The investors want him to be CEO, he says, but he has accepted only the title of executive chairman. "I want to mentor the young guy who's the CEO-founder and help the company get funded," he says. "I'm just giving them two to three days a week of my time. That leaves me time to paint and play music."
As it turns out, he and the Nimbit team are planning to meet the day after tomorrow to go over the presentation for the company's first pitch to VCs, scheduled in two weeks. "They already have a million in angel funding, but I don't like angel funding," Cramer says. "Angels are for small ideas. They need VC money." But the team needs to gird for battle, he adds: "Boston VCs don't get the music business. And the process of raising VC money is all about making entrepreneurs jump through hoops. That's how they learn about you. They want to see what kind of stick-to-it-iveness you've got."
But he knows how to work the VC process, he notes, and he has faith in it, just as the VCs have a lot of faith in him. "When they say no, there's a good reason," he says.
Febuary 28, 2007
Nimbit Headquarters, Framingham, Mass.
Nimbit's office is too far outside Boston's high-tech Route 128 belt to be considered part of it. Indeed, the neighborhood is a bit seedy, the building is dingy, and the offices are cramped and helter-skelter. Scattered among the mismatched chairs in what serves as a conference room is the Nimbit team. Cramer is running the show; it's his laptop connected to the projector. Next to him is Patrick Faucher, CEO and co-founder, whose long wavy hair, facial stubble, and hip eyewear all nicely accent the grungy cherubic looks of a former boy bander. Though Faucher did in fact do a fair amount of gigging back in the day as a trumpeter, his background is mostly in software and e-commerce; he previously developed and sold an online shopping site. Across the table is COO and co-founder Phil Antoniades, an impressively biceped, unsmiling, and generally rough-edged-looking fellow whom you could easily picture climbing off a hog to administer a beating to someone like Faucher just on principle. Antoniades was a touring drummer who for a time averaged 200 nights a year on the road before he built up a band management business and then a $1 million CD replication company that he merged into Nimbit. (And despite his appearance, he turns out to be perfectly civil, if a little intense.) Cramer is again dressed in blazer, T-shirt, and jeans. Others in the room include Robyn Glaser, a former executive at EMI who heads marketing at Nimbit, and Bill Snapper, who by all accounts is a genuine website-coding magician.
Faucher has put together a PowerPoint presentation, which Cramer is critiquing. Cramer tries to tease enlightenment out of Faucher through a sort of Socratic dialogue rather than just telling him what to do, but it's hard to miss the fact that Cramer thinks there's a lot Faucher doesn't understand. Cramer fires off questions relentlessly: "Do we need all these screen stats?" (VCs see a lot of presentations, he notes, so the way to get them to remember yours is to keep it uncluttered and repeat key images.) "Is this slide showing the product as it is now or as it's going to be?" (It actually can hurt you to try to make your existing product look too good, because the VCs will wonder why you haven't hit it big yet if your product is so great.) "How are you going to be noticed with all the other players out there?" (Faucher says there isn't a one-line answer to that question, and Cramer tells him to get one.)
The slides drag on; there are 25 of them. Cramer wants the presentation cut to no more than 15. Faucher seems exasperated. "I've barely slept in three days, and not just because I have a new baby," he finally blurts out.
Cramer suggests they wrap it up, telling Faucher not to worry. "In this A round of financing, VCs want to see you've got a great idea that's unique and defensible, and a good team," he says. "You'll figure all the rest out for the B round." He tells Faucher to think big. "VCs aren't like angels. They're not thinking about how they can make $500,000. They're thinking about how they can build a billion-dollar business. Don't refer to exit opportunities--think next major media company; think replacing the labels."
As the group leaves the room, bound for a late lunch at a nearby Brazilian restaurant, Cramer grabs three coffee mugs and takes them to a sink to wash them. "Hey, it's a start-up," he says.
March 12, 2007
Atlas Venture, Waltham, Mass.
Atlas is situated in a warren of high-tech VC firms huddled together behind a snazzy glass façade in a bucolic setting. These are pricey digs, and Faucher has cleaned up a bit for the occasion, looking more Hollywood than grunge today. Antoniades, meanwhile, looks even more menacing. They're both nervous. Cramer, on the other hand, seems in his element as he chats up the two executives who have come to the conference room to hear the pitch.
Faucher gets less than a minute into it before partner Axel Bichara starts interrupting. "Your metrics are unclear," he snaps, gesturing at a slide that shows how the music market breaks down into labels and independent artists. "What are you measuring? Sales? Units? You have to understand segmentation if you're going to be in a long-tail market." Antoniades responds that revenue figures for independent musicians are conservative because they don't include gigging. Bichara fires back: "Well, what are the gigging revenues?" Faucher and Antoniades stare blankly. Cramer, who has clearly been at pains to try to stay in the background, jumps in to assure Bichara that gigging will be integrated into the Nimbit system and carefully tracked.
