500 Startups? How about 5000!

by | Apr 18, 2012 | Angel Investor, Business Development, CEO Succession, early stage, founder, Revenue Growth, Scalability, startup, startup CEO, Tom Nora, venture

Southern California is going to reach the tipping point. A year ago I wasn’t so sure but now it’s getting crazy. Craig Page @CraigDPage hosted a party 2 weeks ago in Santa Monica that celebrated 500 startups in the SM/Venice ecosystem known as Silicon Beach these days, and he may not be far off.

Then last week there was a Venice Town Hall where you could see that locals are in awe of the influx of startups in their (my) little town by the beach. They’re calling it a Venissaince.

Orange County is growing some amazing companies like @signnow who is attracting Tier 1 VC funding @vkhosla.

Coworking spaces, Incubators, etc. Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Diego, Downtown L.A., on and on. C++ meetups where 100 people show up. Jason Nazar @jasonnazar meetings where 400 people show up! Jason Calacanis @jason Startup interview show @TWIstartups with some of the top startup people in the world, who seem to visit L.A. a lot these days. Google has 500 people here now and is building bike paths in Venice. Startup USC. Startup UCLA. Factual! SpaceX.

I love it. I guess it could happen, So Cal could surpass Silicon Valley some day. Never thought I’d say that. My home town.

Oh well….  5000 could easily happen.   @tomnora

The Power of Connection

The Power of Connection

by | Apr 3, 2012 | startup CEO

Last week I witnessed again the difference between 2 people meeting in person compared all other forms of communication we currently employ.

It’s amazing to see the power of the connection between 2 people in proximity to each other. In the startup world, it seems to be winning over the bits and bytes style. I’ve discounted the value of face to face recently as much as anyone, leaning heavily on asynchronous electronic communication for much of my business and personal life, and even using broadcast communication (twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, email, …) to replace individual communications. But we all should rededicate ourselves to the face-to-face – the random, the first time, the networking, the required, the “have a good weekend”. Connecting on LinkedIn or FB is great but usually leads to few subsequent actual interactions. Apple’s face time is bridging the gap nicely, but still isn’t the same. Meetup.com and Eventbrite, founded on this principle of meeting in person as a response to too much Internet meeting, has helped to spawn, grow and change thousands of startups.

So, back to last week – at a startup mixer I was walking past someone headed to my seat, and we kind of got stuck in the crowd face-to-face. He had on a name tag, I didn’t. We couldn’t move. So he stuck his hand out to say hello, and we wound up talking for 10 minutes and definitely made a bit of a connection. We found several things we had in common, most people do. Since then we have met and emailed and referred business to each other, all from a semi-random meeting.

We never would have connected otherwise. If we saw each other on the street or lived on the same block we probably would just walk on by. So get out there, go to things that you like and are interested in. Barriers will melt.    @tomnora

Even In The Quietest Moments (it’s lonely at the top)

by | Mar 26, 2012 | CEO Succession, early stage, founder, Launch, Scalability, startup, startup CEO, Tom Nora, venture

“Even in the quietest moments, I wish I knew what I had to do”   – Supertramp

[This is about the loneliness of the CEO in a startup. A real startup, that has employees and funding and a going operation.]

 

It’s late on a Sunday night and you’re sitting alone preparing for the week ahead. It will include travel, employee issues, hiring, firing, product design, cash burn, a new facility, the next funding round and some client and partner visits. You have a great team for your little startup, in management and elsewhere. You have a few “startup whisperers” who advise you from afar, your parents are very supportive. Your spouse shows incredible patience and listens to your war stories every day. It’s not that you don’t love this, you do.

But in the end it’s all down to you. No matter how many people surround you, no matter who great your ecosystem is, being the CEO of a going startup is often a lonely job. By definition, in the final step of making many decisions is you alone making them.

  • Others depend on you to do this.
  • You have more information than anyone else in the company.
  • You get more blame and more accolades for results.
  • The outside world looks to you first, wants to talk to you.
  • No one is equal to you inside the company you need to maintain your leadership.

So it really is you alone.

 

How do you improve this situation? Draw from all these resources around you, especially external ones.

  • Pick one or 2 board members to get closer to, (pick the right ones).
  • Don’t ask for advise or what to do, that will confuse you and they contradict each other over time.
  • Find an old college or high school friend who’s disconnected from the business. Or a favorite teacher or professor.
  • Pay attention when outside mentors magically appear in your circle; I’ve met some of the best advisors at meetups and coffee shops.
  • Read voraciously, not just business or CEO books, but history, biographies. etc.
  • Try to mentor a potential replacement even if you’re not looking for that; you’ll learn a lot.
  • Use external consultants – management, executive, legal, recruiters to discuss ideas. Mark Zuckerberg hired an executive coach so he could learn to be a leader. The Google founders surrounded themselves with a dozen moentors and advisors.

I’ve found in my CEO positions that optimizing this thinking process can make the difference between success and failure, usually does. Please reach out to me if you want to discuss any of this with me. I’m @tomnora on twitter.

Random Blog Post :: Downtown Portland Photographs

Random Blog Post :: Downtown Portland Photographs

by | Mar 15, 2012 | startup CEO

I lived in Portland for a few years and often miss the special magic that it has. You can try to put it into words – bridges, fog, Powell’s, fresh oysters and salmon, 23rd, Old Town. But it’s better in words, and Hillary caught some of the magic here.

A Day in the City « hilaryschaffnerphotography http://j.mp/zyPk3R