All In Startup

Launching a New Idea When Everything Is on the Line

Diana Kander

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781118857663
• eBook ISBN: 9781118857670
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

If Owen Chase can't find a way to turn his company around in the next nine days, he'll be forced to shut it down and lay off all of his employees. He has incurred substantial debt and his marriage is on shaky ground. Through pure happenstance, Owen finds himself pondering this problem while advancing steadily as a contestant at the World Series of Poker. His Las Vegas path quickly introduces him to Samantha, a beautiful and mysterious mentor with a revolutionary approach to entrepreneurship. Sam is a fountain of knowledge that may save his company, but her sexual advances might prove too much for Owen's struggling marriage. All In Startup is more than just a novel about eschewing temptation and fighting to save a company. It is a lifeline for entrepreneurs who are thinking about launching a new idea or for those who have already started but can't seem to generate the traction they were expecting. Entrepreneurs who achieve success in the new economy do so using a new "scientific method" of innovation. All In Startup demonstrates why four counterintuitive principles separate successful entrepreneurs from the wanna-preneurs who bounce from idea to idea, unable to generate real revenue. You will likely get only one opportunity in your life to go "all in" in on an idea: to quit your job, talk your spouse into letting you drain the savings account, and follow your dream. All In Startup will prepare you for that "all in" momentand make sure that you push your chips into the middle only when the odds are in your favor. This book holds the keys to significantly de-risking your idea so that your success appears almost lucky. Join Owen and Sam for this one-of-a-kind journey that will set you on the right path for when it's your turn to put everything on the line.

Chapter 1
First Appearances Can Be Deceiving

She was at the bar. Owen immediately knew it was her. He hadn’t gotten the greatest look at her face on the treadmill at the gym, but he could tell from the hair and the shirt. Natural blonde and she was wearing another Sparksys shirt. Was she a sales rep? Owen wasn’t as familiar with the company as he should have been. Having your own business really puts a damper on learning about other companies, especially ones where nobody is exactly sure what they do.

He knew Sparksys made an important part of microprocessors for smartphones and that somehow they’d managed to make that sexy. It wasn’t deliberate advertising on their part, but they were known and featured in many magazines for the ridiculous perks their employees received. Owen wasn’t sure, but he had read something about their offering something called the 7 C’s, where every year for seven years they’d pay for a week or two-week or something visit to a different continent. That’s insane. How much does that cost? Wait—that’s just the kind of company that’d buy bicycles for its employees.

“Hey.”

Owen looked down. The woman had approached him. She was definitely a sales rep. Women don’t approach you in Vegas unless they’re offering up some sort of service. Maybe it was callous, but the first thought that flashed through Owen’s mind was: couldn’t they pick a sales rep with bigger boobs? Oh well—he’d listen to her pitch, pretend to sound interested, and then possibly pick up the name of somebody he could contact about ordering bicycles. Maybe this was a win-win. Or a win for him at least. Not like she had a chance of selling him anything—ReBicycle didn’t need smartphones for its employees. It barely needed employees.

“Hey, I’m Owen. What is Sparksys doing at the World Series of Poker?” A good lead-in question, Owen thought.

“How do you know I work for Sparksys?”

Shit. That quickly backfired. Owen didn’t want to say he saw at her at the gym. That might come off creepy. At the same time, if she’s in sales, she probably won’t care. She wants people to look at her.

“The gym. You were wearing a Sparksys shirt there, too.”

“Oh, was I?”

“Yeah. I mean I think it was you. Unless you have a doppelganger hanging around this hotel.”

“You were at the gym?”

“Getting a little cardio in.” Owen patted his stomach, “I’m playing in the World Series tomorrow and didn’t want to overdo it, but at the same time, you can feel the stress in this place. Got to burn it off somehow.”

“I agree. But it seems like most people here fall into the ‘eat your stress’ category.” She gave him a big smile.

Owen responded with a nervous chuckle. It was a decent line. She was game. Laid-back approach for a salesperson, too. Owen liked and disliked that. He had dealt with enough people coming into ReBicycle trying to sell him dumb things he didn’t need that he was constantly on guard. He knew she was going to ask him if he was aware of Sparksys’s latest offerings and that she currently had one of their microprocessors in her contact lenses because they were so small or something like that.

She nodded toward the insignia on his polo shirt. “So what’s ReBicycle?”

She was going for the sale. Owen could tell.

“ReBicycle? It’s my company.”

Owen had thought of plenty of good ideas for companies. His MBA and his Deloitte consulting job had put opportunities in front of him on a regular basis. He’d frequently think of startup ideas that might be worth something, but the more he slept on the ideas, the more doubt he developed about them. He’d never had that doubt with ReBicycle. It was solid. He could see it perfectly. He could hardly think about anything else. He knew people would love the value he was creating. He could provide for his family on his own terms. He could provide for a lot of families.

