Alliance Partners

Monday, July 30, 2018

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome as an Entrepreneur



Recently, I was called up on stage at a prestigious university—after dropping out of college nearly 20 years ago—to get an honorary doctorate. The other recipients there were, well, astounding human beings. 


There was a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry (who also heads up the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute). There was a pioneer of automated DNA sequencing and recipient of the National Medal of Science. There was a Harvard professor fighting the forces behind climate change denial. And a geneticist who identified a breast cancer gene. And an internationally recognized advocate for social justice.


Then, there was me. A guy who started a software platform called Hootsuite that helps people and companies manage their social media. As I got my honorary laws degree and made my way to the podium to give a speech to the graduating class, I wondered what right I had to be there. What advice could I possibly give, when so many more capable people were waiting in the wings.


Do I deserve to be here?


It turns out that “imposter syndrome”—the feeling that you don’t belong and haven’t earned your place—is common among entrepreneurs. This makes sense. There’s no bar to clear to be an entrepreneur, after all. No standardized training. No fancy degree to prove your worth.

Also, you rarely get the external validation that comes with other careers—promotions, titles, a neat ascent up the org chart. Entrepreneurs improvise their own path, without those familiar signposts. You make risky decisions that don’t always pan out. You leap into the unknown. You hustle. You scrape by … and hope that you can make payroll at the end of the month. Sometimes, you end up with a big payday to “prove” you made it. Many times, you don’t. 

It’s easy to lose sight of a fundamental truth. Being a good entrepreneur is really hard and really important. I say this with all humility, but I absolutely think it’s worth remembering—especially for young entrepreneurs out there, who can sometimes feel they don’t deserve a seat at the table with colleagues from more established professions. (This is also part of the reason I started League of Innovators, a charity to build entrepreneurial acumen and confidence among youth.)


Defeating the inner imposter

You may not have to pass a special exam to be an entrepreneur, but you’re tested, relentlessly. There are the physical tests of long days and sleepless nights. There are the mental tests—decisions made with limited information, deadlines met with limited resources. There are psychological tests of self-doubt, regret, uncertainty and setbacks. And you face these trials without so much as the assurance of a paycheck at the end of the week. 

Add to this another challenge: the tendency to dismiss entrepreneurship as “just about the money.” Unlike a doctor or scientist, the argument goes, an entrepreneur doesn’t really serve the greater good. I can see where this view comes from. Selling software certainly isn’t healing the sick or feeding the hungry. But I also don’t think it’s quite that simple.


Entrepreneurs push innovation forward. Whether we’re talking about transportation or artificial intelligence or medical therapies, it’s entrepreneurs who popularize new technology and make it accessible. Electric cars languished for decades before Elon Musk found a way to mass produce and market them. Access to genetic testing was largely limited to the select few until Anne Wojcicki and her cofounders started 23andMe. By finding a market for invention, entrepreneurs in turn spur an ongoing cycle of research and development. 


Entrepreneurs—at least, successful ones—also provide jobs. In the U.S., small businesses (with fewer than 500 employees) account for 49 percent of all private-sector employment. It’s worth pausing on that figure. The livelihood of tens of millions of people traces to the energy and capability of entrepreneurs. This is no small feat. Of course, these relationships flow both ways. I’d be nothing without the energy and passion of my team. Every successful company is the sum of its parts—all the people who believe along the way—not just the inspiration of one individual.

In some cases, entrepreneurs even have a chance to change a whole ecosystem. As businesses grow, they can form the heart of thriving hubs, spinning off more businesses and more jobs—changing the face of whole cities and even countries. This happened in Silicon Valley with technology. 


The same phenomenon is happening in my backyard in Vancouver. 

But it’s easy to say these grandiose things. Believing them—when you’re up on stage surrounded by Nobel Prize winners and geniuses—is another matter. For all our bluster and braggadocio, deep down entrepreneurs can be very insecure. Does what I’m doing actually matter? Or am I just chasing the next customer?


After I spoke to the graduating class, a few students came up to me. They were engineers who had grown up in the area and followed Hootsuite over the last decade as it grew from a social media startup to a company with more than 1,000 employees. They shook my hand and thanked me—for speaking, but also for everything we’d done to build a tech scene locally and show them that a path forward existed right here. 


