disruptorMonkey

What can you do?

In previous posts I've talked about about what I'd like to see happen here.  I strongly believe that RTP is a great area with a ton of potential  The recent Startup Weekend in Chapel Hill confirmed my opinions about the depth and range of talent here.  And that's not the only indicator...

I had lunch with an undergrad student today.  He's already started one company and is anxious to do many more.  He also wants to create a focal point for students interested in entrepreneurship.  When I was his age, I think I was mostly focused on how my bar tab was getting paid.  So (a) I feel old, (b) I'm wondering where I wasted so much time, and (c) I'm impressed.

Back to my point.  What can you do?  A lot!

It just takes a few disruptive folks to band together with a purpose and things can be changed for the better.  Sure, we can all sit around and bitch about early stage funding, but that doesn't help.  Building a community that attracts attention might.  So I've said it before, but I'll say it again: if you want to connect, reach out. 

While on that topic, does anyone want to start an Open Coffee Club?

Chapel Hill Startup Weekend: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly...

It's done.  I've had some sleep.  Now it's time for a review...

For those of you that weren't following the weekend, we voted to build Workperch, a service that matches people or groups that need temporary space with businesses that have space available. 

A lot of folks have an occasional need for a conference room, office or other venue; but they only need it for an hour or two and aren't ready to commit to leasing a full office.  We fill the space between a coffee shop and an executive suite.  In the future, we could see getting in to other kinds of spaces, like church halls and other venues.

The business model was simple:  we charge a referral fee to customers (Workperchers) when they book a space, we take a slice off the top and the rest goes to the person offering the space (the Host).  They are nominally inviting the Workpercher into their space as a guest, and accepting a small fee to cover their
administrative costs i.e. they are not sub-leasing or renting the space itself.

So if I need a real office for 2 hours to take a meeting with my advisors, I'd book a space through Workperch for $20-40 or so.  If I had an office with a conference room that's empty 3 days a week, I could generate a little revenue from referral fees.

It's not a $B-number business, but it can be a tidy profit maker.  It also does a lot to help out the local small business community.  Last, but not least, part of our mandate was to put some of our profits back into sponsoring local business community events, like Open Coffee Clubs, Noonhat, BarCamp etc.

On with the review.

The Good

A big shout out to Andrew Hyde.  He's been running Startup Weekends pretty much non-stop since the first one.  His management style is informal but effective and he has a good nose for trouble and how to resolve it.  Any kind of short intense project is always brutal and Andrew handles it well.  I'd be more than happy to work with him again in the future.

I'm too lazy to go through a long list of individual shout-outs, but hopefully the folks that impressed me know who they are. 

I do think some highlights are in order just to give you an idea of how willing some people were to just get on and do something they had never done before.  In no particular order, here are some examples:

_____Day Job________________At Startup Weekend I worked on..._____

Motherboard designer.............User experience, biz dev and market research
Soon-to-be-Attorney...............Biz Dev, copy writer & tag line guru
Java Engineer......................Ruby on Rails server setup genius
Network Engineer..................User experience and PR guy
Web/technology consultant.......SEO keyword man, biz dev and market research
CTO..................................All round GSD -- like GTD, but different ;-)

Emily deserves a shout-out too -- she would have been in the list above, but I don't remember what her day job encompasses...  And last but not least, thanks to the folks that voted for other ideas but jumped all over this one anyway.  Nice work.

As for me, I mostly stayed in/around biz dev, PR, marketing and the other seven levels of corporate damnation...  I even managed not to add to the feature creep list, and any engineer knows that biz dev guys are drawn to feature creep like moths to a flame...

To me, the point of Startup Weekend is to build a community (something I've talked about previously).  Unlike a BarCamp, there is more (and closer) interaction with a broad cross-section of people because you are trying to achieve a concrete goal.  Within that context, I think the weekend was great.

The Bad

We don't have a finished product. 

Again, for me that wasn't the real goal of the weekend, it was about the team.

In my misspent past, I ran a 3D animation studio.  There were more short and intense projects than I care to recall e.g. go from a standing start to deliver 19 minutes of animation in 6 weeks, with 19 more due every two weeks thereafter; or complete a sizzle piece for a major client from basically nothing in 24-48 hours (my former colleague Tony is unbelievably skilled at that).  I've also been actively involved in shipping 20+ products and a lot of small dev projects (internal tools etc).

If there is one thing I've learned, it's simplify, simplify, simplify...  Projects always expand to fill the time and resources available.  This gets exponentially more true as the timeline gets shorter.

