Otto Pohl of The Otto Awards On Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup

Good storytelling is one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools an entrepreneur can use to become successful. That’s why I try to spread what I’ve learned as widely as possible. I mentor and run free workshops at multiple incubators and accelerators around the country. Last year, I launched The Otto Awards to celebrate the best in startup storytelling, and to inspire all entrepreneurs. I enlisted some of the world’s best storytellers and entrepreneurs to judge entries, and we handed out over $1 million of in-kind awards to ten winners. When I talk with entrepreneurs, I bring the attitude of a game show host–I really want you to win.

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 experiences about what it takes to create a highly successful startup. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Otto Pohl.

Otto Pohl, founder of the Otto Awards program, has led many startups to success by dedicating his mission towards recognizing excellent startup stories. He is a seasoned communications leader who founded one of the world’s most valuable communications awards for startups. He believes the power in creating a successful startup lies in their ability to frame their mission, encouraging them to share information about their company to the outside world that will spark interest, engagement, and ultimately, success.

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?

I started as a photojournalist. I moved to Moscow in the early 1990s because I was fascinated to see what life was like in the wake of the Soviet collapse. It was an incredible time. I became the New York Times Moscow bureau photographer and spent a few years traveling Russia and the former republics with the three foreign correspondents stationed in Moscow. Better than any journalism degree! It was also a time of incredible economic change and opportunity. I co-founded three companies in Moscow, and over time I found that I couldn’t be a journalist and an entrepreneur at the same time — journalists react to external events, and the business world is scheduled by the calendar. So, I quit the Times to focus on business. I would later go back and forth between entrepreneurship and journalism, before finally realizing that I could in fact largely combine the two, as I am doing now.

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

After I was Head of Communications for a few startups, I realized two things: one, I can add a lot of value quickly when I come up with strategic messaging for a company. In other words, how to tell the company story better. Two, it’s more interesting to work for multiple companies than for one company, because it plays to my journalist curiosity and lets me tell lots of different stories instead of the same one over and over again. I love talking to entrepreneurs who have found opportunity in a field I didn’t even know existed. I find it extraordinarily energizing when they come to me and share their thoughts, describe their inventions, and their plan for changing the world. How cool is it that I can get experts in a field to take the time to let me in on their best ideas! Companies hire me as they’re coming into the marketplace and realize they need to get the word out. They’re coming out of their chrysalis where they were developing their product, building their team, struggling with product-market fit and all the rest of it. Those are all critical steps, but they don’t involve interaction with the outside world. Suddenly they realize they need to get customers, and partners, and investors, and more employees. So, they reach out to me to discuss a press release or something, and I first look at what I can learn about the company online: the website, social media, articles, blogs etc. Usually, it’s a cacophony of messaging dating from different moments in the life of the young startup. An out-of-date website, a blog article describing a product feature they long ago got rid of, etc. I explain that there’s no point launching a PR initiative until the materials an interested person can find about the company are all singing off the same, optimized song sheet. That’s when we dive into discovering what that story is, and who we need to attract, and what we want them to do. The typical outputs are a new website, new social media profiles, thought leadership articles I ghostwrite for the CEO, pitch decks, and the like. Once that is done, we can talk about press releases and PR.

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?

My hero is Richard Feynman, a theoretical Nobel-prize-winning physicist who was able to explain the world in an engaging, intelligent, funny, and accessible way. He had an incredible gift of explaining complex concepts in a way that could make almost anyone understand them. Even more, he makes you feel smart as you suddenly think, hey, that’s not so complicated! He makes you interested in material that you never thought could be interesting, and he does it all without talking down to you, or over-simplifying in a way that would make experts complain. I aspire to be able to do that. My dad, who was also a physicist, knew him, but I never met him. If you take nothing else from this interview, take a moment to look him up on YouTube and watch a few of his talks. And/or read his autobiography Surely, You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.

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

There are a lot of marketing and PR companies. What I find is that there are a lot of form-over-function providers. Website design shops will gladly build you a shiny new website, but they often relegate the text to “content.” And PR companies will take the story you give them and immediately talk about the press releases they can put out or the journalists they can contact. I find this a ready-fire-aim approach. The first and most fundamentally important step is to work backwards from company goals: What goals is the company trying to reach? What outside audiences does the company need to influence in order to achieve those goals? How and where will we find those audiences? What messages do they need to hear, what objections might they have we need to overcome, and what’s the most likely funnel to convert them from indifferent outsiders to enthusiastic disciples? PR and messaging are simply a means to an end, and there’s no way to properly calibrate the means (or the message) without first crisply defining the ends. What makes it particularly slippery with startups is that the goals can shift quickly. Perhaps today what you really need is three industry partners for proof-of-concept partnerships. In six months, you’re looking for 10 new hires and a new round of funding. Three months after that, you’re entering three new customer verticals. In each case, you need to consciously target and tweak your messaging so that you are most efficiently using your messaging to achieve your company goals. Everything else flows from that.

