I get many opportunities to talk with pre-entrepreneurs who are at various stages of exploration, from "I saw the Facebook movie" to "my side project is generating revenue". Something that comes up frequently in these conversations is "why entrepreneurship?" This is a very broad topic with myriad reasons behind it, and each answer is unique to the individual. However, I recently noticed that regardless of who I'm speaking with, one consistency across conversations has been commentary on why it has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. I'm not the first person to say this and it would be a terribly depressing indication of the state of entrepreneurship if I were the last. Whatever the case, the key areas I tend to elucidate on include entrepreneurial education, startup accelerators, modern technology, channels to consumers, availability of funding, startup hubs and supportive communities, and social acceptance. Below is a brief outline of how these play into this being the best time in history to be an entrepreneur.
Education
Over the past 10-15 years, our understanding of what goes into starting a successful business has rapidly expanded. Although our collective knowledge about this topic has emerged through several decades of academic research and practical experience, it was largely Steve Blank's 2005 book, Four Steps to the Epiphany, that opened the concepts up to the masses. His teaching led to the Lean Startup movement, which was propelled by anecdotal publications like The Lean Startup, Running Lean, and many others that followed. With the momentous spread of his teaching, Steve Blank later cleaned up the presentation of his material in The Startup Owner's Manual, which is essentially the text book on how to build a startup. All of this activity resulted in a strong base of easily-accessible knowledge on how to start and build a successful company. This is not to say that the Lean approach, which has largely been the focus of the past 8 years, is the only way to create a startup, or even the right way, but that we have made tremendous progress in the codification and sharing of information on this topic.
In conjunction with the development of knowledge around entrepreneurship, educational institutions have created curricula that is better suited for training entrepreneurs. Stanford, in particular, has been a leader in redefining how entrepreneurship is taught at universities. We have also seen the emergence of fantastic new programs like SWNext, which was enabled by Startup Weekend's unique position in the market and collaboration with amazing local facilitators around the world.
It probably goes without saying, but we have also accumulated a wealth of online resources, many of which are freely available to anyone with Internet access. There are numerous websites and blogs dedicated to educating entrepreneurs in areas as diverse as law, finance, technology, customer acquisition, and nearly any other topic one could ask for. Stanford has even started offering courses in entrepreneurship and related topics online and other academic institutions have followed suit. The vehicles for these online offerings are usually online education platforms such as Udemy and Coursera, which also host a multitude of other courses in entrepreneurship and technology.
Accelerators
With many thanks to Paul Graham, a fairly stable format for offering entrepreneurial training and startup acceleration has taken shape over the last 8 years. A more hands-on and rigorous complement to other educational resources, the 3-month bootcamp model he pioneered has become the de facto standard. Today, Paul's own YCombinator remains a top program along with TechStars, AngelPad, and 500 Startups. Many believe that for entrepreneurs, these programs are far superior to traditional MBA programs, particularly in light of the time required, the financial burden, and the lack of practical work involved in traditional programs. There is even a diversity of technology-, vertical-, and market-specific accelerators in most regions of the United States as well as internationally, but since many of these are newer, it remains to be seen how successful they are. In the meantime, I haven't met anyone who has regretted the experience of going through the fore-mentioned programs, so I feel like they're a pretty solid bet.
Modern Technology
Anyone up to speed on modern software practices is likely to be familiar with the availability of modern tools and will agree that it's unbelievably easy to quickly get a live web service up and running. Services like those offered by Heroku, AppFog, and AppHarbor extricate us from the nuisance of purchasing and deploying hardware, configuring infrastructure, complex deployment processes, etc. Now, we can simply code up our control logic on a framework like Ruby on Rails or Code Igniter, add a rich presentation layer using Bootstrap, and deploy via Git, all while collaborating and preserving the codebase using Github.
Don't know how to code? It doesn't matter anymore. There are a million services out there that don't require any experience writing software. You can create a sign-up page using Launch Rock, a store front using Shopify, and pretty much anything else you can think of. One limitation that stands out is the creation of mobile apps due to app store policies, but mobile web is unrestricted, so it's easy enough to create a mobile-optimized website instead of a native app.
For those more technically inclined, the world of open source has grown at an explosive rate, thanks to public code hosting services like Github and CodePlex. It's easy to nab code for nearly any flavor of indexing, caching, load balancing, data processing, and so much more. There is some unbelievable stuff freely available because developers want to share their work and allow others to benefit from it. There's an API for almost everything from payment processing to mobile backend as a service. Most of these services have a free offering for minimal levels of consumption.
Don't get me wrong - the solid engineering required to build a robust product takes great skill. But there are so many tools available that most of us can get much farther, much faster, and with much less domain-specific knowledge than ever before.