For a Startup Weekend to launch a product by Sunday night, the idea and execution needs to be simple and _something_ has to be ready for feedback by Saturday night. 

Let me be clear, I am not slamming the efforts of the dev team.  They worked their butts off.  But from my terribly-jaded-from-too-many-scars perspective, we should probably have relied a lot more on off-the-shelf code with a nice wrapper, rather than creating something wholly new.

I know that's not as fun in some ways, and it's a different kind of challenge.  But then many of us were effectively doing the same thing -- building on the work of others or things we'd done previously.

And of course, with dev work there is always a _ton_ of foundational stuff that has to happen before you see anything pretty on the surface.  So what you see part way through is really not representative of all the work that's been completed.

Moving on...  My other disappointment early on was that some folks simply didn't want to work on (a) any of the ideas, or (b) the idea that was voted for.  To me, the point was to come together and do something, it didn't matter what the "something" was.  While I was happy to defend my idea, I would have worked just as hard on any of the other ideas suggested if those had been chosen by the group.

However, the folks that weren't happy were a very small minority, and some of them simply voted with their feet (which is fair enough).  For the most part, even the staunch defenders of other ideas jumped in and GSD'd with the best of them -- Katie the Recipe Lady being a great example.

The Ugly

Well, right now the baby is pretty ugly.  We'll see what the next few weeks bring. 

Most of us probably have minor cases of laptop thigh burn too.

And last, but not least, for me it was tough to see even less of my wife and daughter than usual.  Fortunately they sent me a steady stream of photos and text messages to keep me entertained...

Thoughts for other Startup Weekends...

If you're thinking about setting up or attending a Startup Weekend near you, here's my $0.02:

1. Respect the Hyde.  The Hyde is law :-)
2. Come ready to work on anything
3. Defend your ideas, but be open to criticism
4. If you have an idea or concern, speak up.
5. When the group makes a decision, the decision has been made.  Move on.  No circling back.
6. Get a list of your top line deliverables as soon as possible
7. Try to give anyone a shot at a task, regardless of their experience.  They may surprise you.
8. Big buckets of sugary bubble gum are your friend.  Seriously.  I learned this from creative sessions at Hasbro.
9. Consider the potential repercussions of 34 people eating burritos when there's only one bathroom (nothing bad happened, but the plumbing equivalent of Chernobyl was surely near at hand).
10. It's about the experience far more than it is about the product.

And that, as they say, is that.  Workperchers of the world unite!

StartupWeekend is almost here...

StartupWeekend comes to Chapel Hill this Friday.  Did you sign up yet?  If not, why not?

I've got no idea what we'll create, but it's sure to be interesting. You can read my earlier thoughts here...

Thanks to Glen Caplan and Hutchison Law for jumping in and donating the necessary legal work.

Buckets o' Startup Weekend...

Logan and I sat down with Gwen Bell the other day.  She's currently a local to the RTP area, but has been involved with StartupWeekend since the first event in Boulder, CO.  It sounds as though preparations are well underway.

I know I've already posted about the event, but since I am currently stretched too thin to take a pro-active role in organizing the thing, throwing out ideas and opinions here is my attempt to contribute.

I will be there for the whole weekend, and you should consider going too. 

Who the heck else is going to go to something like this?  I have no idea.  But here's my $0.02 as to who I'd like to see:

1)  Smart enthusiastic folks that are willing to kick some new ideas around for a weekend
2)  People from all disciplines and walks of life (this is not just for software developers)

You don't have to be an entrepreneur launching your own business.  You don't even have to want to do that as your day job.  If you've got skills a business could use and want to experience building something for the price of a weekend, come on down.

Okay.  I'll put the soapbox away.

Here are the first ideas that popped in to my head as ideas we could tackle.  There's been no detailed thought, just some noodling.  Bear in mind that I'm trying to think of things that could actually be done in a weekend...

1)  Zillow for commercial real estate.  How handy would it be to have Zillow-like functionality for office leases etc.  Zoom in to an area and see what people are paying  i.e. some kind of Google Maps mashup.  I'm just not sure where we get the data from.

2)  Tools for a StartupWeekend.  How about a bundled set of tools to roll out a StartupWeekend (or any other kind of intensely collaborative short project).  The idea would be to combine multiple open source apps into an easy to install/setup bundle.

3)  CraigsBuddysList.  Shopping/comparison engine for used goods.  Polls ebay and craigslist to find specific used items...

