Until
recently I have to admit I had never heard of Claudia Batten. However as I
found out, she is a true inspiration to anyone starting out in business. She
founded a company along with two other business partners who managed to grow
their business and sell it to Microsoft in a multi-million dollar deal, all by
the age of 31, and yet I had never heard of her. How can that be? Have I been
living under the proverbial rock? Who is Claudia Batten, and how did she start
out to be so successful? I opened up my lap top and did some google stalking to
find out if I could get in contact with her. Turns out I can!
About Claudia Batten
US-based
Kiwi Claudia Batten will openly admit she is digitally obsessed. From her roots
in commercial law, she has been a founding member of two highly successful
entrepreneurial ventures and is an active mentor, advisor and board member of start-ups.
As part of the founding team of Massive Incorporated, a network for advertising
in video games, she helped pioneer “digital” as a media buy. Massive was sold
to Microsoft in 2006, where Claudia then spent 3 years scaling the in-game
network. In 2009 she co-founded Victors & Spoils, the first advertising
agency built on the principles of crowdsourcing. After two years in market,
V&S was majority acquired by French holding company Havas Worldwide. She
was recently the youngest recipient of the World Class New Zealand SUPREME
Award, is a Distinguished Alumni of Victoria University and
seems to be in 50 places all at once. I managed to wrangle her attention
for a short period to get her perspective on how she did it all.
So how did Claudia start? Where
did she come from? What gave her that push from Wellington commercial law, to
high flying successful business woman? Here is Claudia Batten’s start of success…
Before you became a successful
business woman, what did you do to earn a living?
I started my
career as a corporate attorney. I worked for Russell McVeagh in Wellington, New
Zealand. It seems like a far cry from being an entrepreneur but the work I did
there was a phenomenal grounding for being in business.
What drove you to take that leap from
working to become an entrepreneur? Did you just fall into it? Or did you have a
light bulb moment?
I realised
that being a lawyer was not my calling. I could see the somewhat clear path
ahead that you work hard and ultimately, hopefully, are made partner and that
didn’t seem right for me. So my first leap was to leave my very comfortable
straight line career and, in addition, get on a plane and move to New York
City. I think it ends up being a combination of falling into it and that light bulb
moment. On my website squigglylife I
talk about the process of being an entrepreneur. That it starts with a moment
of intuitive knowledge (AKA a light bulb moment) and likely does anything but
follow a straight path from there. So a lot of falling follows.
Before many entrepreneurs grow a
successful business, they often cut their teeth on another business first.
Usually this is smaller and has often failed, but they learn from their
experience, and their mistakes, and turn their new business into a success. Was
this the same for you? Or did you hit a home run right off the bat?
I am not a
huge fan of this concept. I think that every business fails multiple times in
it’s lifecycle. What determines an ultimate success is whether you stick at it
through all the potential fail points and you persevere beyond them. I am still
discovering the process, every day, but a couple of the businesses I am in now
I could have declared failures and chalked them up to learning experiences.
They are still on varying degrees of life support so, I guess, watch this
space.
How did you get the finances to start
your first business? Or did it grow organically so that you didn’t need to
borrow money to start?
There is a
long answer to that but the short answer is that we were an already funded
company that was pivoted into a new business. So the existing investors backed
the new direction after funding the initial strategy of the company. I like
businesses that grow organically, they are great businesses but not all ideas
can be seeded that way. You have to be smart about the scale your business
needs to reach, what resources do you really need to hit that level
of scale. You also need to be very mindful of the competitive space
and be sure you can keep pace with incumbents and possible new
entrants. It’s easy to make a mistake by not funding your business
appropriately.
Did you have a plan for your business
before you started? Or did you just start and work it out as you went?
I always
have a plan, and I always know that plan will change. So it’s absolutely a
combination of both. If you stick too radically to the plan you will miss
important market forces that suggest a smart course-correct. If you don’t plan
you risk running in multiple directions without focus. Focus is the name of the
game in the start-up world, you have to be very clear about what you are doing
and what you are not doing.
What’s one pro, and one con, of
starting a new business?
Pro is the
glorious experience of building something from scratch and creating something
that has not existed before. There is something extremely rich and invigorating
about the process which is never static - just always changing which puts you
on your edge and dares you to be your best. The con is that it’s never
static! It’s a very very intense business where you are always on and there is
no certainty. That is for sure exhilarating but it’s also exhausting,
intimidating and extraordinarily nerve-wracking.
