What’s the pulse of the Silicon Valley like at the moment? (June 2013)
Answer by Tom Nora:
Hardware, Biotech and enterprise are the future, but in what ways?
Silicon Valley is ahead of the rest so always wants to find the next trend first. Big data was the thing 12 months ago but is a passe term now. Web/mobile/Video/Social/etc. are over-saturated, moving into the background. Google and Facebook are looking tired, but can still automatically create a ~$20 million valuation for a startup they breathe on. Apple is starting to wobble, the best people are leaving in droves.
Bottom Line : : We're in a lull, a boring quiet time in terms of earth shaking innovation, too many copycats and buzzword companies. That group of people that hears about the party late is now showing up, looking for instant success. Followers abound.
Things will soon go back to normal and the posers will run out of money and leave. The next amazing innovation here will come from the true innovators who remain.
/steve-ballmers-leadership-at-microsoft-the-successes-and-failures
http://m.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/analysis/2290857/steve-ballmers-leadership-at-microsoft-the-successes-and-failures
“Recommendation Swapping” on Linkedin
This has organically happened a couple of times for me – someone I’ve worked with in the past asks me to write them a recommendation and then spontaneously returns the favor. It’s a very cool gesture and it reinforces the relationship for the future.
Below is an example for a startup entrepreneur I just went through a short mentoring process with, Greg Weinstein. Greg will do very well with his company, I could’ve written a lot more about his attributes.
I recommend (get it?) you try this – swap a recommendation with close present or past colleagues; it will enhance both of your social business circles and create new connections.
It’s hard to derive extra value on linkedin, rise above the fray – this will help you do it.
#networking #linkedin #social_marketing
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Gregory A Weinstein has recommended you on LinkedIn
Gregory A Weinstein
Gregory A Weinstein Founder and CEO, One Fulfilling Life
To: Tom Nora
Date: August 22, 2013
Gregory A Weinstein has recommended your work as Founder, Marketing, Community Development at Startup Workshops.
Dear Tom,
I’ve written this recommendation of your work to share with other LinkedIn users.
Details of the Recommendation: “During the early and critical stages of the conception and start up of One Fulfilling Life, Tom provided us with thoughtful, wise and nurturing insight and guidance. He was our “Board of Directors” and the fit seemed very natural and intuitive.
It was an awesome opportunity and I relish the experience. His guidance saved us a lot of time and money and more importantly kept our momentum moving forward in the face of what could have been crippling obstacles. If your a tech start up and especially if this is your first business venture Tom’s your man. Catch him if you can!!!!!
Thanks Tom”
Service Category: Business Consultant
Year first hired: 2013
Top Qualities: Expert, Praxis High Integrity Systems
What is Drupal? or, My retraining in Software Development
Confessions of a Drupalvangelist
Anyone who’s been around me for the past 6-12 months has been inundated with my evangelism of eCommerce in general and Drupal + PHP. This is actually a bit strange for me, as a 20+ year software industry professional, I’ve spent most of my time in the world of extremely sophisticated software tools and languages – several of the startups I’ve worked at and/or launched were based on software tools to build software, so I’ve been in the middle earth of software for awhile.
The So Cal engineering gap? I’ve been able to study the Southern Cal software dev scene as an insider for over 2 years now. As a native LA person, I’m gratified to see so much code and code talk flying around my town. But, there is a serious gap in the discipline, number of developers and community around real software development here. Also lot’s of fake, wanna be CTOs here. (So L.A.) This imbalance keeps L.A. from catching up with Silicon Valley and New York as a stronger startup region. In my career I’ve seen many times the positive effect of a rich software development discipline, full life cycle, QE vs. QA, test driven development, all the “other” parts of SW dev.
The strongest impact on improving this situation is Silicon Valley and Seattle companies – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and others are making enormous investments in building So Cal as a software town. They bring with them confidence, tools, brilliant people and believe it or not, Drupal and PHP.
Drupal has a worldwide engine of real software discipline. The So Cal Drupal scene is highly regarded and has several free meetings every week to teach advanced software life cycle issues. The Getty, USC, The Grammys, MTV, and many more giant websites built in L.A. are built on Drupal.
