The Accelerated Entrepreneur

For Now

For now, I am blogging about entrepreneurship and other subjects at Anne Giles Clelland's CEO Blog.

I Could Give You My Card

I found myself standing near the door to of the Alumni Hall auditorium to observe and savor the intent conversations occurring all over the room, the sign of a thought-provoking speaker.

Bob Metcalfe is the founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet, and a partner with Polaris Ventures.  He gave a talk entitled “Enernet: Lessons from 62 years of Internet history for how to meet world needs for cheap and clean energy,” in the Alumni Hall, Skelton Conference Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, on November 21, 2008.

Bob Metcalfe was in a group near the podium.  Suddenly he, Bob Summers, founder and President of nanoCom, and others were striding up the aisle to their next appointment.

They paused near the door, spoke to the few standing there.  I thanked Metcalfe for his talk.

Bob Metcalfe turned the whole of his Ethernet-founding, venture capitalist presence on me and asked, “What do you do?”

Trained well by Jim Flowers, director of VT KnowledgeWorks, I launched my pitch, “I have Handshake 2.0, an online…”  Then I failed my training and ended lamely with, “I’m a member of VT KnowledgeWorks.  I could give you my card.”

Groan.

What almost always gets in the way of anybody’s ability to speak is the interplay of thoughts and feelings that form inner sentences clamoring so loudly that the speaker can no longer even hear what he or she wants to say.

These are the inner sentences that rendered me speechless when Bob Metcalfe asked, “What do you do?”

• Celebrate that you created Ethernet!  I’m star-struck!
• Nothing as technologically awing as creating Ethernet.
• Care passionately about my clients and them knowing you would be great and what can I say to recommend all of them to you in a really memorable way because you must hear so much of the same thing and how can I make them stand out to you...
• While you were talking, I was I think about my friend in Tampa with whom I studied for the Networking Essentials exam ten years ago and all the terms you mentioned - TCP/IP, layers, topology - reminded me how much I miss her.
• And really what I do is spend most of my days in wonder and I’m trying to make a business of that and it's hard.

Sigh.

I wish I had been able to represent myself and my clients as well as I had heard Kenneth Ferris represent Luna in a group conversation in the lobby just an hour earlier.

What’s to be done?

Was it on Captain Kangaroo that I first heard this song from Swing Time? “Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again.”

“I’m Anne Clelland.  I have a social media company.  I focus on tech companies.  I enhance my clients’ reputations and connect them online with potential clients and partners.  Handshake 2.0 is one way I do that.”

Better.

An Entrepreneur's Priorities

Not Eric

When I listened to my voice mail, the male voice said, “Hello, Anne Giles Clelland, or however you say it.  Eric Schmidt is from BHS and is coming to Blacksburg.”  Some personal commentary followed, then, “Yes, Eric Schmidt of Google will be at the Lyric Theater.”

Having just begun using Twitter only hours earlier and including in one of my tweets that Eric Schmidt of Google was coming to town and that a colleague had confirmed he was the brother of one of my high school classmates, and having blogged about his visit the other day, I felt awed by the power of words on Web 2.0.  Eric Schmidt had found me.

I also felt sad.  The voice was business-like, not warm, and even could be considered coldly in the third person.  How I translated what I heard?  “You’re just another media type trying to take advantage of who you know.  But because of who you know, my sibling, I’m calling to confirm that, yes, I’m coming to Blacksburg.’

What to do?  Why, e-mail Eric Schmidt, tell him I was touched by his call, reassure him that I would not presume to use such a distant connection, nor reveal what he had said in his voice mail, and to share that I consider myself a vendor to Google and do  my very best to provide excellent content which can show up as excellent search results for his clients.

I wasn’t able to find his e-mail address.

I looked at the missed messages in my cell phone.  A Blacksburg number was listed.  He must have been in town early to see old friends.

I summoned my courage.  I returned Eric Schmidt’s call.

I reached the colleague who had confirmed by e-mail that I had gone to school with Eric Schmidt’s sibling.  He is also a classmate’s big brother, didn’t know my new married name well, and like all big brothers, thought he didn’t have to identify himself to his little sister’s friends.  He was the one - not Eric - who had called to confirm his information to me and to offer more details.  I just hadn’t recognized his voice.