It was a timely reminder why what I was doing mattered, and why it's so critical to remember not to give in to imposter syndrome as an entrepreneur.

Friday, July 27, 2018

Cryptos are still the main game


Bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies have had a great week. Bitcoin is up 20% and at one point Ethereum, was up 15.2%. But cryptos in general have slid thus far this year. But this price volatility is not unexpected as blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies establish themselves and investors start to realize their potential value.
 
 
 
Foundational crypto coins like Ethereum and Bitcoin have only begun their climb into mainstream adoption. There is no question that blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies will become as broadly adopted as the internet. And Ethereum and Bitcoin will form the backbone of all this new digital infrastructure. One of the things that catalyzed the market last year was that Ethereum got to a place where you could build apps on top of it.
 
The ability to issue tokens led to the initial coin offering (ICO) craze. In 2017, ICOs gathered $3.8 billion, and so far this year, that figure has soared to $12 billion. The best ICOs will become great successes and the vast majority of those will likely reside on top of the Ethereum network.
 
So, despite any bearish sentiment, the digital currency market is moving forward at full speed.  In just the past week, more than a dozen major events have taken place. And that is attracting some big investors. Peter Thiel invested in Block.one, Steven Cohen invested in crypto hedge fund Autonomous Partners. Tim Draper, is one of Bitcoin’s biggest supporters.  Why are these tech gurus and financial masters so confident?  Because the blockchain market is growing rapidly.
 
To best understand this growth, you have to look at three unique factors: regulation, application, and accessibility.  In 2017, when it came to application, everyone was excited, but very few understood relevant use cases.   When it came to regulation, there simply wasn't much of it, and that left investors vulnerable to fraudulent companies.  And finally, when it came to accessibility, there was still a lot to be desired.  Fast-forward to 2018, and all of that has changed:
 
1. Regulatory changes
A recent article from Forbes emphasized the growing safety of the blockchain space, stating that U.S. agencies have gotten more involved with cryptocurrencies and now have started to track and punish cryptocurrency crime. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has doubled down on making sure investors are protected against fraudulent characters. And this regulation is in no way slowing the ICO market down.
 
2. Understanding Blockchain potential
Today, the world has a far better understanding of blockchain technology than it did in 2017 when blockchain was being embraced by everyone.  Now, both companies and individuals are starting to understand real applications. IBM announced that it was working with blockchain company Stellar to launch blockchain banking across multiple countries.  The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has continued to grow with over 100 companies supporting the use of Ethereum as a tool for enterprise, including JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Intel, MasterCard, and BP.
 
3. Digital Assets are more accessable
Coinbase has been given the green light to start listing tokens that are considered securities. This is big news.  And it isn't just the exchanges that are growing. Today, there are many ways investors can get their hands on digital currencies without even touching an exchange.
 
So, even when hype is low and stories of impending doom are rife, the digital currency market is still forging ahead

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Q-CTRL gets support of Sequoia

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Sequoia Capital funded Google, Instagram and PayPal and is now backing an Australian quantum computing startup.


The Q-CTRL Scientists 


 The University of Sydney based Q-Ctrl was developed by Professor Michael Biercuk (paywall) to make quantum computers a reality. 

Q-CTRL was originally backed last year  by CSIRO’s Main Sequence Ventures last year alongside three other “deep tech” companies.

Most of the seed capital will be used to hire more scientists and software engineers to join the team. 

Q-Ctrl, which was founded in 2017, now has a staff of 16 young scientists, software engineers and machine-learning experts, but is looking to expand that number to 50 during the next two years.

Q-CTRL

Q-CTRL founder Michael Biercuk. Source: Supplied..

What is it 

Q-CTRL is part  of a global network of companies and organisations, which are given access to IBM’s quantum computing systems and collaborate together on building the technology together with tech a network of researchers and tech companies, such as JP Morgan, Samsung, and Oxford University.