What is Drupal? Drupal works at all levels of software development. Drupal and PHP were tools I’ve acknowledged for a decade but never studied much. Then last year I decided to re-educate myself in software development, but this time as a regular ol’ coder. Although I have an EE and CS education, my best contribution to technology businesses has been in strategy/sales/marketing/leadership. I’ve had 7 jobs in Silicon Valley in software development companies, but 6 of the 7 were in business development.
When I dove into development with a focus on the future and e-commerce I quickly saw that Drupal and thereby PHP are taking over the scene. Sure you have Ruby, Python, many others, but PHP is winning because it’s so accessible to newbies, and it manipulates the server side continuously, allowing e-commerce, social, geolocation and other apps. Big boy applications.
The world has changed – software development, app dev, and software engineering are taking over the center of the conversation, and Drupal/PHP is taking over the lead. You can actually have a successful startup now with just developers, with just one (although I don’t recommend this), if they’re savvy and humble enough.
What is Drupal? Drupal is prevalent in the Silicon Valley ecosystem? In the birthplace of Java, BSD, SQL and many other critical software technologies, Drupal and PHP are spreading like a California wildfire. Drupal has recently permeated places like Stanford; there are over 1,000 sites on campus now. Ther are 20+ major Drupal dev shops up there, they have BAD Camp every year, one of the top Drupal camps in the world.
What is Drupal? Drupal can make a non-developer earn $60-100,000 per year within a year of study. A Drupal or PHP developer here can make from $50 to $200 per hour; I see it all the time. The problem in So Cal is that the discipline part is weak; we’re just not steeped in the cmplete range of what full cycle development, test, etc. are as a region. PHP and Drupal are partly at fault for this – people who never attended Engineering school can learn these tools in less than year without learning formal computer sciense discipline.
What is Drupal? Drupal is an overly friendly community of helpful people and ample free training and coaching. Drupal is also free open source software with functionality for every possible web application. When I moved back to L.A. in 2010, I gradually saw that among our weaknesses we were very strong in E-Commerce, Fashion Commerce, Mobile Commerce, Content Communities, dynamic sexy websites and it was all based on varieties of PHP/LAMP. Drupal’s weaknesses as a software language tool (push button programming, configuring, too easy, more IT than software dev) are actually its strengths. Even the best software hackers should hack less and use that time to build more functionality and usability.
What next?
1. Go to drupal.org, join up for free, find me there I’m tomn
And contact me if you want my help on anything Drupal or PHP…
[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Drupal or PHP experience’ type=’text’/][/contact-form]
Update: What negotiation tactics does Dave Mcclure use? #500strong
I’ve advised several founders from 500 su and they’ve all said Dave is fair, honest, easy going, and lets you know when you’re cheating yourself. Most venture capitalists will take a little advantage of naive entrepreneurs so this was surprising to hear over and over.
Dave McClure should be thought of more as a movement leader than asking how he negotiates. He doesn’t really have to use any tricks, the whole thing is a brilliant maneuver. Remember, this thing didn’t exist a few years ago.
By design his operation is humble (I know, I’ve lived on Castro Street twice!). He created a new layer for people to get a shot at launching a Silicon Valley start with some cash and mentoring that they never would have otherwise had.
Negotiate? He could be more hard-ass but isn’t. He could wear contacts (or real shoes) but doesn’t. He created his own ecosystem that spreads out all over the world now, and even used some of his own money.
The environment allows people learn how to negotiate. And to fail softly if they fail, which is almost critical to later success.
500 startups went from strange idea to an integral part of the world startup ecosystem. Not many major players are not involved or connected in some way. One of the things Dave doesn’t charge for in his valuations is the connections to that world, and for that he will surely make everyone involved a bit of a winner.
Mark M. Whelan 1 vote by Tom Nora
Tom, this is a great endorsement; however, doesn’t address the question set, being fair, honest and easy going is not a negotiation tactic. I think you are suggesting he is a partner style of negotiator, i.e. looking to find common ground before determining the valuation opportunity…
Good points, but I think those are negotiating tactics, everything is. Dave’s strategy is to focus less on each deal and look for the wins through volume, hence the name. Many VCs on the other hand, heavily scrutinize and try to squeeze the best terms for themselves in every deal.
One key weapon VCs use is the threat of walking away from the deal at any moment. Dave pretty much takes that one off the table before starting the negotiation, giving an advantage to the green entrepreneur.
A classic trick is “all the deals are the same here, therefore there’s really nothing to negotiate” which is never true, but works often.
@tomnora