Doing too many things outside of the company
This is one of the most common negative attributes present in Bangladesh. A founder or founding team owns a trading company, has shares in a software development firm, sits as a part-time director in their family business, gives lectures on entrepreneurship or attends startup conferences on the weekends, and is starting one if not multiple start-ups. Then they come to me, and over the course of a 30-minute sit down, pitch me at least two different ideas.
Building a business especially in a country like Bangladesh, where the odds are stacked against a founder in a million different ways, is and should be an all-consuming endeavour. Investors want it to be an all-consuming endeavour. They want every possible waking moment of a founder's life to be spent figuring out how s/he can get their money back and multiply it. It is not something one can do part-time. It is fine if someone has a software development firm that has to do projects to fund the team, or have to do consulting work in an area that is related to someone's startup, in order to fund the expenses. One has to hustle to make ends meet. Some of these experiences can feed into building your start-up. But there is clear difference between survival and vanity or greed.
Doing too many things within the company
Often, it is a resourcing issue. But other times, it is also an ego issue. If their strength is in software development, then let one of the founding team members handle customer development. Founding teams with a strong delineation of responsibilities, with founders recognising their strengths as well as weaknesses and complementing them as soon as possible through a combination of co-founders, investors, advisers, partners and team members are highly preferred.
This also applies to doing too many things as a start-up -- simultaneously launching two or more separate products and services, with very different business models and target markets, at the same time. It is best to go with the idea the founder is most passionate about or seems to have the most promise, and then pivot to the other if it doesn't work, or add new product and service lines that complement the primary ones only after they start seeing traction and scale. Dilution of founders' time and focus is just as detrimental to the future of their business as dilution of their shares.
Being a part-time founder, with a foot out the door
Whenever someone pitches me a brilliant idea or a project, and then tells me that part of the fundraising is to hire a CEO and team to execute it and/or grow it while they continue to be in their existing job/business/country is very disappointing. So they are asking angels to invest their money into a company that they are not fully committed to? And ultimately, who are they investing in, the idea-guy or that hired hand who will get some compensation and nominal shares? Will these hired hands truly give their heart and soul, or would this be a job for them? If someone has the idea, then they should own it, full stop. If it means coming back to Bangladesh for a few years to develop the idea, then take the leap.
If the pitching person has the humility to say that s/he is not the person to execute it, then kudos to him/her. But s/he should then find a founding team with a similar vision, invest in them and mentor them, because that is where their strengths lie: As a board member/investor, not as a majority owner and entrepreneur, at least not for that idea.
They are not open and hungry to ideas
What the author also learnt from observing the most experienced angels in the network is that they are very good at taking an initial pitch from an entrepreneur, figuring out ways in which it could be improved, and pitching those back to the entrepreneur. And good founders take that advice to heart, and will either say they tried it, or say they will at least consider it, and they do and come back and tell the investor the results. They are also constantly scouring templates and examples, both globally and locally, and taking the best ideas. Weaker founders will pay lip service, and continue on their path, and even if the evidence says otherwise, will continue on and blame lack of funds and resources for their lack of traction.
The first part of this article was published on April 16, 2020 in the FE's Education and Career page.
The writer is the CEO of Bangladesh Angels Network, the first platform to connect Bangladeshi start-ups with smart capital via individual and institutional investors. He can be reached at [email protected]
