Board Member for High-growth Companies

Kurt Uhlir at Emory University Goizueta Business School for Hack

Top performers always have advisors
and mentors in their lives

High-growth companies and high-bandwidth founders always have board members and advisors opening doors and providing guidance on “moving the needle” for the company.

Top performers in business and life have coaches and mentors in their lives that give them wise counsel, help them realize their potential, and identify potential hidden opportunities (or concerns).

Kurt has been blessed to have had a number of people much wiser than himself, frequently several seasons of life ahead of him, pour into him over the years. In every one of his growth phases, he can identify at least one trusted advisor in his life – sometimes a personal mentor, other times an investor, and frequently a board member that had walked the same path multiple times before. In almost every one of his companies, he chooses one or more board member to coach them through their growth phases.

If you’re not familiar with the difference between a mentor and a coach, watch John Saddington’s video and read his article on The Difference Between a Mentor and Coach.

Kurt actively advises/coaches/consults high potential leaders to help companies accelerate their growth. Sometimes this involves being a member of a company’s advisory board or board of directors. Other times, it’s one-on-one with the CEO, founder, or another executive of the company. Either way, he brings a unique combination of his experience growing companies, behavioral science, and sometimes tough-love.

These are paid / contractual relationships with some combination of equity and or monthly retainer. Need to accelerate your acceleration? Connect with Kurt and see what makes sense.

Some of the reasons people and organizations typically ask for Kurt’s help

Accelerate Business Growth

Kurt steps in, rolls up his sleeves, and works side by side with your team to optimize every aspect of your business. Sometimes a companies growth has slowed, and other times they just need to adjust their cadence and find a faster stride. Areas of expertise include finding authentic demand, raising capital, adjusting sales pitches, finding product market fit, and other strategies to increase sales and profits.

Fundraising

Kurt works directly with your team to create an end-to-end fundraising strategy. This includes creating your ideal investor avatar, developing target lists, refining your message, creating fundraising materials, creating a strategy for moving investors through their decision making process, identifying potential red/yellow flags in your pitch, helping with common mistakes entrepreneurs make while fundraising and how to avoid them, reviewing ideas for deal structure, and even helping guide you through negotiating your deal.

Leadership and Culture

Your company will succeed or fail based on your and your team’s leadership styles and culture. High bandwidth, top performers will run from toxic employees and environments. Good intentions are important but being able to bring your team into a story that will transform people’s lives is a skill that can be taught. Kurt will come alongside your team with his unique style of servant leadership and authenticity that will consistently “move the needle” for the company and change the lives of your team.

Product Innovation

Kurt is often quoted as saying “Innovation will cause the death of average.”, and you see it happening every day as more and more industries are disrupted. The speed of innovation continues to move faster and the spikes of product growth are increasing. Kurt will guide your team through their search for authentic demand and identify potential technology solutions and product opportunities. If needed, he will dig in and help your team identify opportunities for protecting your intellectual property and can even pull together what is needed for counsel to draft patent applications. Having been the inventor on 16 US and international patents, with hundreds of submitted invention disclosures, and having been in the trenches with many early-stage, high growth companies, he brings a unique mix of business skills and technical talent to help your team.

Professional Transition

Need help transitioning industries, moving from one professional environment to another, how about from corporate life into startup founder, or help breaking through your current professional ceiling to your next phase? Kurt will work with you to position your strengths and find team you want to work with. HR experts claim it takes 1 month for every $10k-$15k of base salary to find your next role. Kurt will help compress that time.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Taking a product to market is hard. Magazines like to write stories about the “over night success”, but the reality is a ton of hard work, frequently a pile of failures, and many tests to find the right messaging. Kurt can help your team find “authentic demand” before they even begin building a product and iterate your go-to-market strategy to maximize ARPU.

WHAT GETS KURT EXCITED

Leadership and company building is not for the faint-of-heart. Kurt believes that successful advising is ultimately about mentorship, trust, community building, hard work, compassion, shared learning, and a bit of luck. He’s never been afraid to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty alongside others. Here are some of the traits Kurt tends to look for in those he consider working with.

Passionate people
Fire in the belly matched with humility. Ideas are a commodity – I work with amazing people, driven to win.
Great products
I’ve seen it time and time again – great products win. I look for beautiful software products and great customer experiences – and the desire to get there.
Big opportunities
It takes the same amount of effort to build something small as something large. It’s not just the size of the market – it’s the scalability of the business model and the amount of friction in place that slows scaling.
Unique vision
The goal is to find authentic demand. I love people humble enough to ask the right questions of potential customers and wise enough to seek the “blue ocean” opportunities.
Servant’s heart
A desire to serve others – customers, team members, your family. The most consistent top performers I’ve worked with all have the heart of servant. It’s also a trait I seek to continuing developing in myself, so it will be a journey together.

Kurt Uhlir speaking at Flashpoint at Georgia Tech

Margarita Mendoza and Kurt Uhlir at the Made in America Roundtable in the East Room of the White House.

Tony Wolf, Stuntman and Cultural Fighting Styles Designer for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, teaching Asylum Stunts team Bartitsu and Character Development

Kurt Uhlir and Kristen Rachels at SUNY Global Center - State University of New York

Vitrue NYC Client Summit - Kurt leading roundtable with Adam Archer and Tim Hong. After GamesThatGive acquisition.

First time here? Read a little more of my story and see some pictures from my journey as an entrepreneur, stuntman, model, speaker, executive, husband, and off-the-grid hiker.

Hear my story

Top performers always have advisors
and mentors in their lives