1 year at bidstack #startupreality

bidstack, as a concept, was born 12 months ago. Now we employ 12 people, with world class advisors and a management team to rival anything in our industry. I thought I'd pop the lid on some of the lessons learned and the methodology behind our decision making.

So, what is bidstack?

Well, bidstack enables businesses and individuals to promote their message via last minute / remnant digital billboard space, bought for minutes or hours. Flexible. Cost-effective.

The idea came about when at a previous startup - where I wanted to enable the food and beverage industry to make last-minute promotions on digital billboards to help shift perishable goods.

The 'idea' is now a business that has world class talent within the team and some incredible commercial and technical milestones reached so far.

It's been an insane year, with the highlights being:

- bidstack the brand was created in June 2015
- we launched the concept at the O2 in October
- raised publicly on Crowdcube successfully, hitting 137% of our target
- we have two offices - in London and Riga
- 10 technical partnerships, including Braintree Payments, Salesforce.com among others
- 20 media owner partners within the DOOH space
- 1 video game developer partnership - to sell ad space in virtual environments of real places
- 50 beta testers
- 80 requests from agencies wanting to be official bidstack 'approved' partners- 2 world class adverts
- A NED and management team including the former Group VP of Digital at JCDecaux, and the former CEO of World Markets at Kinetic (WPP).
- our first major commercial hire - our CCO, who joins from an International Commercial Director role within the advertising industry

...it all looks good. 

Rather than write this when/if we 'make' it, I think it's useful to share our journey at our current juncture. It's more exciting this way...

We've gone against the standard startup blueprint of pre-seed steps, as frankly I don't think it universally is the correct route.

Too many follow the path of: going stealth (act like the world are going to steal your idea), build a basic prototype and to obsess over achieving a low-burn. Leaving your startup invisible due to paranoia, with minimal outside interest in the business and crucially by being so low-key the idea isn't proven commercially. If you run out of money, it's a hard pitch to investors.

I believe this is primarily due to many entrepreneurs lacking the understanding of the value in building a brand - and even if a competitor comes along, if you are the stronger brand, you win.

Exploratory phase

We had an initial ￡20k to begin the detailed marketing research. Friends of friends.This enabled us to get the brand look and feel - build a prototype with site mock-ups.

I spent several months going from meeting to meeting learning the technical, commercial and political dynamics of the industry. Refining precisely the angle of attack for our marketing spend.

We refused to meet middle-managers, and met Board-level executives throughout this phase. At the start, whilst I was trying to suss-out the industry landscape, some of the meetings were cringey as we were still unsure on many lines of attack - silly questions had to be asked. So much was learnt from these meetings it was a risk worth taking.

Crowdcube

When I felt confident we had the commercial angle right, we approached Crowdcube to kickstart our raise.

We raised a further investment to fund a ￡20k video. We ran out of money on the Sunday - and raised the finance by the following Thursday.

Why so much on a video?

Well, I'd been through Crowdcube before, at a previous company. Back then we got a good friend of ours shoot our video. It's on my Linkedin - and I'm sunburnt on it. Once the funding round was over, we couldn't use it for anything else - it was so clearly aimed at investors.

I wanted our bidstack video to mask (literally) our then-size. We were entering the advertising industry - so it had to be sexy. Also, it had to set the tone for our brand - for all future clients, partners, hires etc.

The video has to be our main marketing tool lasting us to our launch - and it's been just that. It got 5k views on YouTube in a couple of weeks of going up, mostly from within our industry.

It's set the tone for meetings. A professional respect towards our approach, mixed with a warmth towards our tongue-in-cheek approach.

What for the round itself?

In October we held an embarrassingly clumsy(!) event at the O2 to kick-off the raise and showcase our video. Execution was amateur, but there was a clear output. We attracted 170 people and crucially sealed our main technical partner Whaleslide, who've been instrumental in making bidstack happen.

In November the round began. We set a target of ￡100k, with a ambitious ￡1m valuation. Extremely ambitious / crazy given where we were as a business at that stage, and considering we're in the UK where tech valuations are far too focused on shillings and pence right now - rather than market potential.

I've written about this round before - so I won't go into too much detail on it again.

