Startup Weekend Coming to Memphis
By Will | February 25, 2008
Memphis has been chosen to host a “startup weekend” in late May. The word has been hot around Memphis the last couple of weeks concerning this event.
Startup Weekend is a 3 day event where local entrepreneurs get together and launch a company over a weekend.
Andrew Hyde, founder of Startup Weekend had a few comments on StartupWeekend.com: “About two months ago I was contacted by Harry Brown, requesting that Memphis be added to the list of Startup Weekend location possibilities. Memphis’s community motivated, and launched themselves to the top of the list. Memphis, (a place known for it’s BBQ and tradition, and not necessarily their tech startup talent) has really impressed me in how their community got together.We talked about location, and Harry introduced me to Eric Mathews of Mercury Labs.”
Eric has been active an instrumental in bringing people together, along with Gwin Scott and others associated with the Emerge small-biz incubator here in Memphis. I have touched base with Eric and Gwin a couple of times over the past few months and they have been working to bring more tech talent together.
This is great news for Memphis. A special thanks to Harry Brown, Eric and other local leaders.
This should be interesting. I think that it will be fun and I look forward to meeting any of the local talent that I have not already met.
Below are the votes on the voting page of the Startup Weekend website. If the votes were any indication, this is looking good.
Topics: Startups | No Comments »
Launching Launchpad
By Will | December 3, 2007
Mercury Launchpad just launched here in Memphis a couple weeks ago. They aim to make it a little easier for micro-startups to get going.
They are a venture of Mercury Tech Labs. I was invited to their launch party and wrote a little about it on my personal blog. It was enjoyable to meet some other local businesses people who are interested in enhancing the city’s capability to launch new companies, especially in the high-tech areas.
What will they do? Basically, it is an incubator for really small start-ups. The interesting part is that your small company (perhaps between 1 and 4 people) can join and utilize facilities, consulting, and networking among other members. The set up works well for small entrepreneur with perhaps several ideas they are prototyping.
An excerpt from their site:
The Mercury Launchpad is a rapid business prototyping center and convergence point for early stage technology businesses in the Mid-South. Operated as a membership based center, the Launchpad combines the benefits of collaboration with structured advising to assist entrepreneurs and technologists alike in growing their technology based businesses. By bringing together top talent in emerging business, the Launchpad will support and facilitate swift and smart business decision making through discourse with others, knowledge exchange, and professional networking. People do better, more value-added work when working together.
The lab will be perfect for working multiple ideas, and perhaps letting a few drop. It is not necessarily based on running a single idea through and then dropping the ideas and the people when it does not work. It is looking for people who will generate and rapidly prototype ideas, looking for that gem.
Many small companies in these areas suffer from a couple different things: money and support/ network of people. The money helps get things going, and a network of people can offer support, ideas, consultation, and even potential employees of these future companies.
I think that incubators like this, combined with building a solid community of Angel investors could really create a successful formula for enhancing smaller-capitalized areas’ ability to launch companies. Good luck to Mercury Launchpad!
Topics: Startups | No Comments »
Parallel Startups - Should You Put All of Your Eggs In One Basket?
By Rob | October 21, 2007
Startups fail at an alarmingly high rate. Not just tech startups, but new businesses of all kinds. The logical response to any risky strategy is to balance the risk through diversification… but does that apply to startups too? If your business is likely to fail, should you have 3 “small project” style businesses going on at a time in hopes that one of them will take off and succeed?
I think there is something to that. Incubating ideas can stimulate creativity and help minimize the risk associated with just doing one thing. But there is another side to the story. Not putting your “all” into an idea can be risky too. If a startup only has a 30% chance of survival even if it is the major focus of your life, how much does that decrease if it becomes a minor focus?
It’s easy to leave the cause when things get tough in a startup. That’s why Cortes burned the boats his team used to reach Yucatan. He didn’t want deserters, so he sent a message that there was only one path. By limiting yourself to one startup, and burning your own boats, you force yourself to pour everything you have into it. Of course, you also force yourself to make short term survival decisions instead of long-term decisions that lay a solid foundation.
