In my journey’s as an entrepreneur I’ve had the opportunity to recruit a cofounder, break up, and recruit another… and break up and recruit another. Locable is over four years in the making and has gone through a number of distinct phases – I wouldn’t call them pivots as they’re part of the maturation I expected but the details of the evolution were clearly unforeseeable.
As Marc Barros says in Founder dating: Tips on how to pick your partner, ensuring you’re well aligned in values and passions are critical. I’ve had two separate ‘technical’ cofounders and while each were helpful in moving the business forward and I’m sure each would say they got something useful out of the experience alignment was never strong. With my current business partner, he isn’t a technical cofounder, our interests are much better aligned and it’s evident in our daily interaction and the pace of work.
The reality is that both the business and I am better off having had the participation of my two previous technical partners however had I found a well aligned partner we’d be much further along and he or she would likely still be involved.
When it comes to pitching Locable it’s been a serious evolution. All pitches are tough but Locable is an integrated business concept i.e. we don’t have an easy “We’re like Google Maps for schools” analogy. In that last year or two we’ve come to refer to ourselves as being a network of local website akin in structure to Network TV but that still leaves something to be desired.
The onstage pitch: How to prepare for your 5 minutes of fame covers a couple highlights. We always make things too complicated and want people to ‘fully get it’ but the reality a pitch is just a pitch. It’s the bait that gets them to take the time to invest to learn more. You’re not going to close an investor let alone a cofounder, mentor, or client in a 5 or 10 minute pitch but you can get them excited to learn more. More than that, articulating your business forces you to think through the variables that are easy to ignore because you’re too close to the opportunity.
