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Karl Etzel Wellness, human performance, and tech.

San Jose, CA

Deep expertise in wearables, human performance solutions, endurance training, general management. Strong product development and business strategy background.

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Fitness, Business, Technology

Karl Etzel • San Jose, CA
Created 10 years ago in Industries / Other

I am passionate about the intersection of wellness, human performance, and technology. 25+ yrs experience with fitness tech and digital health. Former tech company CEO. Medical devices, wearables.

Karl Etzel San Jose, CA

(1)

Reviews 2
Answers 18

ML

Excellent knowledge base

Source: Clarity Matt Livingston Jul 25, 2018

JP

Karl is a hard-charging leader who focuses on results and delivers on-time. His discipline is unmatched and admired by his co-workers.

Source: LinkedIn Jonathan Puskas Mar 23, 2015

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Karl Etzel

San Jose, CA

Deep expertise in wearables, human performance solutions, endurance training, general management. Strong product development and business strategy background.

$1.67/min

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Fitness, Business, Technology

I am passionate about the intersection of wellness, human performance, and technology. 25+ yrs experience with fitness tech and digital health. Former tech company CEO. Medical devices, wearables.

Answers 18
Reviews 2

Answers

Karl Etzel answered

Does anyone know any social media or blogs specialized in event organization? I am looking for experts in admissions and sponsoring revenue models.

Not sure what type of event you have in mind, but you might start by looking around the Active.com site - they've been in the event registration & marketing business for a long time and although they clearly have a service to sell, they work with some large successful events. Here's a link to get you started: http://www.active.com/race-director-software. I was an early adopter of active.com when I was a race promoter over a decade ago and the whole web service/e-commerce world was taking off, so it's been great to see them continue on.

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Business Strategy

Event Management

Revenue Modeling

Karl Etzel answered

Looking for help determining ideal marketing automation -> CRM workflow.

I've gotten to live through this pain before and it sounds like you're getting good advice from others, so I'll just offer a little perspective from a different angle.

Whatever you do, don't get overwhelmed and don't let better be the enemy of good. Among your 60 leads are probably 20 total duds, competitors, or lookie-lous. Among the remaining 40 might be a handful of leads that your top sales person (that's the CEO in a startup...) will instantly recognize as high value. Then a bunch in the middle. Get the whole team to lay eyes on the list and bite off the 5-10 leads that you must get back to asap, lop off the ones you know are worthless, and then delegate the homework & legwork on those in the middle while you iron out the process and get the workflow/systems in place.

Before you put any system in place make sure the CEO is 100% bought in and going to invest the time to monitor and drive follow up. When I was a CEO I "lived in" two systems, one being the CRM to monitor leads/opportunities. It has to have support and engagement from the top.

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Sales

Sales Management

CRM software

Karl Etzel answered

How do I work around the fact that big companies, that want my service, have policies not do business with small companies like mine?

Along the lines of Devon's feedback - who specifically said they can't sign a contract with a small company? The legal department? What is the position of the department that will actually benefit from your software?

One other option - you might consider code escrow as a way to reassure them they have a bail out position if you close up shop.

If it's a cloud service, are you running on your own infrastructure, or a third party like AWS? This can help provide some reassurance and also provides ways to standardize the code that you might leave them in escrow.

You need one advocate on the inside who can help you, who enjoys the benefit of your solution and doesn't just see the risk.

Good luck and congrats on getting this far.
Karl

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Contract Negotiation

Strategic Planning

Joint Ventures

Karl Etzel answered

What is the best way to find a CTO for my start up?

I'd take a look at the large, established companies in the technology space in which you want to operate. Somewhere at one of those companies is an astute, experienced person who might be ready to get out of the big company environment if you come along with the right idea. E.g. Cisco if you are doing networking, Salesforce if you are doing marketing automation, Intuit if you are doing financial apps. The trick is finding one who not only has the technical expertise and wants to get out, but is well suited financially and psychologically for a startup. I learned the hard way that co-founders who are not in the same boat financially can make for an unhappy parting.

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Recruiting

Karl Etzel answered

How do I improve an old and small tech company culture?

There are a lot of similarities in your situation to my last company, where I started at the bottom in project management and ended up CEO after a few management turnovers and the Board put me in charge. My thoughts are based on seeing cultural transition from all angles.

1. It is very, very hard to effect meaningful, long term change in the company from the bottom. What is the ownership structure of the company? Who are the managers and what is their sense of urgency in effecting change? I fear it's not much, given the situation you describe.

2. You really can't hold people accountable directly but you can try to inspire from the bottom to achieve new goals. I would not focus on "analytics" but just come up with _one_ simple, measurable goal that the team can agree on and work toward together. It's like getting a really overweight person to lose weight - start simple, with walks around the block. Once a new habit is established, move on to the next one.

3. Have you identified others in the org that share your desire to improve things, and enlisted them 1-1? Cultural/organizational change takes a lot of emotional energy. You need allies or you will go crazy.

