Kabbage and Roadie’s Marc Gorlin: Avoiding Death By PowerPoint Presentations
Startup Exchange, a student partnership member of Tech Square ATL Social Club, reached out to join forces in hosting a hybrid fireside chat with “serial entrepreneur,” Marc Gorlin.
It can be a difficult road turning an idea into a profitable business. It’s even more difficult to get others to commit to your product with their hearts and minds along the way. Gorlin, co-founder of Kabbage (recently acquired by AmEx) and Roadie, shared takeaways from his personal experience in launching successful companies during a live Q&A session, with attendees being both virtual and at The Clubhouse.
How studying journalism at UGA has helped with serial entrepreneurship.
“I did this right out of journalism school when I was 23. [Journalism school was helpful in that] a lot of being an entrepreneur is being able to use the spoken and written word to explain something to other people. You have an idea you're always selling to somebody – to your employees, your investors, people you want to sell your product to.“
Gorlin co-founded his first company, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) with Phil Zimmermann. It started with a journalistic pursuit.
“It started out of school when I was looking for an idea. On the bus in NYC, I read this story on USA Today about this cryptographer in Boulder, CO that the government had chased around. [So I] gave Phil a call – that’s where the journalism background came in – and I proceeded to have a three-hour conversation with [him].
I went out to Boulder, met him, and we started Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). I was on the board, did business development, and we eventually sold to Network Associates a couple of years later.”
How a delayed delivery box of bathroom tiles inspired the idea for Roadie.
“There’s bound to be someone leaving Birmingham right now heading to Montgomery. If I just knew who they were, surely they’ll put a box of tile in their truck, [and I can] give them $20 [since] they’re coming this way anyway.
That’s when it hit me – there’s this unbelievable transportation heatmap that exists around all of us. Every face you see on this Zoom screen hops in a car and goes places everyday. The combination of all of us [in the U.S.]: that’s 250 million vehicles and 4 billion cubic feet of excess capacity. It’s almost like a natural resource, or a public utility. What would happen if you plugged into it?”
Lean on your network of smart people to fact-check your business ideas.
”You call smart people, [like] industry experts you know. [Call up the] smartest people possible to fact-check this new thing to see if it’s even possible, [and to] see if it’s as good as folks say it is. Everytime you have an idea, it’s very likely that other people have it too. I can’t tell you about the amount of emails I’ve gotten from people about how they came up with Roadie before I came up with it.”
His reply to one such email:
Dear Bob,
Great minds think alike. Please download the app and let me know what you think.
- Marc
Kabbage co-founders Rob Frohwein, Kathryn Petralia, and Marc Gorlin
Look for people with varying skill sets in the early stages of your company.
“Everything goes wrong, and everything is a problem when you’re first starting it up. So you need people who are ‘figure-it-outers’ who don’t let [obstacles] bother them. They just figure out how to keep getting around [these obstacles], because [being in a startup is like] a series of lily pads to jump to. It’s not a straight path, and folks that can deal with that are much more equipped to get through these early stages.”
Whenever there’s questions you don’t know the answers to, start by asking why and determine what’s best for business growth.
“It sounds so simple, but it tends to clarify a lot of decisions if you know why you’re doing it. [Knowing why] takes out the hubris, the politics, and all the drama.”
Roadie teamed up with Ludacris to promote their shipping community
You need to be able to make decisions with imperfect information.
“Oftentimes, people get into analysis paralysis looking into the absolute best way to do [something]. If you get 60 to 70 percent of the information starting out, make a decision. It’s often faster, more effective, and costs you less money to make the wrong one go forward. Just back up and do it over if you’re wrong. If you’re right, then you’ve gotten way ahead.”
Make your pitches memorable with strong storytelling.
“Figure out what your medium is, who your audience is, and what [type of reaction] you want out of it. Most people that pitch to investors [experience] death by powerpoint. You don’t want to overdo it with words [and data]. You want to make them feel something, so people want to meet with you.”
“At Kabbage, we created this animated character named Bill. He was a cartoon character of a small business owner, who would never get a big break from banks. We depicted the bank as a nasty-looking cartoon. The banks would never give Bill a loan unless he had all this data.
Then we showed them that there’s a bunch of ‘Bills’ out there. I could have shown all the stats and data about business, but it’s not nearly as engaging as the Bill image.”
“If you live in the south, you can’t throw a dead cat without hitting a Waffle House.” — Marc Gorlin on offering Roadie delivery options to Waffle House locations, as seen on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Have honest, upfront conversations when things aren’t working sooner than later.
“Once you get a company going, the woodpeckers inside the boat can often do more harm than the storm outside. I don’t worry about competition that much. I keep an eye on it, but there's not much I can do to affect [what the competitors are doing]. But if you have rotten or toxic employees in the organization, they often do more damage inside the ship than any storm outside – [and] that is just the worst. Being able to not suffer fools and make sure that [you] deal with [what’s not working] quickly will save you stress, heartache, and maybe even your company.”
Make tangible representations of goals for your team and your customers.
“At Kabbage, I had five to six bottles of Veuve Cliquot, and had a label put on with the Kabbage logo at the time. It said, ‘To be opened by Marc when Kabbage reaches a $50 million valuation,’ and I handed it to everybody. We held on to the bottle. And we raised [a Series] A, [but] didn't get there.
Another year later, we wound up raising a [Series] B, and we got there. We pulled the whole company together, popped them open, and we poured it for everybody in the company and we all had a toast to reaching that goal.
When we got done with that toast, we pulled a black cloth off of a table, and we had new bottles with the logo for everyone who was in the company at that point in time, for them to go on and have for the next goal.
“It’s not just a bottle – it’s got their name on it. They have them on their desk at their office and it makes them think about it everyday. They look at it. It does it for them and their employees, it does it for the people you want to sell to.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Companies like Delta Air Lines, Home Depot, Tractor Supply, and more have partnered with Roadie to expand their delivery services. Roadie has also partnered with Waffle House to offer Roadie drivers free food and beverages at its more than 1,750 restaurants in 25 states, and provide a convenient meeting location for drivers and senders.
What’s next for Marc Gorlin:
“The goal of Roadie is to be the next UPS or FedEx using crowdsourced delivery drivers, to [help you] get anything you want, wherever you need it. There’s a huge need that’s been exacerbated by COVID. There’s a bunch of us who can’t get out easily; it’s not as safe for us [to leave the house.]”
About Marc Gorlin:
Marc Gorlin has been a successful entrepreneur in Atlanta for almost 20 years. Marc founded Roadie in early 2014 as the first “on-the-way” delivery network. Before starting Roadie, Marc co-founded and was Chairman of Kabbage Inc., which provides working capital to small and medium-sized businesses. Marc is an active speaker on serial entrepreneurship, innovation, and venture funding.
His favorite small business is El Torero, a Mexican restaurant in Chamblee, Georgia that he has been frequenting since he had to sneak out of high school to enjoy lunch there. He says it has the best salsa on the planet.
About our partner: Startup Exchange
The Startup Exchange community is comprised of students of all years, all majors, all different backgrounds. This student-run organization promotes entrepreneurship education at Georgia Tech by organizing speaker events, workshops, and panels for students. Startup Exchange connects students with startups through our network of fellow students, founders, and mentors. Their mission is to foster a group of people who support and help each other reach new heights.
Who is one successful Atlanta entrepreneur you’d like to see in an upcoming fireside chat? Let us know in the comments below.