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

Good storytelling is one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools an entrepreneur can use to become successful. That’s why I try to spread what I’ve learned as widely as possible. I mentor and run free workshops at multiple incubators and accelerators around the country. Last year, I launched The Otto Awards to celebrate the best in startup storytelling, and to inspire all entrepreneurs. I enlisted some of the world’s best storytellers and entrepreneurs to judge entries, and we handed out over $1 million of in-kind awards to ten winners. When I talk with entrepreneurs, I bring the attitude of a game show host–I really want you to win.

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’m a huge fan of the skills that journalism teaches you: curiosity, listening, and writing. It teaches you that within a short period of time, you can absorb the key facts of something you perhaps knew nothing about, make sure you’ve understood correctly, put those facts into a hierarchy of importance, and then relate those facts in a way that is accessible and answers the question, why does this matter? I would encourage any early-career person to spend a few years as a journalist, ideally in a foreign country. My years in Russia have paid dividends throughout my entire career. Second, pay close attention to what you’re good at and what you enjoy. Often those two things are linked. Generally talented people can find “success” in a relatively wide range of fields, but real success that feels rewarding on multiple levels comes from not relenting until you find the niche that lets your mix of talents truly shine. It took me forever, but I’m grateful I got there! Third, celebrate the confluence of perseverance and randomness. It is often said that it’s better to be lucky than good, and that’s certainly true. But unpack “lucky,” and that often means that you must put in a lot of effort while being prepared for the unexpected opportunities that come your way. When I look back on what led to the various “lucky breaks” I had in my career, they are a combination of perseverance and randomness. Here’s an example: The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, when I was a junior in college. I decided to take a semester off and spend time in Berlin — ok, that was potentially a rash decision, but I have a German background and I was studying political science. So, I moved to Berlin, spent time in West Berlin, then East Berlin, then traveled throughout Eastern Europe. I took pictures and wrote down some of the stories of those I met. When I learned that Time Magazine was offering a summer internship in their photo department at their New York headquarters, I applied with my Eastern Europe photos. I got the internship. Turns out that Time’s photo editor was also volunteering at the Eddie Adams Workshop, a prestigious industry event. She wrote my recommendation for the workshop, and I got in. At the workshop I end up in a group of students with the photo editor of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. She liked my work and offered to give me an assignment for the magazine. The next year I graduated college and moved to Moscow. Moscow is in the news and there aren’t many photographers there, so she gives me an assignment. It turns out that the writer of that article is a New York Times correspondent based in Moscow. That’s how I was introduced to the bureau, and by the end of the year I was hired there. Sure, I was lucky, and I’ve had the good fortune to drink at a lot of wells I didn’t dig–but I also think that a willingness to persevere, work hard, and be open to “random” and arguably rash decisions like moving to Moscow with a plan that can only charitably be described as half-baked exposed me to some wonderful opportunities. I say, go for it!

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?

For better or worse, I am impervious to advice. When I was still at Cornell, I began photographing for the school paper. (This is the summer before I went to Eastern Europe). I thought a great next step would be to get a summer internship at a daily newspaper. So, I started calling every newspaper that had a good reputation for photography. One of the few meetings I was able to get was with the photo editor of the Buffalo News. He offered me a 9a.m. meeting, which was uncomfortably early given that Buffalo is a three-hour drive away from Ithaca. But I was just grateful to get a meeting, so I prepared my portfolio, set my alarm for 5am, and made it up to Buffalo in time. The guy lets me wait like an hour, then comes in, gives me a few gruff words, and motions for my portfolio. As he flips through the portfolio, he asks me my major. I say political science. He closes my portfolio, hands it back to me, says “stay in political science,” and walks out.

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

In 1993, I was working for the New York Times in Moscow and running a school photography service. Our crown jewel was the contract with the Anglo-American School, which had hundreds of children of English-speaking diplomats and businesspeople. They bought a lot of pictures. On October 3, a coup attempt was launched against then-president Boris Yeltsin. I was covering it for the Times when I was caught in a nasty gunfight between protesters and government troops. A bullet grazed my head, and another went through my chest, shattering ribs, puncturing my lung and diaphragm, and sending bone chips into my liver and kidney before exiting next to my spine. I was lying on the pavement, bleeding out from a sucking chest wound. The first guy who tried to save me was shot in the head and killed. The second one managed to get me out, but then another one who tried to pull out the first one was killed when he was shot through the back. Over 40 people died that night. I was extremely lucky and made it home within a few weeks. I rested. In January we had our big annual school photography job. There was no way I was going to miss that. I then flew back to Moscow, and we got it done. Not sure there’s a clear learning here, but aside from avoiding political uprisings, I’d say: if there’s any way you can get it done, get it done.

