Ejovi Nuwere

Traveling with the FON team during the fundraising process was a great learning experience. Martin has had enough success behind him that most doors simply opened, just cause. Some of the VC’s got it before they even met with us, some didn’t. All of the potential partners got it. My impression was that while the idea is important the entrepreneur is critical. When they bought into FON they weren’t only buying into the idea, but the person behind the idea and whether or not he has what it takes to execute. Martin has had a number of business successes and he is extremely charismatic. But even if Martin wasn’t charismatic, his business success would have enabled him to raise money. He has proven on a number of occasions that he can execute on his ideas.

We visited many of the popular VC’s on Sand hill Road in the valley. Initially it was only Martin V. as the entrepreneur and me as the US country manager. Later in the fund raising process we were joined by Diego Cabezudo an amazing entrepreneur with a lot of experience in the wireless space. Entrepreneurs have to be good at finding people who are expert in specific areas. Because I’m an entrepreneur I can be sort of a generalist at times, exploring many different things, but generalist don’t build products. Generalist can think of products, entrepreneurs are good at finding people to build products. Successful entrepreneurs are even better at marketing those products.

I also played two roles one was the techie and the other that of the security expert. Everyone in America that we spoke to had concerns with security. It was my responsiblity to relieve their concerns by ensuring them that we were taking security very seriously. FON has. I told them that we would have the ability to update all the routers if a flaw was discovered, FON now has that ability. A feature many of our potential partners don’t actually have in their products. I told them that we would have the ability to create not only two separate networks, which FON has now, but two separate SSID’s. A private encrypted SSID and an open SSID for Foneros. That ability will be implemented in the coming weeks.

Its one thing to make promises, which during the fundraising stage we made many, but what is crucial is the ability to execute and make those promises reality. And when you don’t keep a promise or commitment clearly explain why. In my opinion what a VC is gambling on when they invest in a company is the ability of the entrepreneur to keep more commitments then he fails to. This is why it’s easier for an entrepreneur to raise money after he has had some success behind him. In this sense raising money was fairly easy, what is hard is building the team that keeps its commitments. Next I will talk more about team building and that passion needed to keep the team together.

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