Why We Meet So Early
Add comment June 12th, 2010
“Were all men equal tonight, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier tomorrow.” Elizabeth Gaskell
One reason to get out of bed to get to a 7:30am breakfast.
Posts filed under 'Uncategorized'
Public Transit Tips to San Francisco Meetings
Add comment June 11th, 2010
Boudin Bakery — Embarcadero Center
4 Embarcadero Center
San Francisco, CA
(a) Take the BART to Embarcadero station.
(b) From the Caltrain Station: Take Muni lightrail K from 4th and king and exit Embarcadero
Boudin Bakery faces Justin Herman Plaza (also the Ferry Building)
Adrian Perez Conducting a Study of Entrepreneurial Partnerships
Add comment May 23rd, 2010
Adrian Perez is doing some independent research on what makes for effective entrepreneurial partnerships. He will be joining the conversation this Friday in Mountain View at Red Rock and will share a little bit about his research. He e-mailed me the following description:
Partner compatibility is a foundational part of weathering hardship and making sure a startup discovers and embraces opportunity. If you’re exactly like your partner, you may share a common language, but also have the same blind spots. And if you are too different, you risk constant misunderstanding. Adrian Perez is conducting research into the relationships between character strengths in partnerships. Using the VIA Survey of Character Strengths (available here: http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx ), I am collecting entrepreneurial partnership data to test a hypothetical matching algorithm suggested by the initial work on his research.
More on the study and how it works can be found here: http://www.dropby.com/ElGrande/strengths.html
I took the VIA Survey of Character Strengths a few years ago and found it offered some useful insights into my personal style and effectiveness. Whether or not you want to take part in Mr. Perez’s study it’s free and worth the hour or so of your time it will take to fill it out accurately. Adrian will take part in the conversation on Friday, if you are interested in learning more please either drop by the breakfast or contact him directly.
Tough Minded Optimism Can Sustain Bootstrappers
Add comment May 22nd, 2010
“A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn’t let them get her down.”
Beverly Sills
Optimists (and optimistic bootstrappers)
- Are seldom surprised by trouble.
- Look for partial solutions.
- Believe they have control over their futures.
- Allow for regular renewal.
- Interrupt their negative train of thought.
- Heighten their powers of appreciation.
- Use their imagination to rehearse success.
- Are cheerful even when they can’t be happy.
- Believe they have an almost unlimited capacity for stretching.
- Build lots of love into their lives.
- Like to swap good news.
- Accept what cannot be changed.
“Twelve Characteristics of Tough-Minded Optimists” from Alan Loy McGinnis’ “The Power of Optimism“
Bootstrapper Mandeep Dhillon Launches Togetherville
Add comment May 19th, 2010
One of our fellow Bootstrappers, Mandeep Singh Dhillon, co-founder and CEO of Togetherville Inc, (Togetherville.com) launches his social network for children to the public. Katherine Boehret wrote about them in “A Social Network to Grow On,” reporting that after operating as a private beta with 800 test users for six months, the site went public on May 18, 2010.
“The site provides a social-networking environment that kids can enjoy and that parents will feel comfortable managing. It is designed to function as a safe, kid-centric social network. The site guides kids ages 6 through 10 on how to communicate online with others, using canned responses and parental participation. Togetherville links into Facebook so parents who use the popular social-networking site can have a say in who their children are connecting with and can even interact with their kids online.”
Larry Magid covered them in his “Magid on Tech” column “New Social Site Designed for Children” noting some well thought out features:
Like Facebook — and unlike virtual worlds like Club Penguin — children are identified by their real names and real pictures, but the only people they can interact with are other children who have been pre-approved by their parents.
It’s a totally different model than anything I’ve seen before, and after a preview and several conversations with founder Mandeep Dhillon, I’m very impressed with what they are trying to do.
The idea behind Togetherville is to create online “neighborhoods” similar to real-life neighborhoods where children interact with each other and adults they know.
Only a parent can set up a child’s Togetherville account and link the child to other children and trusted adults such as grandparents and other family members.
Children can interact with other Togetherville members but only by selecting prescreened “quips,” text comments approved by Togetherville staff.
That greatly reduces the chances of cyber-bullying and abusive behavior and eliminates any opportunity for a child to reveal personal information such as their home address.
