Resilient summary

If you’ve seen The Social Network, the film loosely based on Mark Zuckerberg’s experiences founding Facebook, you’ll have noticed something – plenty of people have the same great idea. But having a great idea and being able to turn it into a marketable product are two different skills.

Launching a business or startup is a huge undertaking, which is why so many people never manage it. It’s important to realize that your new venture is going to change nearly every aspect of your life. And the chances of failing are high. Only one in ten startups become viable companies, and of those, half fail within five years. So, before you begin, reflect deeply on whether this is the right journey for you.

When Wilson started Solid Ground Innovations she didn’t initially need to hire anyone else, which was partly why she could bootstrap. But her experience with her second venture, Resilia, was completely different. Wilson wanted to build a tech platform for charities. But while she knew her customers’ needs inside out, she was no tech expert.

Because of that, Wilson needed to hire a team of platform developers – and the most cost-effective way to do that was by engaging freelancers. Most founders hire freelancers to avoid the costs that come with having employees. But freelancers won’t necessarily have as much buy-in as employees, and they’ll be working off-site – often in another country. So, if you want to collaborate successfully, you have to hire the right people. 

Wilson was a 19-year-old college student when she became an entrepreneur. She’d come up with the concept for an online newspaper called B-NOW, which stood for Black News Our Way. She ran the idea past her professor, Dr. Leonard Moore. Enthusiastic about what he’d heard, Moore wrote Wilson a check for $150 so she could file an LLC.

At the time, Wilson didn’t realize that Moore was essentially her first investor. While Wilson bootstrapped B-NOW and her first official company, Solid Ground Innovations, the experience of receiving financial support from her professor taught Wilson an important lesson: relationship building is an essential part of fundraising. 

When Wilson was sharing her idea for B-NOW with her college professor, she was telling a story. As a young, Black woman living in Louisiana, Wilson faced many challenges. By publishing B-NOW, she wanted to draw together local students from two different communities – those from Southern University, which was a historically Black college, and students from the predominately white Louisiana State University, which Wilson attended on a full Pell grant.

Story has the power to capture the listener’s interest and motivate them to take action. In Wilson’s case, Dr. Moore wanted to help by giving her the money she needed to incorporate her business. By carefully preparing the story of your own entrepreneurial journey, you can harness the same power to get the seed funding you need.

There’s a lot of hype around competitions like TechCrunch Disrupt, where early-stage founders pitch their companies to investors. If you win, you not only get glory – you get the capital you need to build your product or make that essential hire.

But these events come with a price tag. When Wilson attended her first pitch competition in upstate New York, she had to pay for her own travel from Louisiana, plus accommodation. Then, moments before her pitch, she was thrown off by some last-minute feedback an investor had given her and made a complete mess of her presentation. The whole experience was a disaster – one that wasn’t worth the time and money it had cost.

There’s a certain glamour to the sales world – schmoozing with potential clients, cutting deals, popping champagne when you land that big account. But in truth, what makes your business a success in its early stages is far from glamorous – it’s a process.

When you first launch your product or service, what you need more than anything else is regular, predictable income. You need to know that Process A will lead to Sales Outcome B. Repeating this process generates steady cash flow. And that consistent cash flow means you can plan how to reinvest your revenue to grow your business.

Once you’re successfully running your business and customers love your product, you’re ready for a Series A round of funding. Series A round refers to a company’s initial round of venture capital financing; it gets its name from the type of stock sold to investors in exchange for their funding.

The size of Series A round funding varies depending on the company and its needs. While you may think the more money you raise the better, that’s not always true. What’s more important to focus on is how much money you’ll need to reach your next major company milestone.