What did I learn from this experience?

1) I never, ever, ever want to be that close again to a lack-of-integrity “I’m somebody because I know so-and-so.”  Not in a blog, not on Twitter, not on the phone, not in person.  Never. 

I’m going to stand in line at the Lyric Theater like everyone else.  If I don’t get in, so be it.  I’ll still be able to stand up for myself and for what I believe in.  Even a seat in the Lyric to hear Eric Schmidt isn’t worth losing that.

2) I believed that Eric Schmidt had called me.  I was disappointed that he hadn’t.  I continue to be full of wonder at the possibilities of Web 2.0.  That I am not going to lose.

Really

This resulted from an all-day e-mail exchange with a colleague, Nanci Hardwick, CEO of Schultz-Creehan Holdings, Inc.

It began with a proposal from me, then a reply from her:

"What do you *really* want?"

At the end of the day, I wrote this:

I want to build a gotta-see, gotta-be-seen online destination for high-tech businesses in search of news about who's doing what and what they're doing.  I'm hoping features like an advice column, a YouTube video show by a local personality, and columns by various pundits will attract the first set of readers--who will then start skimming the site, clicking on the companies listed in the categories, and start getting to know all about our local high-tech economy.

I'm hoping the result of that will be handshakes on deals.

The "side effect" of lots of online content is Google results.  Potential customers, partners, employees, when they search using keywords, will start seeing more and more Handshake 2.0 blog posts in their results.

So Handshake 2.0 is for locals about locals, but is available to anybody anywhere--as any Web site is--looking for what that company can do.

If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I want local economic development to have happened via high-tech companies who found the deal-making information, connection, or even just "feel" for someone through content on Handshake 2.0.

Nanci replied, "Now I get it!  Pretty big goal - I like it."

I do, too.

It's what I *really* want.

Loan

I pitched angel investors on my company and they decided to back me.

Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

Actually, I, a 49-year-old daughter, asked my 75-year-old parents for a business loan.  They very kindly agreed to give it to me.

I left my IF checkbook with my mother.  She used her Ph.D. in statistics on it and found my error.  It took her 3 hours.  If she charged a consulting fee of $350 per hour, we can now add another over $1K to the awing ripple of fees that come from dropping an Insufficient Funds checkbook into business waters.

My mother offered me this wisdom in an e-mail:  “Two descriptors you never use in a checkbook are ‘approximate balance’ and ‘estimated balance.’”

I am sure those are not descriptors she has ever used in her checkbook.

While I have been known to savor an entire bag of chips during a stressful time, I am not hungry.

I am full of humble pie.

What’s to be learned from all this?

From a business point of view, I’m glad I found backers willing to offer a business loan with workable terms (I insisted on a fee, although my parents would have easily gone without) rather than cash in exchange for equity.  I think getting a “friends and family loan” still qualifies as bootstrapping.  I haven’t had to sell or share any of my company ownership.  Yet.

From a personal point of view, I’m a very lucky daughter.  And a very lucky wife.  “Adventures in finance!” was all my spouse said.  I call him Clark Kent.  Others, who know he’s married to me, tend to mention “Saint” with his first name.

On Tuesday, I requested and received a loan.  I saw the lovely bank manager at National Bank again with my new deposit.  (My accountant, Jamie Dunn of Hodges, Jones, & Mabry, will probably want to tear his hair out when he hears I deposited my business loan in my personal account.  But, Jamie, it’s my personal account that crashed!).  I replenished my personal account, my business account, and repaid the loan I received from our joint account.

My mother suggested I drop my personal account checkbook and bank statement by on a monthly basis.

On Tuesday afternoon, Handshake 2.0 went live with online payment services through Click & Pledge.

On Wednesday, we got our very first online order.

I am in the middle of giving the representative from that company the most professional, valuable, first-class service and product I can offer.

That person has no idea the drama into which that order fell like manna.

IF

“What percentage of people tell you this is their first time?” I asked.

“A lot,” the bank manager answered.

No, the title of this blog post does not refer to “If” by Bread.

It refers to Insufficient Funds (IF).

Did I mention that I hesitated to open a business bank account for fear that I didn’t have enough cash for two accounts?

