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Clarity

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS

Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area

Dragana Mendel, a management consultant and a founder of ANAGARD, LLC, works with startups to develop their technology commercialization pathway, and with small business owners to develop their growth strategy. First and foremost, she actively listens her clients in order to understand their company’s mission, vision and long-term objectives. With intimate understanding of client’s corporate culture, she then recommends the best solution to their most pressing pain points.
Prior to founding ANAGARD, LLC, Dragana has been in charge of corporate and business development for a number of emerging growth high tech startups (renewable fuels, renewable chemicals, LED lighting, small wind turbines, digital signal processing). For over 15 years, she honed her new product development skills with IBM and Alcatel-Lucent where she was instrumental in successfully launching dozen of new software, IT and telecom solutions to the market.

Education
• Master in Business Administration (MBA), Poole College of Management, North Carolina State University
• Master in Computer Science, North Carolina State University
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, graduated Summa Cum Laude

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Entrepreneurship Raising Venture Capital Startup Consulting Product Management Market Research Strategic Planning Business Strategy Business Growth Technical Product Management Value Proposition

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Investor-Ready Consulting

Companies seeking funding from external investors, such as venture capitalists, face an uphill, time consuming battle, particularly if they are located outside of hotbed of private equity industry, Silicon Valley and New York/Boston area. We can reduce the time CEO startups spent courting investors by ensuring the company is “investor-ready” before they reach out at start setting up meeting with investors.
We have seen hundreds of investors’ pitches, worked with number of entrepreneurs to improve their pitch and secure funding, and we maintain confidential relationship with regional angel investors and venture capitalists.

We help our clients create: executive summary, teaser, pitch, business model, business plan.

Technology Commercialization

Startups are creative and innovative; they often disrupt the market by commercializing new technology. Unfortunately, most new technologies die in the “Valley of Death” and never get commercialized. To cross this gap between prototypes and commercial products, we work closely with scientists, researches and engineers to find the best end customer for their platform technology. This task is not easy because we need to evaluate market attractiveness for a number of different segments before we can settle on the optimal product-market fit.

Our clients use our technology-product-market fit report to include it into the grant proposals (SBIR, STTR) so they can dramatically increase probability of a win. They can also use the report to evaluate a business viability of their research before they decide to spin a company.

Business Plan

We provide management expertise to our clients as we develop corporate strategy and financially viable business model for their technology. A written business plan document captures: unique value proposition for client’s product/service, portfolio, comprehensive market research for the target customer, competition, strategy and implementation, financial plan.

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Answers

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

How much equity should I ask as a CMO in a startup?

Why are you working only 32/hr week? I have to assume that's because you have a day job with a paycheck. If you handle marketing, communications and PR, that tells me that you are not working at the executive level developing a business strategy, but rather as functional level where you execute already developed strategy.
The first question I would ask you is what do you want our of your career and financial composition?

Assuming that you are going to maintain this workload level, I think that covetable note is the best way to compensate you for your time. Figure out the salary for your role with a large corporation, then use that as a baseline for the monetary value of your time for the past four months.

In terms of equity, with a startup that already has 20 people involved, single digits numbers come to mind.

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Marketing

Start-ups

Entrepreneurship

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

How do you determine if a business idea is worth pursuing?

Spend time scotching out a business model and a business plan for about two months to see if the idea is financially viable. The key is to properly determine the target customer, the current problem and/or need that they have and how will your product address their issue. From my experience, most new businesses struggle because they have not articulated a value proposition accurately.

Value proposition: my product XYX is for customers ABC that have the following problems: p1, p2, p3. Unlike current solutions, our solution is about 30% better, faster, cheaper.

Obviously, to get to the value proposition above, you have to do extensive market research, industry research, competitive intelligence, customer discovery. All of that can be done without actually build a product.

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New Business Development

Entrepreneurship

Business Ideas

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

Need a good lead generation strategy for chiropractors for getting new patients. Ideas?

The answers to this question are all very valuable and provide a number of actionable suggestions. However, I have to disagree that these lead generation activities are FREE. They are not because they are very TIME consuming and a person has to be hired to execute all suggestions above.
The first step for a chiropractor, an expert in the field, is to clearly define what is the VALUE clients/patients would get from a visit. Segment people into different groups based on their needs and speak to their problem and how you can solve it. Personally, I went to a chiropractor after a recommendation from my Ob/Gyn when I was 7 months pregnant and in serious back pain. Weekly visit for spine adjustment took away the pain and I could not only walk, but even run in my last trimester. Now, that's priceless!

