Groomed for Google: 5 Exit Lessons from Mantella Ventures
June 16th, 2011 | Posted in Employer Tips by Mario Laudi
It was an overnight success more than a year in the making: Robin Axon and Duncan Hill, co-founders of Mantella Venture Partners, helped turn a fledgling idea for a mobile music service into a company so promising that Google acquired it. The PushLife experience validated many of their ideas—and taught them a few new things too. Here are five good lessons for you – fresh from Mantella.
1. Test and iterate: let the market build your productIt’s not the perfect product until your market says it is. Product development needs to be fueled by real-life, real-time market feedback. “The moment that you even have a thought, let’s get that thought in the market to be tested,” says Axon. “Let’s learn from our failures and iterate quickly. So long as it’s based on an intelligent thesis, it’s fast iteration that in the end makes a company successful.” Axon and Hill worked closely with PushLife founder Ray Reddy, then a 29-year-old University of Waterloo grad with three years of experience in Research In Motion’s M&A 2. Hire on traits, not track recordWhile Google’s interest was certainly piqued by PushLife’s mobile commerce technology, it was their 25-person team that really sealed the deal. “They spent 10 times as much effort analyzing our team as they did our product,” says Axon. Indeed, Google has shuttered the PushLife service, although Axon still expects parts of its technology to be used in a Google service.
When a startup is just a few hard-working employees and the seed of an idea, every new recruit is a strategic decision. That’s why Axon and Hill treat early hires as though they are founders, looking for character traits that demonstrate the ability to solve problems, to be tenacious and to compete. The recruit’s role must also be defined correctly. “At PushLife, we would ask ourselves, if this person is here six months, what three things can they do for the company that will make us want to celebrate with champagne?” says Axon. “What could they do that’s not being done now and that could take the company up an entire notch?” Another key to success is this: recognize when you’ve mis-hired and fix the problem quickly. 3. Raise only enough money to competeAxon always hoped that by putting together a great team of mobile developers working in a strategic area, someone would seek to acquire them. But with their heads-down focus on the business, it took them by surprise when discussions about a Google partnership suddenly turned into something more.
“We weren’t looking for a way out at all. We still really believed there was lot of growth potential in what they were doing,” says Axon. “You hope to have something like this happen with all your companies, but when it really did, and as quickly as it did, it was a shock. I think the hardest part for me was realizing that now the office was going to be empty. An exit actually meant vacancy and the end of some working friendships.” |
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