Join Dr. Mary Goldberg and guest Co-Host John Inserra as they continue their chat with IMPACT Center mentors Don Morrison and Corinne Vinopol. To all you budding entrepreneurs, make sure you have a strategy, build a great team, get outside of your comfort zone, and most of all, get a great mentor!
Host: Dr. Mary Goldberg, Co-Director of the IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh
Guest Co-Host: John Inserra, Principle at Mindful Venture Consulting
Guests: Don Morrison, chairman of Deal Flow for BlueTree Allied Angels, and Corinne Vinopol, CEO of the Institute for Disabilities Research and Training Inc.
John Inserra | LinkedIn
Corinne Vinopol | LinkedIn
Don Morrison | LinkedIn
IMPACT Center | Website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Full Episode Transcript | PDF
Timestamps:
1:40 Essential pieces for product to succeed.
3:57 Product/Market Fit.
7:28 Importance of intellectual property.
11:45 Identifying a more compelling or promising IP strategy, problem statement or value proposition.
12:16 Customer Discovery & Finances.
13:20 Pitching and the Kinds of Pitches.
17:22 Eye contact and presence.
18:23 People remember stories not numbers. Slides and storytelling.
20:24 Top 2 to 3 things an entrepreneur can do to get to market.
23:57 Get out of your comfort zone.
SPEAKERS
John Inserra, Don Morrison, Corinne Vinopol, Mary Goldberg
Mary Goldberg00:05
The IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh supported by the National Institute of Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research proudly present ImpacTech. Today's episode is "Talk to People Who are Not in Your Nerd Space," with our guests Don Morrison, Chairman of Deal Flow for BlueTree Allied Angels, and Corinne Vinopol, CEO of the Institute for Disabilities Research and Training Inc. I am also joined again by a special co-host, John Inserra, Principle at Mindful Venture Consulting. Recorded remotely from my soundproof bedroom closet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is your host, Dr. Mary Goldberg, and welcome to our sixth episode of the ImpacTech Podcast Series. Today, we're going to continue our discussion with Corinne Vinopol and Don Morrison. We left off on the engaging topic of communication. We picked up some interesting notions about using these communication skills to get technology to market, but we know there's more. So let's dive back in. Welcome back, John and guests.
John Inserra01:17
Glad to be back. And I wanted to follow up on our prior conversation and kind of start to summarize what it take. When you see a new technology, what does it take for you to see, to know that it's going to be able to get to market, what kind of essential pieces have to be there, in order for that product, or innovation and service to succeed?
Don Morrison01:40
From my point of view, a successful product entrepreneur has to really understand the problem they're solving. And, you know, every entrepreneur problem is being solved one way or another right now, I mean, the, the world survived perfectly well without their innovative solution. So understanding how it's been solved, what were the pain points in the existing status quo, and how that can be disrupted by a better way to do things. So you have to have a real improvement on how to solve the problem. And it can't be an incremental improvement, it's got to be significant. Significant is different things to different people. But that's one of the things you validate through discovery is, you know, is a 20% improvement enough or the 50% improvement enough in a respective category. But it's got to be different, it's got to be not incremental. And there's got to be compelling value proposition technology may work fabulously. But if it's 50%, more expensive than current status quo, you might not get a lot of takers. So it has to check off all the right elements,
Corinne Vinopol02:54
I see a difference sometimes between a new market. So something no one thought of before, and an improvement on a current market. So what I've experienced is an improvement on a current market, sometimes it's easier to sell, because people already understand the concept. If it's a new market, that maybe you've identified, and you need to validate that the whole idea of this something new has to be brought to people's attention to say, okay, we know there's a problem, but there's never been an answer that we can find, you know, what do you think about this kind of solution. And to me, that's been, like harder for me to bring to the table, personally, because people might mistake it for something that they're used to. That didn't quite solve the problem because they have no experience with this new concept.
Don Morrison03:57
One of the concepts in startup community is called product market fit. And when you're making an incremental improvement on an existing solution, you're right, Corinne, there is a lot that's already understood. There's established customers, supply chains, and so on. So if you're improving on that there's a, an element baseline to work with. When you're doing something totally different. You know, you're guessing who the customer really is, you know, how big is the market? It's a lot harder to do something that's totally new than an improvement on existing technology. Yeah,
Corinne Vinopol04:34
I guess it's like the wheel. You know. Before the wheel did people have a concept, you know, of being able to move something smoothly. After wheels came along, then there were variations on the theme improvements. But to bring that initial concept forward, I've always found was more of a challenge
John Inserra04:53
I love that thought from the two of you in the sense that I think that sometimes the hardest sell in a new space is to solve a problem. And in one sense, the problem has to be a real problem. Otherwise, solution will not have value won't be a value proposition. But at the same time a lot of time, so we've been through this in our lives, problems have been created that have become, and some of them I'm not fan of, we now drink bottled water, like crazy, that problem was created. And then a product was designed to fill that that's the case that I do not enjoy. But in our case, working with innovators working with adaptive technologies, these are products that would be of great value. But as you point out, sometimes it's hard to have to create that whole landscape. And so people understand where your innovation fits in. That's a long road to hoe.
