I’ve started watching (Chef Gordon) Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares on BBC on my cable package. Although I started watching because cooking is a hobby of mine and I’ve always been fascinated by the restaurant business (when I worked at McDonald’s as a kid, I loved it), it has struck me how wonderfully educational the program is for entrepreneurs in general.

(note - Chef Ramsey does a reality show on Fox called Hell’s Kitchen - not the same show at all)

The premise of the show is Ramsey, a celebrity chef and owner of multiple high profile restaurants around the world, visits small restaurants that are failing and provides 7 days of consulting to turn them around. I’ve noticed several themes that have clear parallels with entrepreneurial ventures in general. For example:

• Understanding what drives profit is important and often counter to conventional wisdom (serving high-end, elegant food is sexy but is much harder to do profitably - the profitable activity often isn’t the sexiest).
• There’s no substitute for roll-up-your-sleeves marketing. When Ramsey analyzes a restaurant, he goes into town and interviews people to see why they aren’t coming. Then he goes out with the owner go out into the general public when the restaurant re-opens for marketing. Lesson 1: lots of the most important marketing is not all that sophsticated. Lesson 2 - even millionaires should never think they are too good to sell to the public. Lesson 3 - Figure out who your customers are and talk to them.
• Lack of product focus is an insidious source of pain for a company. When restaurants have menus with dozens of choices, food production is a nightmare - you don’t get particularly good at preparing many dishes. Plus, your sales staff (wait staff) has a much more difficult learning curve.
• Denial of problems (Ramsey is excellent at facing the brutal truth, usually involving a great deal of profanity) is a killer - once you recognize problems, even deep problems can be surprisingly easy to fix if you take a cold, dispassionate look at them.
• Even one wrong person on the management team can be a company-killer. They need to be excluded from the company quickly once it’s determined that they are the wrong person.
• Managing employees who are friends is really difficult because it’s hard to ask your friends to do things that you expect your employees to do - and it’s even harder to provide firm guidance when required.
• Management is leadership - people have to want to do what you say not just because you pay them, but because they value your approval. You can’t leave your employees in the trenches and hide from crisis. You have to treat employees with respect (that’s very different from coddling), and you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy.
• Poor communication among the production (chef), management (restaurant owner) and sales (waitstaff) - often leads to lousy food and lousy service.
• Lack of passion on the part of owners and employees leads to sloppy execution (you can’t provide good service to customers without a passion for what you do). In one show, the head chef realized he really wanted to work with troubled teens (which is why he staffed his kitchen with them) and he left the restaurant to be a social worker.

If you’re interested in becoming a more skilled entrepreneur, I highly recommend watching this entertaining and edcuational show. My wife Cordelia, who also loves entrepreneurship, is also hooked and it’s become quality time for me and the Mrs.

I’ve found good lessons for me as a manager from the show. You may also.

– mike

We had a great time at the recent PitchCamp session. If you haven’t heard of PitchCamp, it is a free workshop that we offer to entrepreneurs to help them better refine their pitch. We also get into some adjacent areas, such as the ins and outs of investor networking, and how to maximize the value from things like our StartupLounge.com investor networking events. It is amazing to hear the difference in the “before” versus “after” pitches.  And you get the benefit of learning by watching all the other pitches evolve as well.  Good stuff.

The first few times we did PitchCamp, we had 20-25 entrepreneurs in the room. It turned out to be too many. It was hard to give everyone the attention they needed in a limited amount of time. We’ve cut the audience in half, so only 12 slots are available for each session (which we seem to be doing once a month now).

Another cool thing is that something like 60-70% of the angel investors in our Angel Lounge have shared their interest in helping at PitchCamp. We hope to bring in some of these folks to help out with the sessions moving forward.

We have a few slots remaining for our upcoming May 7th, 2008 session. It is from 2p-5p over near Galleria. If you are interested in attending, contact me and let me know. This thing fills up fast …

Cheers.

Lance wrote a nice bit on today’s Georgia Technology Summit. I agree with everything he said. I’ll pile on a bit more.  Pet peeve time.

I worked pretty diligently to follow the guidelines that TAG gave us for the Top 10 Innovative Company presentations. Pretty simple: “3 slides, 3 minutes. Any more than that and you will get the hook.” If you ever been to a big event like this, you know how hard it is for them to stay on schedule with so many speakers, presenters, exhibitors, breaks, etc. Everyone has to do their part, however small it may seem.

I was surprised, and a little taken back by how many of my fellow entrepreneurs ran roughshot over the rules. Some of the companies had what appeared to be a dozen slides, one guy tossed up a video, and some ran WAY over the limit (I swear one guy took 10 minutes). I know that Tino (TAG) didn’t seem all that thrilled about it either. Then again, these were supposed to be the same pitches that the judges saw during the audition … who knows.

I will say this, though. If you can’t pitch the essence of your company in 3 minutes to a room full of people (and obviously can’t follow simple instructions), that is a pretty clear indicator to me that you either have no advisors, some really iffy advisors, or you’re just toast.

Whenever I watch other people pitch, I also try to take notice of the crowd … what are they thinking? doing? gesturing? When people start breaking out the Blackberries that’s a pretty good indicator that you have a first-class ticket on the non-stop to nowhere. At that point, the applause is simply gratitude that you’re done. Trust me, you don’t want to be that guy (or gal).

