One of my goals from the beginning was for the Bootstrapper Breakfasts to foster a community of practice around entrepreneurship. I think a real community of entrepreneurs is very different from a team of entrepreneurs forming a startup.
Here are some things we have tried to do cultivate a geographically diverse learning community for entrepreneurs.
Encourage a scientific approach to entrepreneurship where founders are clear on what they have observed, hypotheses they have formed, and ways that they plan to test these hypotheses.
Share lessons learned from success and failure (the latter may be much easier in small group conversation).
Foster collaborative problem solving by soliciting diverse points of view, resist the temptation to treat any one book or set of books as scripture or static best practices. Instead search for better practices on an ongoing basis that recognize new technologies, new demographics, new attitudes/zeitgeist.
Recognize that the substantial success of a startup may represent the closing of an opportunity window for identical or even similar startups, consider how the lessons learned from a major success can be repurposed to new situations instead of used as a blueprint or treasure map. Look for new opportunities that success of a major startup enables in the business/ and technology ecosystem enables.
Recognize and reflect the unique strengths and opportunities that exist in each local geography/region. Don’t try and clone Silicon Valley’s model but develop on that leverages the local business ecosystem. For more on this see “Federated Entrepreneurship: Play Your Own Game“
It turns out that 8-16 people having one conversation for 90 minutes can make stronger connections than 60 or 120 sitting in classroom or theater seating listening to a single speaker. These smaller group interactions are much more introvert friendly and tend to do more to foster team formation and development than pitch fests, speed dating, or cocktail party networking models. I have found the network weaving model developed by June Holley and Valdis Krebs offers a number of useful models and metrics for fostering a healthy regional community. See the list of papers at http://www.networkweaving.com/june.html
I welcome questions, suggestions, and observations in the comments or us the contact form for a private reply.
Matt Wensing started bootstrapping Stormpulse with a co-founder in 2006, building on an app Wensing developed from a personal interest in tracking tropical cyclones. He has a thought provoking blog where posted this video on “Bootstrapping Survival Lessons”
The sound quality is not great and he has slow start but stick with it, it’s a very compelling presentation about the joys and challenges of bootstrapping a technology startup. His dawning realization that major corporations, CNN, and the White House situation room are using his service was very funny. Here are some notes I took from the presentation and Q&A session
“The goal of any startup should be to help the greatest number of people find the deepest resolution to a high stakes problem.”
Matt Wensing “Achieving a Profitable Product / Market Fit“
“A startup has to bring a product to market that punches through the status quo by being 10x better.”
Marc Andreessen
Empower your customers.
Need to go panning for gold in your user base. Find the ones for whom your offering is critical to their business or their job. Understand the “forcing functions” at work that will trigger their purchase.
Q: How did South Florida help you build Stormpulse
A: Silicon Valley is like ROTC, you are in college and earning a salary.
South Florida is the marines. You are hacking your way through the jungles of Cambodia. You never have a problem with failing too late in South Florida
Q: How did you manage building a family and bootstrapping a startup?
A: I have no hobbies. I have business and family. It’s not your kids fault that you decided to build a company. Take responsibility and don’t take it out on your kids. Take it out on yourself.
Q: How did you get started bootstrapping?
A: My co-founder and I started by cashing out our retirement savings.
Q: what’s your success point?
A: I have been successful not having a day job. Success would be financial stability, all of what the corporate world offers you without having to work in it.
“I think the main reason I like the Bootstrappers Breakfast is because I have grown to respect the fact that I am not the only one facing a lot of the problems that I have. You come here and talk to other people and bounce ideas off of them and say to yourself ‘Geez, I never thought about solving the problem that way.’ It’s those unexpected insights that make it worthwhile.” Linc Jepson 74ze
Startup Spouses is for the spouse, significant other, life partner, or family member of a startup person (founder or early employees). Please join us to share support, wisdom, and life lessons from our startup journeys. We want to create a safe place to vent when needed and be comfortable talking about the stress of supporting a startup person.
