Entrepreneurship Basics for Beginners

Presented by
Mari Ganapathy/Samatva Wealth Management LLC
Agenda
❖ Learn the basics of entrepreneurship
▪ Idea
▪ Customer Validation
▪ Team
▪ Finding mentors and advisors
▪ Communication
▪ Ecosystem
❖ Find interesting business ideas during COVID-19
❖ How to find great investors for your business
❖ How to Hire and Train great employees
❖ Running your business always LEAN
❖ Scale your business / Develop Business strategy
❖ Q&A / Networking session
Profile – Jeyamarippan Ganapathy, CFA
❖ Active Social contributor to Kiva.org/Himalayan cataract project/promise of pencil
❖ Lead Mentor at Startups-Ignite accelerator, https://www.startups-ignite.com and part of
jboard of advisors in startups JuneBrain / Impaction/ lagatos.
❖ Independent investment/financial Advisor (Fiduciary)
❖ Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
❖ Founded Samatva Wealth Management LLC (www.samatva.us) , Registered Investment jAdvisor
❖ Graduated MBA (Finance) Degree from Johns Hopkins university, Maryland/USA
❖ Systems Development Director, Xerox Corporation
❖ Project management consultant (PMP certified)
❖ Master of engineering from PSG college of Technology, Coimbatore, India
❖ Bachelor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Coimbatore Institute of jTechnology, India
❖ Native/School - Elayirampannai (near Madurai), Tamilnadu/India
 TM
Empowering ophthalmology and neurology communities through
remote monitoring of disease

Founder & CEO: Samantha Scott, PhD

BS biomechanical engineering (Stanford University), PhD
biomedical engineering (USC). Focus area: Neuroimaging and
medical device technologies for the eyes + brain.
 Private and Confidential. Not for Redistribution without Permission.

JuneBrain’s Product:
The Neuro-i Home Retinal Imaging System

Wearable …a wearable and non-invasive retinal imaging device for patient

device use at home + SaaS platform to automatically detect and report
changes in retinal pathology.

Patient Physician
mobile app platform

IP: JuneBrain has received a notice of allowance from 5

the USPTO for the Neuro-i
 Private and Confidential. Not for Redistribution without Permission.

Monitoring Brain Health through the Eye:

Market Opportunities
Our device will be used in patient groups with eye disease and
neurological conditions that present in the retina, including:

Retinal Disease US Prevalence

Age-Related Macular Degeneration 14 million
Glaucoma 3 million
Diabetic Retinopathy 7.7 million

Neurological Disease US Prevalence

Multiple Sclerosis 1 million
Traumatic Brain Injury 2 million cases/year
Mental Illness
2.2 million
Schizophrenia
Alzheimer’s Disease 5.5 million
6
Parkinson’s Disease 930,000
 Private and Confidential. Not for Redistribution without Permission.

Disease in Focus: Age-Related Macular

Degeneration
AMD = progressively damages the retina, causing loss of Target Improvements to Clinical Care
central vision, and is the leading cause of vision loss in
people over 50.

▪ US prevalence expected to double to 22 million by 2050 Daily patient

▪ 196 million cases worldwide by 2020 monitoring vs.
monthly clinical Objective data vs.
exams patient self-reporting

