Innovation Scorecard and playbook
January 26, 2010
Bill Warner, A technology entrepreneur in Boston posted the following Scorecard and play book for building an innovation economy. Bill is in Boston but this simple methodology is applicable elsewhere including Kentucky. We need plays and metrics with which to judge the success of efforts to boost a technology cluster. Our politicians often tout the work they are doing in these areas but use outdated or no methodology at all to judge their impact and many of the tactics are outdated or ineffective. This might give us a common language.
Scorecard
Entrepreneurs Foundation creates High-Tech helpHaiti fund
January 17, 2010
Check out the info at EFKY about the High-Tech HelpHaiti fund. An example of the leadership shown by entrepreneurial companies in the US. The funds donated are being matched leading to at least $1.2 million for Haitian relief.
New Media Factory
January 6, 2010
The group behind the IdeaFestival have launched a new media factory. Few details have been released and I have asked Kris Kimel for additional information but one event in the pipeline is a Collective Intelligence/Augmented Reality game design workshop they are hosting on February 26th. I will post more details as they are available. Below is the info from their site:
The IF New Media Factory is a joint venture of future-oriented organizations and companies committed to exploring, developing and creating ways that technology, imaginatively combined with other disciplines, can be employed to enhance the learning and human experience.
Current Project
Working in partnership with the internationally known UC Berkeley Center for New Media, the Factory is now designing a health-centered reality-augmented immersive game. The code name for the project is “Cornerstone”.
New Media Skills and Competencies by Henry Jenkins, Media Studies Program at MIT.
Thomas Malone, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence quote on “new technologies..”
3 resolutions for 2010
December 23, 2009
For the last or one of the last blog posts of the year, I wanted to highlight three things that should be resolved to be implemented in 2010 to build the entrepreneurial economy both nationally and locally:
NATIONAL:
Startup Visa: This idea has picked up steam. I am an opponent of illegal immigration but believe we need a coherent policy to address legal immigration. The startup visa makes sense. Bring the best and brightest from around the world here if they will start a company and employ Americans.
Entrepreneurship education in schools: The skills of an entrepreneur are skills that can help someone through out their life. If we focused on training people early in their life these skills and the concepts of risk verse reward then we would set up a large portion of our population to be self sufficient and productive. everyone would benefit from this. This includes adding some entrepreneur classes or program as part of PhD programs.
Locally:(Kentucky)
Expand State SBIR/STTR matching funds program: This program is unique and sets the state aprt. This type of no-dilutive funding is critical for the growth of these startups and provides lots of high-quality job creation. Funding for this program has always been minimal and the state should set a goal to match every award made to a Kentucky company or one willing to move here. The impact of this is much greater than the traditional type of economic development which is ineffective.
Kentucky ranked 22nd for small business Policy environment
December 2, 2009
Kentucky ranked 22nd for its business climate in a report from the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, a lobbying and policy group. The council assigned index numbers ranging from 25.693 for South Dakota — deemed the friendliest state for small business — to 84.795 to the District of Columbia — the least friendly. Click Here for full report.
The state’s best ranking: 3rd for electric utility costs
The state’s worst ranking: 36th for Workers’ Compensation Benefits Per $100 of Covered Wages
Other notable areas: 7th for property taxes, 32nd for number of state and local government employees.
How to handle PR problems
November 30, 2009
Below is an interview with Gary Gerdemann, Vice President of Account Services at Peritus Public Relations. Gerdemann has been involved in several high-profile startups including eToys.com, Homestore.com, Gamefly.com, Boston Market and Einstein Bros. Bagels.
On the tech and startup side of your experience, what was a major Public Relations issue you encountered?
A very interesting example was eToys.com. At the time I was the Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations for E-Toys.com. One major hurdle we faced was a reputational issue that faced the online industry. The previous Holiday season was marred by spectacular market failures. Toys ”R” Us not only failed to deliver toys by Christmas, they failed to alert customers about the delay. The FTC opened an investigation on the industry and fined Toys “R” Us. Angry mom’s and major public skepticism ensued.
What did you do to counter public skepticism?