I think it’s an interesting idea and I look forward to seeing it evolve. Spouses and significant others play a number of roles simultaneously to entrepreneurs bootstrapping a startup:
passenger in a race car: they bear much of the risk with little if any control on the outcome
investor / banker: often it’s their job that provides critical household income and medical insurance.
counselor / emotional support: bootstrapping something new is always a roller coaster ride, and the person an entrepreneur is most likely to turn to for help with the emotional fallout is a spouse or significant other.
These three roles interact in ways that both parties have to recognize and manage:
Risk identification and mitigation: it’s important to have a candid discussion about risks, loss limits, and when you will decide to give up or at least decommit in favor of finding gainful employment. It’s also a very good idea to write down a simple summary of metrics and limits so that you both can agree the current level of risk and what you can do to mitigate it. This kind of discussion is important not only before formally starting up but periodically throughout the lift of a startup.
Treat your spouse / significant other as a major investor, give them board level visibility and make sure they understand what’s happening in your business at a high level. This transparency doesn’t mean that they need to offer advice, but that if you ask for advice they have a clear idea of what the current situation is.
It’s important that you have other entrepreneurs you can commiserate with in addition to your spouse or SO, it can place too much stress on a relationship if you become completely dependent upon them for emotional support.
I can recall several times in the last year or two that entrepreneurs have had a husband or wife attend a Bootstrapper Breakfast. The primary purpose the entrepreneur wanted to accomplish in those cases was to demonstrate to their husband or wife that
yes, there were really other people who got up at 7am to make a 7:30am breakfast
there were other entrepreneurs prosecuting their own businesses in a deliberate fashion and they were not alone in wanting to create a new company
they were willing to put serious issues on the table and solicit feedback for how to address or improve a situation.
In none of the instances I can recall did we talk about the interpersonal relationship between an entrepreneur and their spouse. When the spouse is not there it’s not uncommon to point out the need to have a written understanding of the risks and the conditions that will trigger an exit from the business as well as the need to provide them with the same transparency you would any other significant investor.
I think Willis is wise to run this as a separate support group because I think they will cover different issues than we would see in a group of entrepreneurs, but I am interested in what he learns and what we can apply to Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings.
Update: Willis posted an editorial on Silicon Prairie News “Why Our Community Needs Startup Spouses” that provides some more insight into what led him to organize the group:
When I first started out on my entrepreneurial journey, it was almost impossible to find people to talk to. I spent three to five hours a night combing through Google search results for three consecutive weeks because I was determined to get connected with people that could understand what I was going through. At the end of my search, the only event that seemed like a good fit for me was KC Roundtable.
Dealing with the transition from the corporate world to the startup lifestyle is an emotional process on its own.
Anyone that has had to make this transition will tell you the stress on your significant other, spouse, life partner, girlfriend or boyfriend can be as bad if not worse than it is on the startup person. My wife is risk averse. She liked owning a house. She has had to place enormous faith in me to feel comfortable with where we are today, but some days it is really hard on her. I want her to have a place where she can get the same feeling that KC Roundtable gave to me: that there are people out there that have done this before, they ended up OK and they can understand her when she needs to vent.
Thanks for coming.
The format this morning is that we are going to take a minute or two to for each person to introduce themselves to talk about what you are working on and if you have any issues that you would like to discuss. I will make a note of them and make sure that we cover them in the balance of the 90 minutes that we have.
Most of the networking takes place after the formal meeting when people have had a chance to listen to each other and get acquainted and can now talk about things that were discussed at the meeting in more detail.
One of our moderators, Seth Kravitz, runs Technori Pitch. It’s the premier event for startups here in Chicago. He’s been nice enough to get us Bootstrappers a discount code for the next event. It’s a great event and a wonderful crowd of people.
Due to the rise in the number of startups based in Chicago, Technori is hosting the premier monthly showcase of the latest and greatest in innovative startups.
