I wrote this on the NY Enterprise Tech Meetup blog and figured I’d share here too as I’ll probably be writing more thoughts on enterprise software and innovation in the future.
Enterprise software used to be clunky. Enterprise software used to have long deployment cycles and massive hurdles. Enterprise software, plain and simple, was not glamorous.
Well guess what? Technology evolved a lot. People got educated. People became empowered.
Innovation in…
Here is a three minute public service announcement about doing your startup in NYC, made by the NY Tech Meetup which served as the inspiration for this meetup. #GoNYC
I was rushing to a meeting the other day, and when trying to get out of the subway station, tons of people were standing still on the escalator instead of walking along with it.
This got me thinking about the parallels to the startup world, and how there are two types of entrepreneurs. Some people are happy to be given any type of opportunity to carry them forward, albeit at a slow, comfortable pace. Others however, seize any opportunity of positive momentum, and leverage it to move even faster than they are capable of on their own.
As an entrepreneur, you’re going to be hustling and eventually have some opportunities come your way. Whether signing a new customer or landing a partnership, the key is to not pat yourself on the back and take it easy for the rest of the day. Each and every opportunity that comes your way is a building block towards your goal of signing a bigger and harder to land customer or partner. If one merely sits back after small wins, the really difficult goal of success for your startup will be even harder to achieve.
In my escalator analogy yes you’ll eventually reach the top. However, so many people will have already passed you by that if anything special was waiting for you there, it will already be gone. Positive bits of progress in your startup should refuel your tank, get you focused, and get you working harder towards making your startup a success.
So keep on hustling. That way you’ll never end up like Milton without any cake.
I did it. Last Monday I taught my first Skillshare class.
The title was “The Art of the Night Hustle - Founding a start-up with a day job” and I discussed a variety of things to consider and issues that come up when you found a startup at night while maintaining your day job.
The format of the class was a 60 minute lecture followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. The class covered broad concepts such as:
My favorite part of the class was how engaged people were. Attendees asked insightful questions relevant to issues they are encountering in pursuit of founding a startup while keeping their day job. Even better, after I would answer questions, others in the class would chime in to add their own personal feedback. I love how everyone got involved and offered helpful tips to add to what I was teaching.
Thanks to Hive@55 for the great space - they deserve some e-props. The staff made it super easy to reserve a room for the class, and when I arrived they helped me get setup and made sure the projector was working. If you teach a Skillshare class definitely check them out.
If you’re interested in attending a future session of the course, please check out course page on Skillshare here - http://skl.sh/spLBX2.
The social web has done a tremendous job keeping people in touch. Yet, with all of our existing technological advances, not enough has been done to connect people offline who don’t currently know one another, but should whether it be out of a shared hobby or interest, potential romantic link, or a potential benefit professionally.
Sites like Meetup (www.meetup.com) are great and connect people based on shared interests, and the plethora of online dating sites out there work to connect people romantically.
The “online to offline connection” space interests me much, as I view leveraging technology to foster real world connections an efficient and productive use of one’s time, which in our ever busy lives today is our greatest commodity. No online encounter beats meeting someone face to face, so my entrepreneurial interests tend to be geared towards accomplishing this.
My existing startup Luv@FirstTweet (www.luvatfirsttweet.com and www.twitter.com/luvatfirsttweet) is the first dating service to leverage Twitter to build an online dating profile for yourself and match you with similar people based on mutual interests in your tweets. The aim is to make online dating simple, fun, and quick.
My new startup which I’m co-founding and would like to announce today is Open Door Meetings (www.opendoormeetings.com). We are creating a platform for connecting business professionals who don’t currently know each other but could mutually benefit from an introductory meeting. While LinkedIn is a great way to stay in touch with people you’ve already met, there is no real tool to expand your network with interesting, relevant individuals that you don’t currently know.On ODM our goal is to promote professional networking by making it as simple as possible to both find relevant people and schedule a mutually convenient time to meet with them.
