25th June, 2023

🗻 Descend, ✈️ Fly, 📢 Announce

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

- Jack Gilbert

🗻 Descend

Perhaps the most recognised New Zealander ever is Sir Edmund Hillary.

In 1953, at the age of 35, he climbed his Everest, which just happened to be the actual Everest. After that he got on with quite a few other things. He lived a life full of adventure and also did a lot to help people less fortunate than himself. These days he lives on the $5 note.

I remember this quote from Peter Hillary's eulogy to his dad (please excuse me if I don't have the wording exactly right):

Don't wait for great things to happen to you, or else you might be waiting a very long time.

I'm interested in the language we use to describe Sir Ed's original achievement. For example, an article on the official Ministry for Culture and Heritage website starts: ¹

A beekeeper from New Zealand, Edmund Hillary, and the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to stand on the summit of the world's highest peak.

Sir Ed himself had a great line about this. He was asked about the possibility that a previous expedition had reached the top before them. He immediately replied (and again I'm paraphrasing):

I always considered it a return trip.

He's quite right. The reason we remember him is because they were the first to reach the summit who also made it down to tell their story.

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✈️ Fly

The landing is what determines if we were flying or falling.

During the early years of Xero there were two stories that dominated media reports:

1. Xero reports another loss; and

2. Xero raises massive amounts of new capital

Both of these stories were true. But the connection between these two facts wasn't often explored. That capital was funding the losses, but what were the outcomes that were being achieved in the meantime, in little steps?

A much more interesting story was hiding in plain sight: the consistent growth in customer numbers; the hugely valuable sales channel that was being forged to small businesses via accountants and bookkeepers; and the remarkably low churn rates, which underpin high customer lifetime value.

It's curious to me how we mostly celebrate startups when they raise investment.

It's like we're applauding the pilot for refuelling the plane.

It's now so common we've all normalised this. Imagine if the airline industry was as excited about refuelling and as blasé about crashes as startups are.

When we fly, the type of jet fuel used, the name of the company supplying it and even the amount of fuel supplied isn't the story.

Obviously it's important that the pilots responsible for flying the plane keep a constant eye on the fuel gauge. But that will only be the headline in the news if they don't.

The thing we should talk about is where we are heading and why.

The lesson for anybody who wants to raise capital to fund a startup and also for everybody who might be tempted to invest (and also for those who argue that we need to continue to subsidise aviation fuel) is:

Describe a clear and measurable unit of progress.

What are the improvements we believe we can make in the immediate next stage of the business; the specific things that will demonstrate our momentum?

We don't need to predict or even describe our final destination. While it's important to think several steps ahead and understand how this next step will open up opportunities beyond that, it's best to avoid getting too distracted by the end game. Smart investors know that great companies are bought not sold, so the immediate goal is to create the sort of business and team that will eventually be attractive to potential buyers rather than focus too early on difficult-to-predict "exit" plans.

Remember, we use evidence to identify problems, but we use experiments to solve problems.

This is why startups are funded in stages (and also why planes are refuelled for one sector at a time).

Each investment into a startup is described as a round. These are given names like: Seed, Series A, Series B etc. Each round of funding typically provides enough capital to cover 18-24 months of expenses.

This time period is sometimes called the runway - another aeronautical metaphor. We hope new funding buys enough time to get airborne, before we get to the end of the runway.

A well articulated unit of progress is a great way to determine exactly how much capital is required. Once we can estimate that, then the current valuation of the business is a simple function, based on how much dilution is necessary to tempt new investors.

Startups usually spend all the money they raise in each round, often faster than they expected, so it never really helps to raise significantly more than required to fund the next experiment - it only increases the dilution for founders and existing investors, with limited additional upside.

The unit of progress will change with each round, each one building on the one before, as the startup moves from early-stage to high-growth.

Some examples:

In a Seed round, we might want to prove that we can build a prototype product and find some initial customers to give us confidence we're making something that people want to buy.

