Raffael Marty, CEO

iEntrepreneurs

iTech Gulf, Kingdom of Bahrain April 10th, 2014

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Raffael (Raffy) Marty

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Starting Your Own Company

Don’t Do It

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If You Are Still Here

it starts with passion

There is no such thing as an “Entrepreneur’s” profession

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Problem

• Deep problem understanding • What’s the solution? • Can you build the solution?

• In time • At reasonable cost?

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• Is there a market for your solution? • How well do you know the market? • Will people pay for your solution? !

• Can you sell your solution? • How will you sell it? At what price? • Do you know the buyer / budgets / …? • How do prospects buy? What’s the sales cycle? How do they

spend money?

Market

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• Do you have a business model? • Pricing • Financial model

• What’s the way to profitability? • When to hire who? • When do you sell product? to who?

• Don’t write a long business plan - safe the time and think about the business itself

The Business Model

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Average sale: $250 / month Profit margin: 50%

Staff cost: $10k / month

Staff: 10 employees

—> 800 customers

The Cloud SaaS Example

Hang on, we need more staff to operate the cloud service and support customers

—> more customers

How do you acquire these customers?

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• How will you fund your company? • Self funded • Friends and family (careful) • Outside Investors (getting $500k is easy!)

• What do you do with that money? • Always think of the next funding round - you will need it! • Founders are too optimistic on getting profitable!

• Where does that money get you to? • What do you do once you spent that money

Funding

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Institutional Investment - The Series A

• Team • Customers / Traction (Market) • Product

Only for 1% of companies $1bn market

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Why is the Silicon Valley Different?

”… rich people and nerds” - Paul Graham

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• Team

• Who is in control?

• Clear roles and responsibilities!

• Get ready for the long haul! Don’t take

“No” for an answer

• Technology is only a small piece!

• Pay it forward - advice / help /

network

Miscellaneous Tips

• Relationships! • Relationships! • Never cold-call investors

• Get warm intros • From credible people

• Build a pitch deck, not a business plan

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raffael.marty@pixlcloud.com