Quantum computers are designed from tiny pieces of matter too small to be seen by the naked eye, and Biercuk and team will try to harness and control these quantum bits or "qubits”

Q-CTRL essentially improve the overall performance of the quantum algorithm” according to the founder. It does this by offering a cloud-based software solution designed to work with any quantum computer, which extracts more performance from quantum devices and combats decoherence.

Decoherence occurs where transferred quantum information gets lost or degraded when the quantum system is not perfectly isolated, leading to lost “quantum behaviour”.

Q-CTRLs technology is hardware agnostic and "can work with nearly every company working to bring quantum hardware to market". 

Why they Invested 

James Hardiman, a partner at DCVC in San Francisco, told The Australian Financial Review his fund backed Q-Ctrl because Professor Biercuk is "a force of nature" and the team of scientists and software developers he has assembled at Q-Ctrl is "as impressive as they come".

"Any time you have foreign cash inflows from organisations that are extremely competitive like Sequoia China or like DCVC or Horizons, that's an indication that we are doing something right," says founder Michael Biercuk

He said Q-Ctrl can itself become one of the word's biggest technology companies just by selling the control software – which will be turned into quantum computer "firmware" in later versions by embedding it into quantum computer controller chips – to all of the world's quantum computer makers.


Atrium and Justin Kan - how does he attract such an amazing investor base ?



The Atrium Team 

A year ago , Justin Kan raised $10.5m in Atrium from blue chip investors,  ended up being one of the biggest “party rounds” ever....

 would be interesting to see what’s happened since?

 Atrium LTS — the “LTS” stands for “Legal Technology Services” 

As a “power user” of legal services over a decade in the startup industry, through the foundation and fundraising of startups like Justin.tv as well as the work he’s done as an investor and advisor to companies through Y Combinator, Kan says he was frustrated by how little technology was being used in the process of interacting with various law firms.

“Why don’t law firms use project management software to track where they are in the process of completing a deal and let customers see that?” Kan asked. But more important than the way in which law firms interact with customers, Kan saw an opportunity to streamline the work that is done in-house to make it more manageable for lawyers and those who work at law firms.

“If you think about corporate legal work that’s done today, some part of it is art and then some of it is repeatable processes,” Kan told me. It’s those repeatable processes that the Atrium team believes it can innovate on to make things more efficient.

Now onto the funding… As we reported, the round was led by General Catalyst, but what we didn’t know at that time is that the financing includes nearly 100 institutional and angel investors who came along for the ride.

Other participating firms include: 500 Startups, Arena Ventures, Balance Ventures, BeeNext, Binary Capital, Box Group, Brainchild, Caffeinated Capital, Early Impact Ventures, First Round Capital, Founders Fund, GGV Capital, Green Oaks, Greylock, Initialized Capital, Jackson Square Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, NEA, Oriza Ventures, Palapa Ventures, Palm Drive Capital, Shasta Ventures, Signia, Slow Ventures, Soma Capital, Struck Capital, SV Angel, Tekton Ventures and Thrive Capital Partners.

And here’s a list of all the angels investing in the round: Aarjav Trivedi, Adrian Aoun, Amitt Mahajan, Andrew Chen, Ari Kardasis, Armaan Ali, Arram Sabeti, Avichal Garg, Bennett Rogers, Brent Goldman, Brian Goodman, Brian Shin, Josh Buckley, Charles Forman, Charlie Songhurst, Chris Fanini, David Cheng, David Schellhase, Desmond Lim, Dharmesh Shah, Emmett Shear, Eric Glyman, Erik Torenberg, Eusden Shing, Matt Brezina, Gil Penchina, Greg Chang, Immad Akhund, Jack Newton, Jason Tan, Jenny Haeg, John Doerr, John Hering, Jon Dahl, Josh Reeves, Karim Atiyeh, Kevin Lin, Kyle Vogt, Lee Linden, Loren Vittetoe, Manish Shah, Matt Gamache-Asselin, Maxim Zasov, Michal Borkowski, Mike Ghaffary, Mikhail Seregine, Osuke Honda, Paul McKellar, Ranidu Lankage, Rene Reinsburg, Robin Chan, Ruchi Sanghvi, Sam Altman, Saurabh Gupta, Scott James, Steve Jang, Sujay & Sheel Tyle, Tikhon Bernstam, Travis VanderZanden, Wayne Chang, and Wei Guo.