And let's not forget about physical products, which have largely been back-of-mind since the tech boom in the 90's. Just like web services, physical products are getting easier to create as well. For $25, you can buy a pocket-sized Linux server (Raspberry Pi) or easy-to-program microcontroller (Arduino). You can create physical objects in hours or even minutes using 3D printers like those sold by MakerBot. Too expensive? Head over to one of the many local shared spaces opening up like Seattle's MakerHaus. What these machines are capable of vastly reshapes the limits of our creativity.
Channels to Consumers
What difference do all these technological innovations make if we can't reach consumers? The whole world is familiar with social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and others that make it easier to build a following and distribute content. We also have channels like eBay and Amazon.com to get our products in front of existing, active consumers. For our web services and apps, we have app stores on every mobile platform and at least one store for browser extensions, Google's Chrome Web Store. To access new customers, we can get substantial reach using Google's Ad Words or Facebook Advertising. The best part about modern online advertising is that every platform I'm aware of allows us to target specific user profiles so we get our message in front of the particular audience we're targeting.
Aside from marketing and sales, these tools can be used to validate our ideas against our target customer segments. When we put out an ad and no one clicks through, or no one converts into a paying customer, there's a good chance something was broken about our business model, whether the customer segment we were targeting, the value prop we were offering, or something else.
The ability to reach people for the purpose of market validation is worth elaborating on. There are a plethora of tools like Mechanical Turk, aytm, and Google Consumer Surveys that help you get copious amounts of feedback more quickly and at a lower price point than traditional means. Of course, it's also good to jump on services like LinkedIn and WhitePages to drum up direct leads. We don't want to get lost in the technological wonderland that surrounds us and forget the importance of sending email, making phone calls, and hitting the streets for in-person conversations with customers.
Availability of Funding
Immense change has occurred in the past few years around financing for startups. Naturally, angels, angel groups, and VC firms are still around, but we've also seen the rise of super angels. Likewise, alternative sources of funding are available such as the revenue-based loans offered by Lighter Capital and crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter. Just like there are new ways to reach consumers, there are new ways to reach investors. Angel List facilitates entrepreneurs' abilities to connect with angel investors to raise financing.
A new development worth keeping an eye on is the passing of the JOBS act last year. While we're still waiting for the act to be implemented by government, numerous companies like Fundable aren't waiting. You can put your startup's profile on their platform today. We can expect many anticipated and unanticipated challenges in this area, but I am eager to see how it shakes up the world of entrepreneurship over the next two years and beyond.
Startup Hubs and Supportive Communities
Startup hubs are growing organically in nearly every major city in the world. Most of these hubs have champions who are deliberately driving the growth of the tech and startup communities within them. Outside of Silicon Valley, cities like Seattle, New York, Boston, Austin, Colorado, and Chicago have thriving communities of entrepreneurs and the resources needed to support them. Each of these cities has accelerator programs, great universities producing tech and talent, and extensive availability startup-oriented services.
I can't speak in depth about other startup communities, but Seattle's is extremely supportive. Community members want you to win and most are willing to lend a hand in one way or another to see that you get there. While there is competition among the companies here, the general consensus is that success in our community is a benefit to all of us.
Social Acceptance
Entrepreneurship may not have been widely accepted as a productive career path prior to the 90's and it may have had some bad stigma after the eruption of the Internet bubble in the early 2000's, but from day-to-day conversations I'm having today, I'm finding that people living completely outside the startup orb have some familiarity with and appreciation of entrepreneurship and those pursuing it. Of course, most people don't understand the mindset of an entrepreneur or what an entrepreneur goes through to build their business, but fortunately, our supportive startup communities help us to cope with the emotional challenges of entrepreneurship.
So, What Are You Waiting For?
Hopefully this has provided some valuable food for thought. For those who are on the edge of exploring entrepreneurship, I strongly encourage further exploration. Talk with friends working at startups, try going to Startup Weekend, or get involved in the startup community in some other way. If you're ready to take it a step further, go work for a startup. And if you've done your homework, have the right risk profile, and are ready for an amazing roller coaster ride, go for it! It's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
How Customer Development Landed Me at a Top VC Firm
For the last 8 years of my life, I've been immersed in the design and implementation of large-scale distributed systems and data processing pipelines. In December of last year, I began working for the top VC firm in the Northwest, Madrona Venture Group, where I help our portfolio companies with their technical hiring needs. Yeah... I went from engineer to recruiter and what's more surprising is that customer development is what got me here. Nearly everyone I talk to asks me how I ended up at Madrona, so here's the story of how customer development landed me at a top VC firm.
I first came to Seattle at the beginning of 2008 to work on an incubation project at Microsoft that would later become Windows Azure. After about 2.5 years on the project, it became clear that the trajectory of relevant skills I was acquiring had started to taper and that my experiences on the team were no longer driving me toward my long-term, entrepreneurial goals. It was time for a change and while the decision to leave a high-performing team wasn't an easy one, it was a good one.