Kevin Makice calledTogetherville a “Digital Training Ground for Young Geeks” noting that:
Fully compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Togetherville is intended for kids who are too young for Facebook, officially, but have parents immersed in that culture. The 6- to 10-year-olds are invited to engage with their real-world friends, play games, watch videos, and create art. Grownups act as the gateways for new contacts, assuming the responsibility for inviting other families to join each child’s online neighborhood. Experiencing online networking together, grownups can guide their kids through the age-appropriate content in an ad-free environment.
Mandeep attended the Palo Alto Bootstrappers Breakfast in December of 2008 while he was still bootstrapping. We asked him today about his journey since then and for any advice for fellow bootstrappers. He said:
When we started Togetherville, we had passion, and no money. For more than two years I passed up opportunities to do other things because I believed that building a better online experience for my kids was worth it. If you have the passion, you can cross a lot of barriers. We were not going to be deterred, and ultimately, passion is required to produce a product that has real impact.
Gypsy Rogers on “What is a Bootstrappers Breakfast”
Add comment May 14th, 2010
I came across this answer by Gypsy Rogers to the question “What is a Bootstrappers Breakfast?” from a public LiveJournal entry in March and really liked it.
It is a group of entrepreneurs who come together once a month to discuss ways to cut costs and push their businesses forward without trying to get venture capital but also without hurting your business by being too much of a cheap skate.
Griffin Caprio: Bootstrapping is Just Being Your Own Angel
Add comment May 6th, 2010
I came across a recent post by Griffin Caprio on “Being Your Own Angel Investor” at that addressed an issue that comes up at many breakfasts. Here is the core of Griffin’s approach but go ahead and read the whole thing:
“So, if I bootstrapped, but didn’t fund myself with personal money, what did I do? Simple: Consulting. Unsexy consulting. I’m thinking long term and, in my mind, spending a year or so consulting to fill my business coffers simply made sense. I wasn’t trying to strike quickly or catch the wave of any given fad. I wanted to build a business that endures. To do that, I needed a stable cash runway similar, to an angel investment, that would give me the freedom to build the kinds of products I wanted to build. So that’s what I went out and got for myself. However, instead of talking to an angel and trying to acquire an funding in exchange for some debt or a piece of my (non valuable) company, I’ve spent the first 12 months of 1530s existence scooping up any and all consulting gigs I could get my hands on.”
Bootstrappers Breakfast Announces A New Venue In Dublin/Pleasanton
Add comment April 27th, 2010
East Bay Entrepreneurs gather at Bootstrappers Breakfast® meetings to compare notes and share business issues. Monthly breakfast meetings are at Athens Burger Restaurant in Dublin, CA beginning May 27, 2010, at 7:30 a.m.
“We are excited to add a new breakfast that supports the East Bay’s strong entrepreneur culture,” said Sean Murphy, founder of the Bootstrappers Breakfast group. “Gone are the days when the East Bay was just a bedroom community, it continues to create promising innovative startups especially in life sciences and clean/green technologies.”
“We were delighted when Pete Tormey of Action Patents volunteered to moderate this new Bootstrappers Breakfast meeting in Dublin. Pete has co-founded two companies and has extensive experience in both engineering and marketing,” continued Sean Murphy.
Since its inception in 2005, the entrepreneur group has grown to a national organization of startup founders who “eat problems for breakfast”™. The breakfast meeting format allows each entrepreneur to make a brief introduction and to ask for suggestions for one or more challenges they currently have. This encourages attendees to consider new approaches offered from peers.
“Fabulous networking and learning opportunity! I walked away with 2 actionable ideas for increasing my visibility in the community. I’ll be back for more.” — San Diego attendee
“I found it helpful today to have to articulate the specific challenges I am facing in my business in front of a receptive and helpful group of other business people. I also met a couple of great contacts that I plan to keep in touch with.”– Silicon Valley attendee
“I found the people who joined the breakfast were all very smart, experienced and valuable. I will definitely join next time to meet more people.” — Silicon Valley attendee
One entrepreneur’s unusual response to a question about an exit strategy of business, “I am not concerned about an exit strategy. I am more concerned about building a successful business, and then opportunities open up.” — San Francisco attendee
New DOL Guidelines Clarify Test for Unpaid Internships
Add comment April 22nd, 2010
The Department of Labor recently clarified their guidelines in “Wage and Hour Fact Sheet #71″ on the demarcation between employment and an unpaid internship. The fact sheet “provides general information to help determine whether interns must be paid the minimum wage and overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA) for the services that they provide to ‘for-profit’ private sector employers.”
