Michael Pink of SmartPM Technologies: Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup

An Interview With Paul Moss

Don’t enter the startup phase with a bunch of investment money. Put yourself in a tight position, and be OK with that. Like I said, the challenges will make you grow. If you have a bunch of other people’s money, and limited experience, you will run through the funds and probably have to start over.

Startups have such a glamorous reputation. Companies like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Uber, and Airbnb once started as scrappy startups with huge dreams and huge obstacles.

Yet we of course know that most startups don’t end up as success stories. What does a founder or a founding team need to know to create a highly successful startup?

In this series, called “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup” we are talking to experienced and successful founders and business leaders who can share stories from their experience about what it takes to create a highly successful startup.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Pink.

Michael Pink, CEO of SmartPM Technologies Inc., leads a team of industry experts to improve construction schedule analytics, service clients, and drive the company’s culture of continual improvement and innovation. With 20 years of construction analytics experience, he founded SmartPM Technologies in 2016. The company, which is headquartered in Atlanta, grew its customer base by 250% in 2020 and closed another round of seed funding. SmartPM is headed into a Series A round of funding in 2021 and continues to improve its services and add new hires.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

After I graduated from Georgia Tech in 2001 with a degree in industrial engineering, I looked for a consulting job in New York City. I took a position with KPMG in its construction consulting and dispute resolution practice. I hadn’t thought about this type of work as a career, but I liked the company and saw it as a good opportunity. Once I got there, I realized the construction industry had plenty of room for operational and procedural improvements. Construction consultants usually came from within the industry itself — and industrial engineer consultants didn’t yet exist in the construction business. That experience led me, later in life, to develop a data analytics technology for the construction industry called SmartPM. Today, I believe this construction technology product will add a level of systematic analytics that is necessary to improve most problems related to overruns, delays and disputes.

What was the “Aha Moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

While earning my MBA at the New York University Stern School of Business in 2007, I was in the executive program and working full time. Company leadership wanted me to go to San Francisco and consult on a high-profile historic bridge construction project that had suffered many delays and overruns and had been fast-tracked by the mayor at the time. For several months, my personal schedule was overwhelming: Fly to San Francisco on Sunday, stay for two weeks, fly to New York on a Thursday night and absorb myself in business school for the weekend, then fly back to the West Coast and do it all over again.

It must have been the rigor of travel, work and higher learning that led me to thinking I didn’t want to engage in that line of work every day. It was during this time I came up with an answer to help the commercial construction industry in a different way. Everything just clicked. My idea was based on delay analysis. I wanted to come up with an answer for how else to do it and started to calculate in my head how to get it done on a computer. My drive became an obsession.

Was there somebody in your life who inspired or helped you to start your journey with your business? Can you share a story with us?

I would say the biggest inspiration in my life, and in my career, is a toss-up between my older brother, Rich Pink (currently chief operating officer at SmartPM Technologies) and my father, Richard Pink (a retired real estate developer). Upon my acceptance and enrollment for undergraduate studies at Georgia Tech, Rich supported me by holding me accountable and also helping financially, at times, through my college days.

My father taught me the importance of hard work and the drive to improve myself, in whatever I’m doing, every single day. He also helped me get that first job out of college at KPMG in New York City.

Both my father and brother contributed to my perseverance, competitiveness, positive attitude and drive to succeed. My brother and I always talked about starting a business together. In fact, when I got the business idea in my head, Rich came to San Francisco the day after I thought about it. He asked point blank, “When are you going to start your business?”

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

We intimately understand the business of, and the professional roles involved in, the commercial construction industry. We also care deeply about everyone’s success with SmartPM, our SaaS (Software as a Service) product. SmartPM is an automated analytics platform that improves visibility and transparency into construction project performance, risks and delays, resulting in fewer cost overruns, schedule impacts and resultant claims. That’s quite a mouthful, and it’s certainly complex. For that reason, we stay engaged with our clients as much as they will let us to make sure they get value, no matter what. That’s different from most companies.

We also love that we’re quickly becoming known via word of mouth in the industry. Construction professionals tell each other about our product and the great value they’re getting by using it — and word of our obsessive dedication to our clients’ success has spread.