My next stop was another incubation project in Xbox Live, where I would be exposed to new challenges and greater scope of responsibility. Even though we were running at 100 miles per hour, I forced myself to make time outside of work to supplement my personal development. I was constantly volunteering in the local startup community and reading as much material as my attention span would permit. Toward the middle of 2011, conversations about Lean Startup were becoming increasingly pervasive and The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Lean Startup quickly found their way onto my reading list. These books and the surrounding conversations led to a personal epiphany that, in a very short time, changed the way I view and approach the world.
As 2012 rolled around, I began finding ways to practice the concepts I had been reading and discussing. Startup Weekend was one of my first practical immersions into the world of customer development and immediately became a habit. Since weekend hackathons are limited in scope, I also signed up for an online course on entrepreneurship taught by Stanford's Dr. Chuck Eesley. From February through June, I worked my way through the course with an amazing group of local classmates. After invalidating numerous ideas, one of my classmates and I decided to re-hash the discussion of why we wanted to build a startup. Among other things, two key drivers stood out: the ability to carefully craft a culture we were excited about and proud of, and to build a team we loved working with. From this, we began exploring the possibility of using these concepts as the seed for an idea rather than limiting them to being principles upon which we'd built the business.
With some thought, we identified the problem of bad hires as something we wanted to solve. Since we both have a passion for startups, we initially defined our target customers as hiring managers at high-tech software startups. While hiring mistakes were viewed as a problem by some of the people we spoke to, it wasn't generally viewed as a major concern. Instead, our conversations consistently and inevitably would turn into conversations about how companies couldn't get enough high-quality software engineers into their hiring pipelines. It was easy to recognize that this was a much sharper pain point than what we had started out with, so we decided to change course, likewise redefining our customers as recruiters of senior engineers at fortune 500 software companies.
At this point, we decided to participate in the local session of SWNext, which was headed by Andy Sack. With Andy's candid feedback and the support of our cohort, we slammed on the gas. In fact, by the third week, we were interviewing recruiters so aggressively that a director of recruiting at one of the companies told me to stop talking to his company's recruiters. While I was shaken by this reaction (our goal was to make their lives better, after all), I wasn't deterred and we continued sourcing interviews from other companies.
At about this time, I started to wonder whether VC firms centralized recruiting to provide their portfolio companies with some of the advantages of scale that large companies have. To find out, I reached out to someone from Madrona with whom I had become well acquainted over the past year to ask. Within a week, I was on the phone with my soon-to-be-manager, Robin Andrulevich. As we dug into the challenges she faces in her work, she mentioned that Madrona was considering opening a new role to help the companies with their technical talent needs. This piqued my interest and I quickly asked if we could have another conversation about it.
By this time, I had become fairly knowledgeable about recruiting, thanks to all the interviews I had done. Further, I had been experimenting with many of the tactics the recruiters had been sharing and had actually gotten fairly good at finding information about people. These factors were an important part of why Madrona was willing to take a risk on someone who hadn't done this type of work in the past.
Although it has been only two months since I joined, I can confidently say that Madrona is an exceptional firm, as are its companies. I really love the work I do and find it extremely gratifying to be helping amazing entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Robin and I get a lot of heart-warming, appreciative feedback from them and we get a lot of thanks from the engineers we connect since we genuinely care about their interests and do what's right for them. And the best thing about all this is that none it feels like "work" - it's a passion that lets me wake up every morning excited about the day ahead. With the knowledge, skills, and connections you make through customer development, it's pretty incredible where it can take you.
---
FYI, if you're interested in what Madrona's companies are working on, we just started a technical mailing list where we'll be sending a quarterly email with technical developments, invites to exclusive events, free swag, new investments, etc. You can sign up here: https://groups.google.com/group/madrona-tech-connection/subscribe. If you're interested in working at a startup, you can contact me directly at hakon@madrona.com.
I first came to Seattle at the beginning of 2008 to work on an incubation project at Microsoft that would later become Windows Azure. After about 2.5 years on the project, it became clear that the trajectory of relevant skills I was acquiring had started to taper and that my experiences on the team were no longer driving me toward my long-term, entrepreneurial goals. It was time for a change and while the decision to leave a high-performing team wasn't an easy one, it was a good one.
My next stop was another incubation project in Xbox Live, where I would be exposed to new challenges and greater scope of responsibility. Even though we were running at 100 miles per hour, I forced myself to make time outside of work to supplement my personal development. I was constantly volunteering in the local startup community and reading as much material as my attention span would permit. Toward the middle of 2011, conversations about Lean Startup were becoming increasingly pervasive and The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Lean Startup quickly found their way onto my reading list. These books and the surrounding conversations led to a personal epiphany that, in a very short time, changed the way I view and approach the world.