In the style of the New York Tech Meetup (which has launched startups like Foursquare and Tumblr), Technori Pitch is a catalyst for empowering emerging companies. Entrepreneurs, developers, designers, tech companies, investors, and enthusiasts alike come together to bear witness to the most innovative Chicago companies present their newest products.
Held on the last Tuesday of each month, Technori Pitch features live demonstrations from 6-8 companies. Each company will receive five minutes to Pitch their startup or new product, with a three minute Q&A from audience members immediately after.
This month’s event will be held on Tuesday, January 31 at Chase Auditorium in the Chase Building, located at 10 South Dearborn St. Chicago, IL.
This month will feature Moosejaw, Leap Year Project, AttorneyFee.com, GeoRama, Phaxio and a keynote speaker.
We have a discount code for you to use and receive 15% off your ticket price. Register online in order to reserve your spot with the discount code of: bb
The Office for Technology Commercialization invites you to learn more about emerging software technologies and startup opportunities from the University of Minnesota. Don’t miss a presentation from special guest, University of Minnesota Computer Science Professor, John Riedl, entitled “Motivating Active Participation in Social Media Networks.”
The showcase will feature technologies including:
Transportation
Driver Assistive System: a portfolio of technologies that provide vehicle navigation assistance in low visibility conditions.
High Precision Vehicle Navigation: a navigation system utilizing inexpensive inertial and image sensors for precise position and orientation in GPS-denied scenarios, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Autonomous Vehicles.
Evacuation Route Planning Software: identifies and highlights the most efficient set of routes to minimize the transit time for emergency evacuations and large event traffic dispersions.
Medical Education & Simulation
Novel curricula and simulation models to drive healthcare education from surgery to patient education.
A system and method for virtual prototyping, design, verification, and manufacture of medical devices.
Technology in Education
Two computer-based assessment technologies that provide educators with screening, progress monitoring and skills analysis tools for elementary education.
Do your shopping on-line and avoid the crowds, then drop by the Bootstrapper Breakfast in Mountain View this Friday at 9am at Red Rock Coffee. We will be upstairs in our usual location in the corner to the left of the staircase.
Entrepreneurs Unpluggd shares entrepreneurs stories through intimate events, video interviews, and
engaging content. Hear actionable advice and insight from entrepreneurs who have been there, and will share their secrets regarding customer acquisition. The entrepreneurs speaking will answer “How Do I Get My First Customers?”with examples from their own experiences, including successful strategies and not so successful strategies
Related:
TECHdotMN offers a similar roundup of events and profiles for Minnesota Startups
If you are aware of other good sites that cover startups outside of Silicon Valley please leave a comment, we are working on a roundup blog post.
On October 18th Rich Pelavin will join us at the Bootstrappers Breakfast in Sunnyvale as our featured guest.
Rich has a long and successful track record developing innovative system management software and has co-founded three software companies.
Currently Rich is co-founder of Reactor8, a company focused on automation and configuration management in agile development and deployment environments. Prior to his work with Reactor8, Rich worked in the area of virtualization system management at his company Replicate Technologies. Rich also brings experience from his position as Director of Engineering at Cisco Systems where he led research and development in network management. He joined Cisco through the acquisition of Netsys Technologies, which he also co-founded and was a key inventor of their intelligent network management product.
Rich started his career in the research center environment after receiving a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) from the University of Rochester. He holds a number of patents in networking technologies, and is co-author of a book on AI planning and temporal reasoning.
Today Rich will focus on lessons learned when trying to determine the best functionality and scope of a new software product or service being brought to market. Bring your questions and join us for a lively discussion.
Venue: Coco’s Bakery on Oakmead at Lawrence (1206 Oakmead Parkway Sunnyvale, CA) Time: 7:30-9:00AM Tue-Oct-18 Cost: $5 in advance, $10 at the door (plus the cost of your breakfast, tax, and tip)
