I had the opportunity this evening to present to about 70 entrepreneurs at DreamitVentures in Philadelphia. My friend Steve Barsh helps run the program and asked me to speak about Business Development for Startups, and I was honored to be among an impressive group of speakers. This is a subject I'm passionate about - I've been focused on technology sales and BD since I graduated college, and it's still part of how I help portfolio companies as a VC. So I put this talk together with some of the things I've learned, and I hope it might be useful. Do you have any other BD ideas and best practices to share in the comments?
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July 17, 2009
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Chris, what a great talk! So glad I was there to see it "live!" Thanks again.
Steve Barsh
DreamIt Ventures
Posted by: Steve Barsh | July 17, 2009 at 01:20 AM
Hi Chris,
I think its always important to have clear overall performance metrics for biz dev. Even in the exchange of value ultimately deals should tie back to growth in revenue, growth in customers, reducing costs etc. Metrics should also drive consideration of the amount time and resources that can be committed to getting a deal done.
Posted by: Jim Berridge | July 17, 2009 at 03:22 PM
Hi Chris. Love the idea of not selling, but helping people buy. I'm a big fan of Tim O'Reilly's notion of creating more value that you capture and I think the best BD deals exhibit this quality. I'm always looking for the win-win-win where you find a way to create value for both partners and create value for those external to the deal.
Great deck. Thx for sharing.
Posted by: Billy Shipp | July 18, 2009 at 11:29 PM
Thanks for distilling so many great real life examples from Half.com, Delicious, Twitter, TED into actionable take-aways! One of the most useful talks we've had at DreamIt, thanks for sharing!
Posted by: SiNae Pitts | July 19, 2009 at 12:33 PM
Chris,
Great points all. Really enjoyed the overview and will put many of your recommendations into practice at my company. One suggestion though - what about getting inexperienced leaders ready for the (hopefully) steep growth curve?
Posted by: Alan Preston | July 20, 2009 at 09:47 AM
I had hoped to get down to see your talk live but had prior commitments.
Thanks for posting this online.
Posted by: Joe Cotellese | July 29, 2009 at 06:05 PM