Category: Events

General Magic Movie Thrills Crowd

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On December 11th, TechRaising held a screening of the inspiring documentary, General Magic. Members of the Santa Cruz tech community gathered at the Landmark Nickelodeon Theater to watch and learn about one of the most innovative, yet unheard of, companies in Silicon Valley.

The documentary told the story about a team, consisting of the top talent, trying to revolutionize the way humans interacted with technology. General Magic released a closed network communication device called the Magic Link, that did not sell. This product launch failure led to the bankruptcy of General Magic.

The story captivated the audience. Two 12 year old kids expressed how the film gave them insight into the start of the now ubiquitous, mobile phone. Brayden Estby, owner of 11th Hour Coffee, drew parallels from the mobile phone industry as he thought about current trends in coffee. Everyone in attendance gave the documentary glowing reviews.

Following the movie, Andrew Mueller, our moderator, asked special guests David Hoffman, Michael Stern, and Dee Gardetti to provide us with firsthand accounts of what it was like inside General Magic. David Hoffman shot all of the original footage used in the documentary, who happens to be best friends with former CEO of General Magic, Marc Porat. Michael Stern, a corporate lawyer at Cooley, was the former CFO of General Magic. And, Dee Gardetti was the first hire of General Magic and head of HR.

David Hoffman expressed how General Magic failed in part, due to lack of advertising. The only Magic Link devices sold were to family and friends. No one else understood how to use the device or what it could do.

Michael Stern taught us that the lack of structure in the company caused serious problems. The engineers wanted to build and work on their passion projects, which was not conducive to meeting deadlines and shipping products. When a product manager was hired, the engineers would find a way to make them leave by “choice”. Michael Stern thought that effective product managers could have saved the company, but we will never know.

On a more positive note, Dee Gardetti discussed the importance of perseverance in the job market. In the documentary, Tony Fadell — a recent college graduate and known now as one of the fathers of the iPod, iPad, and founder of Nest — wanted to work at General Magic so badly, he called Dee daily to get an update on his application. Dee found Tony so relentless that she felt like if she didn’t hire him, he would still be calling today.

Events like these are important for the Santa Cruz community. They bring people together, motivate them to grow, and continue to inspire people to reach their goals and build amazing things. For more events with TechRaising, please subscribe to our mailing list, join our meetup group, and like us on Facebook.

If you are interested in learning more about General Magic, it is expected to hit select theaters in San Francisco and New York in Spring 2019.

 

Building Artisanal Brands — From Beer to Software, with Frank S Krueger

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When people think of “artisanal” they think about physical things crafted from hand. That is a remnant from a time before digital.  The important part is the level of care and attention that goes into the product and the ability to give the customer the feeling that this thing was made for them rather than the masses.

An artisanal brand knows how fill an emotional need or aspiration in the customers life. It is a brand that customers want to identify with and advocate for. Key to doing this includes transparency, storytelling, and customer advocacy enablement. Every business or startup can learn from this.

From a decade of product design for fast-paced tech startups to starting a Santa Cruz based craft brewery, Frank has learned a thing or two about how to do this. He will talk of the thrills, benefits and perils of transparently sharing your company’s story and building a customer base before the government even allows you to sell your product.

That is exactly what he is doing with Humble Sea Brewery — called “the coolest  brewery that doesn’t exist”.  Frank will highlight the steps he took, the stories he shared and the craft brewery brand he’s building — and contrast this to some digital equivalents from his past and current digital product work.

Essential Tips For Pitching Your Startup

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As we approach the 2014 TechRaising Weekend April 25-27  let’s look at some of the insights that we learned from Adeo Ressi’s Pitch Practice session during last July’s TechRaising Meetup.

All of these tips are essential when you are pitching to investors. And most will help you create a great pitch to attract team member to help work on your idea at TechRaising. Take a look and ask questions I the comments or tell us what you think.

Adeo’s Pitching Tips

Don’t ever use adjectives and especially superlatives.  You may think your idea is the best, the greatest, the first. Chances are the VC you are talking to has heard that same idea 100 times in the last two weeks. Ideas come in waves, if you thought of it chances are at least 975 other people did too. In Adeo ‘s case, when he hears superlatives you lose so much credibility he has to fight himself to “re-listen to what is coming out of your mouth.”

His advice: Don’t squander your precious time in front a VC — get straight to what they need to hear: tell them what you product is, who buys it and what problem it solves.

All businesses have one customer. Tell me whom you are helping – and it can’t be half of humanity. Yes you want to have a broad customer base, and it needs to be a specific segment of humanity. “Men” is not a specific segment. That is half of humanity.

The customer is who’s paying.  Always focus on the people with the money – especially when you are creating a market place.

Use the phrase, “My helps specific segment of humanity to [do what]” Not “I’m helping them by….”

Never, Never, Never, Ever – Start your pitch with Questions. 1) Unless you are actually gathering market data you are wasting time that you could be using to tell your story about your business.  2) Big risk: If no one engages your pitch has just crashed & burned.

Appear fresh and new – Saying that you have been working on your product/idea for the last 5 years is often not a good thing. You want to give the appearance of magic — that your idea just came from the ether and hey “look at this prototype we created over night!”  If you tell them that you have been at this for years – they’re going to want to see all the customers you’ve garnered in that time.

You spend all day thinking about your business model and need to make it comprehensible in a short pitch. Don’t give partial information. If there are 10 parts to you model don’t give only parts 4, 6 & 9 in your pitch. It confuses the audience. Find a way to distill your whole model into your pitch. (By the way, if your model requires 10 parts you may need to reexamine your model.)

Don’t lead with your “oh so clever phrase” or your data – Always start with what you are creating. People need the context first for you stats or clever phrase to make sense. Otherwise they are confused on where you are going with this. You don’t want to start them off questioning the data. Use the data to justify their gut feeling after you already sold the idea. Not the state you want the people with the purse strings to be in! Seriously, resist the temptation to be what you think is a great showman. Trust Adeo on this, your stats or catchy phrase will be even more powerful when people know what the heck you’re talking about!

Start with this phrase  “My company (insert name) is developing (insert a concrete item – website, mobile app, software etc) to solve (name the problem) with (insert your secret sauce)”.

When you’re the winner, Shut Up!  When you’re pitch has landed stop talking. Maybe the hardest thing to do and also the most important. Any top sales pro knows this and it is still hard for them.

Ok, now that you are ready you can get your TechRaising Tickets here.

Image: Flickr – Adam

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