Just trying to start the wheels spinning.  I gather there will be a forum of some kind set up in the next few weeks -- I'll post the address when I have it.

Startup Weekend comes to Chapel Hill

As I've said before, I'm not sold on the idea of a StartupWeekend as a way to build a business, but I do think it is a brilliant way to help build the startup community.

If you have any interest in participating, you should head on over here and sign up.

We need more of a community here, so put your money where your mouth is and sign up :-)

I believe they'll have pie.

p.s. Thanks to Phillip Rhodes for the heads up.

My Thoughts on a Startup Weekend for RTP...

First of all, I want to be absolutely clear that I mean no disrespect to Andrew Hyde, the man behind the original Startup Weekend.  I think it was a visionary idea and the inspired debate alone makes it worthy of a tip o' the hat.

One of the things I have always disliked about the internet is how easily it enables anonymous and highly negative criticism.  If you have something to say about someone, stand up and attach your name, or a real handle (one you consistently use in many venues) and be prepared to defend your opinion.

It is certainly NOT my intention to sling mud at Andrew's idea.  As I've said, he had a visionary idea that is worthy of praise.  The event's ability to bring together the Colorado startup scene was impressive.  While I'm sure there were moments that were tough for everyone, it is quite clear that the process had an enormous positive impact on the region and the community.

I am very convinced that the process is brilliant and adds huge value.  However, I am equally uncertain that the goal is the best way to drive the process.

The pros, as I see them, are:

#1 (by a mile):  Building/consolidating/unifying/expanding the startup community.  Not only did this event network the existing startup-minded folks, it lured in newbies that were on the fence about the whole startup experience.

#2:  Getting folks that would otherwise not interact to work together e.g.  programmers and evil marketing people like me

#3:  Pushing hard for a solid goal in a short period of time.  My only issue with events like BarCamp is that the free-form structure deliberately doesn't lend itself to achieving a particular goal, which leaves me wanting more...

#4:  The ability to gain first hand experience of the ups and downs of a startup while only risking a weekend.

However, there are some fairly major cons, some of which other local folks like Dugald have already discussed.  I'll skip past some of the more obvious issues, and go straight to the big ones from my perspective:

#1:  This was a weekend adventure.  I believe most of the attendees had real jobs, many of them in startups.  The passion that it takes to commit to a startup is huge, and once you are drinking the coolaid, it is very hard to leave.  I think the essence of being "in" a startup is best captured by the first few lines of Casabianca (disclaimer: I had no idea what the name of this poem was until about 5 minutes ago -- I'm am not that culturally edjumacated...)  

  The boy stood on the burning deck  
  Whence all but he had fled;  
  The flame that lit the battle's wreck  
  Shone round him o'er the dead.

The best and brightest in a failing startup are often there until the bitter end.  The whole damn boat can be on fire and sinking rapidly and still they will hang on.  Committing a weekend to something is unlikely to persuade these folks to leave their current startup for a new idea.  In other words, you're building something around a team that won't stay around.  The ones that will stay on are more likely to be the less experienced, further tipping the odds against success.

#2:  In most startups, there is some kind of core idea around which everything coalesces.  There is usually one primary owner of the idea, who has managed to get other people to believe.  The idea expands, changes and evolves, but there is always a core of 1-3 people that define "the path" and keep everyone on it.  This core, and the people that guard it, is the greatest strength (and weakness) of any startup. 

In the case of disruptorMonkey, I had the original seed of an idea back in May/June 2006, sat on it for a few months, then pitched it to Andre and it grew from there.  Logan joined in October, the idea grew, changed and became more concrete.  We are in sync with the vision of what we are building and why. I just don't see how you reach that in one weekend with 70 people.  It's like being a recent hire at Google -- you and 69 other people all arrive one day and are just trying to figure out what makes things tick.

#3:  Products take time to build, test and finesse, even the simplest ones.  Almost no-one wants to build a crappy product (I am biting my tongue here for a change, so bear with me), but a weekend is just not enough time to really make a full product.  More than a weekend is going to be a commitment problem for many people, and as per note #1, the folks that can commit may not be the best experienced for the task at hand. 

#4:  The structure.  As I understand it, 50% of the equity was split between all attendees and 50% held in reserve for those that got the job done.  I completely understand the logic here, but it is a messy structure that would probably scare an investor (if the company sought funding at a later date).