For instance, using ODM an associate investment banker can meet with counterparts in a private equity fund to discuss trends being seen in the market, and if a transition to the buyside would be a good idea for the banker. Or a lawyer specializing in real estate law can meet with someone who works in real estate acquisitions or development to talk about what asset classes seem to be bouncing back ahead of the others, or even discuss how many deals each is seeing as a leading indicator of future success or turmoil.
We are currently in beta testing in New York City, so come check us out at www.opendoormeetings.com. More information to come as we conclude our beta and launch to the public in the next weeks.
Historically, enterprise tech companies did their thing and didn’t worry about the noise in the consumer tech ecosystem. These days though, there is a lot to be learned from consumer tech companies that can be applied to the enterprise.
I have a unique view of the enterprise technology ecosystem. Having one foot in the enterprise world (via my day job in technology business development for a bulge bracket investment bank) and the other in the consumer world (via my 2 startups Luv@FirstTweet and Open Door Meetings), enables me to watch how the consumer ecosystem continues to evolve and innovate at a far quicker pace than its enterprise counterpart.
That’s not to say that innovative enterprise companies don’t exist. In fact, quite the opposite is true. What does not exist though is an engaged enterprise community full of active dialogue, meetups to promote new companies, and incubators to get mentors involved and help teams turn ideas into businesses — all of which have helped the consumer side flourish. Things are starting to change though, and for instance last year NYC funded the Fintech Innovation Lab (side note – FinTech Innovation Lab is accepting applications through January 18th 2012 http://www.fintechinnovationlab.com/). But much more is needed.
Mayor Bloomberg recently spoke at NYTM, which has grown from 20 to 20,000 members over the last five years, to announce the formation of the Mayor’s Counil of Technology and Innovation. He has also pushed the NYC government to be more innovative through the hiring of Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne and its use of social networks (see http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/tech-savvy-rachel-sterne/ for an example of how Sterne handled real-time communication during Hurricane Irene)
In an effort to help the enterprise technology ecosystem evolve and begin building a real community here in NYC, I am announcing the NY Enterprise Tech Meetup. Similar to NYTM, the meetup will be a monthly event which will feature demos from the hottest new emerging technology companies as well as new offerings from companies that are a bit more established.
The group’s mission statement is to foster innovation in the NY enterprise technology ecosystem through promoting early stage technology companies, supporting entrepreneurs, educating companies on how to work with enterprises, and creating an environment where entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses can all network and learn from one another.
What better place to launch than NYC, where we are full of enterprises such as financial services, advertising, media, and fashion companies.
Will you take a part? Join today and stay tuned for information on our inaugural meetup coming in January.
12/14/2011 Edit: The first meetup is scheduled for Wednesday 1/25/2012 from 7-9pm and features demos from Bitly, PerspecSys, Socialware, and one more TBD company. It also features a demo from the “business app of the month” ScanBizCards. Sign up here http://bitly.com/NYETMevent
I originally posted this on my startup Luv@FirstTweet’s blog, but I figured was worth reposting here as well. So without further ado…
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Between recently launching Luv@FirstTweet and actively trying to promote it, I thought I’d share my thoughts on tech networking events. Since SXSW is just around the corner, the topic is extra relevant.
In college, while at parties and bars, everyone started off with the same question upon approaching someone new:
“What’s your major?”
It was the standard opener that everyone loved to hate, yet used anyway, since it was relevant to most anyone standing in a room-filled with college students holding $1 beer. It just worked. As a young-professional living in NYC now, I go out to bars and find myself starting conversations with people in more creative ways; so much so that I couldn’t even tell you how I began talking to certain people…it just kind of happens. I’d like to think that I’ve developed some networking skills since my college years…
Going to more tech events after co-launching Luv@FirstTweet with Ari has posed another similar opener, almost as if I’ve lapsed back to college! This time it’s
“What brings you to <insert tech event here>?”
