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FROM OUR SPONSORS
What's Nashville Entrepreneur Week?
Sam Butler, Founder of NEW: NEW was born pretty organically from a need my friend and fellow entrepreneur Nick Potts and I often found ourselves discussing: we were both constantly seeking ways to connect with, learn from, and establish professional relationships with other entrepreneurs in Nashville. Almost four years later, we now have some of the best operators, investors, and entrepreneurs in Nashville as a part of the board and planning committee. We continue to serve that original purpose -- creating ways for entrepreneurs to connect -- as NEW has since evolved and grown. We want you to be a part of it this year. Read our full story here.
Click the banner at the top to learn more, and don't forget to mark your calendars for Nashville Entrepreneur Week, May 11th-13th, 2020.
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Dear <<First Name>>,
What if you knew that the thing that convinced someone to work with you had nothing to do with your idea, and everything to do with your preparation? Today's letter is about an unsung element in getting to 'yes.' While pitching an idea, you'll get a lot further by building the best prototype you can, writing a meeting agenda, conducting a case-study, drawing up a design -- whatever you can with the tools you have to show someone that you are executing on your product. Let the idea be secondary to working with you, the person who is always prepared for 'yes.'
Have an impactful day,
🚀✉️
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Deanna Meador, Associate Director of the Wond'ry, CEO of Couture Technologies
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At the Wond'ry, Vanderbilt University's Innovation Center, Deanna helps people in the Vanderbilt University community (faculty, students, staff and sometimes alums or other community members) that have ideas. These can be ideas for new products, technologies, services, research- really anything. With Couture Technologies, she leads a team that is building a virtual fitting and visualization technology for the fashion industry- an idea she came up with earlier this year to solve one of the biggest pain points in the industry currently- high return rates for online fashion purchases.
Recent Achievement:
Deanna's fashion technology team recently completed the National Science Foundation's I-Corps program at the end of December. They received $50K in non-dilutive funding to go out and conduct customer discovery. They got funded to travel around the world and talk to some of the most interesting people in and around the fashion industry. It was an extremely intense schedule and in the end, they conducted over 120 1:1 interviews over the course of 7 weeks and spent over 80 hours sitting across from other humans learning from their experiences. They talked to one of Donald Trump's stylists from his Celebrity Apprentice days, did walking interviews through the streets of NY, got invited to visit the homes of fashion execs, and found early adopters for the technology. Through the intensity of it all, the team bonded and supported each other every step of the way.
Meet your five minute mentor, Deanna Meador, Associate Director of the Wond'ry, and the CEO of Couture Technologies.
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I am a creator and inventor so I don't typically think about problems, but rather opportunities for innovation and new thinking. I would say the biggest opportunity facing the U.S. as a whole that keeps me up at night lies within our education system.
It is a complex, multi-faceted and often disparate system that is ripe for disruption, but is going to require collaboration from many different types of people and organizations in order to enact big changes that can have a meaningful and lasting impact on our future workforce.
I am part of a group that is designing a new tool for instructional coaches and school administrators. We were recently invited to pitch the technology in London and in preparing for the pitch, I ran across this statement from UNICEF, "this Learning Crisis is the greatest global challenge to preparing children for life, work, and active citizenship." referring to the over 617M children that are unable to reach even the most minimum proficiency levels in reading and math. We have to do more. We have to do better. We have to do different.
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The ability to read people. Critically important in business and life generally, but not something I think you can get really better at without having lots of varied experiences, putting yourself out there, and interacting with a diverse group of people. I spent a couple years in my early career working alongside families experiencing addiction, homelessness, abuse, and various types of trauma. I had a lot of difficult conversations, got much better at listening, and it changed my life.
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I make sure I compliment and lift someone up every single day. Each day passes quickly and it is really easy to get so focused on your goals for the day and what you need to accomplish from your task list that you don't always notice how the people around you, both physically and virtually, contribute to your success and your happiness. So, tell people and don't assume they know you appreciate them and what they do. Voice it out loud or in writing, but tell them.
