DealHorizon - the faster, easier way to create and share business plans

Okay Wall Street Executives - here's your chance. With one move, you can overcome years of aggregated anger and push the "reset" button on how the rest of the world views you. How? You can give 5% of your most recent bonus to Haiti.

5% would add up to somewhere between $50mm and $400mm, depending on whose numbers you use. That is a good amount of cash and would allow this country to get back on its feet. It would be an amazing thing to see the bankers come up with their own "we are the world" strategy.

Let's call it the "Wall Street Executives for the Rebuilding of Haiti Fund". Please share this blog post - the more people that see it, the better the likelihood of it happening.

If you're ever in a meeting with potential investors and someone says "great idea" at the end of your pitch, do not get excited. You haven't won, you've lost. Because what they're really telling you is "great idea but your execution stinks."

Ideas, as we all know, are among the cheapest commodities on Earth. They really are a dime a dozen, and that's what they're worth. Bar graphs showing user populations growing exponentially are equally inexpensive. Promises are too cheap to measure. Your charisma may win you a meeting, but it won't get you through due diligence.

What really counts in a meeting with potential investors is a demonstration of the tangible benefits your technology offers potential users, preferably shown from the perspective of a group of pre-identified sales prospects that you've already contacted whose enthusiasm for your product can be easily qualified via phone.

You need to demonstrate that you are more than an "ideas guy" - you need to show that you have an executable plan in process. You need to show that you understand how to package and communicate the value that is being created for your existing customers, and use it to bring on new customers.

If you can hold a meeting at a critical execution point in your plan, and be able to point to the milestones achieved in your operating plan prior to that meeting, and explain how the capital you're after is going to add value, you won't hear "great idea", you'll hear "great opportunity" - because at the point at which you're executing, and customers are responding positively to your value proposition, that's what you have: a great opportunity.

Note: If you're looking for compliments to take home to your spouse post-meeting, be warned: your spouse already inately understands the "great idea = you suck" rule. He/she wants you not just to dream, but to execute.

Jon Samsel just sent me Paul Graham's recent blog post entitled "What Startups Are Really Like". It has some excellent insights, including some useful observations about working with co-founders.

What people wished they'd paid more attention to when choosing cofounders was character and commitment, not ability. This was particularly true with startups that failed. The lesson: don't pick cofounders who will flake.

While this sounds correct on the surface, and is possibly true of many startups, I don't think it's true for all. I don't think the issue is that people flake out so much, as they are not directed well as to how they can provide value, or are not asked to contribute at the relevant time, or are prevented from doing so - and so they leave, or "flake".

This isn't a problem with the character and committment of the co-founder - it's a leadership problem. And leadership issues within startups are unique to that environ.

Consider the non-startup world. When it comes to establishing power structures, there are few parallels outside start-ups. The army deals with new recruits by placing them under the command of veterans. Football teams place them under the command of coaches. Grad schools under the tutelage of professors. Existing companies under the command of an existing veteran power structure.

Even small family-owned restaurants usually have established structure and power-sharing arrangements (based on Mom/Pop's final word.)

Co-founders within start-ups face a unique struggle to get a working command structure in place that is able to apply each co-founder's strengths according to the needs of the moment (which are rarely written down), prevent a co-founder's weaknesses from muddying the vision or slowing things down, and direct these efforts towards the creation of value, before resources run out.

It can also be tough for friends to "give orders to other friends" - or take them - which means that often, orders are positioned as arguments within a democracy. In many start-ups, the path of least resistance becomes "democratic decision-making." Outcomes become dependent on compromise.

Only the toughest groups of co-founders can position themselves for success within such a Socratic environment - the time demands alone to exorcise these arguments can become immensely value-zapping (entrepreneurs, pick out any recent issue and count the number of emails involved in resolving it and you'll see what I mean.)

My best advice? Figure out who is "guardian of the value-creation vision" (salesperson in chief), who is "architect of the technology needed to achieve the vision" (your lead developer), who is "keeping of the dates and dollars" (your head of operations), and who is your head of communications and community (chief user advocate and UX).

Assign the roles. Assume your position as leader of that function. Fight with your co-founders about anything outside each area democratically. Follow the leader on anything inside one of the roles. And if it turns out that you or one of your co-founders suck at the role, deal with that quickly and effectively.

The important thing at this point is to take action: Do not allow mediocrity to exist at the co-founder level - one bad guy in four can kill your chance of success. Two bad guys out of four will doom you to oblivion. Pay them off and move on.

If you follow this advice, I think chances are good that you'll get past launch and create some value - and maybe even have some fun with your co-founders. My experience is that people rarely flake when assigned important tasks they are capable of achieving for a start-up they co-founded and put money in. It is much more common for people to not be assigned a goal, and just "drift away" through lack of interest.