Responses have varied from being entrepreneurs, journalists, or generally curious people interested in technology. I get asked it, and I’ll admit I resort to asking it all the time as an opener. Everyone there wants to learn something and meet new people, yet I find a lot of people awkwardly glancing at their phones pretending to be busy. They really want to meet other people doing innovative and interesting things but are often hindered by being too shy. But what can you expect from people who developed their technological acumen by opting to play with their computers instead of the neighborhood kids? The curiosity and ability is there, it just needs to be drawn out.
This especially rings true when you go alone — which I’ve done a lot lately since Ari is hacking away to keep Luv@FirstTweet running smoothly and develop awesome new features. Even though we’re all obviously there to network, and it’s not like I’m hitting on the person next to me, it still takes a fair amount of courage and an outgoing personality to walk up to a stranger. After all, we’re not all natural born salesman ready to chat up anyone we meet (although I wish I had that skill).
So here’s the point of my post and some advice – put down your phone and go talk to somebody. Chances are they are happy to learn about what you are up to and tell you what they are doing as well. Maybe they’ll offer some useful feedback or make an intro – that’s what you’re there for after all: to meet new people with different viewpoints and experiences. It’s a bit tough at times, but definitely worth it.
PS – if you see me at an event on my phone feel free to call me out…and that’ll make for a different opener than the norm
The Jewish High Holidays just ended, and they serve as the inspiration for this blog post. Aside from being days of self introspection and prayer, they are also a month of the year where you miss many days of work.
It’s times like these that really demonstrate how important momentum is in order to succeed. Success in a venture is always difficult, but if you don’t allocate the proper time and stay consistent with your work, it gets harder to focus and then your chance of success becomes even slimmer.
This is because when you get into a lull, negative momentum drags you deeper into it. Laziness makes it hard to approach the lofty work that needs to get done. You can’t focus and your attention gets diverted away from accomplishing key tasks for your business.
This sounds pretty depressing that there are all these factors weighing down on you. The good news however is that momentum works in both directions.
Get to work. Overcome being tired and just get started. Go in knowing that it’s going to suck and that you’re going to feel lousy, but sit at your desk anyway and just do it. You may get stuck on an idea. You may get frustrated. But FIGHT. Success comes from sticking through it and working.
As you get a good schedule going, you’ll notice how much more productive you are. Things will be fresh on your mind and you’ll have the mental capacity to think through problems - even the really difficult ones - and make better decisions on how to handle them. You’ll be able to get things going in parallel so while you’re waiting on a response to one item, you can continue making progress on something else. You’ll be efficient, and you’ll feel great about what you’re accomplishing.
If you put in time and work hard consistently, you’ll find that it is easier to keep going and pushing forward.
When I was in AP English in 11th grade, we had to write an essay that defined something by negation. I chose to define geeks. I wish I could find it but I think I lost it many hard drives ago, although it may be on a 3.5’ floppy disk somewhere back home.
I argued that no longer were geeks not athletic. Just look at NFL players hooked on Madden or even Curt Schilling who played Everquest (I was so jealous when he announced what server he was on that it wasn’t mine [Quellious])
I went on to discuss that they weren’t social outcasts anymore because “geek culture” was becoming cool (and thus they were getting positive attention from the opposite sex), and that coding wasn’t reserved for people in their parents’ basements (it was becoming more mainstream by the day).
Which leads me to brogrammers, and the purpose of my post – We need more brogrammers!
The biggest question any non-technical person has when looking to launch a startup is “How can I find a technical co-founder?” As someone who has read tons of blog posts on how to do so, attends many tech events, uses Ohours, and has a decent size network, I can tell you that it’s still hard and often a crapshoot, especially if you live outside of Silicon Valley. Finding someone with the skill, time, and drive to work with is rare (all three are critical because startups are hard, time consuming, and often make you consider giving up), mainly because of the extremely limited quantity of such people out there.
Brogrammers are great for many reasons, including:
Based on my points above, with more brogrammers out there, it will lead to a positive feedback loop wherein the supply of coders will increase and the outputs from development will be of higher quality and more innovation than currently exists today.
For some fun, check out this Quora question How does a programmer become a brogrammer? and UP YO GAME BRO.
Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