In the end, I think it boils down to this - if you aren’t willing to put your eggs in one basket, you probably don’t like those eggs enough, which means you probably should look for something else.
Topics: Strategy | No Comments »
Silicon Prairie Social
By Rob | October 9, 2007
I recently had the chance to interview Tim Courtney of Silicon Prairie Social. It’s an interesting idea and Tim seems to be having lots of success with it. The Q&A is below.
1. How did Silicon Prairie originate? Where did the idea come from?
Our company, XNet is a successful Internet startup from 15 years ago. Over that time there hasn’t really been a cohesive technology community in the western Chicago suburbs where we are located. The idea for Silicon Prairie Social came to us when we saw social events in the tech industry happening in other places like downtown Chicago, but not in our area, where there’s also a large and established industry.
Earlier this year, I attended a few TechCocktail events downtown Chicago. That gave us the inspiration as a company as a company to step up and host a cocktail event closer to home from which the businesses and entrepreneurs in the western suburbs could benefit.
One thing we’ve noticed through our collective experience is events that have come and gone have all been formatted so the attendees come with a “what’s in it for me” focus, and the spotlight has been shone on just a few parties. To make ours different, we designed special icebreaker name tags with “I Need” and “I Know” at the top to get people talking to each other. The result: People are still calling and emailing a week after the event, thanking us for the number of highly targeted contacts they’ve made to help them advance their goals.
Over time, we believe formats like this will build a tightly woven community that brings value to everyone.
2. What has the response been so far?
The response has exceeded even our expectations. Our official attendee count was just over 200, but others have estimated the number in attendance as closer to 300. I have to go off of our count officially, but it did feel like more than that.
Because we held the event in the suburbs, we drew a lot more established businesses from the mature IT industry in the area. This complimented the energies of the younger generation (from which I come) where web2.0 startups are popular. We believe this mix of generations will facilitate connections where seasoned pros can offer ‘gray hair’ to young entrepreneurs, and the young generation can offer energy and an innate knowledge of social media and new technology to established businesses. Hence, we’re really excited to see what comes of this in the long run.
3. Entrepreneurs are often busy people working under the radar. How do you get the word out and find entrepreneurs?
At first, we tapped the same community that’s emerged around TechCocktail. Several of our initial sponsors came as referrals from the TechCocktail organizers, and together we got the word out to popular Chicago blogs like TechCocktail and WindyBits, event calendars like TechSocial, and outreach to associations like the Technology Executives Club and the ITA, who promoted us on their sites and in their newsletters.
Eventually, news of the event reached the Chicago Sun-Times via a reporter and also through TechVenue.com, who feeds the technology event calendar they publish in the paper and online.
4. Building a startup takes a lot of time. Why do you think there is value in leaving the office to go network?
Startups are looking for these three critical things: customers, talent, and funding. Talking up your idea or product at a networking event gets you exposure to users, people with opinions (free advice/help!), and possibly even the media. It could even be an introduction to a paying customer, depending on your product. Also, the others who attend a tech networking event have the skills and ambitions startup comapnies are looking for. Finally, venture capitalists also attend these meetings (I’m aware of a couple who attended the first Silicon Prairie Social) and it’s a good way to meet those people in an informal setting without walking through the front door.
Case-in-point: PunchEngine is a startup who sponsored our first event. They’re launching soon and are looking for users and funding. They left ecstatic over the people who were interested in their site — from potential partners and talent to leads on funding to well-wishers with good ideas to give them.
5. Entrepreneur clubs often end up overrun with service providers in the long term. I’ve been to some that had 3 lawyers, 2 accountants, and a banker for every 1 entrepreneur in attendance. Are you ok with that, and if not, how will you prevent it from happening?
We’ve been aware of the same thing from the very beginning, and we are working to keep the audience focused at future events so quality doesn’t degrade over time.
