Post from Leadership Turn  Image credit: Liquid Scenarios

I was unable to attend the Stanford Summit this year, so I prevailed on Emanio CEO and M3 Foundation founder KG Charles-Harris to go and share a story or two about the people he met.

From KG:

At the Stanford Summit I met a Lorenzo Carver, who impressed me quite a bit.  He’s 40 years old, plays base and studied music at Berkeley as a film score major.  His working to pay for school was affecting his playing and studies and as a consequence he started a business that did well and sold it after 18 months, then started another one that tanked.

Lorenzo’s entrepreneurial zeal didn’t end and when he returned to school to study finance he put together a leveraged buyout for a company in bankruptcy and used his portion of the profits to pay for graduate school. He ended up with a MS in Accounting, plus and MBA and CPA; all received while he was working.

During those times Arthur Andersen was the premier firm, but after a short stint there Lorenzo wanted to return to his entrepreneurial roots.  His new business was advising entrepreneurs; he wrote more than 200 strategic plans for biotech and software and assisted in raising more than a billion dollars in funding for these companies.

Then came the dotcom collapse, which gave him the seeds for his present company, Liquid Scenarios.  They are now 14 people and self funded, growing from the profits they produce.  The strange thing is that, instead of coming to the conference to seek investors, he came seeking investors as customers. (Liquid Scenarios’ tagline— “Because Time is Money”)

Liquid Scenarios is based on his having developed complex algorithms for calculating funding scenarios, especially for high-growth companies.

Anyone who has spent time calculating scenarios for more than one class of stock realizes the value of this tool for real estate, venture capital, private equity, and private investors.

The problem he solves is one that faces many investors (and entrepreneurs) in disparate industries—how to calculate funding structures that reduce uncertainty.

Previously there has been no simple-to-use software that helps reduce uncertainty for investors, entrepreneurs and creditors in financing situation by enabling modeling of complex scenarios and outcomes.

After reviewing his software, it is clear that it reduces the calculations from dozens of hours and days to just a few minutes.

(Pretty cool! Check out the product demo to really understand why this is so hot. Miki)

The reason I’m excited is because I’ve been on all sides of the table, as a venture capitalist or private equity investor, investment banker and entrepreneur and I know that calculating all this is so tedious and difficult that only experts can do it.

Liquid Scenario’s tool creates equality between the people on different sides of the table and is especially useful to entrepreneurs who may not have the training to work complex spreadsheets.

But what I found most interesting was Lorenzo’s comment on the most important lesson he’s learned as a manager or entrepreneur.

“This startup is the easiest one I’ve done of twelve where half were started by me.  The difference this time is that I’ve been exceedingly careful about the people I work with—I’ve only chosen the ones that are passionate and competent.  There is no B-team this time.”

(For more of KG’s impressions click here.)

Do you “settle” when you hire or do you slog on until you find an A-team member?

Your comments—priceless

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