Data-informed
treatment decisions
vs. trial & error 7
Basics in entrepreneurship
Idea
❖ Validate your idea (B2C or B2B or B2C/B2B)
❖ Customer survey or customer interviews (never stop this task)
❖ Do not invest any money to develop your product or service until you have done customer
validation
❖ Find out which market segment you are planning to target (start with very small niche
segment)
❖ Try to use all the customer channels to validate your idea and you will find out which one
works best for your business
❖ Take always the high road – Be highly ethical and maintain honesty and integrity at all costs
and it will put you over the top of 99% of your competitors
Basics in entrepreneurship
Team
❖ Try to find your core team members who can support your startup and journey (never
stop this task)
❖ Select team members that have complementary skills to form a diverse skills team
❖ Look for team members who has the skills in areas like:
❖ Technology (who can build your product)
❖ Sales/ business development (who can sell your product and service to potential
clients) ... you may have to play this role at the start
❖ Marketing /Branding (social media, direct marketing, partnership marketing, events,
word of mouth...)
❖ Customer support --- very critical for your business growth
❖ Finance/HR/Accounting/Legal -- you can use an hourly consultant at the beginning and
you can hire these members as the company grows
Basics in entrepreneurship
Networking & finding mentors/advisers
❖Attend events related to your business (never stop this task) and it will
help you to find your potential team members / mentors / advisers
❖Use www.meetup.com, www.eventbrite.com, Google search, Facebook or
Linkedin to locate the networking events related to your business
❖Personal networks and connections
❖The startup community - ask peer CEOs where they found advisers - Trade
associations and networking organizations
❖Join start up accelerators (Y Combinator, Tech star, AngelPad…)
❖Established institutions in your community, state, and region
Basics in entrepreneurship
Communication
❖ Keep communicating to your team, mentors, and advisors
❖ Send out weekly or monthly email newsletters to your team,
mentors, and advisers and explain how you are progressing so far and
indicate if you need any help and list out your current challenges and
mention your success stories and failures ...
Basics in entrepreneurship
Ecosystem
❖ Always be part of the startup ecosystem
❖ Keep looking for good mentors and advisers who can help your
startup and sell your vision and request them to join your team
How to find out great ideas during COVID-19
❖Identify fast growing areas (Digital transformation, cyber security)
❖Smart home devices and related services (Doorbell/Thermostat/
Camera/Door lock/Voice assistant/Audio/lighting/Wi-fi/Routers)
❖Education (online vs campus or hybrid)
❖Redefine or disrupt impacted businesses (Retail, travel, hospitality and
commercial Real estate)
❖Logistics
❖Health care (PPE) products
❖DTC – Direct to customer innovations
❖Restructure restaurants, birthday party or graduation or wedding and
entertainment services
Technology Disruption in the next 15 years
• Quantum computing (super position/ Rigetti)
• Artificial intelligence / Machine Learning (Synthetic data – needed to train the machines)
• Self driving vehicles & EV
• 5G
• Cloud computing (AWS, AZURE, REDHAT)
• Internet of things (IoT)
• Genome sequencing Social impact: Women are under
• Gene editing represented in technology.
• Robotics surgery
80% Men vs 20% Women
• 3D printing
• Increase human immortality Gender pay Inequality will get
• Drones worse unless parents and society
• Blockchain address it
• Hyperloop
• Flying cars
• Space Travel
• Solor/Wind/Battery backup power/Fuel cell
Q&A
Rules:
• Please post your name and question in the chat window
• Moderator will read out the question
• If you need any additional clarification, please un-mute your audio
• Ask your clarification
• Mute your audio
NPR – How I Built This
Podcasts Summary
NPR – How I built this – podcasts summary
❖ Passion
❖ Persistent
❖ Create unique product or service
❖ Identify your core customers and reach out to them
❖ Flip every stone – ex: talk to every vendor at (any suppliers) event
❖ Money is not the motive behind it
❖ Help the customers or solve their problem
❖ Lot of hard work at the beginning
❖ Create word of mouth
❖ Marketing buzz
NPR – How I built this - podcasts
❖ Surround yourself with positive minded people
❖ To grow, may need to accept private funding at some time – it will push
you to sell the company to meet exit strategy needs after 10 years
❖ Keep your investment capital lower (Spanx use others shelf’s store vs.
Carols Daughter used old brick and mortar store)
❖ They took longer time and built strong foundation before igniting growth
so that it is sustainable
❖ Watch the competitors very closely and challenge them at the very
beginning (Compaq vs IBM)
❖ At the top level – it is all about (right) decision making
NPR – How I built this - podcasts
❖ If possible, make your competitor as a partner (Whole Foods)
❖ Founder read 1000’s of books about business before opening new stores (Whole
Foods)
❖ Be creative to cut costs and stay afloat at the beginning
❖ 1-800-GOT-JUNK – Try to create marketing at a lower cost (publishing story in
the paper)
❖ You will always encounter challenges throughout the business and you should be
ready to implement bigger changes down the road
❖ Instacart (Apporval) – idea from their daily pain of getting groceries during
severe winter in Canada
NPR – How I built this - podcasts
❖ For any startup, bringing the product or service at the right time is very critical
(not too early) or (not too late)
❖ For an entrepreneur, having more failure at the start is a good thing for a mega
success
❖ Provide value to the customers (ex: calling them to confirm what they want and
if not available, recommend alternative plans)
❖ Power Rangers CEO Haim Saban – when many people say that it won’t work,
then you should definitely try out the new idea
❖ Kendra Scott – Hire the right people – choose those who help you and never
forget their help
❖ Kendra Scott – start the business during severe economic recession or
depression – your competitors will be going out of business at that time and you
will get better lease deals for your stores.
NPR – How I built this - podcasts