In a Series A round, we might need to demonstrate a repeatable sales process and a channel that allows us to acquire customers at an acceptable cost.

In a Series B round, we might want to show we can attract the people we need to grow the capacity of the team, especially in engineering and sales and perhaps expand beyond our local market into different geographies.

In later rounds we might need to hire a more experienced executive team, to move beyond the reliance on the founders and generalists who created the foundation in the early stages, and focus on improving unit economics.

These examples map nicely onto the four stages of growth: do it once, do it again, do it multiple times at once, do it at scale. Every stage in this model builds on the lessons from the previous stage.

When we take investment it's vital that we are specific about the things we hope to prove or disprove in that limited time; that we are confident that we can complete the experiments in that timeframe; and that, if we do, it will leave us in a better position at the end.

Again, the real test of an investment round, once we have the benefit of hindsight, is whether the additional capital created more value than it cost.

We don't applaud pilots for refuelling. Or for successfully taking off. Or for landing in any random place. The reason we fly is because we want to travel somewhere. The thrill is the journey but mostly the destination.

So don't be distracted by other founders announcing their large capital raises. Be clear about where we are going and what it will take to get there.

18 months later

If I were a business journalist, anytime a startup wanted me to write about their capital raise I'd ask them about the unit of progress, and write about that. Not the amount they have to spend, but the outcomes they want to achieve with it. If they couldn't answer or didn't want to share that, then I'd write about that.

Then, 18-24 months later, I'd follow-up to see if those things were achieved or not.

Anybody doing this would quickly uncover all the important patterns. Who is consistently doing what they said they would do? Who are the investors who repeatedly back those founders? Those are the startups and investors that are worth following closely. That would be a simple way to get beyond the current situation where founders and investors who make the most noise or have the most recognisable names get the most coverage.

I also realise this is probably impossible, since people are generally only happy to tell their story in those moments where they have just raised new capital, when their potential is all ahead of them, than later when they would be judged much more on actual results.

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📢 Announce

I was surprised to see the headline story in the Render customer newsletter email I received this week:

No doubt they are excited to have that much new money to spend. But, as a customer, I don’t care how much capital they have raised, who they raised it from or what letter in the alphabet they are up to with their investors. I’m interested in what they do with it that will benefit me.

Here are three different things that we can choose to focus on when announcing a new investment:

Customers. If we want to grow our sales, talk about the customers we currently serve and aspire to serve next. This is a rare chance to overcome our obscurity. Explain why customers love what we do for them.

Team. If we want to grow our team, talk about the team members we currently have and aspire to have. Ultimately our results are the average of the people we are working with. Explain why great people should choose to work with us.

Lessons. If we want to share our secrets (and look smart), talk about the things we’ve learned so far and the experiments we’re planning to tackle next. Explain what our team has realised that others haven’t spotted yet. This is likely the thing that has attracted our new investors in the first place.

That’s it. Choose one of those three.

But almost nobody does this.

Consider the things that everybody does instead…

Don’t pretend to be further ahead than we are. Every startup has a bold vision for what they imagine their product might be and how it will transform the market they are competing in if they are successful. Perhaps this new capital will “usher in a new era” but what are the next steps that might get us there?

Don’t talk about our investors. It’s tempting to name drop our new friends, especially if they are people that others will recognise from previous investments they’ve made that went well. If investors want to make the story about them let them do their own press release. Great investors will prefer to use the moment to shine the spotlight on the company rather than themselves.

Don’t talk about the valuation. We will inevitably be asked, because journalists love this question. But we can just explain that it’s irrelevant, because we’re not interested in selling the company at this stage, so the only valuation that matters is what we might be worth in the future. Much better to talk about the value we create for customers than the paper (and still illiquid!) value we’ve created for ourselves.

And never forget, a startup is a return journey. Even if we think we’ve made it to the summit, we’re only halfway.

1. Hillary and Tenzing reach summit of Everest, 29 May 1953, NZ Ministry for Culture and Heritage.