Don Morrison05:47
It does happen. I think one of the most interesting examples of true innovation is the iPhone. We had cell phones before the iPhone, we had cameras before the iPhone. In fact, we had cameras in phones before the iPhone, but you know, what Jobs and Apple did is they basically the big innovation was connecting the internet to your phone, and also giving you a great camera, which totally disrupted the camera business, that it put the sum total of all human knowledge, you know, in our pockets. So that was a truly innovative thing. But it wasn't a pain point that was being solved. It was it was a value proposition that an innovation that people said, Wow, that, that's pretty cool. I think I need that iPhone. And we went basically very rapidly from flip phone technology to iPhone technology in a relatively short period of time, and that percent of market share, Apple was able to gain and maintain is pretty remarkable.
Corinne Vinopol06:50
You know, it's interesting, because it pivoted my company. So the technology from another company that became very pervasive and lucrative, influenced my customers to a different need, which was that they needed access, as they were traveling around more itinerant teachers needing access, wanting it on their phone. And so from our company being CD based, then we moved to internet base. So it created a market for us and caused us to change the direction of our company
John Inserra07:28
That's interesting to see how the shifts occur. And clearly the iPhone was a dramatic shift. And behind that dramatic shift was some clearly new intellectual property and a rather new innovation. When we're working with mentees, sometimes firms come though that do not necessarily have what appears to be such a rock solid hold on intellectual property. How do you approach and how important is that intellectual property component for a startup innovation?
Corinne Vinopol07:59
Don you go first.
Don Morrison08:01
Well at BlueTree the question I get asked all the time, as we know, what does BlueTree invest in? And my short answer is we invest in good ideas. And we define the good ideas of an idea has the potential to scale to 20 to 30 million in three to five years in revenue. Why that number, because that's when most companies tend to get acquired when they hit that $20 million revenue threshold. We prefer companies that are capital efficient, we prefer companies that have a great team. And that team is the not just the co founders, but also who they've surrounded themselves with in terms of their advisors and mentors, you know, we'd like to see some gray hair and scar tissue somewhere on the team. As far as IP, you know, investors prefer IP, because that sort of guarantees that it's easier to keep people out of your sandbox if you have strong IP, but I think it's often over emphasized, in some cases. Yeah, every company has to have an IP strategy. And that IP strategy might just be trade secrets. It's kind of a double edged sword when you do a disclosure of highly technical products, you have to disclose, you know, all of your hard research. And in some cases, it's not that difficult for other people to take your research and do a workaround to get around your patents. So patents well done patents add value to a company. I don't think it's a universal thing. But I think every company must have a IP strategy. You can't just say I don't need patents. You know, you have to have some trade secrets. And that triggers a whole string of best practices your company should be pursuing if you don't pursue patents.
Corinne Vinopol09:52
I've run into with several my mentees that they were unclear on who own the IP and that's been particularly frustrating. So that was something that they had to clear up. And it becomes complex for some of them, because they may be connected with an RERC, as well as a hospital or as well as a university. Sometimes the PI has some partial ownership, the people who are doing the grunt work, think they're gonna start the company, but they have no skin in the game. So one of the things that I ask early on, let's say I've learned as a mentor I need to ask early on is, do you own this? Yeah,
Don Morrison10:39
That's a great point. One of the problems many companies fall into is that's not clarified upfront. Let's say john, and I start a company together, and he's the inventor on the patent, he leaves the company, and that's not well defined, he could take that IP with him. So that's the reason for, you know, well written founders agreements, and also agreements to clarify, if John's the inventor, he's assigned that IP to the company. You know, it is something that it's one of those things, you know, you don't know what you don't know, until it's too late. So you know, having well written founders agreements, and IP strategies, and IP documentation is really important.
Corinne Vinopol11:23
Several my groups did not know, they didn't even think about that, in the beginning. You know, they were heavily invested in their technology, working under the auspices of the University Hospital. And we're thinking about starting their own company with this technology they've been working so hard on, but they had no rights to it. And that needed to be cleared up.
Mary Goldberg11:45
If this provided some interesting examples of where awareness can be a key issue. But I'm thinking about when an innovator has an IP strategy or problem statement or value proposition that may be uninformed or invalidated. So they have one, but you're not totally believing it or buying it or thinking that it would be successful. So I'm curious about what kind of advice you give to help them identify a more compelling or promising one in any of these areas.
