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.

Responses: Santa Fe Friends + Cali Friends + +

Responses to my Santa Fe Friends + Cali Friends + + letter. In chronological order.
So you and Rich Murray became friends? how long did he last at NMCC?LOL
peggy
Hey Tom Baby!!! Im HERE!!!Patsy

Lets get together soon

Loved this message!
Thank you.
I have some good ones for you to meet.
Can you send more info on your social media (or otherwise) focus?
Peter

– Show quoted text –
> * **@tomnora* <http://twitter.com/tomnora>* |
> *@cowlow<http://twitter.com/cowlow>
> * | *LinkedIn <http://linkd.in/qwVquV>* *
Tom,Thanks for the thoughtful note. We miss you and look forward to seeing you soon.The NM Green Chamber of Commerce wants a ‘buy local’ app. Does such a thing already exist?Would you be interested (or know someone) in creating it? Alex works with the chamber and I know the folks involved.

Don’t get shot out there.

Joe

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

yeah very good friends. he runs the poker game! Not long with Jarrett. He barely remembers him.
Tom Nora ✆ to MeiMei
show details Sep 16 (3 days ago)
I missed the excitement of the real business world and the water.
I made amazing friends out there and enjoyed small town life very much, but needed to plug back in and wanted to launch a startup here.
New Mexico is a weak startup location – missing many parts and move too slowly. The best of both worlds is to have both, but I can only live in one place at a time.

Napa is probably similar to Santa Fe in many ways, I could see you living there. Hope all is well for you, have a glass of wine for me.


Tom: Congrats on your move, I wish you the best.

Enjoyed our discussions and adventures. Hope we can stay in touch and please let me know when you get back this way.

Best personal regards,

David

yeah just say when. lunches are pretty open. will you have a car?


T
Yes I’m interested, building up a strong little team here of app developers. Tell me whom to connect with. 
Also interested in Teres Kids progress. Did u guys get funding yet?

I’m sure 9/11 was a thoughtful day for you. Take care.
Tom,Wow, what a great letter, what a great way to catch us all up on your move.
As someone who still hangs on to her LA area code, I love your new city and consider it still “my city” even though after seven or eight years here,
I have to admit I’m not living there anymore.

I’m going to be out there in early October to attend Indiecade…do you have a free couch?

You should see my paintings!  I am making major progress!

I wish you all the possible best in your new environs and really do hope to stay in touch.

Note my new phone number and I cc’d you on my go-forward email address after I leave EPIC in January.

BE WELL!

Big hugs,
Stephanie


Good luck Tom, thanks for staying in touch.
Stephen Hadwin

Hi Tom. Thanks for your soulful update. Gotta get tough if you’re gonna stay in LA though! Just remember, compliment everyone on everything and you’ll fit right in. – JB

yes i’m back in the groove, moving faster, no mo “manana”, headed to Arrowhead today to catch up with OC friends.
Good luck, Tom. Let’s try to keep in touch.

I had a great weekend in San Francisco and I’m trying to figure out how to get back more often.
Need to start generating some income so I can afford a small apartment in the city.
Trying to figure out how to schedule a trip to India with my new partner in our social enterprise.
Anyway, give me a call when you get a chance. Enjoy the urban life.
Gary
Thanks for the official welcome – i’m stuck in town this weekend but could go next wkend if ur still painting. Are u painting walls or canvases?


Heather: Now that Tom is living in Los Angeles, it would be a real favor to my friend if you would drag him along to some events there so he
can get integrated into the social media and tech scene there.Stewart
wow.  Life changes, the one thing we can always count on.  Back in LA, must feel strange in some ways,
exciting in others. . . curious Tom, as we haven’t talked in awhile, what prompted the move?  And, did you rent a u-haul?
I know you like Nascar and all, drive fast and all, but somehow you and Frieda in a u-haul?  Nah. . .
I may be in LA to look at some projects there, so maybe we’ll connect.
Texas is unreal, even for me, but here I am.
Brazos y besos
Kathy


Iim at district 13 right now u gotta check it out.