• Atari & Chuck E. Cheese • Chesapeake candle

(Nolan Bushnell) – “do – never give up – be
different things that are not creative – try to
related which will bring identify which
more happiness to your life” products sell faster
– Brianrush startup to during the trade
enhance students’ memory shows or events –
by eight times. Having focus on that
playful culture increase product
creativity vs 8-5PM culture.
Franchising always brings
scale and growth
NPR – How I built this - podcasts

• Crate and Barrel (Gordon Segal) –

Travel is good for startup
entrepreneurs - it will give great ideas
and connections
• Never work for making money as a
purpose – work with interest and try to
make your customers happy and as a
result money will follow
• Any business can get into risk at any
time – very difficult to avoid risks –
always expect risks and mitigate the
risks creatively
• Always embrace new technologies and
try to take advantage of them – adapted
online internet selling around 1997 and
now 40% of selling is happening online
 NPR – How I built this - podcasts

• Lyft (John Zimmer) • Beyond Meat (Ethan • Kate Spade

Brown) • At the starting stage, you
• Traveling to may need to wear many
underdeveloped countries • Have noble goal – hats until the business
could trigger new ideas – reduce animal takes off –
saw ride sharing concept in killings for feed
• Kate did the design,
Zimbabwe (66 billion animals shipping, attend trade
• Have noble goal – reduce are killed every shows – struggled for four
the cars and pollution by year) and reduce years
ride sharing methane pollution • Marketing is crucial– used
from animals editors help to promote
• Do not underestimate govt. their bags in the magazines
regulation and unions ads
 NPR – How I built this - podcasts
• Virgin companies (Richard Branson)
• When you see a company that is
not delivering their services or
products with great value added,
you can try that business with
good added value for customer.
• Example: UK banks charged 2
to 3% of fees for handling
client money – Virgin bank
provided better customer
service without any add on
fees – if you see greater
weakness in any business you
can challenge it and do it in a
better way.
• Edible Arrangements (Tariq Farid)
• New idea – no one liked it
except his mother
Struggle in the beginning –
bought $7000 store and built
flower shop
Link fruits and flower bouquet
and came up with idea of
cutting fruits and make flower
bouquets
• Never chase money – chase
your ideas or business
NPR – How I built this - podcasts
• Zappos (Tony Hsieh) • Samual Adams (Jim Koch)
• Pay money to buy an
experience, not a thing
• Not a shoe company/
excellent customer
service company
• Some things are scary but not
dangerous and some are dangerous
but not scary – like having a
permanent job that does not offer any
growth opportunities or happiness
does not seem scary, but it is
dangerous – starting new business is
not dangerous but looks scary
• Keep lean at the beginning of startup
• You may need to play sales guy at the
start which is a good thing since you
tell better story than paid sales guys
NPR – How I built this - podcasts
• Warby Parker (Dave Gilboa and • Melissa & Doug Toy
Neil Blumenthal) company
• Try to disrupt big business – • Embrace failures –
do lot of homework before around 600 toys
starting the business – selling got rejected by the
eyeglasses online vendors – they
• Excellent customer service went to stores
• Product pricing is very critical directly – went
• Timing to enter the market is against traditional
critical toy design – made
• Building a brand before launch wooden based toys
using lot of PR companies
 NPR – How I built this - podcasts
• Southwest Airlines (Gallaher)
• Starting a business as an outsider has a huge
advantage and can completely think outside
the box – bring low cost airline service for
every one – keep the costs lower by removing
food option – same type of flights to minimize
the cost of operation – faster check in and
check out (10 minutes) for every flight to
maximize capacity
• No debt – use free cash flow to reinvest for
buying flights
• Do not regret your failures – you will not burn
out – if you do what you enjoy the most
• Do not focus on growing market share and
lose return on invested capital – maintaining
profitability is very important
• Angies List (Angie)
• Technology is not that important
for success – foundation is
building business idea without
any technology and acquiring
good customers by city
(construction service providers
and users who need the service)
and developing feedback
mechanism which adds value to
everyone – technology will help
you to scale it and bring faster
growth
NPR – How I built this - podcasts
• Clif Bar (Gary Erickson) • Radio one (Cathy Hughes – African American
started business during 1970s)
• Always use corporate
counsel to check the • You can still recover from early
setbacks/unexpected events and by
contract agreement working hard you can still achieve great
before signing any heights
handshake • Use insults from others as a powerful
agreements with your weapon for boosting your life – challenged
suppliers, banks, to open her own Radio company and she
vendors, etc. knocked 32 banks door to get $1million
dollar loan and got it from 33rd bank
• Always be optimistic, even if all the odds
are against you
 NPR – How I built this - podcasts