The goal of the 3 minute pitch is not to raise money, and it certainly isn’t to provide due diligence - it is to get your message out there. Who are you ? What do you do? Why are you great? That’s it. Say enough to spark some interest out there - you want people seeking you out during the break, not praying for you to stop talking. That isn’t the time to amaze the crowd with your superior knowledge of dynamic link libraries.

Jeff Haynie (Appcelerator) had a nice pitch … nice, clean design … easy to read … got his message out there, and got the hell off the stage. You could tell he’s done this before. His pitch was reflective of a professional entrepreneur. Hopefully, TAG will post the videos soon - should be very instructional for some folks.

One suggestion for future events: It would probably be beneficial if TAG did a “bootcamp” pitch session for all entrepreneurs that are presenting at the Summit. Since we already do this coaching via our free PitchCamp sessions via StartupLounge, I’ll offer that up to TAG as a way to do it for free. We’re happy to help, and provide some sounding boards for you. Or, if you’re an entrepreneur who is getting ready to hit the pitch trail, stay tuned to StartupLounge.com for dates as we post them and come on your own - again, it’s free.

There’s no such thing as the “perfect pitch” (I’ll include every pitch I’ve ever done as well) - there is always room for improvement. But good lord … some of those pitches illustrated this fact: as hard as it is for companies to find capital in Atlanta, the entrepreneurial community has work to do to meet the money half way. Blocking and tackling …. the basics.

I will close with this, though - the TAG Summit definitely keeps getting better every year.  I remember past Summits with pretty thin crowds.  Much like building a company, it is an iterative process.   As Lance pointed out, Tino does a good job of listening to feedback from TAG members, and the event continues to evolve.

Cheers.

One of the really fun things about being involved in the early-stage scene here in Atlanta is that I get to network and meet with a lot of people who share the common vision of fostering a better startup ecosystem for our community. Included in this are representatives from various chambers of commerce, academic institutions, and governmental agencies. It seems that a common thread among many of these groups is that they all get excited about the prospects of launching an “incubator” in their respective geographies.

Unfortunately, many of these well-intentioned endeavors never get off the ground, or they take forever to gain traction. Why? Bureaucracy. While they all see the benefit from an economic stimulation perspective, they lose sight of what is really important - traction. Let’s face it - they are going to try and encourage tenant entrepreneurs to gain “traction” - ostensibly so they can graduate from the incubator, and become a viable force in the local economy.

It’s time they drink their own medicine. Stop wasting time with steering committees, breakout groups, and herding cats - start executing.

I recently met with one of the local Chambers of Commerce - one in a very affluent part of the city. They are very excited about launching an early-stage incubator, but for a year now, they’ve been “talking” about it.

Here is my easy four step plan for anyone who wants to launch something like this:

1. Forget about “incubators” - think “accelerator”

Incubators imply infrastructure. Not needed. Acceleration implies movement - traction. Much more salient. Forget about creating a building and charging rent from an early-stage company. You will automatically rule out 90% of the ideas that will eventually become viable players in the economy. By its very nature - if a company can already afford to pay your rent, they shouldn’t even need you. They already have traction.

2. Find a kid with a good idea

Imagine that. Jimmy is building a new software company from the ground up. Latch onto him. I was a judge last week for the Georgia Tech Business Plan Competition. Lots of fun. One company in particular actually said in their business plan that they were considering a move to Silicon Valley. Not if I can help it. Grab them before they get desperate.

3. If need be, Give him a place to hang his hat

Got a spare cube laying around? Stick Jimmy in it. Let him use your small conference room. Give him Wi-fi access. Whatever. Just do it. Just don’t charge him. Do it because you give a flip.

4. Help him.

Leverage your network and other resources to help Jimmy on a practical level. If he has a marketing question, set up a coffee with Bill, your longtime college buddy who now runs marketing for a hot tech company. Help Jimmy build his own network. Mentor him. That’s what it is all about. The next thing you know, Jimmy is an ambassador for the cause, and contributing to others.

Yes, Virginia - it’s just that simple.

Forget the bureaucracy. Find a kid with a good idea, stick him in your office, and help him. Acceleration. Good things happen.

On that note, stay tuned for an announcement about the cloud, our (StartupLounge.com’s) new model for early-stage acceleration here in Atlanta.

Cheers.

I spent the day today down at Georgia Tech serving as a judge in the semi-final round of their annual business plan competition. It was a ton of fun, and I thought I’d drop a post here with a wrap-up, along with some more random thoughts on business plans, business plan competitions, etc.

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Ok, I will confess that I am a process improvement fanatic. I suppose it has something to do with my experiences early in my career working in a TQM environment at TSYS, and working with a key customer (AT&T Universal Card Services) to win the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award. In reality, though, it probably has more to do with my desire to create “well-oiled machines” and tinker with numbers.

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I learned to play the game of chess as a kid, although I’m certainly no Gary Kasparov. I have always been intrigued by its simultaneous complexity and simple elegance. After running several startups, and going through the exit process more than once, I have come to the conclusion that running a company is very akin to playing chess, although running one effectively is probably closer to mastery of the game. Chess is a great game for entrepreneurs - it is a lot like entrepreneurship at its core.

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