As 2012 rolled around, I began finding ways to practice the concepts I had been reading and discussing. Startup Weekend was one of my first practical immersions into the world of customer development and immediately became a habit. Since weekend hackathons are limited in scope, I also signed up for an online course on entrepreneurship taught by Stanford's Dr. Chuck Eesley. From February through June, I worked my way through the course with an amazing group of local classmates. After invalidating numerous ideas, one of my classmates and I decided to re-hash the discussion of why we wanted to build a startup. Among other things, two key drivers stood out: the ability to carefully craft a culture we were excited about and proud of, and to build a team we loved working with. From this, we began exploring the possibility of using these concepts as the seed for an idea rather than limiting them to being principles upon which we'd built the business.
With some thought, we identified the problem of bad hires as something we wanted to solve. Since we both have a passion for startups, we initially defined our target customers as hiring managers at high-tech software startups. While hiring mistakes were viewed as a problem by some of the people we spoke to, it wasn't generally viewed as a major concern. Instead, our conversations consistently and inevitably would turn into conversations about how companies couldn't get enough high-quality software engineers into their hiring pipelines. It was easy to recognize that this was a much sharper pain point than what we had started out with, so we decided to change course, likewise redefining our customers as recruiters of senior engineers at fortune 500 software companies.
At this point, we decided to participate in the local session of SWNext, which was headed by Andy Sack. With Andy's candid feedback and the support of our cohort, we slammed on the gas. In fact, by the third week, we were interviewing recruiters so aggressively that a director of recruiting at one of the companies told me to stop talking to his company's recruiters. While I was shaken by this reaction (our goal was to make their lives better, after all), I wasn't deterred and we continued sourcing interviews from other companies.
At about this time, I started to wonder whether VC firms centralized recruiting to provide their portfolio companies with some of the advantages of scale that large companies have. To find out, I reached out to someone from Madrona with whom I had become well acquainted over the past year to ask. Within a week, I was on the phone with my soon-to-be-manager, Robin Andrulevich. As we dug into the challenges she faces in her work, she mentioned that Madrona was considering opening a new role to help the companies with their technical talent needs. This piqued my interest and I quickly asked if we could have another conversation about it.
By this time, I had become fairly knowledgeable about recruiting, thanks to all the interviews I had done. Further, I had been experimenting with many of the tactics the recruiters had been sharing and had actually gotten fairly good at finding information about people. These factors were an important part of why Madrona was willing to take a risk on someone who hadn't done this type of work in the past.
Although it has been only two months since I joined, I can confidently say that Madrona is an exceptional firm, as are its companies. I really love the work I do and find it extremely gratifying to be helping amazing entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Robin and I get a lot of heart-warming, appreciative feedback from them and we get a lot of thanks from the engineers we connect since we genuinely care about their interests and do what's right for them. And the best thing about all this is that none it feels like "work" - it's a passion that lets me wake up every morning excited about the day ahead. With the knowledge, skills, and connections you make through customer development, it's pretty incredible where it can take you.
---
FYI, if you're interested in what Madrona's companies are working on, we just started a technical mailing list where we'll be sending a quarterly email with technical developments, invites to exclusive events, free swag, new investments, etc. You can sign up here: https://groups.google.com/group/madrona-tech-connection/subscribe. If you're interested in working at a startup, you can contact me directly at hakon@madrona.com.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Startup Weekend, Women's Edition
As I stepped into the Perkins Coie conference room in downtown Seattle, I felt a sudden rush of self-conscientiousness. I was in the minority in a room with about 85% women. This was Startup Weekend Seattle: Women's Edition, a special Startup Weekend event focused on women in technology and entrepreneurship and I was one of a small number of men at this event. I immediately thought "this must be what it feels like for women who come to the majority of startup events that are predominantly male." I normally have no problem engaging in conversation with entrepreneurs and engineers, but this felt different. My mind flooded with questions. Would I be the annoying guy who came to participate in this women's event? Would I say something stupid and embarrass myself?
Walking through the room, I eased up a bit when I ran into someone I had met in the street only a few minutes prior, where I had helped her get a handle on parking in Seattle. She was a business professor teaching in southern Asia, who had just arrived from a Startup Weekend event in Australia. It was fascinating to hear about her experience teaching outside the United States and her thoughts about entrepreneurship. I moved on, a bit more comfortable with myself, shortly joining a conversation with a pair of women who had been exchanging backgrounds. I tried to learn more about them and told them a bit about myself. And with that, my fears came true - complete disinterest in speaking with me. One of the women excused herself right away and the other was fairly quick to distance herself conversationally. It's funny how this would go nearly unnoticed in the circumstances I'm used to, but how in this situation it felt incredibly acute. Fortunately, I then ran into a friend, Irena Menn, with whom conversation helped me to regain my composure.
Transitioning into the event kickoff, we all took seats as Julie Sandler of Madrona Vetnures and Shauna Causey of Decide.com, introduced us to the event and laid out what to expect from the weekend. Dalia Al Said followed with an inspiring story of her involvement in entrepreneurship in Egypt and how she organized the country's first-ever Startup Weekend. Next came Dawn Lepore, CEO of drugstore.com and one of the top businesswomen in America. These were remarkable speakers and I hope we'll continue to see such exceptional female leaders inspiring us in this way.