• TRX (Randy Hetrick) • Vice (Suroosh Alvi)

• Product company – patent is very critical - • Online magazine - keep
challenges from copycats and knock outs innovating and come with
• Copycats mitigation – work with local govt different ideas to make
and ban the copycats and work with the magazine interesting
customs to stop shipping the copycats to their audiences
• Knock outs (who copy as is and do not use • Ex: Interview Taliban
your brand names) mitigation – file a members as part of
patent infringement case against them under ground illegal
(cost around half million to million dollars) gun/arms sales
– if you win the case you can stop them and
they cannot sell it through Amazon or any shows
other channels any more
• Visited 300 to 500 gyms and provided
training about his product TRX and how to
use it
 NPR – How I built this - podcasts
• Lady Gaga Manager (Troy Carter)
• No plan B when you are at the
startup level – keep focused
and move forward
• $2 million is nothing – you
could go bankrupt in few
months
• Start from scratch again –
visited small clubs and built
the ground network – social
medias
• Lonely Planet (Maureen & • Dermalogica (Jane Wurwand)
Tony) • Always develop at least one skill (sewing
• Traveling across Asia skills or manicure/pedicure skills,
helped them to write plumbing, electrical wiring, Smart
popular tour guide devices setup, app dev, etc- could be any
skill)
• Went to every salon to promote their
beauty school or beauty products
• Travelled from UK to South Africa to USA
• When she heard that front desk people
are Americans who handle sales and
backend people are beauticians from
Europe– revelation of “why not train
American workers to do
manicures/pedicures?”)
NPR – How I built this - podcasts
• Zumba (music & dance)
• Young kid from Columbia
• Very low subscription fee ($35) to
the teachers
• 50 million users
• Get the revenue from music
promotions
• Patagonia (Yvon Chouinard)
• Lead a simple life
• Allow employees to make
independent decisions and give
freedom to them (like Ant
colony – no leaders – still the
job will be done)
• Look for long term stable
growth vs short term enormous
growth
NPR – How I built this - podcasts

• Mark Cuban (Shark • Starbucks • Stonyfield Yogurt (Garry Hirshberg)

Tank) • Traveling to Italy • When you are growing your
• Always stay ahead triggered the idea business and could not raise
of the curve – of implementing money from others or bank, you
check the pulse on coffee shops in could ask for SBA guarantee and
the upcoming USA bank will loan it.
technologies and • Success will bring • Getting funding from your
spend time or
inefficiency in parents or family friends will
open a new
business around it business – always push you to work hard and make
work like startup the startup successful
• Do not depend on single
supplier – if they fail, it could
bankrupt you too
 Failure rate for any first-time startup is
more than 90%

Success rate for the second startup

is more than 90%

Keep Trying!
How to find great investors for your business
❖Potential investors
❖Parents, friends, relatives, Angel and VC
❖Do not just look for the money from the investors
❖Look how deep the investor’s network connections are and it will be
more valuable than the money they invest
❖Always keep potential investors in the loop – keep sending them
emails and explain how you are progressing and meeting milestones
and they may change their mind down the line
How to value your company?
• 409A valuation – seed round – Series A-Series B - Series C – Term sheet
• Common methods of valuation
• Asset Method – where the value is based on the value of the underlying assets
• Income Method – where the value is based on the future discounted cash flows
• Market Method – where the value is based on comparable valuations in the market
• Valuation could be impacted by
• Milestones
• IP/Patents
• Competition dynamics
• Strategic partnerships
• Quality of your management team
 Private and Confidential. Not for Redistribution without Permission.

