Month: December 2012
We are sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas in a country that is recovering emotionally from two disasters named Sandy – one natural (Hurricane Sandy) and one man-made (Sandy Hook). Our politicians in Washington are playing a zero-sum game around the Fiscal Cliff. The CEO of the NRA just held a press conference and said “we should be able to afford to put a police officer in every school” and he called on Congress “to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school in this nation.”
I get 500 emails a day – sometimes more. Many of them are from people I don’t know looking for advice and funding – I try to respond to them all. Every single day at least one of them goes off the rails as a result of my simple and direct feedback, often that I’m not interested in what they are doing. Here’s an example from a few minutes ago.
well if you ever come across investors who give a fuck the business plan is there online, recently updated this morning.
I did clicked your link, it’s just internet plays, you can’t swing a cat without hitting an investor investing there. Like I said if that meant anything there would be no talks of a fiscal cliff. We been investing in the internet for decades and worst for it.
If you in a hole you stop digging but if you are an internet investor you invest in an app that digs a bigger hole.
Brad you live in the same country I do, so where ever you are on the socioeconomic ladder, you in the same fucking hole. Except you investing in shovels and telling me you an expert in that. Oy vey.
This was in response to me passing because the business was something outside software / Internet and I stated that it was outside my area of expertise and pointed the person at our themes.
If this was a once in a while thing I wouldn’t call it out. But it happens every single day. I suppose if I ignored all the random emails I got, this wouldn’t happen, but then I’d be “one of those VCs that isn’t responsive.”
Fortunately this is 1 out of 500. The vast majority of stuff I get from people I don’t know is positive. The ad hominem attacks I get – either from people I don’t know or people I try to be responsive are part of the drill. But every time I’m on the receiving end of one, I think to myself “that’s not a winning strategy.”
Everyone is allowed to feel how they want to feel. But recognize that if you are an entrepreneur, trying to create a business, raise money from investors, sell products to customers, and hire employees, that angry, hostile, and bitter is not a winning strategy. And – if it hasn’t been working for you, maybe try something different in 2013.
I’ve been a huge fan of Xconomy since its debut several years ago. It’s been a refreshing resource for a bunch of startup communities, including Boston (where it started) and Seattle. Over time they’ve added New York, Detroit, San Francisco, and San Diego and are now considering expanding to Boulder / Denver (I encouraged them to combine both as each city is on fire and there’s no reason not to link them together at this point.)
We (my partners and I at Foundry Group and David Cohen at TechStars) are helping them get enough initial sponsors to bring on a full time writer in the Boulder / Denver area. The sign up for the Bring Xconomy to Boulder/Denver page has all the details.
Companies who have already signed up include Application Experts, Foundry Group, FullContact, GoSpotCheck, Gnip, Linksmart, Orbotix, PaySimple, PivotDesk, Precog, Rally Software, SendGrid, Simple Energy, SnapEngage, Standing Cloud, Swiftpage, Sympoz, and TechStars.
Come join us, sign up as a founding sponsor, and help get a great new resource covering the activity in our startup community.
Nope – I’m not talking about an Android phone. I’m talking about an amazing book titled Nexus by Ramez Naam.
Ramez sent me a pre-release version last month. I read it over my holiday in Mexico while I was recovering from kidney stone surgery. I saved it for the end when I was reasonable rested and cogent – it was amazing.
One of my favorite forms of science fiction is what I call “near term scifi.” It’s stuff written two to ten years in the future, usually linked back to current stuff. In Nexus‘ case, Ramez sets it 20+ years in the future, but I’m going to argue that he’s talking about stuff that’s within a decade. My guess is he chooses 2040-ish given the singularity dynamics – I prefer his post-human definition when man and machine merge into one.
Ramez combines science, technology, and a thriller in a very accessible and page turning way. If I ever decided to write fiction, my hope is that I could master the craft of scifi the way Ramez, William Hertling, and Daniel Suarez have. I put him firmly in their league.
If you are looking for a powerfully stimulating book to read over the holidays about where things are going, with a complex hero / protagonist / antagonist structure, plenty of twists and turns, and great scifi that intersects with our reality, go get a copy of Nexus right now.
In the Startup Communities, I talk extensively about leaders and feeders. I assert than anyone in the startup community should be able to start / create / do anything that is helpful to the startup community. They don’t have to ask permission – there is no VP Activities in a startup community. I also talk about how the students are the precious and most valuable resource of a university.
This morning I got the following email from Fletcher Richman, a student at CU. It’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about and it is immediately actionable for every entrepreneur in Boulder and Denver.
Dear Founders and Friends,
As students at CU Boulder, we have noticed that there are many startups that would love hire more interns and full time employees from the university, and lots of students would love to work at a startup. However, there seems to be a disconnect between the two.
We would like to fix this issue. We have created a simple form to get a better idea of the positions available for students at startups that we would greatly appreciate if you could fill out:
I’d like to hire some CU Students!
The data from this form will be used for two things:
1) To help start an online startup jobs and internships board for students that we are currently building.
2) To build a contact list of companies for the Students2Startups fair early next year, which will be bigger and better than ever before!
Thank you so much for your help! Please let us know if you have any questions.Sincerely,
CSUAC and AECU
So – what are you waiting for. Go sign up to hire some CU Students!
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This first appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s Accelerator series last week under the title Cultural Fit Trumps Competence. Also, I’m going to be doing online office hours with the WSJ on Friday 12/21 at 3pm ET – join and ask questions!
The first people you hire in your startup are critical to your company’s success. So it’s easy to say that you need to hire the “absolute best people you can find.” But what does this actually mean?
Take two different spectrums – (1) competence and (2) cultural fit. Imagine that you have a spectrum for each person – from low to high.