After hearing some fantastic pitches, we broke out and formed teams. With discussions ensuing, I quickly noticed that the style of communication and interaction was markedly different from what I was used to. Rather than giving quick bios and jumping into tasks involved in putting the project together, the team and I spent more time getting to know one another through casual conversation. I found it interesting how conscientious I was about this and how deliberately I had to resist the urge to push things forward prematurely.
The team and I shared some incredible experiences and it was really amazing getting to know my five female partners over the course of the weekend. Highlights for me included going out to the Pike Place Market to interview people in our target market, trekking around town for hours looking for a color inkjet printer to make iron-on t-shirts, seeing the pitch deck come together, and really getting to know the others over lunch. The exceptional ladies I worked with included Adriana Moscatelli, Bonnie Mattson, Karmin Mauritz, Hema Natarajan, and Nnenna John. Each was smart, fun to work with, and brought valuable unique skills and experience to the team. And most fortunate for me, they were completely accepting and kind to the "odd man out".
Something that always shines during Startup Weekend events is the mentors, and this was no exception. In fact, I would say the things were really stepped up a notch for this event with lots of leaders and great role models coming out to show their support. Kate Matsudaira made a critical contribution, giving us some early advice as the first mentor we talked to and setting us down the right path from the outset. We also got valuable advice from Janis Machala, Susan Sigl, and Jean Brittingham. And special shout-outs go to Bob Crimmins and Julie Sandler, each of whom spoke with us multiple times throughout the weekend to provide feedback and to help us refine our pitch.
As the weekend wrapped up, Adriana delivered a flawless pitch despite fretting over it during the run-up to our allotted time. As we waited for the results, the team was beaming with anticipation. At that moment, I distinctly recalled my first couple of Startup Weekend events and the uncontrollable excitement right before hearing who the judges had deemed "winners". I had decided to participate in this event to experience the diversity and to meet people who I hadn't had to opportunity to meet at typical startup and tech events. Although we didn't end up placing among the top three, I got so much more out of the weekend, even with the high expectations I had going into it, that I was nothing less than ecstatic. Though my teammates were disappointed with the results, we nonetheless regrouped in a mini-celebration, donning our custom-made t-shirts and sharing hugs before heading home for some much-needed sleep.
Walking through the room, I eased up a bit when I ran into someone I had met in the street only a few minutes prior, where I had helped her get a handle on parking in Seattle. She was a business professor teaching in southern Asia, who had just arrived from a Startup Weekend event in Australia. It was fascinating to hear about her experience teaching outside the United States and her thoughts about entrepreneurship. I moved on, a bit more comfortable with myself, shortly joining a conversation with a pair of women who had been exchanging backgrounds. I tried to learn more about them and told them a bit about myself. And with that, my fears came true - complete disinterest in speaking with me. One of the women excused herself right away and the other was fairly quick to distance herself conversationally. It's funny how this would go nearly unnoticed in the circumstances I'm used to, but how in this situation it felt incredibly acute. Fortunately, I then ran into a friend, Irena Menn, with whom conversation helped me to regain my composure.
Transitioning into the event kickoff, we all took seats as Julie Sandler of Madrona Vetnures and Shauna Causey of Decide.com, introduced us to the event and laid out what to expect from the weekend. Dalia Al Said followed with an inspiring story of her involvement in entrepreneurship in Egypt and how she organized the country's first-ever Startup Weekend. Next came Dawn Lepore, CEO of drugstore.com and one of the top businesswomen in America. These were remarkable speakers and I hope we'll continue to see such exceptional female leaders inspiring us in this way.
After hearing some fantastic pitches, we broke out and formed teams. With discussions ensuing, I quickly noticed that the style of communication and interaction was markedly different from what I was used to. Rather than giving quick bios and jumping into tasks involved in putting the project together, the team and I spent more time getting to know one another through casual conversation. I found it interesting how conscientious I was about this and how deliberately I had to resist the urge to push things forward prematurely.
The team and I shared some incredible experiences and it was really amazing getting to know my five female partners over the course of the weekend. Highlights for me included going out to the Pike Place Market to interview people in our target market, trekking around town for hours looking for a color inkjet printer to make iron-on t-shirts, seeing the pitch deck come together, and really getting to know the others over lunch. The exceptional ladies I worked with included Adriana Moscatelli, Bonnie Mattson, Karmin Mauritz, Hema Natarajan, and Nnenna John. Each was smart, fun to work with, and brought valuable unique skills and experience to the team. And most fortunate for me, they were completely accepting and kind to the "odd man out".
Something that always shines during Startup Weekend events is the mentors, and this was no exception. In fact, I would say the things were really stepped up a notch for this event with lots of leaders and great role models coming out to show their support. Kate Matsudaira made a critical contribution, giving us some early advice as the first mentor we talked to and setting us down the right path from the outset. We also got valuable advice from Janis Machala, Susan Sigl, and Jean Brittingham. And special shout-outs go to Bob Crimmins and Julie Sandler, each of whom spoke with us multiple times throughout the weekend to provide feedback and to help us refine our pitch.