I describe myself as Southern (originally from Indiana, but have been in Tennessee since high school) and polite and friendly, but this one started being intentional for me when I ran my first company. I had so much to learn and wasn't very good early on at noticing and recognizing people and it cost me a few good employees. Also, I know this habit makes me a weirdo, but I don't drink coffee ever. Like, I have never had a cup of coffee in my entire life.
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There isn't enough focus and attention paid to alternative funding strategies for entrepreneurs.
I go to multiple entrepreneurship conferences and events every year, subscribe to newsletters, read articles, etc. and the last several conferences I've gone to have had someone from an investment group on every single panel and there have been multiple talks on funding that almost exclusively focused on outside investments from angels and VCs. Yet, during each of these panels or talks, one of the speakers would quote a stat about the small number of startups that actually receive outside funding from these types of investors.
The stat varies depending on the year, but is always less than 10% so why are we spending so much time talking to less than 10% of the audience?
I know VC and big deals and big dollars are sexy and fun to talk about, but let's start applauding and highlighting more people that bootstrap their ideas and pursue other avenues to get their businesses off the ground so that becomes just as sexy.
This will highlight these other avenues for aspiring entrepreneurs and make it feel possible and real.
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There is no shortcut for hard work and surrounding yourself with the right people.
I am generally the last one to leave the office no matter where I've worked or what role I've been in. I do my homework or research and pay attention to the details.
I built a system for social science researchers to collect any kind of data electronically without the need for a developer in 2009 and when I brought it in to pitch the idea to my supervisors, they were onboard to test it, but wanted me to first meet with the head of IT and get his approval. I reached out and scheduled a meeting with him. Ahead of the meeting, I had built the prototype at home on my own time and implemented rough templates of a couple of our team's measures, outlined training and data collection procedures we would need to consider to prevent the potential for data loss in the field, and even calculated the weight of the tablet computer people would need to carry including an extended battery (we did some all day observations in classrooms) we would need to buy and install. The IT head came in and listened to my idea and hung his head and kind of shook it back and forth a bit.
He said, "I came over here to tell you no." and to provide all the reasons this is not a good idea, but you've convinced me this can work.
From that point on, he was one of my best allies and advocates. He contributed ideas that really helped advance the solution and was excited about it. The idea was good, but the preparation was better. Plus having a working (even if only partially) prototype is hard to say "no" to.
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Deanna Meador's first business was in retail- a mineral-based cosmetics company. Her current work involves supporting innovators and entrepreneurs from all industries (She has mentored teams working on everything from restaurants to fintech to cybersecurity and nuclear technology), as well as running a fashion technology company, while also working with a team inventing a new educational technology that will launch this summer. Some people go really deep in an industry. Deanna prefers opportunities and designing solutions that have the potential to make a difference for people no matter what industry. If there is a compelling need and a potential way to meet the need that makes sense and adds value, she can get on board.
Contact her:
For Wond'ry/VU-related communication- deanna.n.meador@vanderbilt.edu
For the fashion technology company or other communication- deanna@couturetech.fashion
Follow her on Linkedin
Follow her on Instagram and Facebook @couturetechnologies
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🕯A moment of silence for all your self-doubt 🕯
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LaunchLetter is for founders who want to share words of encouragement with other founders and CEOs. If you have meaningful experiences to share, please click the button :)
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Can't get enough?
1. Check out the relaunched Southern/alpha. If you've been looking for a place to learn more about what other local founders/entrepreneurs are doing to launch and grow their businesses, this is the place to find it.
2. Our local Slack, StartupNash, is at 170 members! Please join in if you are in the Nashville area and want to pitch a startup idea, or share a weekly win with our supportive community.
3. We just launched a free mentor matching service for the StartupNash Slack community. I've gotten a lot of interest in people seeing professional mentorship, and lots of people who want to give back. You can participate here. It doesn't matter how long you've been reading these emails, if you are interested, I'd love to have you. I promise this will roll out soon! |
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LaunchLetter is a weekday newsletter from Southern/alpha, a website that features collections of stories and resources for underestimated startup communities.
LaunchLetter is for founders getting started on an idea or business. Our goal is to share the perspective, habits and positive messages of more experienced founders and CEOs. We hope you find it relatable and delightful as you get focused for the day on your own goals. To the stars!
🚀✉️
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