Don Morrison12:16
What are the purposes of discovery? Again, we all want to prove our hypothesis, but sometimes disproving it is as much value as proving it. This is a crowded space, there's too many potential infringements I've might be making with my technology, it's not worth pursuing this, I'm going to look for a different problem to solve. So understanding what's out there is really important. That's why, you know, good competitive analysis is always part of the innovative process,
Corinne Vinopol12:49
and also the finances of the new startup. Now, if there could be a big space, but they may not be able to last long enough financially, to get there. So sometimes this you know, I say, Well, is there something incremental that you can do that's financially achievable, with at least leverage you up until you can make a larger financial and or time investment to grab hold of that bigger space?
John Inserra13:20
At this point, one innovative mentee company would have benefited from your experience. They've been there done that part of your life, you've helped them with communication, identifed that they have a big problem that a strong solution, they've gone through discovery. But all this leads up to ultimately pitching, making a pitch or multiple pitches. So like to pivot to the kind of advice and approach that you take to focus your innovators on of making effective pitches. And I know there's more than one type of pitch they might be in a position to make. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Don Morrison14:00
Corinne, do you want to go?
Corinne Vinopol14:02
Oh, sure. Well, one thing you have to know your customer. So you have to know what your customers problem is in order to make a pitch because your pitch should address their problem. So by the time you're ready to pitch, you should have an understanding of how you need to tweak your product to address various problems, you know, of your customer segments. And then when you make your pitch, you have to show that match. So you have to highlight the problem, elicit some acknowledgement from the customer, and then show how your product is going to address what their needs are. When I would do it myself, I often bring along PowerPoint or something but for each customer it was always tweaked to address that particular customer so it was personalized to them.
Don Morrison14:59
So at BlueTree, in a position where I'm literally looking at pitches every day, you know, I see hundreds, if not 1000s of pitches every year. And as you say, Corinne, you have to understand who your audience is. And basically, there's three types of pitches, there's the elevator pitch, which is typically two minutes or less. And it's really explaining the big idea in clear, simple terms that you're working on. And the idea of an elevator pitch is not to communicate everything about your ideas. It's really just to explain it in such a way that causes curiosity, you want the listeners to say, oh, tell me more. So that's the elevator pitch. The other pitch is a product pitch. And that's when you're going into a company to basically improve their process by you know, selling them your, your clever innovation. The third type of pitch is an investor pitch, and the investor pitch, you know, you have to talk enough about your innovation and product, but don't dwell on it, because the investors want to know about the business opportunities. How big is the market? What's your value proposition? What's your go to market strategy, what's your exit strategy, who's going to buy you and when and for how much. And those are all very important, one of the mistakes we see often at BlueTree is, companies come in, and they're guilty of what I call the beautiful baby syndrome, the entrepreneur falls in love with their technology. And that's all they talk about is their technology, they don't cover enough about their business side of it. And so those teams typically don't get funded. So you have to understand who your audiences is, Corinne said it, and develop a compelling pitch, which has a strong opening with usually some kind of a hook to try to grab, you know, emotions. You know, we, we have the attention spans of fruit flies, I think someone, someone said, so, you know, you've got to come up with a compelling opening to grab people's attention. Explain what you're doing very clearly, here's what I do, here's why it's important, here's what's in it for you. And then have a really strong close, making strong eye contact, really establishing a relationship with the investors or your audience. If you're pitching a product, it's really critical.
Corinne Vinopol17:22
You know, when you were talking about eye contact and presence. Now, that's something I've talked to my groups about, because they're so used to being in the lab. And just, I said, bear with this old lady, now, so I have a right at this age to pontificate. But you have to put on a nice shirt, and you have to turn on your camera. And you have to be visually engaging, and just jesticulate and create a presence, because people aren't going to just remember you by your voice. I said, that would be like showing up at a meeting with a bag on your head. I said, you know, you have to be memorable, that it's not even the product, you yourself have to be memorable. And one of the things that I enjoyed was listening about storytelling, and bringing that human factor into the sale, into the pitch of what you're doing to help people to relate.
Don Morrison18:23
People remember stories, they don't remember numbers. And so the thing I preached to all the entrepreneurs I work with is, you know, tell me a good story. Good, clever opening, a middle and an ending, because that makes you memorable. We've actually had some entrepreneurs come into our pitch meetings pre COVID, when we had live presentations, actually turned their back to our screening committee and read their slides. They're overly busy slides. And so the most important part of any presentation is really the narrative itself. It's the story. And the slides should be simple, not complicated, not too much text or numbers there really to support the narrative, and takes time to write a good story. You have to practice it over and over, you know, if we just think about our own families, usually within every family, there's a great storyteller, it might be your grandmother or your mom. So they've told those stories over and over. And they're pretty good at it. So you have to develop a story and practice, practice, practice, telling it over and over and, and making it entertaining, so you can create that memorable connection.