Our solution: radical openness. Typically, in our business, the logistics and fulfillment system are secret from the public because of inside / proprietary information. But this time we knew that our ‘trust us’ system wasn’t going to be enough for mom. We needed to show people how awesome our delivery process was so that they could formulate their own opinion.
We worked with NBC on a ‘how does it work?’ segment on NBC Nightly News (10 million weekly viewers). We had someone place an order from NBC’s studio office in New York as a camera crew tracked the whole process. From when the order was received in California, to when it was shipped and finally received by the customer in Denver.
Our message was that all of our employees were serious about every order every time. For example, our head of Logistics was a Vietnam War veteran. His job was to make sure the package was packed, shipped and delivered on time. NBC loved this. They even asked for his old war photos to air. During the segment, we interviewed all employees involved and discussed all high-tech machinery used in the process.
What was your success from this?
Well, our overall success was a real time result:
A) No government intervention and no restrictions on business.
B) Put customer concerns to rest.
Any other words of wisdom in handling PR crises?
The lesson is that sometimes in a difficult business position, you have to make a move that is well beyond what you may normally consider prudent. It’s worth doing some mental computation and asking yourself: What if we took an idea and blew it up 100 times larger? What if we did the exact opposite of that which most would consider “safe”? When we originally approached NBC with a standard pitch, they weren’t interested. But, we doubled down and offered unfettered access and they jumped at the chance. It was a hit and the piece the aired was a gem.
Comparing entrepreneurial cultures
November 6, 2009
Below are some excerpts from an article on xconomy about the startup scenes in Boston, Boulder and Seattle. I highlighted the statements I thought were important to or resembled Kentucky and other areas trying build high-tech ecosystems.
Brad Feld of TechStars and Foundry Group gave a brief history of the startup scene in Boulder, CO—useful for any city with entrepreneurial aspirations. “When I showed up in ’95, what I found was on the software side you had a lot of smart engineering talent but you didn’t have much else. A handful of entrepreneurial companies in storage and cable infrastructure. Not much in the way of entrepreneurial executive leadership other than from these pockets. In the mid-90s, because of the counter-culture community—and the Internet was purpose-built for places like Boulder—you had a lot of people who were independent, very smart, doing their own things suddenly intersecting with a medium that allows you to be anywhere. It’s 100,000 people plus 25,000 college students. A pretty small town, but it has the largest percentage, per capita, in the United States of computer scientists and PhDs. Yet there wasn’t a broad wave of entrepreneurial experience,” Feld said.
“In the mid-to-late 90s, there was huge activity around the Internet. Anybody with a pulse could get a company started. The predictable thing eventually happened, there was a lot of wreckage. But from ‘95-2001, Boulder had imported a lot of executive talent—CEOs, VP sales, engineering leadership. We also had a lot of entrepreneurs who had one or two companies in that cycle. So by 2003, people were starting to come back and get re-engaged in entrepreneurial activity. There were probably 50-plus people that made $10 million or more, so there was enough of an angel community. There was critical mass around this. But what was missing was something that tied the community together. There was the endless cocktail party circuit of entrepreneurs. Eventually people got bored and stopped going….“The other thing was that one of the hardest things for first-time entrepreneurs is to have an engaged relationship with an experienced entrepreneur. We found we were creating this thing that integrated the whole value chain of entrepreneurs. It really energized the existing entrepreneurial activity.”
Chris Sheehan of CommonAngels then gave his thoughts on the Boston innovation scene. [Disclosure: Chris is on Xconomy’s board.] “In the IT ecosystem in Boston, there are a number of things going on,” Sheehan said. “It’s a wonderful place for universities and colleges. MIT has been the granddaddy in terms of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. But what I’m seeing is a fresh set of energy coming through the other universities—Harvard, Boston University, Babson, Brandeis, the list goes on and on. They’re all embracing startups. There’s a deep bench of entrepreneurs around Boston. On the larger companies, we’ve been lacking there at times, but I’m seeing renewed vigor from companies in terms of your ability to go in and get experienced executives. And Google and Microsoft have finally made a big commitment to Boston.
“There’s been a lot of wealth created in Boston from startups, most of it from the computer, hardware, telecom, networking industry. You’ve seen the rise of angel groups in the last 10 years in Boston. We were the first back in ’98. Today in New England there are 23 or 24 angel groups, representing 800-1,000 angels. The venture community, there are probably 20-25 active firms doing IT investments. But I think we can do more on the seed and early-stage side.