Now, you obviously will not hire someone who is low on both competence and cultural fit. And you obviously will hire someone who is high on both competence and culture fit. But what about the other two cases?
Many people default into choosing people who have high competence but a low cultural fit. This is a deadly mistake in a startup, as this is exactly the wrong person to hire. While they may have great skills for the role you are looking for, the overhead of managing and integrating this person into your young team will be extremely difficult. This is especially true if they are in a leadership position, as they will hire other people who have a cultural fit with them, rather than with the organization, creating even more polarization within your young company.
In contrast, people with low competence but a high culture fit are also not great hires. But if they are “medium” competence, or high competence on in a related role, or early in the career and ambitious about learning new skills, they may be worth taking a risk on.
While you always want to shoot for high competence, high cultural fit people when you are hiring early in your company’s life, it’s always better to chose cultural fit over competence when you have to make a choice.
If you are interested in working with a company that is an expert at figuring this out, go take a look at RoundPegg.
I love the emails I get from readers of this blog. Yesterday morning, I got the following from Shane Schieffer of FitTrip and I just saw it as I was grinding through my morning backlog from the weekend.
“Hi Brad, Happy holidays. My friend and I were watching Polar Express with our kids last night, and he commented on the impossibility of skiing down the top of a train towards the engine, even on a crazy steep slope. I know you like to geek out on software and things such as figuring out the algorithms behind slip numbers, how about physics? The question was bothering me so I took a shot at it this morning. Thought I’d share the result. I bet users of your forum could top my work, or find errors, or extend it to further interesting observations. Kind of a fun holiday geeky thing to contemplate, so I thought I’d send it your way.”
This reminded me of a great story from Amy. On her very first trip to Dallas from Boston to meet my parents, she was sitting on a plane next to a guy who was doing a bunch of math sheet of paper. She asked him what he was doing. He said he was calculating how much fuel the airplane needed to get from Boston to Dallas. It turned out to be a guy named Christopher Couch, who was an undergrad at MIT that had crossed paths with me for some reason I can no longer remember. She and Chris had a great time on the plane together talking about all kinds of nerdy things. The entire memory made smile.
Oh – here’s the answer.
“Assuming just the train engine (not cars, and cargo) that the polar express was modeled after, which weighs 361,136kg and has an approximate cross sectional surface area of 10m^2, at freezing (0-deg Celsius) and 1atm of pressure (sea level) on a -128.5 gradient (what the sign said in the movie which equates to a -52 degree slope) assuming frictionless tracks, and a hill tall enough to induce free fall, where no braking nor engine acceleration is applied, and the coefficient of drag is based on a rectangular shape, the train would be traveling 1,434 mph. This is clearly much faster than the terminal velocity of a 6-foot tall man with a boy on his shoulders (say a combined 3m), standing up, weighing a combined 240lbs, with a cross sectional surface area of 2.25m^2, whose terminal velocity would only be 52.5 mph on that same slope. Of course the train itself would create a wind draft that would lessen the difference, but either way the man and boy are going off of the back end of that train. Unless the man is a spirit…”
When I created Startup Revolution and began writing Startup Communities, I insisted with Wiley (my publisher) that the word be “startup” and not “start-up” or “start up” or even “StartUp”. It took a while to (a) get everyone to agree to that and (b) expunge the efforts of the copy-editor to reintroduce some gross variant of “startup” but I finally got it done.
Today I noticed a post from Andrew Hyde titled Washington Post Style Guide Now Includes “Startup” as A Word. Awesome.
We had a similar conversation when Startup America Partnership was formed in 2011. After some back and forth we all got it right.
I’m glad that “Startup” is making its way into the style guides of the old media world.
So – I’ve apparently been hiding under a rock and had no idea about the Nyan Cat phenomenon. The original Youtube video has 89,604,608 views as of this moment. Insane.
Ok – whatever. Wait, shit, five minutes just passed with me playing around with the Nyan Cat site. I’m especially digging Jamaican Nyan and Pirate Nyan. Damnit, another five minutes just disappeared.
Time to download Sphero Nyan Cat Spaceparty. A perfect combination of a cat, a ball, and an iPad.
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At some point in the future, the machines will take over. At that time the machines can create Feldborgs if they so desire; until then there is only one of me.
After a day like today it’s hard to accept that I can’t go to every city on the planet and talk about Startup Communities. Today I was in LA – starting at LaunchPad LA, followed by a meeting with Ivee (so, so cool), then an interview with Jason Calacanis for This Week In Startups, and finishing up with a fantastic evening at Cross Campus, first with about 20 VCs who are the core of the LA VC community and then 300 or so entrepreneurs talking about Startup Communities until late in the night. It was an awesome day and my last travel day of the year.
On Monday, Kelly and I had a chance to go through my 2013 calendar and lock down commitments around Foundry Group and the companies I’m involved in, Startup Communities, and most importantly my beloved, Amy. While I am flattered by the plethora of interest in Startup Revolution, I don’t have the ability to do something physically in many of the cities (or countries for that matter) that I have been requested to visit in 2013. I’m tempted to revisit this after a great day like today, but I’ve made a commitment to myself and to Amy that I’m going to approach travel differently in 2013, and part of that is locking down where I’m going to be in advance of the start of the year.
However, just because I can’t be everywhere physically doesn’t mean I can’t participate remotely via Skype, Google Hangout or some other form of video conferencing technology. I’ve been gradually increasing this form of participation and have had great success with it. If for some reason I can’t make it to see you, but you think a remote session would be useful, just ask.
In the meantime, keep an eye on Startup Revolution where I will be posting book tour cities and dates for 2013 shortly. And – LA Startup Community – thanks for today. Y’all are awesome.