John Inserra19:37
Yeah, I like to say to my teams, I work with that you're making a movie. It's a short film, but you want it to be a thriller, not a documentary.
Mary Goldberg19:51
That's great.You both have have mentioned so many strategies through this and we've covered several topics. The communication, the listening, the pitching, the different things that they have to be prepped for to get to market. I'm wondering about the top two to three things you think an entrepreneur can do constructive. So these are maybe resources or exercises that they can do. What are you think? What could they do? What are the top two to three things?
Don Morrison20:24
I guess my thoughts would be, you know, to have a strategy, not all teams have a strategy. The other thing is to build a great team. Most entrepreneurs are really good at one or two things, but they're not good at everything. So you know, successful entrepreneurs really know what they don't know. And they try to surround themselves with people who can complement their native skill sets. And a really good balanced team is going to have a much higher probability of success than a team that's filled with all chemical engineers, or mechanical engineers, or software engineers. So you know, good teams have to be balanced. So I, you know, again, I would say have a strategy and build a good team.
Corinne Vinopol21:11
Don, I was thinking the same thing, I've always said, you have to have a good team. And I remember, I even booted out one very talented person, because he didn't want to be a team player. And anybody who thinks that they can do it all is just kidding themselves. And like you said, you have to be smart enough to know what you know, but also what you don't know. And defer to people, or collaborate with people who may know something different. And that's one of the things I've looked at the teams that I've mentored is like the balance among the team, and how they communicate with each other. And if they're listening to each other, so not even just listening to the customers, but listening to each other. Because there has to be a balance between the direction toward commercialization as well as the direction to development.
Don Morrison22:03
That's a great point Corinne. One of the things I've noticed in team dynamics, you know, every every team has its alpha members that tend to dominate conversations and push their ideas aggressively. But oftentimes, some of the most important feedback is from some of the quieter members of the team. And so you know, good leaders will really strive to get everyone's input in participation when you're working on a problem.
Corinne Vinopol22:34
It's interesting, because I find that depending upon their role, people see the problems very differently. Like we build software, and the vision of the programmer, is different than the vision of the designer, maybe different than the vision of the commercialiser. And so they really need a time to sit down and listen to each other. Because they each have a different strategy. And the collaboration is often what makes the hit
Don Morrison23:06
Collaboration and diversity. There's been a lot of talk and conversations about diversity. But it really does make a big difference in collaborative efforts. If you have a more diverse team, not just gender, but backgrounds, races, the whole thing, the more diverse your team, the richer the output will be.
Mary Goldberg23:28
Thank you, Don. We had a great episode on that with Cathy Bodine. So I recommend checking that out our episode called Diverse Perspectives. And we know that mentors are so key to building this collective vision and knowledge. And of course, just building an all around great team. And hence our theme for today. And you certainly all have been mentors to me. And I really appreciate all of the knowledge that you've shared. And John, for co hosting, do you have any final words John comments or questions.
John Inserra23:57
And actually, the follow up with my advice to young innovators and entrepreneurs, which is to get outside of their comfort zone as much as possible. Programs like this, the IMPACT Center's BootCamp, StartUp, Accelerate, places where you get structured experience, but even going out into the world to see other pitches to communicate with people, mixtures and events like that, where you can talk to normal people who are not nerds, like just like you would be different nerds, you know, everybody's a nerd in some realm nerd about wine nerd about this, but talk to people who are not in your nerd space and see if you can start to speak to them in a way that they understand what you're talking about. And the more practice you get that the better off you'll be. So that's my advice. Other than that, such a great pleasure to be in the room today with one of the best benefits of working as a mentor, which is you get to work with other great mentors, innovators, and it's always a great pleasure.
Mary Goldberg24:57
Thank you, John. Thank you, Don. Thank you Corinne, and to all you budding entrepreneurs have a strategy, build a great team, get outside of your comfort zone. And most of all, get a great mentor. Thank you all for listening. Talk to you soon. If you'd like ImpacTech, please review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you again for tuning in and continue to make an impact in whatever you do. A quick note from our sponsors, IMPACT initiatives are being developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. NIDILRR is a center within the Administration for Community Living Department of Health and Human Services. IMPACT initiatives do not necessarily represent the policy of neither ACL or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government and the same goes for the University of Pittsburgh. We'd like to thank our ImpacTech guests and our production team at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Michelle Zorrilla, from the Department of Rehab Science and Rechnology, Natalie Vasquez and Dr. Marie Norman, from the IDEA Lab at the Institute for Clinical Research Education.