As the weekend wrapped up, Adriana delivered a flawless pitch despite fretting over it during the run-up to our allotted time. As we waited for the results, the team was beaming with anticipation. At that moment, I distinctly recalled my first couple of Startup Weekend events and the uncontrollable excitement right before hearing who the judges had deemed "winners". I had decided to participate in this event to experience the diversity and to meet people who I hadn't had to opportunity to meet at typical startup and tech events. Although we didn't end up placing among the top three, I got so much more out of the weekend, even with the high expectations I had going into it, that I was nothing less than ecstatic. Though my teammates were disappointed with the results, we nonetheless regrouped in a mini-celebration, donning our custom-made t-shirts and sharing hugs before heading home for some much-needed sleep.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Lean Life
With all the thinking I've been doing about the lean methodology, I had a very interesting thought about life.
Consider that the "runway" a startup has is now defined as the number of build-measure-learn cycles founders can iterate through before having to give up on the company. The faster the iterations, the longer a company's runway. Thus, we are no longer defining a company's runway as time-dependent, but instead as cycle-dependent. This means founders with little time can still have a decent runway. It also means that founders with a lot of time can have very short runways. It all depends on the way in which they address progression.
So what if we stop thinking about life as being defined by time? What if we start thinking in terms of act-assess-learn cycles? Age would no longer matter and what we really care about is the number of times we can accomplish something and learn from it. It seems reasonable to ask what happens to the long, ambitious life goals? Well, just as build-measure-learn doesn't replace a company's vision, act-assess-learn doesn't replace having short and long-term goals. In fact, it makes it more likely that we'll reach our grand goals since we are taking short, measurable steps that result in verifiable progress and help push a flywheel that builds momentum off our experience.
In the act-assess-learn model, maximizing the number of cycles maximizes the length of our lives. What exactly does this mean? It means we have more control over our lives than we did when we measured them purely in units of time. It means we have to focus more on value and less on a ticking clock. It means we maximize the satisfaction we get out of life, satisfaction of course depending on the individual's values.
Consider that the "runway" a startup has is now defined as the number of build-measure-learn cycles founders can iterate through before having to give up on the company. The faster the iterations, the longer a company's runway. Thus, we are no longer defining a company's runway as time-dependent, but instead as cycle-dependent. This means founders with little time can still have a decent runway. It also means that founders with a lot of time can have very short runways. It all depends on the way in which they address progression.
So what if we stop thinking about life as being defined by time? What if we start thinking in terms of act-assess-learn cycles? Age would no longer matter and what we really care about is the number of times we can accomplish something and learn from it. It seems reasonable to ask what happens to the long, ambitious life goals? Well, just as build-measure-learn doesn't replace a company's vision, act-assess-learn doesn't replace having short and long-term goals. In fact, it makes it more likely that we'll reach our grand goals since we are taking short, measurable steps that result in verifiable progress and help push a flywheel that builds momentum off our experience.
In the act-assess-learn model, maximizing the number of cycles maximizes the length of our lives. What exactly does this mean? It means we have more control over our lives than we did when we measured them purely in units of time. It means we have to focus more on value and less on a ticking clock. It means we maximize the satisfaction we get out of life, satisfaction of course depending on the individual's values.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Lean Startup Machine Day 3
Strap yourself in... this is a bumpy one.
Yesterday night, we deployed a website late in the evening to test our hypothesis that experienced developers would sign up for an event where they'd work with startups on weekend-long projects to give both parties a chance to better evaluate one another. We wanted to try to get 20 experienced developers to sign up for the event by 10 am. The site was up and running quickly and we sought ways to promote it. Then came a huge mistake that we won't ever repeat and which we will share with others so they don't repeat it. After a verbal sign-off from someone we thought was associated with a particular brand, we added that brand's logo to our site to entice potential participants to sign up based on brand recognition. Looking back, it's hard to say why didn't further checks our facts before pulling the trigger. We really got caught up in the moment and let it blind us.
As today morning came around, we ramped up our marketing effort. We promoted as much as we could with a goal of hitting our target. In the end, we didn't make the bar and went back to analyze our next move. At this point, we realized that we had skipped a step by not interviewing developers first and finding out what their needs were. So our next hypothesis to test was that developers wanted to learn about and work at startups. But that's not nearly as noteworthy as what happened next.
I believe around 10:30am, we received a cease and desist call from the legal counsel of the company whose logo we had used. We immediately took the site down and started working on an apology to the involved parties. We knew we had messed up and wanted to do our best to undo any potential harm we had done to a brand we love. The right thing to do was to be open, honest, and sincere.
The ironic thing is that we probably would have had success if we had reached out to the company or a similar one through official channels to request a partnership. The test was also invalid since the result was driven by something we didn't have proper authorization to use and that would be difficult to replicate.