“The final building block is startup resources. Part of the challenge in Boston is, you’ve got this very dispersed ecosystem. You overlay that with a conservative culture. Trying to make connections there and get in and see the right people can be challenging, can be time-consuming.
On the Seattle front, Greg Gottesman of Madrona Venture Group pointed out the importance of anchor companies like Microsoft and Amazon. “I think the most exciting thing going on in Seattle on the entrepreneurial scene is actually Amazon and the wealth it’s creating for a lot of people who’ll be the next generation of angels and entrepreneurs,” he said. He also stressed the importance of wins in establishing an entrepreneurial culture at the University of Washington—his example was Farecast, the travel search startup co-founded by UW prof Oren Etzioni, which Microsoft bought for $115 million last year.
Steve Hall of Vulcan Capital stirred the pot a little by pointing out some of the shortcomings of Seattle. “The first is the question of whether Seattle has enough capital. It’s a very short list of funds. You need a critical mass of capital to drive entrepreneurs’ willingness to quit their jobs and burn the midnight oil to start businesses. While I think it’s good for us VCs to have the market to ourselves, you need a little more activity to jumpstart the system. The good news is there are a lot of Bay Area firms spending a lot of time up here. But I think there’s room for another fund or two, probably in the $100 million range,” Hall said.
Are celebrity investors/advisors/board members worth it?
November 3, 2009
I recently read two posts on this subject, one from Altos Ventures and one from Chris Dixon and I agree with the key theme that celebrity (the term that i would use is “big name” not necessarily famous but known like a politician or well connected person locally) are not worth it:
“ In our experience, celebrity investors and board members do little to help entrepreneurs do what they need to get done. They offer little in the way of strategic or practical advice about hiring, firing, product development, closing deals and financing. Even worse, sometimes the advice can be out of touch with what is going on in the industry or company but due to their celebrity status, some off the cuff comments can carry too much weight.”
I would go one step further and say that the number of “big name” people on a board probably has a inverse relationship with the quality of the start-up, the more “big names” on the board the lower the caliber of the idea and team. In other circumstances I have seen, the “celebrity” board members are used for fundraising only. Look Mr. Rich, former Mayor so and so is on our board as well as former university standout such and such, If they are in shouldn’t you be?
“No matter how big your board or how well connected your advisors are they will NEVER produce the quantity or quality of leads your own team will produce”
Lexington & Bowling Green featured as Best Cities to launch
October 14, 2009
Fortune Small Business Ranked the top 50 metros according to the following criteria: per capita income, hourly wages, workforce quality, crime rates, taxes and foreclosures.
Lexington was ranked 6th in the medium sized city category (number one was Huntsville, AL)
Bowling Green was ranked 12th in the small city category ( number one was Billings, MT)
What put Lexington and BG high in these rankings were that they graded in the middle on most categories, not a leader and not a laggard.
One of the negatives was tax climate. Kentucky was rated to have the 16th worst tax climate for business in the country
The Founders Visa
September 23, 2009
Currently, their is a trending topic among VC’s and those in the tech world about the need for a “Founders Visa” Or ” Startup Visa”. The idea is basically the following:
provide a special visa to allow immigrants who want to start a company entrance into the US.
They would be barred from working for another company so as to not take jobs away from Americans.
The idea comes from the fact that roughly half of all tech startups were started by immigrants and that our current immigration policy keeps these company founders from moving to the US to found their companies.
This idea was started by Paul Graham and has been picked up by the likes of Brad Feld, Eric Ries and Paul Kedrosky etc. While I am for stopping illegal immigration, I believe this is a smart way for the US to keep its place as the leader in innovation. Each of these companies will employ Americans and some will become very large companies creating thousands of jobs. While some of the details still need to be worked out, It is a good sensible step to take. One detail I would support is to allow VC and investment funding to be used as the barometer of whether you receive the Visa, or an accreditation process similar to the way Universities determine if a student can get a student visa.
I think a smart immigration policy is to let in to The US all of the smartest people from all over the world that want to come here legally.