Part of not just slinging mud is to make some suggestions, so here are mine:

#1:  Hack for Humanity:  think of the essence of Habitat for Humanity, but instead of building a house, we're building a product.  It doesn't have to be quite as morally lofty as Habitat, but the end result should be a useful product or service, and should probably end up as an open source project so others can carry the torch.  There would be an initial weekend, where a problem gets identified, teams put together and work is begun, but the project would actually take place over a period of weeks.

#2:  xCombinator (with apologies to Paul Graham):  Think X-Prize meets yCombinator.  Teams come together in a friendly but competitive way to build something on a fixed schedule.  Each team has to build something soup to nuts, and be able to pitch it, by the deadline.  A panel of worthies chooses a winner, who wins the prize (ideally a big fat wad of cash or a full beer truck).

#3:  Pitch 'n' Bitch:  Anyone gets to come and pitch an idea or product (BarCamp style) to everyone that shows up.  The audience gets to pile on, dissecting each idea.  The winning pitch gets free therapy to recover from the beat-down.

#4:  Startup Hackathon:  A traditional hackathon but with the aim of building something that is a product plus a plan -- so multiple mini-Startup Weekend teams competing over a fixed period of time.

I'll give it some more thought and see what I come up with.  Feel free to jump all over me in the comments...

Thoughts and Updates from BarCampRDU

First of all, a big thanks to Fred and the rest of the team for organizing the whole enchilada.

Second, I met someone that Dugald Wilson, who actually reads this blog.  Even better, he liked it.  I'll be wearing my swollen ego with pride for the next few days ;-)

Third, but certainly not last, thanks to Erik from Fetzco Coffee  -- Fred suggested them and I gather everyone liked the coffee.

There were some interesting sessions and I got to meet some smart and talented people.  Anyone trying to follow up can reach me via the email feedback form on our home page or send it to nick at disruptormonkey.

I have to confess that when I casually threw out a couple of ideas for sessions, I didn't really expect to end up presenting them.  As a marketing guy, I figured I'd be a bit of a social leper at this event.  But maybe the presence of a Microsoftie was what made me more socially acceptable.  All sins are relative, after all...

I gave two presentations:

• What's stopping YOU from starting something?
• A lot of Marketing and Sales is B.S.  Let's discuss the parts that aren't.

Someone Brian Russel had previously suggested a StartupWeekend session (sorry -- I don't remember your name, but it's the man behind the startup wiki) which got rolled in to my session.

With the minor screw up on lunch (catering was late) I was up earlier than I expected, and ended up winging it more than I had intended, but everything seemed to turn out okay.

Some notes/thoughts from the sessions:

Most of the startup session attendees were coders.  While the number one concern expressed was paying the mortgage, (not a surprise), more folks than I expected cited "not knowing what they were getting into and needing business advice".  Food for thought there.

We talked a little about yCombinator and TechStars, and of course  StartupWeekend. There are a lot of things I like about the StartupWeekend model, especially with regard to building an entrepreneurial community, but I do have some concerns about feasibility.  Again, food for thought.

There was one suggestion that we plan one in two weeks, but I really can't see putting everything in place by then (venue, sponsors, ideas etc).  Not that I'm suggesting I run it -- my bandwidth is stretched pretty thin at this point.

If you're interested in doing a StartupWeekend in RTP, head on over to the wiki and make yourself heard.

I promise to think about it some more and do some future blog posts.

My BS session had a decent turnout too -- hope I delivered something of value.  I'll be posting much of what I talked about here over the next week or two.

One final note, for now.  I mentioned some sales and marketing books to a few people that I think are worth the read.  For those of you that don't know me, I am usually VERY reluctant to recommend marketing books because so many of them are bad or faddish (The Tipping Point was certainly the book du jour today -- not saying it's bad, but there are _some_ other books out there).

My current top book is "Marketing That Works: How Entrepreneurial Marketing Can Add Sustainable Value to Any Sized Company" by Howard Morgan, Leonard Lodish and Shellye Archambeau.  Normally I would run from a book authored by a VC and two Professors, but this is probably the single most informative and practical marketing and sales book I own.  Read it and learn.

For straight sales info, Jeffrey Gitomer's "Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness" will teach you a great deal.  I find it an incredibly annoying read, but Mr. G. knows his stuff and the book has a ton of great ideas and information.  But trust me, this book will scare you and you will feel slightly soiled and used after you read it.

A "classic" of marketing, in my opinion, is still "Positioning" by Al Reis and Jack Trout.  If you want to understand branding and what it should do, this is a great place to start.

More to come as I think of it.  A great day was had by all...