Gonna miss you! I had no idea that you left to the bigger city.  I do get out there as my sister lives near you, in the West Hollywood area and my son, is enrolled at Claremont McKenna College.  

So, I’ll be sure to give a call when in the area.  Let me know when you are visiting NM and I’ll make a point of taking you for drinks.

 

Have fun and make a difference out there!   Lillian

  

Hi Tom—

Wow I had no idea you were moving!!! We are definitely going to miss seeing you and hearing about all your entrepreneurial experiences at our events.

Best of luck in California and next time you are visiting in NM let me know. J

Take care! Shandra

Absolutely.
Tom, please feel free to email or call me. Social Media Week LA is happening right now and I believe there’s some events
(looking into it). If not this week, there’s a few good events every month. Would love to connect.Heather

From: Stewart Alsop <salsop@

CASH IS KING. Or is it?

Aurum Rex. Nummus Rex. Emptor Rex.

I.e. Cash Is King. An old sayings, but so true in the startup growth equation. Where does revenue fall here? Is it more or less important? What about Strategy? Revenue? Growth? Buzz? Profit? A “Right On” product?. Smart People? Ambition? Your position on the Bell Curve?

When a startup has none, cash seems like liquid gold that can flow over the business and cure all – salaries, resources, exposure, growth, success, new offices, marketing. But often entrepreneurs fool themselves into thinking that lack of cash is their only problem. I’ve been involved or almost involved in so many early stage companies that said “If only we had $XXX in cash, everything would be o.k. Sometimes they get the new cash but still can’t scale or survive. Cash is certainly required to play, but it has to be part of a larger system, purpose, goal.

Venture capitalists, controllers of cash, are always looking for mind blowing new things that can “change the world”; can step out in front of our regular world and catch fire, anticipate what the world needs that no one else has figured out yet. And they have cash, high risk cash, to take a shot at being part of these new phenomenons. They get in early and guess at the future, which means they could be often wrong. But that’s not a problem; they only have to be right once in a great while to win big. That’s the game they’re in. What an exciting job!

On the other side we have the yet-to-be-funded or need-more-funding startup. Whatever cash is in this company is less than enough to spark it to the next level quickly enough to meet the business goals, or often just to make the next few payrolls. Is this you?

So what about REVENUE? Revenue is close to cash in it’s power within a startup. It can solve so many problems, including cash issues. It attracts more cash investment, it creates profits, it legitimizes your business. Revenue has to be managed properly and leveraged wherever possible, but those are good problems to have. It’s eventually more important than cash, especially when it’s steadily and predictably growing. Growing revenues, not cash, create higher valuations.

Early on, most startups focus more on adoption, eyeballs, users, traffic, assuming these will infer and convert to future revenue (Twitter, Google, Zynga, Facebook).  The actual cash on hand and/or revenues don’t fully support the business, but no problem if major growth is apparent.

So is that it? User adoption? For Twitter it is, they’re currently at a valuation of 40X revenues, way high. But there’s no question that they’re permeating the globe, possibly with more longevity than Facebook.

The bottom line is value. What value, how many valuable things is your company providing. What’s better, cheaper, faster, unique, easier. Google is a great example of amazing and increasing value to user. It’s all of the above, mostly free, with an attitude of always wanting to provide more to its users while simultaneously simplifying use of everything digital.

Early on Google didn’t focus much on cash or revenue; they eschewed it, they had a higher goal – organize all the worlds information. Their goal and execution of it was most important to them. Of course they also happened to be a few blocks away from the highest concentration of venture capitalists on the planet, but they went 3 years without VC funding. Their first 2 years they had no revenues and received only $100K in funding, from Andy Bechtolsheim.  A year later they raised $25 million. Their great ideas and excellent execution came before any cash.

So maybe cash shouldn’t be #1 for an ambitious startup, rather amazingness should, true passion, even if it’s nights and weekends around your day job.

@tomnora   @cowlow   @norasocial