Whew.

You get all that?

Ok, so the question is, why would Atrium LTS bother raising money from so many different stakeholders? Why not just get a few large checks from a few notable investors, instead of lots of small checks from a bunch of VCs and angels?

How to write a white paper for an ICO

The Bob Pritchard Column 

I know many people who are planning ICO’s, Initial Coin Offerings and the first place to start is with a White Paper.   There are several necessary components to a successful token sale or ICO, but for the most part, they all follow the same basic narratives.
 
 
It is often easier to point out what ICO’s do wrong, than what they do right. For example, most projects fail to describe why the reader should care about their existence. When you’re writing anything intended to be persuasive, it’s imperative to answer the following questions as soon as possible:
  • Who are you?  Introduction/Team
  • What are you creating?  Solution/ Product/Tokenomics
  • Why should I care?   Problem/ Industry Overview/Market Inefficiencies /Technical Overview
  • How are you going to deliver what you’ve promised? Roadmap / Tokenomics /Token Utility/MVP/Use Case.
       
Most projects do pretty well at the first two points, they falter when explaining why the reader should care, and how they plan on delivering. These questions are pivotal because they lend themselves to several different sections of a white paper.
 
It’s extremely important that you spend time thinking about these questions. It’s painfully obvious how thought out a token is when you talk to founders about writing their white paper. How serious they are about the business can often be shown by how quickly they’re able to answer the questions.
 
The “Team” section of the white paper is usually near the end, however, I’d suggest displaying it prominently on your website. So that when someone downloads your white paper, they see the team first. This way they’ll be able to see how qualified your team is before reading up on the problem you’re aiming to tackle.
 
The “Introduction” is not about who you are as a person, it is about what you seek to do?  Why do you want to do it?  How will the world or your industry be different once you’ve completed it?  Explain your greater vision in your “Introduction”, and in “Team”, show them you have what it takes to execute on that vision.
 
How is your company creating a solution? What does this solution look and feel like? Have you thought out the Tokenomics? Will any coins be burned? Why not use BTC or ETH instead of creating your own coin? 
 
Focus on benefits, not functionalities. You have talked about all the amazing functionalities your ICO is going to deliver. Now, it’s time to explain why anyone should give a flying f**k. What do all those functionalities mean to me as a user? How is the proprietary algorithm” you bragged about in prior sections going to benefit me as an individual?
 
So, how are you going to deliver what you promised?  Explain why the team can execute on the milestones you’ve outlined in the roadmap? Does anyone on their team have any relevant past experience?  If you are building a marketplace, has anyone on the development team built a marketplace before?  If you’re a B2B project, do members of the team have relationships they can rely on to generate leads?
 
The killer ICO’s and Token Sales of 2018 will be the companies that have found a way to utilize blockchain technology to fix something that is impossible to fix with anything other than blockchain.  It takes a true understanding of blockchain to create solutions that genuinely need the technology to improve, unfortunately, these necessary solutions are the minority in ICO’s.
 
There will always be need of trusted voices in the investment community, but what the ICO markets are showing is that the world has incredible demand for future-looking projects!
 

Life is like riding a bicycle

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein

Tuesday, July 03, 2018

Immigration easing for startups



Are you trying to recruit more talent outside Australia for your startup but don’t want to wait 6 months for the visa to be accepted? 

Well, this is your lucky day.

The Department of Home Affairs is introducing  a Global Talent Scheme (GTS). This scheme allows startups to apply for 5 high priority visas per year that are exempt from the skills shortage lists and that will be processed within 17 to 30 days. Those visas will last for 4 years and will lead to the possibility of the visa holder becoming a permanent resident.
 
This Australian first could be very valuable and could definitely solve the lack of talent availability that is said to be the biggest factor of growth limitation within the startup ecosystem.

For more information please visit StartupAus’ newsletter here:
https://mailchi.mp/startupaus/priority_visa_access_for_startups 

#startups  #innovation #immigration