[barryt]

An Entrepreneurial CEO Opportunity

I have a very early stage business that I want to grow. It manufactures and sells directly into the Consumer Electronics market, specifically the Music Reproduction segment. That is all the Audio Stuff that you listen to music through, or the sound supporting video presentation (generally TV, Home Theater, or Gaming).

My company caters to the high-end of a very narrow niche of this market. It is a bootstrap startup by definition with no investment other than using customer word of mouth marketing and subsequent sales to pay the development and production costs. Virtually nothing invested in marketing, it's too early.

I believe that the company has hit the point in the journey that moving on to "Page 2' in the script of the growth of a company/culture to success is appropriate. To me that script is now relatively clear to build this to a significant player in the more general marketplace.

To do this I need to find someone to be the 'CEO' and with them build a profound and dynamic culture taking innovative products to the highest level marketplace for both men and women. While offering superior technology the products are not about technology, they are about the human experience and perceived emotions.

To that end I begin a search for someone special.

So who am I to be doing this? Well I have been down this road before, am a 60 year veteran of all aspects of this Industry and done multiple startups taking one public as the COB.

And most importantly, my gut tells me it is time.

I also know that I am 78 years old and don't want to again become the workaholic I have in the past. But I sure do want to coach and provide a vision for someone to become 'the company' and continue the journey to its proper end.

Two closing comments. First - If your approach to success is super sales manipulation or 'rip their lungs out' at all costs then we will not want to waste each other's time. This success will be forged in thought, consciousness, sensitivity, and human understanding.

Second, this is not a solicitation for any kind of offering of services, advice, counsel, mentoring, motivation, referral, or connecting. Don't waste your friendly concern on me, my sole purpose now is to find the person that you will want to touch, the new CEO.

Barry Thornton
http://www.linkedin.com/in/barrythornton
barry@austinaudioworks.com

 

[msing539]

And here I thought CEO was some audio acronym I hadn't heard of.

Have you considered Indeed.com?

 

[chesebert]

The products look tired and old and do not fit today's high-end aesthetics and target market's taste and preferences. Here are my 10 steps to relaunch your gear. Good luck. You or whomever you hire got a lot of work to do and you are way behind the 8 ball.

Step 1: Find an ODM in Taiwan or SE Asia or India
Step 2: Focus on your wedge product - phono EQ and preamp and work with ODM to redesign the product so you have a design language that you will use in your extended product line in the future
Step 3. Understand your target market - 2 channel audiophiles with $10k+ purchasing plan or existing gear; you need to figure out what makes your preamp unique and build on that.
Step 4. Revamp your website and hire a marketing person to help highlight audiophile buzzwords and to expand into other marketing channels. Have a social media strategy. You need to be omni channel at this point. Your current GTM kind of sucks TBH.
Step 5. Once you and your ODM have completed the design, send it to influencers and YouTubers (and let them keep the gear so they will write positive reviews and impressions of the product). It has to look the part - sound quality is important but not as important as the look and features - you gotta give them things to talk about like expensive caps, ceramic circuit board, EMI absorption panel, stuff like that.
Step 6. Go to Axpona and pay YouTubers and magazines/websites to give you an award for something. Participate in an interview (make it exclusive) and just market the hell out of the company but you gotta look authentic while doing it
Step 7. While at Axpona set up meetings with dealers to talk about NA and EU distributions - they would have heard about you by now given the influencers/Youtube videos
Step 8. Start taking orders but limit to 100 (or whatever) units a year initially - builds exclusiveness and helps you manage logistics
Step 9: Launch a crowd funded fundraising and raise a few million for expansion.
Step 10: rinse and repeat with the launch of a new product - probably NOT the headphone amp.

Just an Internet rando rambling, not actual business advice and you should not rely on any of the above.