Lukas Biewald is a first-time entrepreneur now at the helm of Crowdflower, a crowd-sourcing service for simple tasks. Since founding the company in 2008, Lukas has helped raise $6 million, with the most recent raise coming this past January from Bessemer and Trinity Ventures.
In this Lessons Learned segment, Lukas, who admitted feeling uncomfortable giving advice given his limited experience as an entrepreneur, said that a person wouldn’t necessarily think that perfecting a pitch or sales deck, or business materials, would raise the probability of getting funding or a sale done. But for him, it’s the total opposite. “I’ve always done better when I pushed deals really hard,” he said. Entrepreneurs should “close that deal, as far as you can push people in the meeting or in person, following up immediately afterward, it doesn’t look desperate, it looks aggressive.”
Lukas also says that entrepreneurs should take advantage of the “free” advice available in the Valley. Too many people pay for advice by giving away a percent of their company. “But there’s so many people who’d give you good free advice,” he said. Angels and VCs will “trade you a meeting to hear your story for their advice.” It’s like journalism, he added, the best and brightest do it for very little.
Finally, don’t ask entrepreneurs for advice, ask them to give you their experiences. Lukas apparently got this advice from his investor, Travis Kalanick, who told him: “Don’t ask for advice, ask for stories.”
So, what’s Lukas story? Back in 2008, Lukas was like a little boy chasing a shiny object that seemed to be making a lot of noise and getting traffic. That shiny object was a site, called Facestat, which let people rate the trustiworthiness of a person’s face. He and his partners were bootstrapping their company and were also becoming envious of their friends making a lot of money and receiving a lot of recognition for their social networking/media startups. So, they focused on Facestat, which sidetracked him from the core business and took him away for six months as he chased what was a fleeting fancy.
What did he learn? Be patient.
