After six months of exploration since leaving Red Rover, I’ve narrowed down my list of potential new projects to one that is most exciting. For now I’ll hold off on talking about the idea, but since this is my third (maybe fourth) time ramping up a new business, my goal is to be extremely transparent in the process by reflecting on my thoughts, and actions, on this blog so you all can share in the journey with me because it’s bound to be a fun, bumpy, and exciting ride. I’m calling the series “Founder Lessons.” So let’s get started…

When Kevin and I started Swift Kick seven years ago, I naturally thought we’d split the equity ownership of the company 50/50. Kevin refused and said he would never do an equal split again after some ugliness his last company because without a clear leadership structure both legally, and through an organizational chart, it would cause too many issues down the road. Plus he didn’t believe we were both going into the new venture as equal partners. He wanted to spilt the company more along the lines of 75/25. I understood not being 50/50, but a 75/25 split seemed insane to me. What did he know that I didn’t? Turns out there was a lot I didn’t know I didn’t know. To my benefit, we ended up starting Swift Kick at 51/49, though the equity conversation came up several times again throughout the years and it kept shifting through renegotiations and ended around a 75/25 split. The renegotiations were mostly initiated due to feelings of unfairness around the equity split. But mixing feelings with negotiations creates an ugly stew, especially when it isn’t based on a foundation of tangible facts.

As I ramp up my new idea, I find myself going back over seven years of notes to see what and how we ended up determining the equity each time. In doing so, I came across a little gem that I’m calling The Starting Founders’ Equity Equation. It’s a way create a foundation of tangible facts to determine what everyone is bringing to the table to start and thus what the equity spilt should be.

Here’s a description of each element…

• Idea / Vision – If the idea / vision were a tangible pie that equaled 100, who contributed what amount to the creation and generation of the idea up until this point?
• Capital ($) – If the company needs X amount of money (in this case I’m using 100 for X) to get going, who can put in what amount of that total to start?
• Unpaid Time – In the beginning, founders exchange a paycheck for equity. If the max unpaid time someone could put in is 100, what amount of unpaid time will each person be able to put into the business in the start-up phase?
• Resources – If you listed out the resources (knowledge, skill, connections, etc) that were needed to make the business successful and the max were 100 per person. How close to 100 would each person get?

Once you’ve filled in numbers for each element, add up the totals for each founder and divide that number by the total for all the founders combined and you will get a rational way to spilt up the equity that is based on a foundation of tangible facts. In this case, if founder #1 would’ve agreed to a 33/33/33 split then eventually it would’ve come up that he/she was the only one putting money in, or that he/she was the only one with contacts, or that he/she was the only one working for free. It’s better to work through this equation now than to face the argument later and try to renegotiate.

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Update 4/21/12 – Someone created a nice little calculator that helps you figure out the equity split.

The TechStars Bloomberg documentary aired tonight. Some people on Twitter were calling it the American Idol of start-ups. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. We, in Red Rover, were in the NY TechStars program for 4 months and they did a TON of filming. They must have walked away with 1000s of hours of footage so they really could’ve taken the story in any direction they wanted. And they did…

Within the first 10 minutes of the show, it was pretty clear what six companies they are going to focus on for the next six episodes, and Red Rover wasn’t one of them. What that means is that they are probably not going to use any of the footage of us expect maybe a few b-rolls of us interacting with one of the main six. If what happens on TV is reality, then it will almost seem like we weren’t even on the show or in TechStars :-/.

Having done the NBC Today Show wedding contest and now the TechStars Bloomberg show, I know that producers are out to create the best possible show and whether you like it or not, they are in charge. What happens in the end is up to them not you. Apparently a $1mm+ revenue generating enterprise software solution with a group of tall guys who dress sharp and work hard isn’t good for TV . Understandably, we didn’t have any big pops during or after the filming so in terms of a story…there really wasn’t one with Red Rover.

I’m still excited to watch the rest of the season though, as I love watching the start-up hustle. You can watch with me Monday nights at 9pm EST on Bloomberg TV, or streaming on their website.