“I figured as much. So what is it? Should I have heard of it?” A nice unhurried question. She was good.

“Well, do you ride road bikes? Or do CAT races? We advertise all over the place. We’re an online-based company that takes slightly used bike parts and we build custom-made bikes and then we sell them for a fraction of the cost of what the big bike companies do. It’s all about delivering like a really amazing product. And at an affordable price point, which is a big problem in the cycling world.”

She was quiet. Probably gearing up for the big pitch.

“Great, so how is it going?”

Ha! How’s it going? Well, should he tell her that he’s unable to make the payments on either his first or second mortgage? Maxed out on two credit cards? On the brink of laying off six people who put their faith in him, who put the well-being of their families in his hands?

Dammit! The bikes are ridiculously good and ridiculously cheap. How is it not growing? Shit, how is it not surviving? The bikes are literally half the price of the ones people can buy in a store. Half the price! We’re talking 500 to 600 bucks. That’s not chump change—that’s a cruise.

His initial plan was flawless. Identify a problem. Check. Bicycles are expensive and good bicycles are really freaking expensive. Identify a solution. Check. Build bikes by hand from slightly used parts that are available and cheap. Identify a market. Check. People who are cost-conscious but know quality. Identify a way to reach those people. Check. Advertise on all the largest cycling forums, send free samples to the big magazines, set up booths at large trade shows. Generate word of mouth.

Check, check, check, check. ReBicycle had done all of those things. And yet ReBicycle had also sold only eight bikes in the past week. Eight bikes was what Owen had envisioned moving on a slow Monday morning. Not an entire day. Not an entire week. What the hell was going on? Sometimes when reading cycling forums where people bragged about their new bikes, he’d daydream about ringing the doorbell of that person’s house and then physically shaking them and showing them just how much money they’d wasted. He’d written some nasty comments on those forums recently. Someone had called him a troll. He didn’t tell Lisa, his wife, about that. He didn’t tell her much anymore.

Their strained communication over the past few days was nothing new, and Owen knew he was responsible. Whenever he looked at Lisa now, he no longer saw the twinkle in her eye that used to always make him smile. He only saw the reflection of a man who was putting his family in financial peril to chase a dream. He just couldn’t overcome the enormous sense of guilt. He wondered whether their marriage would be able to survive all of this.

“Uh, how’s it going? Really well. We’ve been fortunate enough to get some really incredible publicity, and traffic to our site is increasing virtually every month.” Owen gestured an increasing growth curve with his arm.

“You must be pretty successful. I mean the market must be pretty big if you’re coming out for the World Series of Poker. Is it international or just domestic?”

What a fraud. Owen couldn’t afford a ticket to the World Series of Poker. He could barely afford the drinks at this bar. He was only here because last week, his best friend, Pitchford, entered a last-chance $300 buy-in tournament at Island Resorts, the local Columbus casino, where you could see from one end to the other and no drinks were free. Owen hated the place. It was a 200-person tournament and the top three finishers got a place at the World Series of Poker instead of cash. Pitchford had told Owen he was entering it, which was nuts because Pitchford was in the middle of getting ready to leave on a consulting project in Japan for six months. Pitchford had also told Owen that if he won, he was going to give Owen his spot at the WSOP. He placed second and kept his promise.

Owen didn’t want to go. He couldn’t go. It wasn’t right to go. He told Pitchford as much. Pitchford told him he was an idiot if he turned down the deal of a lifetime. A free trip to Las Vegas and a free entry into the World Series of Poker, usually a $10,000 fee. Pitchford told Owen that they could split the winnings. Whatever Owen won, he could keep half. It’d be like they were playing on the same team.

Lisa was also surprisingly supportive . . . cautiously supportive. She said she thought the trip would help Owen clear his head, maybe figure out the best thing to do with the business. Who knew? Owen could actually win some serious money. It was an opportunity they really couldn’t afford to pass up.

“Well, right now, we’re just domestic. And the market is there . . . but uh . . . we’ve had some difficulties tapping into . . . uh . . . well, we are still pretty new and we haven’t made the dent on the market I was hoping for. But we’re getting there. Like I said, the web site traffic is up 50 percent this month alone, and the press has been great. It’s just a matter of time. And what do you do for Sparksys?” Best to just change topics.

“Not much of anything anymore. I’m here to play in the tournament.”

“You?”

“Yeah. Me. What’s the matter? Never met a girl who could play poker?”

“So are you like a pro and you’re sponsored or something?”

A genuine laugh from her, though Owen didn’t mean it to be funny.

“I’m not a pro. I’m not sponsored. I am sober, though. I’m going to grab a drink. You need one?”

“Sure. I’d love to pick your brain on how Sparksys chooses its vendors.”