The full text is here http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm the heart of their test follows:
The Test For Unpaid Interns
There are some circumstances under which individuals who participate in “for-profit” private sector internships or training programs may do so without compensation. The Supreme Court has held that the term “suffer or permit to work” cannot be interpreted so as to make a person whose work serves only his or her own interest an employee of another who provides aid or instruction. This may apply to interns who receive training for their own educational benefit if the training meets certain criteria. The determination of whether an internship or training program meets this exclusion depends upon all of the facts and circumstances of each such program.
The following six criteria must be applied when making this determination:
- The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;
- The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;
- The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;
- The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;
- The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and
- The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.
If all of the factors listed above are met, an employment relationship does not exist under the FLSA, and the Act’s minimum wage and overtime provisions do not apply to the intern. This exclusion from the definition of employment is necessarily quite narrow because the FLSA’s definition of “employ” is very broad. Interns in the “for-profit” private sector who qualify as employees rather than trainees typically must be paid at least the minimum wage and overtime compensation for hours worked over forty in a workweek.
The FLSA makes a special exception under certain circumstances for individuals who volunteer to perform services for a state or local government agency and for individuals who volunteer for humanitarian purposes for private non-profit food banks. WHD also recognizes an exception for individuals who volunteer their time, freely and without anticipation of compensation for religious, charitable, civic, or humanitarian purposes to non-profit organizations. Unpaid internships in the public sector and for non-profit charitable organizations, where the intern volunteers without expectation of compensation, are generally permissible. WHD is reviewing the need for additional guidance on internships in the public and non-profit sectors.
VC Expert’s Article on Bootstrapping Techniques
Add comment April 15th, 2010
Kevin Spreng, one of the moderators for the Minneapolis Bootstrapper Breakfasts®, forwarded this article from VC Experts on “Sources of Capital – Bootstrapping Sources And Techniques from VC Experts.” The article outlines techniques in the following areas:
- Friends and Family Loans and Investments
- Alternate Revenue (e.g. Consulting Revenue)
- Customer Prepayments or Discounting Accounts Receivable
- Supplier/Vendor Financing and Extended Terms
- Customer and Supplier Barter Arrangements
- Revenue and Pricing (price increases can provide funds)
- Customer and Supplier/Vendor Investments
- Deferred Employee Compensation
- Outsourcing (e.g. payroll & benefits, manufacturing, distribution and selling)
- Working Capital Management-Inventory, Accounts Working Capital Management-Inventory, Accounts Receivable, and Accounts Payable
- Operating Profit
Although the authors’ sympathies seem to lie with professional investment as the best source of startup capital there are some good overview insights for bootstrappers:
“Bootstrapping is the term used for nontraditional funding of a company using a series of interim techniques and sources to move from one company stage to another…The technique is routinely used by start-up or early stage businesses that do not have institutional or professional investors, keeping in mind that the great majority of start-up and emerging growth companies do not obtain funding from institutional or professional investors.”
“From the perspective of the entrepreneur or businessperson, bootstrapping may be viewed as a resourceful or creative way to address the financial need of the business for an interim period using the cash flow of the business and minimizing the use of external capital until the cash flow of the business can support ongoing operations. Given that excess funds are rarely available in this situation, bootstrapping may have the benefit of instilling financial discipline in the company’s leadership team and processes as they focus on managing cash flow and all of the influencing factors; they grow accustomed to running a tight operation.”
“Most entrepreneurial ventures are bootstrapped to some extent. Sources of funding come from anywhere the entrepreneur can find it. Much of the funding is through the use of services of other companies who might have an interest in the product or service if fully developed or launched. Entrepreneurs are creative, and how they structure relationships with other companies and obtain services is as varied as their personalities. … A word of advice: Never lose control of the intellectual property or enter into a relationship that cannot be reshaped into an independent entity capable of demonstrating growth, creating future value, and being financed.”