Below is the tralier for an upcoming documentry airing on Bloomberg TV starting September 13th at 9pm that follows the behind-the-scense progress of ten tech companies here in NYC, including Red Rover. Click here to read the full story from TechCrunch.

It’ll be interesting to watch how each company is positioned as our personalities and business styles were all over the place. I suspect our Red Rover crew will be seen as the serious, enterprise company dealing with big money coming in and out.

Though I was interviewed and on camera a lot, I’m not sure how much I’ll be seen during the show as Kevin is Red Rover’s CEO. I did however have my share of practical jokes that were caught on camera, so we’ll see.

8/8/11 UPDATE: Bloomberg just launched their website for the show.

Over the weekend I went skiing with a group of friends in Killington, VT. Prior to this weekend, the last time I went skiing was eight years ago in Whistler, Canada.

Starting on the bunny hill and then working my way up to a “real” mountain, I was impressed at how quickly skiing came back to me. It felt very natural. Each time I went up the mountain I pushed myself a little more. Without polls, faster, through moguls, over hills, etc.

On one ride up in the Gondola, I chatted with an older lady who sat next to me. She’s been skiing all her life. I told her my background and she offered to watch and coach me as I went down. I excitedly excepted and off we went.

When we got to the bottom she said my form was great and said I needed to try a different hill as our current hill was too easy for me. Then she said,

“In skiing if you don’t fall down, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. You’re not learning anything new.”

Moving away from skiing, the older lady, and the mountain, this philosophy rings so true with my current work at Red Rover.

Over the past two months, I felt like I kept failing over and over again. It’s frustrating, annoying, and wears me down. But it’s not impossible. And the next time I take on the project, I’m better at it.

In my work I want to kick ass and be amazing, and many times I am, but I also want to keep falling down because that means I’m trying something new and pushing myself forward.

In skiing when you fall down and your equipment gets scattered across the snow, they call it a yard sale. Here’s to a life filled with many more yard sales.

Today we had a last minute new mentor that popped into the #TechStars offices. Kevin was already gone for the day, so Dan and I led the conversation. While there was very little business value gained from the meeting because he was in a totally different industry, I gained a lot of value from being forced to talk through our idea. When Kevin and I are together in a meeting, it’s expected that he leads the conversation. He’s done it a million times and he does it well. I’ve told the Red Rover/Swift Kick story a million times too, but each time I tell it, I get better. I want to tell it more. I want to have mentor meetings where I’m leading because that’s how I get better. I don’t get better from listening all the time. And in the same breath I have a lot to learn and keeping my mouth shut and ears open is a good way to do that.

Every Red Rover institution has a student ground team that helps us with the launch, student adoption, and ongoing engagement. Forrest Battle (yes that’s his real name) is our ground team member at College of Coastal Georgia. He and I chat via email on a regular basis, but unlike most schools who give you your name as your email, at CCGA, they assign you a number like 920037023@ccga.edu. My alma mater did the same thing and it felt shitty.

Every time I email Forrest, I’m reminded of what CCGA thinks of him, and all their students, as just another number in their database. I know many of our readers don’t have control over every institutional system, but take a moment to step back and see what internal systems you are using within your walled garden that either hurt or support the vision of individualized learning.

In our continuing quest to better help schools understand, measure, and utilize the increasing amount of campus engagement online, I wrote the article below on discovering your student life’s heartbeat online for this month’s NCSL NOW! magazine. 

Discovering Your Student Life’s Heartbeat Online

By Tom Krieglstein

The Internet is a decentralized place, with a lot of small, loosely connected pieces, where individual engagement acts like a finicky firefly. Our traditional rules of on-campus physical student engagement need to be modified for an online world, or we’ll miss out on leveraging our best tools to increase and quantifiably measure and report on student engagement, both within our student groups and across the whole campus. 

When talking about online engagement, my favorite place to start is offline, on the dance floor. We’ve all been to good dances and bad dances. A dance’s success is proportional to the number of relationships built up on the dance floor. It’s a simple idea; people are more likely to dance, have fun, and hang out longer if they have relationships with the people around them so that they can talk with these people or teach them new dance moves. So, if you host a dance party, your job is to connect people together around shared interests, increasing the number of relationships on your dance floor. It’s not about you, it’s about them connecting, learning, and growing from each other, and the more relevant the introductions, the more likely the relationships are to solidify. You are the facilitator of engagement, not the gatekeeper. After you’ve built up the relationships, you should be able to walk away from the dance and have it continue on without you. 