We’re OK with having service providers, so long as they are active participants in the community contributing value to the group. We’re more concerned with is professional recruiters headhunting talent and people who only attend to gather as many cards as possible for a sales gig that doesn’t build the community (such as multi-level marketing types or something outside the industry such as insurance).
For future events, we may add to the event details a list of the types of job roles the event is for, and who it isn’t for. Since we collect companies and titles, we’re considering refusing RSVPs from certain categories like MLMs or recruiters. Obviously this isn’t foolproof, but we can show the group we’re making our best efforts towards presenting them with a focused audience of peers who they can gain value from versus being overrun by people who are more interested in business cards to make a quick sale.
Now that it’s been a week since the event, we’ve had the chance to digest the outcome of the first event and start looking towards SPS2 and expanding the group with events in other formats. Stay tuned for some exciting announcements over the next couple months!
Topics: Midwest | No Comments »
Interview With David Armstrong, Founder of Bouncebase
By Rob | September 9, 2007
I recently had the chance to interview David Armstrong, found of BounceBase, a portal for searching everything on the web. He had some good replies to my questions about starting a business outside of silicon valley.
1. How did Bouncebase get started, and where did the idea come from?
Bouncebase is a startpage that uses our own API. The Bounce API aggregates many different verticals; search, blogs, video, shopping, jobs. etc. It pulls it all together and then gives easy access to it via simple, standardized protocols; like REST and RSS. The API is open to anyone. We also have a Google Gadget called BounceRemote and a search page called BounceFind.So the API came first and then we started to address a few areas of the web that we thought could use some design help for regular people; like an ad-free start page (www.bouncebase.com ) We opened the API to everyone because their are so many smart developers that could find other places to fix too.
The part I personally like is the co-op approach to sharing revenue. Our affiliate program shares 50% of our revenue back to the community. Each person’s piece of the pie is then based on the contribution of clicks from their widgets, web pages or whatever. It’s simple, it’s fair.
2. What technologies were used to build Bouncebase?
Primarily, it is based on RSS. You won’t ever see us say that though. We joke about sites that put “What is RSS?” link on their page. That’s like putting “What is an internal combustion engine?” sticker on the door of your car, useless and confusing.
3. There are lots of different sites I can use to search for things around the web. Pitch me on Bouncebase. Why should I use it?
I use it for one reason, I know it’s a comprehensive view of what is available on the web It’s as if you went to each site and searched it yourself, then added all the results together. This gets to be pretty difficult for things like shopping, jobs or news.A few other compelling reasons are that we are ad-free, we enable sharing in a really easy way and also have persistent search.
Persistent search is available on any of the Bounce products can save that search to your favorite start page (I use bouncebase of course) and every 10 minutes, it checks for new items. Google doesn’t do that. I use it to keep track of anytime the word “Bouncebase” is mentioned on the web, blog, or video description.
4. You have multiple US locations. Has most of your work been coordinated virtually?
We are 99% virtual, the other 1% is at Starbucks. We had some people on the team that didn’t work out. It’s a pretty demanding environment and it’s not for everyone. I support having a smaller team and taking longer to deliver, a different approach than the SV teams I’ve met.
5. What are the pros and cons of being outside Silicon Valley for a company like Bouncebase?I’ve never lived in the valley, however, I’ve been there a few times. It’s “money central” for sure, but I personally struggle with that. Putting it bluntly, an entrepreneur that doesn’t have a lot of their own money in the game and subscribes to “fail fast, fail often” is banking on luck. What investor would want this? Maybe the money is in the valley, but I’ve met many more entrepreneurs NOT in the valley who know how to create and run a business.
The “pro” of not living in the valley is that you don’t get grouped with the hype. You get to meet real people who also care about real business, not just a “repeat” model. You have to understand your market, know your model and execute. Ok to fail? I don’t think so.
The “con” of not living in the valley. You get ignored by the press. This’ll get to me sometimes as everyone has an ego, but growing your business because you are actually serving customers needs and providing value is better. You just have to accept that you’ll never be on the front of any magazine even though you are running a company in debt, no real business model and stressed out servers like some of the valley darlings.
