Claudia Batten

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!