Would be happy to get on a call and get more details and work through tactics if you are interested.

Best,
Karl

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Company Culture

Culture Change

Karl Etzel answered

Cut prices to compete with undercutting competition or not?

Pricing strategy needs to be aligned with brand, product, and channel strategy. Whatever you do with your pricing, you need to make sure it aligns with those very tightly. I've seen companies with really good product get themselves totally sideways in the mind of the consumer (and the retailer) by not keeping this in mind. I can't tell if this matters in your particular market/product category. But if you had three years lead, perhaps you have what it takes to seize the high ground as the innovator in your category and maintain your prices, assuming you have a pipeline of new products to justify the leadership position.

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Pricing Strategy

Karl Etzel answered

How to value the exit price for a early stage startup? Multiple of current or forecasted revenues?

This is a bit dated but one of the best articles I've read on valuation. I found it helpful when thinking about the issue for a company I was trying to sell and I couldn't possibly add anything to it. So here you go:

http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/05/24/all-revenue-is-not-created-equal-the-keys-to-the-10x-revenue-club/

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Valuation

Exits

Buyouts

Karl Etzel answered

I wanted to see if anyone could provide examples of SaaS offerings doing well in a distribution channel sales environment?

Take a look at Intermedia, from what I can tell they are a favorite of VARs and are also in the Ingram Micro cloud catalog (along w/ Box). Xero also has some level of reseller relationship with accountants but that is more than just a typical VAR or disti model, since the accountant remains deeply involved with the business client.

One issue that VARs brought up in my discussions with them was branding - they really like to have their brand in front of the customer (this is one of Intermedia's selling points). Not sure if this would work for you or not.

Happy to jump on a call to discuss more, I spent quite a lot of time looking into this at my last company as we launched a SaaS service.

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Business Strategy

SaaS

Channel Sales

Karl Etzel answered

How do I find the right tools/system/skillset to create the ideal customer experience for my fitness product/program?

I owned an SMB in the health & fitness space and spent several years running a SaaS/PaaS startup in the business productivity space. There are lots of WP developers out there, I'd start by looking at elance. Have you done mockups so the developer can accurately quote the work? It's worth a little design expense up front to make sure your vision is communicated clearly.

I'd also make very certain that an off the shelf solution won't work. Zenplanner and Mindbodyonline are two cloud-based CRM/studio management solutions tailored for fitness businesses, I assume you've ruled those out. There are many generic SaaS CRM solutions out there as well so I'd really make sure that the "ideal" experience is really that much better than "good enough". I used MBOnline and it was not perfect but it certainly didn't hold back my business.

I'd also recommend finding someone else in your space who has what you want for customer experience, and just ask what they use. Assuming they are not a competitor they will probably be forthcoming with the info.

Happy to jump on a call if you'd like to discuss further.

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User Experience

Customer Experience

Product Development

Karl Etzel answered

Our target customer is hospital systems for our remote monitoring software, with many interested in pipeline, how do we close short term paid pilots?

I worked in Intel's Digital Health Group for a few years and my experience was that anything involving hospitals will be slower and take longer than you think. I can't possibly imagine a customer facing trial happening without a face to face meeting and some training. Lots of people can say no - the CFO, the CEO, the CMO, CIO, the head of nursing - and none can completely say yes. Granted, this market has changed a lot in the years since I left it, and it is getting more nimble, but be prepared for a drawn out process. And I'd budget for some plane tickets.

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Healthcare Information Technology

Health

Karl Etzel answered

We are a B2B SAAS company. We are working with some major, global SIs and have had several discussions with them.

Having worked in B2B for much of my career, I have seen this handled a variety of ways. Here's my perspective.

This is likely a highly ambiguous situation with important potential downside. Make one of these SIs angry and you jeopardize a big sale. Fail to capitalize on the publicity, lose traction. High severity/high ambiguity means it's a question for your CEO.

Factors to consider: how sensitive is your industry and these SIs to revealing technology providers? How many leads do you have in the hopper that will be swayed? How important is it to have the SIs mentioned on your website, vice perhaps having the name dropped "accidentally" in conversation with a new prospect? To what degree are these SI's "partners" vs. customers?

In most _sales_ contracts I've signed there has been language about use of the customer company logo and whether it can be revealed that we were selling to the customer. In the world of web APIs, where ecosystem enablement is important and it is truly more a partnership, many companies are more promiscuous with letting their name be used and they have simple guidelines for doing so published on their website. Happy to jump on a call and help you work through this in more detail.

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Marketing Strategy

Business Strategy

Online Marketing

Reviews

Excellent knowledge base

Matt Livingston Source: Clarity

Karl is a hard-charging leader who focuses on results and delivers on-time. His discipline is unmatched and admired by his co-workers.

Jonathan Puskas Source: LinkedIn

Member since March 2015