The Corporate Refugee Startup Guide

Meet Dave Gee
dave@startupguides.io

“Help mid-career professionals
successfully launch their first startups.”
- Aug 26, 2017

“Plan on it taking
1-2 years from
start to getting it
in print.”

“You will only get
5%-10% in
royalties from
publishers.”

“A publisher will
never let you put
that photo of a
Cobra on your
cover.”

“Using a
publisher wouldn’t
be very
entrepreneurial of
you, would it?”

Wait, let me write
a book instead...

Aug 26, 2017
Nov 10, 2017

Average age of a first
time entrepreneur….40
(Vivek Wadha - Duke University)

12 Critical
Steps for the
“Corporate
Refugee”
Entrepreneur
Step 1 - Assessing your True Motivations
Step 2 - Validating your Startup Idea & Building Your Business Model
Step 3 - Preparing your Family for the Journey
Step 4 - Transitioning from Corporate to your Startup
Step 5 - Branding and Marketing Your Startup
Step 6 - Law School for Your Startup
Step 7 - Raising Capital for Your Startup
Step 8 - Pitching Your Startup
Step 9 - Building Your Startup Team
Step 10 - Creating Your Launch Plan & Pilot
Step 11 - Cash Flowing Your Startup
Step 12 - Preparing to Pivot again and again

Some Featured Startup Secrets from the Experts….

Step 1
Assessing Your
True Motivations
“...entrepreneurs who have a need for
achievement end up being much more
successful in general than those who have a
need for independence. These are not
mutually independent things; you can have both,
but one usually dominates.”
- Brad Feld, co-founder Techstars and Foundry
Group

Step 2
Validating Your
Startup Idea &
Building Your
Business Model
“One of the traps I see first-time
entrepreneurs fall into with great frequency
is being afraid to talk about their idea. There
are 7.4 billion people in the world. You are
naïve to think that you are the only one that
has ever had this idea before.”
- Troy Vosseller, gener8tor

Step 2
Validating Your
Startup Idea &
Building Your
Business Model

Step 3
Preparing Your
Family
“The notion of work/life balance has always
been a little strange to me. I've only been
known to operate one way—with high energy
and passion around things I love. This means
that while I'm working, I try to be dedicated to
spending time on what matters most to the
business at that very moment. And, while at
home, I try to be dedicated to what matters
most at that time—my family.”
-Aaron Everson, Co-Founder of Jellyfish and Shoutlet

Step 3
Preparing Your
Family
“I can tell you from personal experience that
when people are going through turmoil in
their career, their decisions become very
short-term focused and frequently, little
consideration is paid to the best interests of
the family.”
- Meg Schmitz, career & franchise consultant

Step 4
Transitioning
from Corporate
to Startup
“Taking employees with you is generally a
bad idea. You need to remember that you
are taking not just four individuals, but
many times, four families with you. In my
34 years in this business I rarely see it work
out. The exception is salespeople; then it
can work.”
Howard Tullman, CEO of 1871

Step 4
Transitioning
from Corporate
to Startup
“In Corporate America you have an incentive
not to rock the boat. You try to stay in
line....Going out and launching a company is
the opposite. You have to break the status
quo in order to succeed as a startup. It’s a
fundamental change of perspective. Some people
simply can’t make that change.”
-Troy Henikoff, MATH Venture Partners

Step 4
Transitioning
from Corporate
to Startup
“Sometimes when I am mentoring startups, I
am shocked at the lack of recognition of the
importance of sales. At times founders focus
too much on product development; meanwhile
they are burning through cash and not growing
the business”
Kathy Hust, President, Scanalytics

Step 5
Branding and
Marketing Your
Startup

Step 6
Law School for
Your Startup
“One of the common issues I see with
co-founders is that they have not worked out
their internal roles—who is expected to do
what—employee, director, company officer.
Often they have not talked through who is going
to receive what amount of equity...Sometimes
these conversations result in someone leaving.”
Hank Barry, Sidley Austin’s Emerging
Companies and Venture Capital Office and
former CEO of Napster

Step 6
Law School for
Your Startup
“In the employment context, many states will
not enforce non-compete provisions...I
suggest that they instead use agreements
that contain non-solicitation (e.g. no poach)
provisions for employees and customers.
- Chris Cain, Foley & Lardner

Step 7
Raising Capital
For your Startup
“We must have been spending 50 percent of
our time on the Kickstarter campaign up to two
months before the campaign. Here is what
people need to understand—60 percent of
Kickstarter campaigns never get funded and the
average one that does get funded raises $5,000.
In order to really knock it out of the park, you need
to commit significant capital and/or time up front.”
- Rob Kowalik, CMO of CA7CH, Raised over
$250k on Kickstarter

Step 7
Raising Capital
For your Startup
“They [corporate employees] tend to think that
the product or service needs to be polished,
just like when they were in corporate. They
just want to keep adding whistles and bells. They
come with over-engineered products. They don’t
understand the concept of an MVP (minimum
viable product). “
Peter Wilkins, Managing Director, Hyde Park Angels

Step 8
Pitching Your
Startup
“One of the important things I tell my clients is
that pitching is a kind of specialized theater
like opera or comedy improv... Most
performances follow those rules, Your job is to
learn ahead of time about the rules of
pitching, who your audience will be and the
criteria that the audience will use to judge
quality.”
- Professor William Dougan, Faculty, University
of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Step 9
Building Your
Startup Team
“I find that some of the most common mistakes in
hiring the initial team members are:
- Not understanding their company’s needs
(and their weaknesses).
- Giving away too much equity to people
early
- Keeping friends on the team, even when
they are no longer adding value.
- Not judging people critically based on their
knowledge, education, experience,
network and integrity.”
- Peter Layton, CEO & Co-Founder,
Blackthorne Capital Management

Step 10
Creating Your
Launch Plan
Tips on selecting your beta target market:
1. Ensure that the market is representative of your target
market
2. Select a sample size that is large enough to gather
necessary feedback
3. Provide enough time to gather feedback
4. Choose a market that cannot be easily impacted
(positively or negatively) by outside sources (e.g.
competitors, biases from your startup, non-representative
economic factors, etc.)

Step 11
Cash Flowing
Your Startup
Cash Flow Traps:
1. How will I fund my new business?
2. Is your startup funding sufficient?
3. Is your startup funding too much?
4. Will your cash flow support your business?
5. Are my sales estimates right?
6. Are accounts receivable and accounts
payable causing my cash crunch?
- Tim Carr, University of
Wisconsin-Whitewater, former Director at
Robert W. Baird

Step 12
Preparing to
Pivot, Again
and Again
“Developing a minimal viable product (MVP)
and ensuring that your product is built to be
scalable, highly functional and a solution for
the customer pain point is the most
important job you have as a founder.”
-Brian Jensen, CEO & Co-Founder, Fishidy

The Corporate Refugee Startup Guide

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to The Corporate Refugee Startup Guide

Similar to The Corporate Refugee Startup Guide (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

The Corporate Refugee Startup Guide