Before doing something, ask yourself whether you have checked all the facts appropriately. Use your good judgement and don't let your excitement or eagerness allow you to jump the gun. It's really just common sense.
This was a major failure, but we certainly learned from it. One thing I can assure you is that we will never make this mistake again. Our future judgements will be much better and we will share this experience with others to make sure they can learn from our mistake and won't repeat it.
Our sincerest apologies to everyone involved.
Yesterday night, we deployed a website late in the evening to test our hypothesis that experienced developers would sign up for an event where they'd work with startups on weekend-long projects to give both parties a chance to better evaluate one another. We wanted to try to get 20 experienced developers to sign up for the event by 10 am. The site was up and running quickly and we sought ways to promote it. Then came a huge mistake that we won't ever repeat and which we will share with others so they don't repeat it. After a verbal sign-off from someone we thought was associated with a particular brand, we added that brand's logo to our site to entice potential participants to sign up based on brand recognition. Looking back, it's hard to say why didn't further checks our facts before pulling the trigger. We really got caught up in the moment and let it blind us.
As today morning came around, we ramped up our marketing effort. We promoted as much as we could with a goal of hitting our target. In the end, we didn't make the bar and went back to analyze our next move. At this point, we realized that we had skipped a step by not interviewing developers first and finding out what their needs were. So our next hypothesis to test was that developers wanted to learn about and work at startups. But that's not nearly as noteworthy as what happened next.
I believe around 10:30am, we received a cease and desist call from the legal counsel of the company whose logo we had used. We immediately took the site down and started working on an apology to the involved parties. We knew we had messed up and wanted to do our best to undo any potential harm we had done to a brand we love. The right thing to do was to be open, honest, and sincere.
The ironic thing is that we probably would have had success if we had reached out to the company or a similar one through official channels to request a partnership. The test was also invalid since the result was driven by something we didn't have proper authorization to use and that would be difficult to replicate.
Before doing something, ask yourself whether you have checked all the facts appropriately. Use your good judgement and don't let your excitement or eagerness allow you to jump the gun. It's really just common sense.
This was a major failure, but we certainly learned from it. One thing I can assure you is that we will never make this mistake again. Our future judgements will be much better and we will share this experience with others to make sure they can learn from our mistake and won't repeat it.
Our sincerest apologies to everyone involved.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Lean Startup Machine Day 2
Day 2 of Learn Startup Machine was another learning-packed day. Seriously, the mentorship is just outstanding. My team got an early start reviewing our learning hypothesis canvas (I really need to find a picture to link too...), our riskiest assumption, our validation metric, etc. After that, we immediately went to work making phone calls and doing a few in-person interviews with startups who hire software developers.
In our interviews, we tried to keep the conversations high-level so the interviewee could surface the issues that were really important to them. We generally started by asking whether they had ever made a hiring decision that they regretted later. It was really interesting to see the diversity of responses here. We really thought this would be a sure-fire "yes" all around. However, we got a lot of negative responses early on. A number of folks responded that they had never regretted a hire and demonstrated that they had extremely tight filters. Our criteria for passing validation was that 6 of 10 hiring managers had to indicate that culture was a top problem in hiring. We ended up with 11 interviews and 4 negatives, so the assumption was validated, but barely.
Although our assumption had been validated, we had to make adjustments to our hypothesis since we started with a very vague notion of what we were after and after our interviews, we had a ton of information. In the commonalities among the many interviews, we found that startups hiring technical talent have trouble ensuring that the candidates that fill their pipelines are high quality. We modified our canvas, got some feedback, and started on our next experiment. I can't share the next experiment yet because it would ruin it. However, I'll post more info later.
Before wrapping up, I have to say that I've been really pleased with the talks. Adam Berk is the lead on running everything and has been doing a stupendous job. He's given us a ton of feedback and kept the 9 teams on track. John Sechrest, who everybody loves, has also been around the entire time giving great advice at every opportunity. Patrick Vlaskovitz, Clint Nelson, Irina Menn, Bob Crimmins, and Charlie Kindel all gave really informative talks and spent time mentoring. All these folks supporting Lean Startup Machine are what makes Seattle an awesome place to start a company and they all have my deep appreciation for their commitment to the community.
Tomorrow is the last day and I'm eager to get to it! But first some much needed sleep...
In our interviews, we tried to keep the conversations high-level so the interviewee could surface the issues that were really important to them. We generally started by asking whether they had ever made a hiring decision that they regretted later. It was really interesting to see the diversity of responses here. We really thought this would be a sure-fire "yes" all around. However, we got a lot of negative responses early on. A number of folks responded that they had never regretted a hire and demonstrated that they had extremely tight filters. Our criteria for passing validation was that 6 of 10 hiring managers had to indicate that culture was a top problem in hiring. We ended up with 11 interviews and 4 negatives, so the assumption was validated, but barely.
