Managing Time for Higher Performance

Intro: Carolynn Duncan

Founded Portland Ten to create 10 high-growth startups in the state of Oregon, the first of which just reached $1M in revenue (ShopIgniter). Managed 30 Portland startups in the past 18 months, met with & advised more than 300 startups in the tech, startup, & angel/venture capital networks in Seattle, Portland, southeast Idaho, and Salt Lake City region in the past 4 years. Launched, co-launched, or assisted in 5 early stage venture development projects: FundingUniverse Northwest, EPIC Venture Fund-- a Draper Fischer Jurvetsen affiliate fund, Eastern Idaho Entrepreneurial Center in partnership with Idaho National Laboratory, Hundred Dollar Business, Provo Labs Seed Fund.

Intro: Portland Ten

Entrepreneur development organization with the mission to get 10 Portland companies to $1MM within 18 months.

30 alumni, 5 cycles of 2 bootcamps (Portland Ten, Six Week Sprint), 25 Community Partners & Sponsors , 5 advisors, 5 staff, 10 volunteers, started Feb 2009. Profile client: ShopIgniter, $3MM of venture capital within 6 months of graduating, $1MM in revenue within 12 months. Initial team of 3. now 18+ Partners with PDC, NedSpace, OEN, Voyager Capital, Willamette University, Mercy Corps NW, Perkins & Company, Davis, Wright Tremaine, Silicon Valley Bank, Startup Weekend, Civic Apps, FundingUniverse, and many more. Grant by Portland Development Commission: $35,000, May 2010.

Intro: Today’s Meeting

Managing Time for Higher Performance

• Maximize the team's available time through identifying your startup’s highest/lowest priorities.

• Do a self-check to see if priorities are being implemented across the team, and review simple tactics that drive time efficiency.

When you start out, nothing exists. The business is an exclusive result of your team’s efforts. • If you don’t make a sales call, sales don’t happen.

• If your dev team doesn’t write code, the product

doesn’t exist.

• If you can’t keep the team on board & moving forward, it falls apart.

Problem 1: Starting from Zero

You quickly learn that effort= tangibility.

“We do a task, therefore something exists.”

So, your ambitious team starts doing a variety of tasks:

Telling the story. Working on the business model. Developing the product. Holding team meetings. Talking with investors. Going to networking events.

For a few months, life is great.

Maybe even that first year.

You’re living the dream! You’re an entrepreneur.

All of a sudden, something happens.

• Someone’s savings dry up. • The sales cycle is much, much longer than expected. • A cofounders’ spouse stops being willing to be the

“sugar mama”. • Loan payments become due. • Friends & family start hinting around at when they

might get repaid.

You start to feel a sense of urgency. The mortality rate for startups (50-90%) is the standard, not the exception. What if you don’t make it? Things become very straightforward: you have X months to get things together, or you’re done. You need X dollars to get there, and you currently have 1/X to do it. Or in some cases, -X. You can see the writing on the wall: if you don’t secure funding or generate revenue, it’s game over.

Problem 2: The Survival Instinct Creates Urgency

So, to bridge from where you are, to where survival is, your job continues to be to manage low budgets, go after critical developmental milestones, tell the story, make sales, raise funds, make payroll, keep burnout in check, and somehow keep stress levels low enough to maximize your efficiency.

Except now, if you’re not effective and efficient, your team will disintegrate, and you’re just another statistic.

Problem 2: Converting Chaos Into Survival

Chaos/Mortality

Security/The Dream

Checking In

• Sound familiar?

Focus, Execution, Priorities

• Fear of mortality creates a sense of urgency, which results in focus.

• For possibly the first time, you’re now completely focused on execution.

• You immediately begin deploying time & resources into your key priority areas.

But wait— what are your priorities?

• Short term: don’t die.

• Long term: extend the runway as long as possible.

1. Fighting fires

2. Going after funding, telling “the story”

3. Adding warm bodies to the team

4. Getting the product developed

5. Working on marketing materials

6. Figuring out the value prop

7. Hanging your hopes on 1 or 2 major accounts

Typical Startup Priorities

1. Actively managing a sales pipeline

2. Generating high-profile and meaningful traction

3. Clarifying the value prop/marketing message

4. Developing and deploying the MVP

5. Making the team secure & effective

6. Utilizing all current assets & converting assets into social capital & cash opportunities

7. Attracting funding & major stabilizing resources

Successful Startup Priorities

Runway/survival-generating formula: Revenue Driven (Sales as First Priority) Resource Conservative (Spending/Funding as Last Priority)

Revenue Traction Biz Dev Prod Dev Team Resources

Time Inventory:

$100/hour

40 hours/week

$4K/week of time inventory

$16K/month of time inventory

CEO Calendar

What are your top 3 priorities?

1.

2.

3.

CEO Calendar

Get out your calendar from last week. What % of time was dedicated to:

Priority 1? Priority 2? Priority 3?

Is the way you’re spending your time, aligning with

your top 3 priorities?

CEO Calendar

Identify the # of hours that need to be allocated for each priority— 1, 2, 3.

Schedule them (block them out) on your calendar.

Track this for a week, see how it goes. How well are managing the $16K worth of time inventory you’re spending?

Blocking Out Time

• Do priority 1-3 tasks first, then fit everything else in around.

• Whenever possible, have people adjust to your calendar– give them some days/times during your available blocks of time, near your location.

• Commit to spend less than 50 hours/week on work, and block other times (weekends, evenings) as non-work zones.

• Do the time inventory/calendar activity with your staff as well! How well is your team managing the company’s inventory of human capital?

Some Time Mgmt Tactics

Questions?

Carolynn Duncan

Director, Portland Ten

cduncan@portlandten.com

www.portlandten.com

503.707.7763