Private Startup Stock Trading
Software is ahead of Social Media – a sign of things to come.
http://j.mp/KzXAgR
My Response to “The dirty secret behind the incubator boom” in #VentureBeat
This is great! Congrats to Mr. Dao for stepping up to this. Thx @lieslchang for forwarding. I was at that same pitch fest. This is what I call “Harvesting Youth”.
I think MVP is usually MVBS. There are so many things wrong with the current climate. I’ve written about this many times in my blog, often being called a spoil-sport. Many “mentors” are teaching young entrepreneurs the wrong things, in order to cherry pick them for their own projects. They’re being taught to recite stupid sayings like “Killing It” and “Pivot” and “Seed Round” when they’re doing none of those.
A $50K seed round? $25K?
As someone in the startup world for over 20 years it’s sad to watch what the word startup has become, sunk to. A startup is inventing, it’s UNIQUE technology, UNIQUE idea, UNIQUE deployment. A shoe store is not a startup. A startup is something to be nurtured, built, caressed, enhanced.
For the L.A. vs. Silicon Valley comparison, these mini-launches aren’t helping L.A.s reputation. There are some incredible companies growing in L.A., but way too many fake startups.
The other crazy thing going on? Now everyone says “I’m gonna learn to code”. Ridiculous.
@tomnora
500 Startups? How about 5000!
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
Even In The Quietest Moments (it’s lonely at the top)
“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.
Shout Out to Seth Levine, or the In-N-Out burger startup
Shout Out to Seth Levine – Seth Levine’s VC Adventure – “I’m getting sick of the bull$%!^”
http://www.sethlevine.com/wp/
Seth Levine, a successful VC with the Foundry Group, wrote a great blog entry about all the hype going on currently in the startup world. Worth the read. His focus is on people bragging about how amazing they and their startup are when they usually have close to n o t h i n g, which goes against the karma good business and screw it up for those really trying to build strong long lasting companies. If more people like Seth step up with their qualified voice, they could help save us from or lessen the big crash coming.
I’ve been harping about this a lot (too much?) for over a year:
Currently Los Angeles is in what could be a startup renaissance or an apocalypse, dependent on how long the hype goes on. Based on Seth’s article, I realize it must be happening everywhere. The signal to noise ratio continues to degrade, but it’s actually moving into the next phase. Investor groups are cutting out the management, bus dev, sales, and marketing professionals, trying to get raw, young engineering teams that have never negotiated a term sheet to give away their IP rights and equity for next to nothing.
Some of these projects will produce amazing companies. But most participants (young developers) will raise their hopes, fail and get spit back out into the cruel world within 2-3 months(!) and become a jaded unemployed 25 year old. Or realize down the road that they gave away a lot for a little. Many investors now advertise that want only developers, they will cover all business/marketing/etc. needs. Don’t put real business people on the actual team. To reuse an overused term – Wait what? They offer them zero to a few thousand dollars and office space. I call it harvesting youth.
Recently there was a developer only coding party where, in a few hours, you form a team, think of an idea, then design, develop, deploy a website. The compensation? All the alcohol you could drink and In-N-Out burgers. Now don’t get me wrong, I love In-N-Out burgers, some of the best in the world. My favorite is the Double Double animal style (see photo). But the sad thing here is that after that party many of the participants think they have a startup.
The word startup used to be about very unique technologies being deployed in very unique ways, creating new markets and capabilities in the world. Having knowledge and experience had value and a balanced team was required. Balance, humility, hard work. Facebook and Google had plenty of business people deeply involved. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg is a great salesman, and a pretty mediocre programmer. Now almost anything is a “startup”, and almost everyone is “doing” a startup. And bragging about it before it happens. We’re spreading resources over way too many businesses, knowing most have no change. I know it’s a risk game, I’ve been in it 25 years, but there should be some intelligence invested in the outset. One VC recently told me that his investors don’t care if he does no due diligence, as long as he “brings them another Facebook”.
Real startup successes are measured by growth, revenue, shareholder value, making something from nothing, ROI, longevity. Not just this weeks buzz or a $25,000 seed round. They devised with strategy, ingenuity, an ecosystem. Long term employment, new jobs.
The good news is that this hype period will end, probably soon. Then the remaining companies will be much easier to watch and enhance and benefit from. @tomnora
The “Pre” Startup is adding air to the bubble
There seems to be a lot of this going around these days – the “I’m just about to start a startup” category of entrepreneurs, or “I just started a startup” when they haven’t. It’s also become the new euphemism for unemployed.
Here are the justifications and logic process for so many claiming they have a startup before they really do, and in many cases actually getting some funding:
- people feel like they might as well start their own business since nobody is hiring
- funding is more prevalent than ever for early early (read “ideas”) stage companies
- the barriers are now very low for actually forming a business, as is the cost
- micro funding ($25K)
- no formal certification or education required
- many new angels spawning from Google, Facebook, etc. millionaires
- angel investors are supporting these early unqualified launches; many are F&F/parents who believe in the dream
- amazing shining examples of success and IPOs, even though they a 1 in a thousand
- it sounds cool, or used to before everyone started doing it
- many people never before involved in startups want in
There will be significant fallout from this no doubt, but no one knows when.
Not that there’s anything wrong with many new businesses per say – here are some good results of such a rush
- some of these will be the next homeruns (and base hits) in the startup world
- lots of jobs being created, even if short term
- first time startupers will get invaluable experience, whether they succeed or fail
- many more people are learning software development
However, the fallout from all this will set us back a few years again …
- many misled, unsophisticated angels will get burned and sour to good investments (not sophisticated angels, they know the risk)
- whenever investors jump in late (now) many bad things happen
- innovation is heavily suffering right now – almost anything is a business model
- when many vaporware and vapor-businesses crash or fade away they leave damage, possibly fueling the recession (remember 1999-2000? 2008?)
…but will take us back to a more solid footing.
The American Dream of entrepreneurship is one I hold dear, but to apply it to a technology based startup requires a few basic principles – a real business model, hard work, technical excellence, outside expertise, sustainability, market focus, strategy, and more hard work. Eventually it also needs revenue growth and profits.
Hang on tight the roller coaster is taking a dip soon, I predict by mid 2012. It will shake out many people into the streets wondering what the hell happened. @tomnora