Although our assumption had been validated, we had to make adjustments to our hypothesis since we started with a very vague notion of what we were after and after our interviews, we had a ton of information. In the commonalities among the many interviews, we found that startups hiring technical talent have trouble ensuring that the candidates that fill their pipelines are high quality. We modified our canvas, got some feedback, and started on our next experiment. I can't share the next experiment yet because it would ruin it. However, I'll post more info later.
Before wrapping up, I have to say that I've been really pleased with the talks. Adam Berk is the lead on running everything and has been doing a stupendous job. He's given us a ton of feedback and kept the 9 teams on track. John Sechrest, who everybody loves, has also been around the entire time giving great advice at every opportunity. Patrick Vlaskovitz, Clint Nelson, Irina Menn, Bob Crimmins, and Charlie Kindel all gave really informative talks and spent time mentoring. All these folks supporting Lean Startup Machine are what makes Seattle an awesome place to start a company and they all have my deep appreciation for their commitment to the community.
Tomorrow is the last day and I'm eager to get to it! But first some much needed sleep...
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Lean Startup Machine Day 1
I might just be addicted to hackathons. It seems I may have a bent towards building businesses over the course of a weekend. The latest is Lean Startup Machine, which focuses on early-stage customer development. Basically, I wasn't planning on going until Justin Wilcox, the brilliant guy behind the Customer Dev Labs blog convinced me. After the first night, I can say I am incredibly glad I am attending.
Earlier on I had thought Lean Startup Machine was going to be similar to Startup Weekend, which I've attended several times. However, I've found it to be quite different and a whole new learning experience. First, there's more structure. This is a huge value. We are given a framework to guide us and experienced mentors actively engage with us when we get stuck. The mentor-to-participant ratio is quite high, which is really fantastic. Second, it focuses on earlier stages of the process of customer development. The process is generally aided by the "Validated Learning Canvas", a great tool for honing in on key assumptions and testing them. Third... well, I could go one, but that's enough for now. Check out the website for more info.
So the night started out with some networking, which was fun since I met a number of new people and connected with a bunch of people I know from Seattle's startup scene. Shortly after an intro to the weekend, we jumped into pitches. I had planned to pitch since I will never be satisfied with my public speaking skills, but I hadn't put a lot of thought into what I wanted to go after. In the end, I decided to pitch a problem that really frustrates me - the fact that it's impossible to know what it's like to work with someone until you've worked with them.
To my surprise, this idea was picked as one of 5 that teams would form around for the weekend (there were also 4 pre-formed teams from the recent Angel Hack event). Actually, it was the problem that was picked since I really just presented the problem and didn't try to identify a solution. Then team formation kicked off and I was really excited when Justin and a good friend, Anupam, wanted to team up to work on this. Two new friends, Jim and Anthony, also joined. We had also had Arun Kumar, founder and CEO of Kerika and an avid member of TiE, join us, but after being told that there was a strict 5-person limit on team size, Arun generously volunteered to switch to a smaller team.
We spent the remainder of our time ramping up for our initial tests using the Validated Learning Canvas and even got in a few interviews with folks around the room. This team works really well together and I'm looking forward to learning and working with them throughout the weekend! I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of this awesome group!
Earlier on I had thought Lean Startup Machine was going to be similar to Startup Weekend, which I've attended several times. However, I've found it to be quite different and a whole new learning experience. First, there's more structure. This is a huge value. We are given a framework to guide us and experienced mentors actively engage with us when we get stuck. The mentor-to-participant ratio is quite high, which is really fantastic. Second, it focuses on earlier stages of the process of customer development. The process is generally aided by the "Validated Learning Canvas", a great tool for honing in on key assumptions and testing them. Third... well, I could go one, but that's enough for now. Check out the website for more info.
So the night started out with some networking, which was fun since I met a number of new people and connected with a bunch of people I know from Seattle's startup scene. Shortly after an intro to the weekend, we jumped into pitches. I had planned to pitch since I will never be satisfied with my public speaking skills, but I hadn't put a lot of thought into what I wanted to go after. In the end, I decided to pitch a problem that really frustrates me - the fact that it's impossible to know what it's like to work with someone until you've worked with them.
To my surprise, this idea was picked as one of 5 that teams would form around for the weekend (there were also 4 pre-formed teams from the recent Angel Hack event). Actually, it was the problem that was picked since I really just presented the problem and didn't try to identify a solution. Then team formation kicked off and I was really excited when Justin and a good friend, Anupam, wanted to team up to work on this. Two new friends, Jim and Anthony, also joined. We had also had Arun Kumar, founder and CEO of Kerika and an avid member of TiE, join us, but after being told that there was a strict 5-person limit on team size, Arun generously volunteered to switch to a smaller team.
We spent the remainder of our time ramping up for our initial tests using the Validated Learning Canvas and even got in a few interviews with folks around the room. This team works really well together and I'm looking forward to learning and working with them throughout the weekend! I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of this awesome group!
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