Minnie Ingersoll of TenOneTen and Brian Nickerson Discuss Their Journey in Successful Startups
This week’s podcast discusses important attributes to successful startups as Minnie Ingersoll advises Magic Links founder Brian Nickerson about the future of his company. Here is a small bit of advice from their podcast:
- Have domain expertise.
- Your startup will have a higher potential for success if you are somewhat of an expert in the domain you hope to innovate.
- Raise your own influence level.
- Having contacts and knowledge in your domain will also greatly contribute to your startup.
- Look deep enough into your model to have your numbers make sense.
- While it is near impossible to know what your numbers will look like for your startup in the future, it is possible to understand what they will probably look like. If you can project your gains within reason using a sophisticated model, you seem more credible to experts and potential investors.
- Find people who are “smart investors”.
- Brian MacMahon defines a “smart investor” as someone who, regardless of their category as angel or venture capital investors, or even as someone who has not invested before, is knowledgeable about the domain of your product. If you have a good product, they will be more likely to invest. If you do not, they may be able to give you good advice.
Brian MacMahon is the founder of Expert DOJO, and is currently leading projects for the Expert DOJO fund such as the international accelerator, as well as helping to build a comprehensive startup community based in Santa Monica. By helping startups find investment in the Expert DOJO community, he aims for high success rates among startups and market innovation.