we start chatting about your ideas to like doing these maybe new book or something was like two years ago, or a year ago. ish. And now actually, you're doing it. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown 3:21

And years later,

Sergio Smirnoff 3:26

maybe years, something nourish me. But what I'm saying is later, as an entrepreneurs, we set our own goals is nobody above us, and you have to do this. So when you said, this goal, will I need to achieve this. And if you feel that you cannot achieve that you feel bad. But actually, if you achieve it, if you're going through it, because you said that expectation for yourself. So that's why when you ask him, for example, well, why you are where you like to be an entrepreneur, because I love to set my own goals and expectations to myself, not somebody else to say for me, so. But in the fight in the battle, sometimes you lose the focus that as I said, that call so if it's not working, okay, let's find a way but always feeling that I mean, like, in a positive way, don't be like, over warm, because things are not going the way that it should be. Because you set that goal. So you should like embrace it will like joy. Make sense? Yeah. Yeah,

Jason Nyeh 4:39

it's crazy.

Sergio Smirnoff 4:45

You can say here,

Shawn Flynn 4:49

don't be surprised. That's on my link

Sergio Smirnoff 4:53

for you. You can use it. Yeah, I will love you to use it. But you have to say, say bye. I'm crazy. I'm like,

Jason Nyeh 5:03

exactly that. Yeah. Jason, anything else you'd like to add? Yeah, just just piggyback on what he said, definitely just is this journey and be part of that journey in you know, sometimes when we are going to, let's say, we're hiking in the hill of mountain right. And then when you're going through the journey of going up the mountain and once you get there, right, you see this big view and you like, Oh my god, this is amazing. But the climb to that hill were to see the Ville right may not be as pleasant but the so that's goes back with you know having our own business having a startup I would always go to in go through those journey and I'll be grateful for that journey so I could see the whole view and see the successes just like Silicon Valley successes you know seeing that the the goal of we're going in see that journey and this is phenomenal This is amazing I want to take this like

Sergio Smirnoff 6:09

this is great about Ron going up the hill is like sometimes until you get there you can see what's next and but

you need to get there embrace the journey but sometimes like entrepreneurs well when you get there okay that's the next mountain is not even higher so you actually you don't even like enjoy this very small moment because when you get there over this small hill okay now I have like this mountain in front I need to start climbing it and this go again for the journey but I think that sometimes somebody told me a long time ago you need to celebrate your small victories because you don't have like your boss saying hey good job yeah no maybe your friend your wife somebody you'd like so celebrating life gives good

that's what I'm saying no wife compliment but well so this small achievements at the end of the heel is like wow look down down the hidden well it was tough but I get there okay now gain energy and move forward to what's next but I feel like as he said is like the heel the the joy of the journey itself and but without losing perspective that you are going that direction because you said that fabrics for yourself you said that's all the mountain is like even like Higher Higher Higher okay this is what you will do fine but that's right

Jason Nyeh 7:48

yeah yeah I will continue to always yeah because I would never want to you know what they say is that I'm working for someone to make them rich you're working for us and then we become as much more humble and because of the journey and so I love that so I'll always choose the journey to to get the most definitely

Sergio Smirnoff 8:13

when I saw for example one of my first MVP some some month ago is like wow and it show it to somebody like I need works

wow that's pretty cool and it's not about money

it's not about like how hard was it's like well I have this crazy father in my mind and now we see here yeah yeah and actually

it's not even it's not only a real but it means something and it's you're like okay yeah yeah did you see it so it's like amazing okay let's let's

Jason Nyeh 8:57

have the entrepreneurial spirit that is you're willing to take the the journey take a risk even diving don't have to get paid for it because you want to see that yeah see it live totally having others you for enjoying it and using it and that's the

Sergio Smirnoff 9:17

arrows

just fine why number

Unknown 9:30

one

Unknown 9:33

exactly

Sergio Smirnoff 9:39

Of course because what we're building like business we're building products and problem should be like sale and people should buy it by the same time is as he said it's like just the joy of like the rebrand something that people is interest to us is like, wow, you like makes you feel well, I believe that's the spirit of the real entrepreneur.