How did you decide on what business
to start? For someone who doesn’t know what industry to start in, what’s your
advice to them? How do they choose?
You have to
do something you are ultimately passionate about. Wake you up in the morning;
annoy people at cocktail parties; relentlessly absorbed with PASSION! So if you don’t know where to
start, either buddy up with someone who has that passion about something OR
wait. Don’t jump in because you think being an entrepreneur is a good idea. We
call them wannapreneurs!!
When you started out, How did you get
customers? Was it word of mouth? Did you do a hard sell? Or did you use social
media or google advertising or some other marketing to get noticed?
It’s a
complex matrix of all of the above. It’s individual to your business, what
works for one doesn’t always work for others. There are a few things you should
be smart about as an entrepreneur: the funding process, sales and marketing and
- well actually that is my list. All the other pieces are important but these
will make or break your company. With a good team, product, culture, financial
model you will still fail if you poorly fund your company (or sell too much
equity) or fail to market and sell your product.
We always hear about the good things
in business i.e. the lifestyle and the freedom. But what are some of the
sacrifices you had to make to start out?
I joke that
entrepreneurs black out the negative, if we remembered the hard stuff we would never
do it again. I don’t feel I made sacrifices other than not having too many days
off. You are always working which puts a pretty big strain on your life. Your
world and relationships need to be able to accommodate this. That said, I have
travelled the world doing this which to me is perfection. I like to work - so
it’s not really a sacrifice. But I am sure I have blacked out the things that
were really hard!
What’s one piece of unorthodox advice
you can give to someone starting out? Maybe something that won’t or doesn’t
always work, or even people tell you not to do - but that’s been gold for you?
To be the
biggest, boldest, bravest version of yourself that you can be. Don’t try to be
someone else, there is nothing interesting to people about an inauthentic
person. This is a people business, you need people to help you at every step of
the journey. By you being extraordinary, people will surround and support you.
You have to bring your “A” game and your “A” YOU.
Do you ever feel you should have
started earlier?
Not for when
I started, I think some people can start at 18 but that is not me. I am so grateful
for my education and my time in law. But we all need to make our own decisions
in terms of what we are ready for.
USA has the likes of Silicon Valley
area, where all the techies live. They all appear to feed each other, or advice
is just around the corner. But I’m personally from small country called New
Zealand, how easy is it for someone in a smaller country to succeed?
I live in
Boulder, Colorado and we have a phenomenally supportive and vibrant start up
community. That’s all you need. People with a mindset to help each other and be
brave and fearless in the pursuit of something extraordinary. That exists in
New Zealand. I encounter people likewise minded the whole time. And New Zealand
is a great place to do business. So I think it is easy. You just have to find a
place to start, and start!
You have become successful in your
own right. So what do you do now as of this date? Do you have your feet up
relaxing in the tropics far away from all the stress of business? Or are you on
to the next venture! Not because you have to, to make a living, but
because you want to?
I love what
I do and I really don’t ever see myself putting my feet up. I get bored so
quickly with vacations - it’s a sickness I am sure. I most recently cofounded Broadli with Ale Lariu and Mary Abraham. We
are investigation how we might rethink our use of digital connectivity,
specifically to power what we call “the new networking". Most people
hate the idea of networking but with Broadli
we are trying to activate other people to help us network. By telling our
trusted network what we need help with, they can
make connections they think will be useful. Our dream - not more
awkward events in large rooms where you are trying to hustle business cards to meet
people. Broadli can be downloaded here at http://bit.ly/broadli.
I am also
working on my concept of #thesquigglyline of being an entrepreneur. That the
path to the extraordinary is anything but linear. So I am interviewing
some amazing people and sharing what inspiration I can at http://www.squigglylife.com/ (yes,
life not line). Or follow me on Twitter @claudiabatten and Google+
claudiabatten if you are not yet ready to commit to a blog!
Thank you so much for your time
Claudia. It is such an inspiration to find out about your own ‘start of
success’. Too often people see the end result of success and put it down to “Oh
they are so lucky” without knowing how it all started out and the blood, sweat,
tears and sacrifices that are put in. Thank you for your words of wisdom and
best of luck for The Squiggly Line, Broadli, and any other future endeavours!