Timeline + Milestones
PROTOTYPE DEV PRODUCT
+ FEASABILITY COMMERCIAL PRODUCT DEV LONGITUDINAL LAUNCH
TESTING + USABILITY STUDIES AMD + MS CLINICAL STUDIES Fall 2021

Aug 2018 – Feb 2020 March – Dec 2020 July 2021 – Dec 2022

FDA 510(k) Submission FDA Approval

March 2021 September 2021

2020 2021
Rounds

$1 million (Seed Round)

$60k (Pre-Seed Round)

The above milestones can be fully funded by our target Pre-Seed and Seed rounds alone.
Receipt of the following grant awards will supplement our fundraising and postpone or reduce our Seed raise:
Grants

$390k (Awarded: NSF, small grants, Hardware Cup, founder) $1.5 million (Prospective: NSF Phase II)
36
 Private and Confidential. Not for Redistribution without Permission.

Funding Requirements + Use of Funds

Seed Round: $1 million
Alternative funding in case NSF Phase II is
unsuccessful in December 2020 10% Fabrication of 5 devices for
Burn rate = $10k/month initial customers

40% Longitudinal Clinical Study 20% 510(k) submission

▪ Johns Hopkins + Georgetown to FDA + patent
▪ 6-month study prosecution
▪ 100 MS patients ▪ Usability + electro-
mechanical safety
testing
30% 1 year of salaries and ▪ Comparative study in
50 patients with
overhead
predicate device
▪ R&D engineer (FTE),
(Johns Hopkins)
software developer
▪ Additional IP filings in
(FTE), ophthalmic
US, EU, Canada
researcher (FTE) 37
How to Hire and Train great employees
❖Do not force any one to join your startup
❖Explain your company value and vision and how you are trying to help the
community to the potential hires and they should join with their own
interest
❖Never micromanage your employees
❖Allow them to make their own decisions and make them as share holders
of the company
❖Set up your compensation (stock awards) in a way that employees will act
as owners – it will eliminate lot of admin overheads
❖Provide lot of learning opportunities
❖Allow them to learn and grow within your company (never leave your
company)
Running your business always LEAN
❖Focus on managing your cost structure from Day 1 (just like focusing
on growing revenue)

❖It should be part of your company culture

❖Being LEAN will help your business when you run into economy down
turns or unexpected product failure or losing a big client
Scale your business / Develop Business
strategy
❖Always validate if your business can be scaled through franchise
model
❖If you are planning to scale it by yourself, develop the plans and
budget and funding needs
❖Always be 5 years ahead with respect to planning
❖Consider your partners, suppliers, or customers and find out the
possibility of scaling the business using their resources
Founders who are very successful are good at.....
❖ Being persistent
❖ Showing Empathy
❖ Communication to mentors/investors/team
❖ Sales skills
❖ Need to have fire in their belly
❖ Storytelling to customers or inventors
❖ Having a long term vision and focus on very niches to grow from the start
❖ If the founder Is a hustler he will figure things down the road
❖ Scalable
❖ Market size
❖ Less Capital Intensive
❖ Profit margins / switching costs for the customer
❖ Any networking effects down the road
❖ Customer acquisition cost/ break even
❖ Strength of Team and Board of Advisors
❖ Never give up
Great Books for Reading
❖Talk-Like-TED-The-9-Public-Speaking-Secrets-of-the-World-s-Top-
Minds – by Garmine Gallo
❖PIXAR Touch – The making of a company – By David A. Price
❖Barbie and Ruth – The story of the worlds Famous Doll and the
woman who created her – by Robin Gerber
❖Brick by Brick – How LEGO Rewrote the rules of innovation and
conquered the global toy industry by David C. Robertson
❖New Ideas from DEAD CEOs – by Todd G. Buchholz
 TM
Thank you!
Samantha Scott, PhD
www.JuneBrain.com Founder and CEO
155 Gibbs Street, #528 samantha.scott@junebrain.com
Rockville, MD 20850 650-380-7190
Q&A / Networking
Rules:
• Please post your name, email and company name in the chat window
• Moderator will call out your name
• Un-mute your audio
• Ask your question or discuss about your company for 1 minute
• Mute your audio