8/40 - Invent America

I've been fortunate to participate in over 50 startups in my career as a team member, investor, advisor, or consultant. I've brainstormed or workshopped with the founding team of another 100+ that I never took a formal role in. I've been very fortunate to see what works and what doesn't. I've had enough exposure and followed teams through to their eventual end to start to notice a pattern that has informed my decision-making about getting involved in a company.

It really breaks down to four things that I look at before I really do a deep dive on the rest of what the company has to say.

• The Problem: the best companies solve a very clear and definable problem. Do I care about solving that problem? Is it a problem I personally experience?
• The Solution: there are a lot of different ways to solve a problem. Do I believe that the solution they are building is the best way? Do I believe it actually solves the problem?
• The Team: if I don't like the team, I don't want to get involved ever. If I don't want to get a beer with them, then I'm not interested in getting their investor updates or being someone they call when things go wrong.
• Market Timing: Why now? There are countless companies that should have worked, but they were too early to market and ended up fading before the world was ready for the idea that they thought of first.

Those are the first four things that I ask when looking at investing or advising a company these days. The problem has to be something that I understand and that I want to see removed from the world.

I learned that very early on in life when I solved my own problem at home and submitted it to INVENT AMERICA in first grade and ended up winning the THOMAS EDISON AWARD for Plano, TX. It was a huge double-tiered green and gold award that I'm pretty sure I had on my bookshelf until I left of college.

My invention, was very concretely and boringly named: POSTER-PAPER-PLASTIC-POCKETS. Let's just say I didn't work with a branding agency on the name. But, in a very clear way, it said what it was, and then I did the voiceover of why it was solving a problem.

When my Dad would get home from work, he'd come through the garage door and into a small hallway with the washer and dryer. He'd set down his briefcase and look at the mail and anything else that was sitting on top of the dryer that Mom had placed there. That also became the place where I would set my graded homework and tests.

One week, I had done very well on some school work and placed it in the designated spot. When I came in from playing and saw Dad was home from a business trip, I was excited to get his reaction to my good work. When I asked him if he saw it, he said he didn't. We went and looked and it wasn't where I had left it. placed it. I was distraught and sad that it had been misplaced.

So I made POSTER-PAPER-PLASTIC-POCKETS to make sure that all my school work would be easy to find and he'd know what he'd already seen and what was new. I changed the name of the pockets each school year and it seemed to work out well for both of us.

Sadly, I hadn't met the executive team at Container Store yet, so my invention never reached its market potential.