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.

There are a million things you need but let me boil it down to two. There are a lot of good business ideas, or at least ideas that seem good. And a lot of them might be good, for someone. But you must make sure they’re good for you. Unless you have a good reason to embark on a particular entrepreneurial journey, don’t — and “make a lot of money” is not a sufficient reason. Here’s a test: as you’re thinking about a new startup, imagine yourself giving it everything you’ve got for three years until you realize the business has failed. Are you still happy you went on the journey? Did you enjoy the people you met, and the things you learned? Will you be excited to be open to random other opportunities you come across during your startup? If this is the field you want to be in, the journey is almost always worth it — and by the way you’re also more likely to be successful. I once started a company to aggregate unsold tickets to tourist events. I did the numbers and realized how many unsold tickets there were. Their aggregate value was extraordinary, and as soon as the tour bus left, that value plunged to zero. I talked to a few operators, and they would be happy selling last-minute tickets to me at a steep discount that I could then resell. I’ll spare you the details, but I spent a lot of time (and investor money) failing at this business. And the thing is, the tourism industry isn’t my thing–and not the lower-end mass tourism industry. I was in it for the money. And when that didn’t work out, I got essentially nothing out of it. Don’t make that mistake. So that’s the first piece of advice. Second, once you find your journey, go hard. Work all your connections. Run through every wall. That’s how you’ll win — and even if you don’t, then my first rule will still ensure it was a valuable experience that will, in retrospect, have been a critical piece to your overall success.

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?

Here’s one I see all the time, and it’s hard to avoid: breathing your own exhaust. We all tell ourselves stories about the problem we’re solving, or the needs of our customers, or the uniqueness of our solution. They are often true, at least partially, and for a while. But it’s easy to let them ossify into unquestioned tales that soothe us but bear increasingly little relationship to reality. One of the most pernicious is over-estimating how big a problem something is to other people, and how much effort or resources they’re willing to bring to bear to solve that problem. I recently met a founder who had identified that people are frustrated by the fact that they’ll find a few dishes at a few restaurants and when they’re hungry, they’ll often go with the known quantity and end up at the same handful of restaurants ordering the same dishes over and over. And I think we can all relate to that. I kind of wish I had greater omniscience about the great restaurants near me, and all the great dishes on the menu I haven’t thought to order. On the other hand, it’s far down on my list of things I’m going to spend a lot of time and effort avoiding. But this entrepreneur asked some friends about this “problem”, and they said, sure, they’d love to eat more adventurously and try all the great dishes they’ve been missing. Armed with confidence and hubris, he sets off to develop an app that has a whole bunch of mechanisms to encourage people to review various dishes, and restaurant owners to incentivize people trying other menu items, and a recommendation engine etcetera. And then it doesn’t really take off and he’s convinced the problem is that he doesn’t have enough restaurants. So, he spends all this time getting more restaurants on board, and giving out more discounts to entice more diners — because you have to get the network effects going, isn’t that how Facebook did it? — and in the end the guy spent a lot of time and money struggling to solve a problem the rest of the world was more or less willing to live with. (By the way, this flavor of founder mistake can be avoided if you follow the advice in an excellent book called The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick.) There are lots of other versions of self-delusion. Another frequent one is to dismiss competitor’s innovations instead of realizing how it changes the game and adapting.

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?

When I was younger, I didn’t worry about the candle. I didn’t worry about the two ends burning, I just threw the whole thing in the fire. And that works, for a while. At some point I realized I had to get more thoughtful about things. Here are three habits I’ve formed: one, eat well. Everyone must find their own definition of that, but you can’t eat crap at all hours and expect to run efficiently. Two, exercise. I block out time on my calendar to do that and have not the slightest guilt about it. Three, meditate. I learned transcendental meditation many years ago, and it’s an excellent way to calm the choppy waters of the mind. If nothing else, I meditate 20 minutes before bed and I find it gets rid of all the stuff I’d otherwise be worrying about, consciously or subconsciously, as I’m trying to fall asleep, or, worse, that would otherwise keep me awake at 3:00am.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

For advice and inspiration on great startup storytelling, sign up for the Otto Awards newsletter at www.ottoawards.com (you’ll also hear when it’s time to apply for your chance at a $100k award). I also post articles at www.corecommunicationsconsulting.com. Connect with me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ottopohl/

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