In 2017, my brother, Rich, and I found great success collaborating with Flashpoint at Georgia Tech. This rigorous management and education program worked closely with founders to create companies. Flashpoint’s purpose was to create better startups, faster. We definitely wouldn’t have gotten SmartPM Technologies into such a successful position so quickly without the deliberate and innovation approach we learned in the program.

Rich and I dove into gaining knowledge and a passion for responding to the needs of our potential clients. We were able to take my vision for correcting a major industry problem and shape the company with true market and product fit, reduced risks, lower costs and a better chance of high-quality success. This took gathering the opinions of numerous people in the industry in an unbiased and authentic manner, and spending thousands of hours developing experience and expertise. I believe this is what’s called the innovator’s dilemma, and I’ve lived it. Although Flashpoint is no longer operating, I still stay involved in coaching and sharing my knowledge with up-and-coming entrepreneurs in the startup community.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I use my expertise to help others, like mentoring and advising startup founders in our ecosystem. I think the other thing we are doing is helping destress an industry. The amount of stress we can relieve with SmartPM is significant. In the commercial construction industry as a whole, people work hard and experience a lot of conflict due to the nature of the work. By relieving many of the arguments and questions about what good decisions look like, we’ve helped create a better environment in construction. We are solving the root of a lot of pain.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

First, I have strong analytical capabilities — and I’m hell bent on being accurate and honest. The accuracy of my analytics is key. While at my previous career, where I was performing complex analytics to resolve high-dollar disputes, I had a realization that I wanted to use my analytical skills to solve problems of the future before they occurred.

Second, I’m focused on establishing a culture for continuous improvement. We need to make it better today than it was yesterday, and ensure we’re constantly trying to improve. I hold a number of workshops with my team to brainstorm ideas based on what we learn from our clients and the epiphanies we each come across during our workdays.

Third, I’m willing to let the data tell me what I need to know versus relying on what I think I know. It’s important to be objective in that regard and go with the data versus going with the gut. I designed the first version of our product with limited industry involvement. I wanted to take my ideas and develop them, and then uncover the shiny new product (and way of doing things). I learned the hard way that you may know a lot about the problem, but it’s very hard to create a solution that everyone wants — and you will only get there if you ask the people you sell to what they want. You can’t force-feed them with your ways of doings things.

Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. But let’s reverse the question. Can you share a story about advice you’ve received that you now wish you never followed?

I wish I hadn’t gone to business school to learn about entrepreneurship. Real entrepreneurship will teach you way more. The biggest things I got out of business school, though, was it forced me to say that I absolutely have to start a business and it gave me value of a great network of professionals.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

There are so many to list, so it’s hard to choose the best one. I had three kids and a wife during the startup phase, and my wife doesn’t like risk. I hired my brother, and his family was then connected to the success of the business as well. That was stressful, and there was a lot of pressure on me. It was, quite frankly, the hardest time of my life. But we worked through it and we are much stronger on the other end. That’s the thing about hardships — they make you stronger. While good times make us feel good, it’s the hard times that make us grow.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard? What strategies or techniques did you use to help overcome those challenges?

When things were getting really hard, Rich didn’t let me quit. It was more out of necessity than anything. He was not going back to mortgage industry, and I didn’t want to go back to helping people fight over money. But it paid so well! “Dude, you can’t quit,” he’d say. “I can’t go back to the mortgage business. We are so close.”

Luckily, because we were automating what I was paid to do as a consultant, we had a great ability to make ends meet via bootstrapping and without raising money. But it was like having two full-time jobs. I also knew that I had the fallback plan of getting more consulting work, but that’s a double-edge sword. It was an easy solution to alleviate money stress, so being able to consult part-time helped. Things are very busy now, though, and money stress has evolved into stress of wishing I had more time in the day to get things done. The startup world is a fast and furious one, and we are successful.

The journey of an entrepreneur is never easy, and is filled with challenges, failures, setbacks, as well as joys, thrills and celebrations. Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?

When I’m in an emotional low in my journey, I remember this: Win, lose or draw, the experience I’ll get out of this will provide huge dividends for the rest of my life. What keeps me going is building highly relevant experience as a business manager and a leader, and that is worth a lot.

When I’m at an emotional high, I typically don’t get too excited because I know the high won’t last very long. Challenges and setbacks always come along, and while the high is great, there’s always more work to do to accomplish our mission. I don’t ever want to get too cocky.

