Crossroads: Budgeting for Your Launch with Ellie Symes

While I don’t have a traditional tech start up, I have a kind of love love relationship with the tech world.  Maybe it’s because Tech is the new American Dream.  To have an idea that solves a pain point in the world, build a model, have a bunch of tech stuff happen, and voula, you’re a millionaire.  One version or another of this story, the story of a magically different life than you have right now, has captured the American imagination from it’s infancy. The very act of immigrating, sailing on a ship for months to the new world is that story.  The industrial revolution is that story, And now, from our Commodore 64s and Ataris to the podcast your listening to right now,  we all love to believe that magic can happen.  So I do love talking with tech entrepreneurs.  To hear the pain point their solving.  To dig deep into the nuts and bolts of what it means to raise huge sums of money based basically on nothing besides the founders word and a compelling deck of powerpoint slides. And then build the thing and launch the thing and raise money money and grow.  Or conversely, to fail miserably, to miss one key point, to just miss a fund raising goal, to not realize a subtlety of your ideal client. 

Tech is the wild wild west and I love every chance I have to be a part of it.

So today, we dig into it.  Deep into one specific issue that every tech business lucky enough to actually launch their product faces: how to budget for the first years of a product actually being live.

Our guest is one of Bloomington Indiana’s favorite tech entrepreneurs. Her business serves a very specific purpose – to help honey farmers create healthy happy productive lives for their bees.  Her business is called Beecorp and their products monitor bee hive and organize data helping farmers measure hive strength, productivity and safety.  Beecorp has won awards across the tech and agriculture industries and they’re continuing to grow staff and products each year.  Ellie Symes is the founder and CEO of Beecorp and she shares a crossroads with us today.

We’re glad you joined us.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

• The current state of Ellies business (5:20)
• Should Ellie hire for sales? (11:35)
• How many customers does Beecorp need? (14:30)
• Cut backs she’s made for the upcoming year (23:00)
• What’s driving the budget question (28:00)
• Prep of the Pitch (35:00)
• Model what you can and what would over staffing look like (37:15)
• The Vision Value Pull (40:45)
• Building the magnet (45:00)

Special thanks to Ellie Symes of Beecorp for being willing to pull back the curtains and share this business crossroads.

And, of course, a huge thank you to David Quick for offering his time and expertise. You can find David and many of his resources at HELPINGBULLS.COM

Contributors to this episode include:

• Host - Jeremy Goodrich
• Co-Host – David Quick
• Music - Mark Vinten
• Editing - Christopher Lang

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