by tomnora | Aug 18, 2013 | Angel Investor, Business Development, Hiring, Jobs, PHP, SaaS, Scalability, startup, startup CEO, Tom Nora, venture
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…
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by tomnora | Aug 9, 2013 | Angel Investor, CEO Succession, early stage, founder, Hawaii, Launch, Revenue Growth, startup CEO, Tom Nora
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.
Edit
@tomnora
by tomnora | Jan 19, 2013 | Angel Investor, Business Development, CEO Succession, early stage, founder, Hawaii, Revenue Growth, Scalability, startup, startup CEO, venture
Most startup entrepreneurs focus on one thing throughout the lifecycle of their company: bringing in CASH. C-A-S-H. Cash through investments, revenues, borrowing from F&F, VCs, convertible notes, deal terms, angels, etc. All of these things are magical words to early stagers. I attend and host many meetups and conferences for startups, and consult to several startups, and every founder is inevitably talking about Cash. Cash on Hand, The next Round, we just need $XXX,XXX. Cash, Cash, Cash.
A different way to improve your cash situation is the indirect one – reduce Friction Costs in your ecosystem with peripheral influencers.
In Silicon Valley, Boston, Boulder and a few other places, the growth of the startup world has vastly been enhanced over the past 10 to 30 years by professionals who are not VCs or developers or entrepreneurs – they’re the Accountants, Attorneys, Consultants, Professors, Marketing firms and others who have tremendous influence over VCs, Angels and prospective customers. They are trusted, fairly impartial, focused, big picture and practical. They’re also critical to the processes of business.
If you want to make money rain from the sky, nurture these people with sincerity over long periods of time, not just when you need them. They decrease the friction in doing business by connecting the right people, finding the quickest path between 2 points, making warm vs. cold introductions and telling entrepreneurs when “it ain’t gonna happen”.
So find some of these people and get to know them – here are 10 things you can do:
1. buy them a cup of coffee
2. be real with them, when you don’t need anything.
3. Help them out with something they’re working on.
4. Read What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis.
5. Join my meetup group; you’ll find many of them there and can connect no matter where you live: meetup.com/Startup-Workshops/
6. Invite them to speak at an event you’re hosting.
7. Contact me and I’ll help you find and meet the right people.
8. Create something very cool, nothing gets attention like that.
9. Be a connector. Connect 2 people without any self interest; I do this almost daily.
10. Become an authority on the flow of cash in startups, a very valuable skill.
Tom Nora
by tomnora | Dec 28, 2012 | Angel Investor, Business Development, photography, Revenue Growth, Scalability, startup CEO, Tom Nora
Yesterday I was checking my LinkedIn and ran across an old colleague/friends bio – Teo Yatman. It made me decide to spontaneously write an unsolicited recommendation for him (see below). I’ve only written recommendations on request in the past so this felt really fun, and a little strange to do.
I think the LinkedIn one-click endorsements are awesome, one of the best social media tools in a long time – they are so easy to do and eventually you crowd-vote someones list of skills, so it’s pretty accurate in most cases.
But the recommendations are still valuable – I recommend (no pun intended) that you try this – write a spontaneous recommendation for someone you’re linked to from your past. It will surprise them and cause good will.
Here’s the exchange between Teo and me…
LINKEDIN RECOMMENDATIONS
Tom Nora has recommended your work as Silicon Valley Sales and Sales Management at Mentor Graphics.
Dear Teo,
I’ve written this recommendation of your work to share with other LinkedIn users.
Details of the Recommendation: “Teo and I worked together for a brief time in Silicon Valley in 1987-88 and I’ve told this story many times over the past 20+ years:
I was managing a few account managers at Mentor Graphics, a fast growing high flyer in the EDA/CAE industry, we were #1 against several tough competitors – Daisy, Valid, the brand new Cadence, etc.
The problem was that in Silicon Valley we were losing to local favorites. In the middle of all this, Teo was amazing to watch – he exceeded his quotas every month and could predict almost to the dollar how much he would sell every month. Nobody else, including me, could even come close, or would want to make that commitment. He would get in his car and drive away then come back with a p.o. time after time. I still don’t know how he did it.
I learned a lot watching his positive disposition and his confidence – he always had a big smile. I haven’t seen Teo in over 20 years, but I’ve thought of him often when I lose confidence about closing a deal – “What would Teo do?” And usually it works! Thanks, Teo.”
Response from TEO:
Hi Tom!
Thanks so much for an awesome recommendation! I was surprised and amazed when I saw this. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you in any way. I honestly enjoyed working with you back in the day. Hope you and your family are doing well. Do you live in SoCal? If I head down that way I’d love to connect with you – maybe a lunch in honor of the good ole days!
Heartfelt thanks!
Teo
@tomnora
