What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur

I. Does Tim Westergren have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? If you were one of Tim's friends back when he was first thinking about his idea, would you have told him to go for it or to forget it?

Do we think Tim Westergren has what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Before giving a straightforward answer on this, it is valuable to analyze the characteristics we see in the case about Tim.

To start off with the fact that Tim grew up in a constantly moving environment, with his family he used to live as expats during the time he grew up. Which could have been a positive thing, because you learn to adapt yourself to a new culture and a new environment over and over again? However, what we see when he starts to studying, he has a hard time with the structure and he does not have the willing to commit himself completely to the medicine study he started with. Instead of that, he 'gives up' and he continues with a study that is the shortest, to be done as soon as possible.

But on the other side, Tim is very active since his youth in team sports. And there he always takes the captain role of the time. And this is not because he chooses this position himself. His peers always select him for this position. The same we see in his student dorm, there he takes a leading position as well by becoming the president of the dorm. Later on, we see he also takes the leading position in his band.

What is very entrepreneurial characteristic of Tim is that he does not like to be controlled, for example with the piano lessons. He loves to play, but especially when he can improvise his own play.

Later on, we see that Tim cannot find a focus for his life. He shifts from one function to another and this only because he wants to follow his passion. However, this passion is not giving him any structure in his life; neither does it provide a solid financial status. And with the job as camp counselor, the nanny job, and the part in the band, we don't see a clear strategy neither a clear view on where Tim actually wants to go.

So all by all, we can conclude that he has some leading skills. But is this enough to get control on his unfocused view on the world and the low discipline level he has? And is he willing to commit himself for such a long time to one certain thing? That is what we actually doubt about if he would be our friend.

With the plan Tim starts, we would not advice him to start up the business. Since his knowledge of doing business is minimal and the way of operating is not foolproof at that moment. Simply, because the idea has not been structured enough yet to make it to a business that can operate and can generate money at all. Therefore, we would recommend him to first completely put his idea on paper, then collect the partners like Jon and Will around him and start operating with the three of them.

II. How do you feel about how Tim built the founding team? What are the strengths and weaknesses you see concerning the team?

The way Tim has gathered the other two co-founders is very smart. We think both persons are willing to add value to the company.

First of all, with Jon Kraft he had a person that was very interested in the business and had a solid knowledge on how to set up your own business due to his recently sold company Sequoia. That was backed by one of the largest venture capital companies in Silicon Valley. So the way of doing business with a VC was not completely unknown to Jon. Therefore it was a real strength that Tim could use in setting up Savage Beast. Jon did work on the business plan and knew which steps to take in setting up a business.

The second co-founder, Will Glaser was a common friend of the other two. He was a product engineer that actually could build up the prototype of their first vision of the product. His strengths: math, computer science, physics and he shared the passion for music by being an amateur musician. During the time Will join the company as co-founder he was also the co-founder of another company, and working on consulting projects in the Valley. So the complete attention was not for the start-up yet, what could be negative?

All by all, we think the three could be a magic team. All three possesses skills that are actually needed to set up this business, without outreaching each other.

III. Evaluate the founders' decision regarding the split of equity. As a potential investor in the company, would these decisions concern you?

As mentioned in the first question, it might have been better if Tim had developed his business plan and product plan further before finding co-founders. Herewith, he would have been the actual founder of the company, and this would definitely have gives him more rights. However, since it was still his idea, we think it would have been more logical that he got a larger part of the equity. Again, as we saw with the NanoGene case, we see where they are coming from and why they actually did divide the equity