Once a chiropractor has clearly articulated benefits of the treatment, he or she can hire a marketing professional to execute on the strategies people mentioned on this thread.

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Online Marketing

Lead Generation

Facebook

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

How do I double my clientele? I currently have 200 active members at my fitness studio and need to know which strategies would be most effective.

Jesse, congratulations on your tremendous success in the first year!

Before you start designing your growth strategy, I recommend that you analyze first your current situation and figure out what is the reason for your tremendous success. Then, survey your current clients, figure out the attrition rate, their satisfaction levels, needs, why they like to be in your fitness studio, etc. For example, industry average attrition rate is 3.25%/month or 39%/year! That's a lot. What's your attrition rate? I hope it's lower. On the other hand, with an expansion and membership growth, you have to ask yourself will you be able to have enough high quality trainers in the studio to keep the clients happy and offer them personalized training and attention.

I am currently working on a project that deals with this exact topic and I have a number of valuable data points that are relevant for your industry. Healthy living trend is definitely your friend, but desire to be make healthier choices in life didn't translate into more physical activity or increase in fitness club membership. In fact, fitness club membership has peaked in 2012, so the challenge is how to attract a mainstream person to get off the couch and come to your studio because that's the demographic segment that can provide the highest growth. On the other hand, if you are targeting elite fitness enthusiasts, ask yourself if there are 400 of them in your area.

Here's another valuable data point: people that talk about fitness clubs and classes on social media use one specific channel 70% of the time. So, knowing which channel to use, you can have your staff focus only on that social media channel and ignore the rest.

it's really hard to give a specific advise without knowing your specific situation and location. Feel free to call any time if you need specific advise and I can tell you where to focus your social media activity that gets the most chatter -- 70%.

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Growth Strategies

Fitness

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

What are some tools we can use to do market research ?

Because I am a consultant for startups and new businesses, I pay for subscription to variety of market research databases where I can get information about market size, growth, barriers to entry, trends, competition, regulation, etc. http://www.anagard.com/market-research.html One market research report on single industry or market segment can cost few thousand dollars.

If you are lucky, you could find a ready made secondary market research report for your specific market segment that will give you TAM (total addressable market). With this information, you can then focus on your initial market entry, for example a metro area, then figure out how many sales you can make in first few year and that will give your SAM.

Most likely, you will not be able to find a ready made answer. Still, figuring TAM in your case should not be difficult because you are working with already established parameters: number of sushi restaurants in Canada. I am sure it's really easy to find the number of restaurants in Canada (start with trade journals) then find a number of sushi restaurants. Hey, even Yellow Pages would give you a good estimate.
$PPP == price for your product.
TAM = $PPP * number of sushi restaurants in Canada
SAM = number of sushi restaurant that are your customers * $PPP

Investors (angles and VCs) prefer to see TAM larger than $1B. Most inexperienced startup founders will simply claim that SAM is 1% of TAM, and viola, you make millions of dollars. It's not that simple... Anyway, your business probably can grow organically.

Good luck!

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Market Research

Entrepreneurship

Market Analysis

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

My small wearable tech company just got a big box retail contract, how do I go about getting first round VC seed money or for our growing needs?

Congratulations on getting your first retail contract! Not knowing anything about your product, it's hard to give you a specific answer, but I hope that my recent article would be helpful. The article compiles advice from venture capitalists themselves how they like to be approached by startup founders and what they are looking for before they decide to invest in a company: http://www.anagard.com/blog/2015/01/13/venture-capitalists-advice-to-startups-how-to-successfully-raise-funds/

By the end of the day, your business model and plan is the key, so please don't hesitate to call if I can help further.

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angel investing

Funding

Raising Venture Capital

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

Should hardware startups try to look for and acquire customers who will pre-order the product or should they just grow the hype before the launch?