If we'd failed on that site, like it would for any company failing to hit their raise target on such a public capital-investment platform, would have meant the beginning of the end for bidstack.

We hit 137% of our target - after an incredibly stressful raise.

What people don't realise before going onto the site is when you're mid-raise, and if you aren't flying toward your target progressively throughout, colleagues, investors, friends and loved-ones don't know how to communicate with you. Some begin to panic - brilliantly unhelpful, others try to offer pointless statements "oh, it doesn't look good James" and some default to "well, at least you tried...". 

We had three investors who were extremely engaged throughout the round. Their CV's were exceptional - CTO for a global bank, a CFO at Venture Capital firm (and ex-Out of Home) and finally a CFO at a ￡billion asset fund. All focus was shifted on getting them over the line - and, fortunately, we did.

First hires

We partnered with Whaleslide's Francesco Petruzzelli and Andy Curran, who together we setup a two-floor enormous office in Riga, Latvia.

Initially we hired a CTO and a UI guy, to replace our skeleton UK team. On December 28th we took the decision to rebuild the demo platform from scratch - in Ruby on Rails / React framework to future-proof the technology.

Nilesh Gohil our COO came into the team to assist with our procedures and paperwork. Along with Cris Young, they've created the base for the company to grow structurally - from accounting, shareholdings and contract standpoints.

Strengthening the management team

I wanted exceptional individuals to come into our management team - and was delighted to get both David Payne (ex WPP) and Eric Penot (ex JCDecaux) as NED and Chairman respectively. Their knowledge, added to Cris Young's (ex Ocean Outdoor) has been a enormous coup.

Always be hiring

Over the last month we've boosted our tech team to 8 individuals both here in London and in Riga, under our CTO Maxim's outstanding guidance.

In addition to this I've been adding / connecting relentlessly with high-quality individuals on Linkedin. Headhunting - something most startups don't bother to do, which is short-sighted.

We've just added Steve Hanson as our CCO, ex. International Commercial Director of Opera Mediaworks and prior to that, Unruly.

To tempt someone as a full-time hire of his stature within the advertising space is a major statement of intent.

To look at our payroll now, the volume of names - and their CV's, is quite humbling.

My advice, for whatever it's worth, is to always be headhunting. If as an early stage Founder you haven't got a clear vision of your next hire - in terms of position and name, you don't truly believe your company will scale.

So where are we now?

We've 20 media owners, 50 beta testers and 80 agencies lined-up to use bidstack. An insane number, given Linkedin, Campaign Monitor, the O2 and Crowdcube have been our only marketing outlets.

We launch our beta in August and go fully live in December. Exciting months ahead.

What take aways have I got from this year? A few.

- Go full-time on your business

Whilst you're in full-time employment you can't position yourself as a personal brand, properly. Linkedin is an unbelievable tool, and if you can't plaster it with what you're up to for fear of upsetting your employers, you're hampering yourself.

In addition, you should be free to meet anyone who shows an interest in your brand during the working day. If you're meeting solely in the evenings, you're not serious.

The pressure of knowing bidstack is my sole focus and income, means I have to make it work.

- Stop 'playing' startup 

I've stayed mostly away from the UK startup 'scene'. I think too many people are playing with a dream.

Too many people underestimate how hard it is to get a company off the ground. 
I've wasted too many days and evenings talking with Founders telling me they wouldn't sell their company for less than ￡x million - despite not having a single customer, or working product. Mental.

Most companies fail - for a number of reasons, some due to the wrong personnel, industry, idea, or just plain bad luck/timing. Surrounding yourself with the beanbag / free beers / co-working culture has the extreme downside of watching people you've built personal relationships with realise they have to give-up, as they can't continue paying the bills.

I've seen it. I'm done with that.

Surround yourself with scaling companies and inspiring individuals. It will keep your focus and energy levels high.

- Detaching myself from the brand

I'm not bidstack.

bidstack is a company and brand.

I've helped steer that company and put the core ideals in place - but now it's so much more satisfying knowing that we as a collective, are all contributing to make this happen.

It's akin to a school project with everyone chipping in.

bidstack is the work of thousands of man hours, hundreds of conversations and many partners - both commercial and technical, who've helped us get to this point.

Well. That's it.

It's been the best year of my life. No doubt.