I also make sure not to put all our eggs in one basket. We can’t sit there and rely on that one deal closing. Or that one investor. Or that one hire. Or that one idea. If we are incorrect, it may pull the rug out from under us. We have to be continually drumming up business and not assume that one big deal will be our saving grace. We need a contingency plan for the contingency plan’s contingency plan. That’s how I roll.

Let’s imagine that a young founder comes to you and asks your advice about whether venture capital or bootstrapping is best for them? What would you advise them? Can you kindly share a few things a founder should look at to determine if fundraising or bootstrapping is the right choice?

My advice is to bootstrap as long as you can. When you think you don’t have another choice, figure out another way to get revenue. Basically, don’t raise money before you start generating revenue from the product.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Many startups are not successful, and some are very successful. From your experience or perspective, what are the main factors that distinguish successful startups from unsuccessful ones? What are your “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

I have six things, actually.

• Admit that you don’t know your customer very well. Go out and make sure you know your customer more than you ever thought you needed to. Ask probing questions, because you’re about to take the biggest risk of your life and it’s worth the time to thoroughly understand your customer. Collect enough data to develop a persona that accurately stereotypes their needs and behaviors (relevant to your product, of course).
• Realize that you’re going to make a lot of mistakes, and you’ll learn from those mistakes. That’s called continuous improvement. The idea that you need to figure out how to do something better tomorrow than you did today, in all aspects of the business, is crucial.
• Make sure you’re solving a problem that has authentic demand. The difference between a good startup and a bad startup hinges on whether there is an authentic need for your product. You will feel the difference in your conversations from “Hey, pretty cool product,” to “When is it going to be ready, how much is it going to cost and can I try it today?”
• Don’t enter the startup phase with a bunch of investment money. Put yourself in a tight position, and be OK with that. Like I said, the challenges will make you grow. If you have a bunch of other people’s money, and limited experience, you will run through the funds and probably have to start over.
• Manage with goals. See the vision of what you want to become and work toward that. With every decision you make as you work toward each goal, ask yourself this question: Does this align with my goal? If the answer is no, don’t do it. Every conversation, every article you read, ask yourself: How can I take the information I just received and use it to achieve my goal?
• Make sure you set up an environment in your business to collect and study data. Do this early, because it eliminates a lot of the guesswork down the road. Collect data for everything, and study it often.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?

Blowing through money is a common mistake. If you want to maximize your personal ownership, don’t raise capital until you have paying customers and thoroughly understand your business model. When founders and CEOs don’t know their messaging, don’t know if a customer wants to buy their product or don’t know how much people will pay, they haven’t mastered the business model before they raise the money.

Startup founders often work extremely long hours and it’s easy to burn the candle at both ends. What would you recommend to founders about how to best take care of their physical and mental wellness when starting a company?

I haven’t done such a good job of taking care of myself. I think the number-one thing is to learn how to separate work from your nonwork life. Learn how to not think about it. Don’t let work fester in your brain while spending time with family and friends.

And don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is the best educator. Interestingly, I read a statistic that 90% (or so) of second startups don’t fail.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think there is enough data for it to be clear what healthy food is and what non-healthy food is — and I believe this baseline should be set and made a standard.

From there I think foods that fall into the unhealthy category should be taxed far more than 8% (and have corporate taxes imposed), while healthy items shouldn’t be taxed at all at the retail and corporate levels. I believe this will help people with less money eat healthier, and it will help reduce obesity, depression, anxiety, ADHD, cancer, heart disease and the other problems that exist from all the bad stuff we put in our bodies.

I think the tax structure should be designed to drastically increase the amount of taxes received in the short term, and all of that should go to people who can’t afford to eat at all.

We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I’d like to meet Peyton Manning, and his father, Archie, and brother Eli, if possible. I love how Peyton was a real student of football, so clearly managed his growth as a leader with the concept of continuous improvement, and took a no-name team all the way to the Super Bowl and won. I also find it interesting how Archie was able to have two of his own kids follow in his footsteps, both of whom became Hall of Fame-level quarterbacks. Also, I am a New York Giants fan and want to congratulate Eli, firsthand, on beating Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. Twice.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Readers can visit our website for blogs and news at SmartPMtech.com and follow SmartPM Technologies Linkedin page.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!