A look of disgust flashed across her face. Disgust equaled wrinkles. Maybe she was older than her early thirties. Thirty-seven tops. Owen prided himself on being able to tell demographics. Why was she disgusted that he asked about Sparksys and potentially doing business with them? Definitely not a saleswoman. The chest, age, and demeanor ruled that out. What was she?

“What’s your name?”

“Sam.”

Chapter 2
You’re Not Fooling Anyone

Sam had immediately recognized him for what he was. He was in shape, wearing a work polo with sleeves that were too tight. The company logo and lack of funky glasses ruled out advertising industry. The tip-top shape, khakis, and polo screamed some hip business. He was a small-business owner who had hit it big or at least big enough to come to the World Series of Poker. Sam hadn’t even really wanted to talk to him, but across the bar she couldn’t make out the logo on his shirt. So she had approached. As she approached, he kept staring. An introduction was going to happen. She wasn’t shy about that.

ReBicycle? What was that? Since selling Sparksys, Sam had followed plenty of startups. She was sure s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• A Letter from Thom Ruhe
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: First Appearances Can Be Deceiving
• Chapter 2: You’re Not Fooling Anyone
• Chapter 3: You Can’t Sell Anything by Doing All of the Talking
• Chapter 4: It’s How Well You Lose, Not How Well You Win, That Determines Whether You Get to Keep Playing
• Chapter 5: The Real Pros Don’t Play Every Hand
• Chapter 6: Vanity Metrics Can Hide the Real Numbers That Matter to Your Business
• Chapter 7: You Won’t Find a Mentor if You Don’t Ask
• Chapter 8: Put Your Customers and Their Needs before Your Vision for a Solution
• Chapter 9: Don’t Gamble—Use Small Bets to Find Opportunities
• Chapter 10: Even Experts Need to Prepare for New Terrain
• Chapter 11: People Don’t Buy Visionary Products; They Buy Solutions to Their Problems
• Chapter 12: Only Customers Can Tell You if You’ve Found a Problem Worth Solving
• Chapter 13: Hoping and Praying for Luck Is Not a Strategy
• Chapter 14: It’s Never Too Late to Test Your Assumptions
• Chapter 15: The Secret to Customer Interviews Is Nonleading, Open-Ended Questions
• Chapter 16: The Only Way to Get Good at Customer Interviews Is to Practice
• Chapter 17: Finding Out Your Assumptions Were Wrong Is Just as Valuable as Proving Them Right
• Chapter 18: Don’t Pivot to a New Idea without Testing Your New Assumptions
• Chapter 19: Save Your Chips for When You’ll Need the Least Amount of Luck to Win
• Chapter 20: Successful Entrepreneurs Recognize Failure, Fold, and Live to Fight Another Day
• Chapter 21: Test Your Assumptions before Committing Any Resources to an Idea
• Chapter 22: Luck Can Be Engineered if You Take Emotion Out of the Equation
• Chapter 23: Every Successful Entrepreneur Has More Failures than Successes
• Chapter 24: The Harder You Work, the Luckier You’ll Get
• Chapter 25: Opportunities to Find Prospective Customers Are Everywhere—You Just Have to Look
• Chapter 26: The Best Feedback from Potential Customers Comes from Meticulous Interviews
• Chapter 27: Recognize the Vanity Metrics to Avoid Big Losses
• Chapter 28: Keep Interviewing Customers until You Find a Migraine Problem Worth Solving
• Chapter 29: People Can’t Help Themselves from Sharing When You Bring Up a Migraine Problem
• Chapter 30: Stay Objective in Your Interviews Whether You Are Getting Good or Bad News
• Chapter 31: Nothing Else Matters until You Can Prove That Customers Want Your Product
• Chapter 32: Luck Makers Seek Out New Experiences and Find Opportunities Wherever They Go
• Chapter 33: Luck Is Not a Good Strategy for Poker or Business—It’s the Outcome of a Good Strategy
• Chapter 34: To Prove Demand, Find the Shortest Path to the Ultimate Customer Action
• Chapter 35: Prepare for Bad Luck by Building Up Reserves
• Chapter 36: Fear and Inaction Are the Two Greatest Threats to Your Business Idea
• Chapter 37: Understand Your Tendencies On Tilt So That You Can Compensate for Them
• Chapter 38: There Is No Mistaking It When You Uncover Migraine Problems Worth Solving
• Chapter 39: Get Comfortable with Being Wrong
• Chapter 40: Don’t Go All-In without Confirming Your Assumptions through Smaller Bets
• Chapter 41: Second Chances Are Rare—Make Sure You Get It Right the First Time Around
• Chapter 42: Even When You Find a Migraine Problem, Crafting a Solution Requires Vigilance and Readjustment
• Chapter 43: Don’t Commit All-In until You Prove That Customers Want Your Product and There’s a Business Model to Support It
• Chapter 44: The Strength of Your Initial Idea, or Starting Hand, Is Always Relative
• Sam’s Journal
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• End User License Agreement