Jonathan Copley considers himself to be one of the world’s biggest Manchester United soccer fans. So when Team Manchester arrived in the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2011 to face-off against the Seattle Sounders, he faced a choice. Pit his lifelong fandom and upbringing in Manchester, U.K., against the home team in the region he now lived in and loved. It was no contest.
It was “Go Manchester” all the way!
Now, two years later, Copley isn’t repenting for Manchester’s 7-0 win vs. Seattle but reaffirming his allegiance to the Puget Sound community that is sprouting startup companies like blades of grass on his home field turf.
A champion of new business formation, capitalization and valuation, and the founder of CFOcare, Copley has what he believes is a winning Seattle game plan. He has assembled a team of multidisciplinary advisors, 16 professional service firms, in a consortium known as Grow50. As in soccer, there is a goal to achieve that he and his illustrious teammates share. Grow50’s mission is to help 50 select companies grow significantly over the next 10 years by getting all the expertise and funding they need.
“I wanted to put together a team of people that had every skill set an entrepreneur would need when starting a business,” he explained. “We see a lot of startups coming in and asking angel investors for money, and the angels naturally turn around and say, ‘Tell us about your management team.'” That’s obviously the number one success factor, right? The startups typical response is, “Right, you give us the money and we’ll give you the management team. It’s a Catch-22 situation.”
“We believe we can accelerate a large number of aspiring firms and give investors the confidence of knowing these early stage companies have strong, professional support. Recruiting. Product Development. Legal. Sales. Marketing. International. You name it.” he says.
Copley soundly rejects the opinion of Cam Mhyrvold who, writing in GeekWire, blamed a lack of entrepreneurial talent in the Northwest after closing his Ignition Partners venture group and moving to San Francisco. Jonathan considers the Northwest an extraordinary spawning ground for tomorrow’s tech leaders, given the talent, the resources, and the legacy of companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks and Boeing, to name the forebears.
So if you’re a Northwest start-up, how do you get your fledgling business concept in front of this all-star team?
Train your sights on winning first or second place in the Northwest Entrepreneur Network’s semi-annual First Look Forums, These competitions test the mettle, the business model and the pitches of hundreds of entrepreneurs from around the Pacific Northwest.
Later this month on April 19th and then again in October of 2013, the winners of the First Look Forums will be awarded $50,000 worth of professional fees from Grow50 members, and the second-placed finishers will receive $25,000 worth of professional fees for an annual total of $150,000 in services for promising entrepreneurs.
Speaking of soccer, (weren’t we?), there’s a valuable listen to be learned from Copley’s experience with the World Cup.
“I met with Alan Rothenberg who was chairman of the World Cup at the time, and because I loved soccer, I said, “Alan, is there any way I can help you?” Rothenberg already had a vast number of people working on the World Cup but he told me he needed someone to help him help build a future soccer league for the U.S.!”
“I spent the next two years developing the business and marketing plan for what was then called the National Soccer League and which we rebranded Major League Soccer,” reflected Copley.
Today’s Seattle Sounder fan base of 40,000, of which he is one, “is astonishing!” he says. “It would make the Sounders the tenth best supported team in Britain! We have fantastic crowds. ”
There’s another lesson to be learned here as well. It’s about how some engagements start out as one mission (the “World Cup”) and then morph into another — (“Major League Soccer.”) “It’s called the Pivot,” reminds Copley. “It is practically inevitable that the first idea a new company founder has will be revised or reinvented along the path to fruition. “It’s the skill set and flexibility of the startup, and the advisors, that makes all the difference as a young company progresses!”
You can’t help but admire this soccer-aficionado-turned-startup-coach’s team spirit! Go Grow50! [24×7]
Learn more about the Grow50 initiative.
Learn more about the Grow50 list of firms and members’ expertise.
Learn more about CFOCare.