Moving back to the online world, Web 1.0 was about a community having a central hub and a moderator, admin, or webmaster playing the gatekeeper of member engagement. Large sites would push content to their members who would then consume the content, and that would be the end of the engagement. In the Web 2.0 world, the most popular and explosive sites like Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, and YouTube don’t have a central hub. There is no gatekeeper of engagement. These tools all act as platforms to facilitate relationships among members. The more engaged the members are with each other, the more successful the site becomes. 

Looking at three popular tools in particular — Facebook, Twitter, and blogging — the goal for increased student engagement online should be to move from 1.0 engagement to 2.0 engagement, where we make it about them, and we are simply the facilitators. Here are four recommendations for online engagement: 

Be Human

Instead of using a logo for your role as the facilitator of engagement among members, use an image that has a face, or a group of faces that shows you are actually human. Talk as if you were talking to someone at a cocktail party. A big logo head at a cocktail party would be odd. Being human also means you engage in the conversation as if it were a two-way street … because it is.

Enlist Hosts

Instead of stressing yourself out trying to engage everyone, enlist hosts to take over some of the engagement and facilitating. Delegating small roles to members will make your job easier and give your members a stronger sense of ownership in the community.

User-Generated Content

The sense of ownership among the community members is amplified when the members get to populate a site with their own content. Support the sharing of real videos, photos, and stories from your members. This will increase engagement and will make a site feel more human. School-sponsored student bloggers are currently popular, and a step in the right direction. But make sure you allow them to write without censorship, and after their sponsorship is over, let them keep their blog and content.

Link Out, Link In

Because the Internet is a collection of small pieces loosely connected, no one tool will solve all your problems, but collectively, the tools leveraged together can have a big impact on engagement. While certain sites, such as Facebook, remain the most popular, students like to spread out and express themselves on multiple sites across the Web. Facebook is a limiting tool if you use it as your only source of online engagement. Make sure to link between all the tools you are using, and the tools your students are using. Following these four tips will support your success in engaging students and members online. Facebook, Twitter, and blogging are a start, and once you add up each piece and multiply by all your members, you will start to discover your student life’s online heartbeat.

Moving students from online connections to offline engagement is a goal of Red Rover. We want to help you find people who are excited about the same things as you within your community and then help you go do stuff around those interests. Facilitating connections around shared interests builds a sense of comfort which according to researchers, like Astin and Tinto, leads to increased participation and, ultimately, retention.

For FYE courses we co-wrote curriculum that uses Red Rover to help students understand the concepts of first impressions and digital identities.

We’ve received a collection of requests to write activities for orientation that use Red Rover to help connect students together better while at orientation. Below is the first, of many, outlines for ways to better implement Red Rover at orientation.

With an amazing 2010 coming to a close for us at Red Rover and 2011 already looking like a landmark year, we’re expanding the team and looking to recruit some amazing new people. Below are two roles we’re hiring for in the next couple weeks. For both roles, they’d start off as trial contractual positions and if all goes well, move into full time positions within Red Rover within the first couple months of the new year. If interested, let us know, but know that creativity in submissions counts…

TITLE: Marketing / Sales Manager

OVERVIEW: The Marketing / Sales Manager populates and manages leads through the sales funnel to contract signed and payment received as well as renewing partners.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead Generation Setup / Logistics (Pre/Dur/Post) (Conf, Meetups, Mailings, etc)
• Drive Leads through the sales funnel
• Highrise CRM Management
• Generate weekly, monthly, quarterly sales goals / reporting

SUCCESS CRITERIA:

• Lead Generation
• Deal Closings

IDEAL CANDIDATE (In order of importance):

• Sales background/experience (better if was in education, best if was in Higher Ed)
• NYC Based
• Great/Hustle attitude
• Understanding of the education market
• Seen, experienced, or understand DFT
• Skilled PookTre Artist…

TITLE: Community Manager