I agree with Armando and Shaun, customers bring you revenue, social media followers do now. I would go even further to say that social media followers represent a cost center, an expense, because you need to have a paid employee or a contractor to manage social media followers and keep the brand message consistent.
Businesses exist because they have paid customers. It's that simple. Regarding hardware startups, I just published a case study about FitBit vs Jawbone: http://www.anagard.com/blog/2015/05/06/case-study-bootstrap-vs-venture-funding/ In just three years FitBit took 70% market share for fitness trackers with only $83M in venture capital funding and yesterday they announced $100M IPO even though valuation is $1B. FitBit has to thank paying customers for the success. In contrast, Jawbone, their competitor raised $518M, took 19% market share and is in debt today -- epic fail.
Please call if you and your team need outside feedback.

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Hardware

Startups

Business Strategy

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

How can I improve communication with my investor?

Well, do YOU really want to go with this business opportunity? That's they key, what do YOU want to do, not this alleged angel investor. I would be weary when "investor" approaches me first and them asks me to do a lot of work. Why? I think you need to figure out what YOU want to do first, evaluate business potential of the idea at hand and not bend over backwards trying to change your communication style.

Now, back to communications with investors. They almost never say no, but silence is very common. Silence can be interpreted in several ways:
- they are simply not into your business plan
- they are way too busy to respond, which is very common
- they want to keep getting updates from you for several months before they meet you again F2F (common)

http://www.anagard.com/blog/2015/01/13/venture-capitalists-advice-to-startups-how-to-successfully-raise-funds/ You can read in my article more about this topic and focus on communication segment of the paper.
Good luck, and call if you have more questions.

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Angel Investor

angel investing

Strategic Communications

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

What are the best practices for fundraising and/or using Kickstarter effectively?

I agree with other responses, crowdfunding is not an appropriate channel for your business model. What is the value proposition that you offer to condo owners and people renting the place? Do you have an exclusive relationship with condo owners? Unfortunately, social media marketing is NOT FREE these days, paid social media marketing for B2C products is significant expense for all new high growth companies and I am not sure that's the best way to keep acquiring customers for you.

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Crowdfunding

Funding

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

Pitch Decks: Where can you get the most design bang for your buck?

Most co-founders are not designers, and most new businesses do not need to have a full-time designer on staff. Design in itself will not help you successfully raise funds -- hard data will.
Investors see thousands of pitches annually, so they are so quick to spot a promising startup. I know that this startup is your "baby", but your startup is just another commodity to an investor. Commodity stands out by price (ROI), not by a shiny package (pitch deck design). Having seen hundreds of pitches and read even more, I can tell from my own experience that majority of startup founders fail to succinctly articulate that is the value proposition for their clients, what is their sustainable competitive advantage and how much money investors can expect to make. These are my entry level services: http://www.anagard.com/services/InvestorPitchImprovement.html

If you are completely confident with data, and if just want to convey the value visually, then a graphic designer can help you, as said by people on this thread.

Somewhat off topic: Design is important, but it's not a solution to everything. The best example is Jawbone fitness tracker: beautiful design and app, raised 6 times more money than its competitor FitBit, but captured only 19% of market share at the peak. Today, Jawbone is fending off creditors, and FitBit is planning IPO. Execution matters. If you are curios to learn more, I wrote a case study: http://wp.me/pj2e9-db

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Pitch Development

Graphic Design

Raising Venture Capital

Dragana Djuricic Mendel, MBA, MCS answered

When and how can I find an external investor?

Generally speaking, yes, it's possible to get money from USA investors even though your company is not local.

On the personal note, I am glad to see that all your programmers are from Serbia, as that's my home country and I live in the US now.

The app does not have to be done at all. 60% is good enough to test the market, so I would shift my focus on product--market fit validation, customer acquisition process and a business model with an emphasis on revenue potential, addressable market size, total market size.

Seed investors will put their money into pre-revenue companies, but venture capitalist, Round A are less likely to do so which makes bootstrapping incredibly important.
Here's my paper that can help you understand where does your company fall on investment readiness spectrum.
How do you know that #startup is ready for venture capital? Industry fit, $1B+ market size, big competitive advantage http://wp.me/pj2e9-by

Finally, I would be more than happy to work with you on your investor's pitch and be ready before your colleague starts making connections in SF:
http://www.anagard.com/services/InvestorReadyConsulting.html

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Investments

angel investing

Raising Venture Capital

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Member since July 2014