I think it’s a special kind of entrepreneur that can get it done outside the valley. After taking a few trips to the valley, I was lucky to figure out that I didn’t need the hype.
Check out Bouncebase and let David know what you think. Also be sure to check out BounceFind, which has a more traditional search interface, and the Bounce remote on iGoogle.
Topics: Startups | No Comments »
The 100 Fastest Growing Tech Companies
By Rob | September 5, 2007
Business 2.0 has a list of the 100 fastest growing technology companies. Some interesting stats from the list:
- Only 21 of the 50 states have a company on the list
- Only 12 states have more than 1 company on the list
- 37% of the fastest growing companies are in California
- The most surprising number is that New Jersey is in 3rd place, with 7 fast growing tech companies
Topics: Resources | 1 Comment »
Socializing For Your Startup? Try These Tips.
By Rob | September 4, 2007
One of the things we preach here at OTV, is the importance of networking. Get out and meet people and your startup will do much much better. You never know who you will meet that may have some interest in whatever it is that you are doing. For some of you, social functions may present a problem because you just don’t like to socialize (or perhaps you think you aren’t good at it). Since the newest Daily Idea tackles that issue, we decided to post it here. We hope it helps.
Topics: Miscellaneous | No Comments »
Back in the Saddle Again - Sorry For the Hiatus
By Rob | August 30, 2007
Posting has been a little slow here at OTV, and there were two primary reasons for it. First of all, Todd and I have been focusing on Daily Idea, our new web show concept, and it has taken more time than we thought to get it launched and promoted. Secondly, OTV is going to be changing. Our initial plan was to focus on startup reviews outside of silicon valley, but that market is saturated and, frankly, kind of boring. We are going to go for quality over quantity. While we will still do some reviews, the ones we do will be more in-depth and relevant.
We also have plans to add some new functionality to the site, to help those of you not in the valley to better connect and share ideas. Stay tuned, and please email us if you have any suggestions.
Topics: Site Info | No Comments »
It’s All About Incentives
By Will | August 12, 2007
I am reading this book, called “Discover Your Inner Economist” by Tyler Cowen. I like Tyler’s easy to read style. One of my degrees in in Economics, and I can say that I think I would have enjoyed him as a professor. I like the book and highly recommend it.
What is the book about? Incentives
“Incentives” is a word that comes up a lot when working in anything that interacts with humans. That includes designing a new high tech business model, or anything that means trying to get humans to do something.
When I am asked about a new high tech idea or any initiative that is trying to incite a change in a group of people– some of the first questions I ask are about incentives… Why would anyone do that? If the people buy what you are selling or change their behavior in the way you want – what are they getting?
Personal recognition, wealth, personal satisfaction?
Will they be getting something that they will value more than the cost (perhaps money or just time) of what you are trying to convince them to do? This is a key question whenever you are looking at new concepts and ideas. Ideas like “the wisdom of the crowd” are successful when incentives are taken into account. Also, it is important to know what the population you are targeting values. You can’t just assume that everyone values the same incentives the same way.
Incentives, be sure to take them into account whenever you are analyzing something new that you want the world to appreciate.
Topics: Books | No Comments »
Boost Your Creativity At the Ideafestival
By Rob | August 5, 2007
Conferences are a fantastic networking tool for outside the valley entrepreneurs. It’s a chance to rub elbows with like minded folks and hear the latest ideas and trends discussed and debated. Many of the best conferences are, of course, in the Valley. But over the last few years there is an increasingly popular conference in the Midwest - it’s called the IdeaFestival, and this year’s main speaker is Woz. That alone is enough reason to attend, but the here’s another reason - 3 members of the OTV staff will be there. In addition, there are other great speakers and entrepreneurs, so give it some consideration. You could use a shot of creativity, and this conference has the benefit of being inexpensive and providing you access to many of the speakers. So visit the website, check out the conference, and then claim it as a capital expenditure because it’s an investment in your creativity.
Topics: Ideas | No Comments »
