Cervical fluid is more “investor friendly” than cervical mucus

Musings of an unlikely turn-around CEO

I’m a 51 year old turn-around CEO, and I run a female fertility company. I’ve been on my journey for nearly a year, running Kindara, a company focused on women’s health, notably reproductive health. We have a killer app, a great consumer product, and a super dedicated team. But it borders on bizarre that a guy from The Bronx who once sold Play-Doh and Stride Rite shoes is CEO of a company where we discuss stuff that I don’t think my wife and I ever discussed. And did I mention I’m a guy?

For the record, this was not a totally conscious decision for me. After leaving my last job, I did know that I needed a break from larger public companies where CEO’s had figured out how to preserve themselves at the expense of others (although what it really taught me was that a weak Board was even worse for shareholders than a weak CEO). More about this in another post.

I did know I enjoyed the mechanics of a turn-around. Getting to the root cause problems, the original insights that fed the founders, seeing past as prologue to try to figure out the way forward. With a young company, you have the opportunity to do this with pretty minimal baggage, at least from a historical perspective. While you may not have the capital resources you had with a larger, more established company, you likely have more autonomy.

All of these factors came into play when I took on the role at Kindara. I take a great deal of pride in the fact that the company is still moving forward (which was never a guarantee given the turn-around nature of the business). We have a long way to go before we can say there is a victory here, but I wanted to offer some lessons from the year that may help others who are shifting from one category to another, or big company to early stage company. I am going to admit these are pretty basic, but I think they can help make things easier.

Cash Is King

The first thing you have to do is have a great cash flow forecast, and manage cash with an eyedropper. I know this sounds super obvious, but when you are burning cash as most early stage companies do, having the ability to pull levers on spending is critical. I think it also gives your investors a bit of confidence that you are in control of their investment.

Shine Your Pivoting Shoes

At larger Fortune 500 companies, your ability to manage and maintain a strategy is absolutely essential, as it puts the guardrails in place to keep the ship moving forward. At an early stage company, especially pre-revenue or early revenue, you simply have to have the ability and lack of ego to pivot your business thesis. You probably don’t have the resources or runway to test ideas, the ability to be nimble and admit when something isn’t working quickly and pivot to a different idea is essential for your survival.

The Value of “Frenemies”

Chances are, if you are running a company that has a great idea, there are dozens of others entrepreneurs circling your idea. At Kindara, there are dozens if not hundreds of other companies circling the same consumer with either the same promise or a promise close enough to make you uncomfortable. Unlike larger companies, I have found that most of the peer group startups in our space have been very friendly, and discussions with them have been valuable on a number of levels. We have in some cases discussed partnerships, mergers, or even just bitched about VC’s with each-other. In nearly all cases, the discussions and relationships have been value added.

Care MORE Than Your Investors

Founders by nature care a lot about their business. It is their identity, and for some serial entrepreneurs the game is more about ego than money. I am not the founder of Kindara…so I have a little more pragmatic view of how the success of the company is tied to me personally.

However, what I quickly learned was that after the initial assessment of the situation I started to “feel” like the founder, and all of the past issues and challenges with the company became my issues and challenges. Our investors care a great deal about the company, their investment is not only financial but it is their ego as well. But they are only focused on Kindara for minutes at a time, while it is my full time gig.

If you don’t feel like you care as much about your company as your investors, I suggest you look in the mirror.

A Company Is Like A Shark

I went back and counted the decks I have done in the last year, I stopped counting at 200. Decks for VC’s, potential partners, board decks, even for our employees. What I realized was that the company story is ever evolving, and that is a good thing.

In the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall, there is a great quote when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are breaking up; “A relationship I think is like a shark, it has to constantly move forward or it dies, and I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark”. If the story isn’t evolving, if you aren’t improving the pitch every day, you are one day closer to a “dead shark”.

You Aren’t Alone

My final musing is that in the beginning of this adventure I felt very alone in the process. While that may be something I need to discuss with my therapist as much as anything else, I have found that what I am going through is nearly identical to all other CEO’s in early stage companies:

• The highs are higher, and lows are lower
• Fundraising sucks, and investors say no WAY more than they say yes
• We are learning new stuff from new people almost every day, which is kind of awesome
• When our companies work, we will be really happy
• If our companies don’t succeed, we will still be happy because we learned a ton and have made some incredible connections

I’m always interested in hearing other stories from people in similar situations, follow me on Twitter @Ihernowitz or here on Medium Ira Hernowitz.