Have I shared often enough how much I just love being an entrepreneur?

What would I do differently?  At this point, nothing really.  I thought I had enough start-up money.  How would one really know at the beginning how much one needed? 

My spouse was lovely about it.  Frankly, this process would be nearly unbearable without a supportive partner.  If I heard every night, “Did you sell a blog post today?”, I would lose heart.

I'm going to frame the Insufficient Funds notice.  49 years old, indeed, and bouncing a check. 

Actually, thanks to National Bank, not bouncing a check.  I got charged one fee.  National Bank covered the several checks that came in after my, ahem, oversight.

“Most people, though,” the bank manager said, “don’t come in to pay their fees.”

Oh.  I can understand that.  I felt pretty small walking into the bank.

I include blog posts from The Accelerated Entrepreneur:  The Saga of Anne Giles Clelland's First Year as an Accelerated High-Tech Entrepreneur at VT KnowledgeWorks on the VT KnowledgeWorks blog, Inside VT KnowledgeWorks.

But I don’t think I’ll be sharing this one quite yet.  I'll probably enjoy telling this part of the saga some day. 

Let me wait until my red face lightens a tad.

Technical Support

From me to my Web 2.0 developer:

Click the box! I would never have guessed that! I love my new rainbow of colors! Thank you SO much!!!

From my Web 2.0 developer:

This is why software companies need to hire normal people to use the software the nerds write and tell the nerds how normal people use computers.

Separation

Near the end of my VT KnowledgeWorks start-up meeting for the incorporation of my new enterprise, my LeClairRyan attorney Peer Segelke said:

“You have to separate yourself from your company.”

I immediately began to reflect on the myriad implications of such a profound statement, but he called my attention back to the bound corporate documents and legal business guide he would give me.

“If you take only two points away from this meeting, it’s this and this.”  Peer put a red sticker on each page, then pointed to the first one.

“Get used to signing your name ‘Anne Giles Clelland, President.’ If you sign your name just ‘Anne Giles Clelland,’ you’re personally liable.”

Uh-oh.  I had signed my first contract as a business just the day before.  I had felt proud and excited as I penned “Anne Giles Clelland.”

Sans “President.” Legally, then, I actually hadn’t signed as a business.  I had signed as an individual.  Uh-oh.

Peer pointed to page with the second red sticker.

“Open a separate bank account for the company,” he said.

Every single adviser I had consulted since the start-up process began had given me this advice. 

Why had I moved it down on my entrepreneurial to-do list?  Fear that I had too low of an Earnings Before Income and Taxes (The EBIT Ghoul) to have enough funds to open an account.

“Don’t mix your funds and the company’s funds,” Peer said.  “If there’s a problem, who’s liable becomes unclear.”

That’s when I felt dread.  I’ve written before that I am willing to invest my time and heart into this venture, risking both in the process.  I am not willing to risk the enterprise I share with my spouse.

And the cats, the cats, who would care for the cats?! 

I hadn’t realized I had put us all in such peril.

I needed a nap, cat on chest, to recover from the meeting with Mr. Segelke.

Then I made the phone call to our VT KnowledgeWorks bank contact, Susan Shephard, BB&T Financial Center Leader, a lovely person I met at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center picnic. 

I had wanted to enter her office as a woman of means, as someone she might be glad to have as a client because of the deposit I could make.

As I mentioned here and here, I was raised to be a genteel Virginia woman.  Talk of money was not the done thing.  I felt embarrassed, and cornered, into asking her the hardest question:

“How much?”

Let’s just say Susan Shephard’s VIP-treatment answer started with a very small number, included a lot of use of the term “free,” and had a very heartening reference to “no minimum.”

If I had made a deposit of $100,000 instead of a deposit with a lot fewer zeros, I couldn’t have been treated with more warmth and professionalism than when I opened my first incorporated company’s first bank account at the Blacksburg, Virginia branch on Price's Fork Road of BB&T.

At 10:00 AM, I met with my attorney, Peer Segelke.  By 4:00 PM, I was signing BB&T documents.

“Anne Giles Clelland, President.”

Sometimes I write around my deepest truths.

I was so sore-hearted when I wrote E-Life.

A friend died.  I had surgery.

Okay.