Speaking

Our speaking focuses on Unicorn Math, the economics of rapid growth. Whether you want to become a Unicorn or not, understanding the process of becoming one enables you to think about growth differently. It enables you to make the strategic decisions to support the type of growth you want to achieve. Based on over 6 years of research into thousands of companies, this framework addresses topics such as:

Market measurement
Market selection and segmentation
Increasing Competitive Differentiation
Improving Product/Market Fit
Enhancing Marketing Efficiency
Forecasting and capitalization

Find Out More

If you’re interested in discussing this please send me a message or email me at cplant@narwhalproject.org

Unicorn Math Workshops

This series of workshops and individual coaching sessions has been designed for startup CEOs and founders to gain better understanding of their own financial. Companies will be able to develop their firm’s capacity to approach five key growth factors: market size, competitive differentiation, product market fit, marketing efficiency and capitalization.

“When a tech startup is ready to begin scaling, it’s vital that they are armed with the right insights to ensure they are aiming to meet the right targets on the path to becoming a unicorn,” said Iain Klugman, CEO at Communitech. “The Unicorn Math program was designed to help Canadian CEOs and tech founders take the guesswork out of scaling and better understand what-where-when-how-why to focus in order to score big.”

“It takes many years to create a successful company and the growth captured on this year’s Narwhal List is a direct result of a long-term pattern of growth,” said Charles Plant. “Through the Unicorn Math program, participants will get an opportunity to deep-dive into their potential financial journey and begin to aim for the right scale-up score on their journey to a $1B valuation.”

Companies interested in participating in the “Unicorn Math” program can reach out Charles at cplant (at) narwhalproject.org. If you want to read more about Unicorn Math, follow the link below.

Bringing Big Ideas to Life

This talk was done in 2019 for Rotman Magazine and is a good summary of Triggers and Barriers.

The Innovation Sweet Spot

While I was developing the concept of Triggers and Barriers, I gave this talk about what I called the Innovation Sweet Spot. It takes a consumer perspective on innovation and helps technology innovators appreciate a different perspective.

Building and Managing a Team

This talk was designed for prospective and early stage technology entrepreneurs who are looking at leadership for the first time. It helps them understand how to do a better job at implementing strategy. To do this, I go through how to use metrics effectively in a manner that is similar to the way Google uses OKRs to manage their activities.

Bootstrapping

Designed for prospective and early stage entrepreneurs, this talk methodically goes through a time-tested way of starting a company without other people’s money. The art of bootstrapping has been lost due to the promise of venture capital money but it is actually the best way of thinking about financing a startup.

Financial Forecasting

I’m not sure how often I’ve heard entrepreneurs (including me) say “The market is $300 million, we only need to get 2% of it to be successful.” Unfortunately, things don’t actually work that way.

This topic goes to the heart of Metrics, a subject I deal with as part of helping leaders connect strategy with action. It is on the execution side of Ideas and Execution and is particularly useful for entrepreneurs. If you knew what your revenue was going to be next year, do you think you could be more profitable? Using metrics effectively is the key to financial forecasting.