January 12th, 2010
Recapping on my earlier “Federated Entrepreneurship” post from January 5.
A federation is a union of partially self-governing units with a constitution that does not allow unilateral changes by a central governing body. I think it’s also a good model for what’s required to create an economically dynamic region. One parallel would be to a barn raising or Finnish talkoot, where a community comes together to solve an urgent problem that is beyond the means of a member or family in the community. As one of my old clients once remarked “it takes a village to raise a startup” and I think it takes a federation of entrepreneurs to improve the economy in a region.
Justin Bacon described this as a goal for his Minnesota Lean Startup Group in a comment on the LinkedIn Group
What we all hope to learn, the encouragement and advice that we give and/or receive, the lessons learned that we share and the relationships that we build, are as much about building this kind of community here locally as it is about helping us foster our own bootstrapped tech-startups.
Two other well known entrepreneurs have shifted their focus to entrepreneurial education.
Sramana Mitra outlined an ambitious New Year’s Resolution for 2010
Through the Entrepreneur Journeys project, I have come to conclude that the most vulnerable phase in an entrepreneur’s life is the pre $1 million revenue stage. This is where numerous ventures fail. Once the $1 million revenue milestone is crossed, entrepreneurs find it easier to find additional customers, manage working capital, and access funding, whether it is credit or equity.
In my roundtables, the vast majority of entrepreneurs I work with are in this rather vulnerable pre $1 million revenue stage.
Thus, I have come to the conclusion that if I could help a million entrepreneurs globally reach $1 million in revenue (and beyond), that would be the foundation of a robust, distributed, and sustainable economic value creation that would add up to a trillion dollars in global GDP. It would also result in creating at least 10 million jobs around the world.
Through my efforts — blog, books, columns, roundtables — I am trying to develop a scalable entrepreneurship education system that entrepreneurs from every corner of the world can access. I am sure, in 2010, this work will gain further momentum.
But I do need your help in getting the word out that this resource base is available for entrepreneurs who wish to access it. Each of you — if you believe in this vision — can directly or indirectly influence, perhaps, another hundred entrepreneurs, and help them clear the all-important $1 million revenue hurdle. By using bootstrapping, crisp positioning, and laser-sharp focus, entrepreneurs can, each in their individual domains, build small businesses with solid foundations.
Eric Ries also outlined a desire to move Towards a New Entrepreneurship in his first post of 2010:
When I started writing about the lean startup, my aspiration was to do more than just share a handful of tips and tricks that work for consumer internet startups. I believe the only way to improve our chances as entrepreneurs is to develop a working theory of entrepreneurship.
Like other industries – from publishing to automobiles – entrepreneurship is in the process of being disrupted by globalization. On the whole, this is a good thing for America and for our civilization. The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an internet connection. The result is a profound democratization of the digital means of production.
In a subsequent post today Eric did a roundup of Lean Startup Resources; there is also this list of Meetups.
Related posts:
- “Continuing Education in Entrepreneurship” from October 2006 suggests networking offers “knowledge that isn’t written down” (and not to be found in Mr. Google’s basement):
“I had this epiphany that I had spent the last dozen years or so, since I started attending Software Entrepreneur Forum (now SDForum) and Churchill Club meetings, in this ad hoc program in continuing entrepreneurial education. Books are valuable, and not enough entrepreneurs do enough reading, but there is also a category of knowledge that hasn’t been written down yet. And you can gain wisdom from listening to someone whose has played the game–even if it’s just their mistakes–that you would otherwise have to gain from your mistakes experience.”
- “Breakfast with Tom Anyos of Technology Ventures Corporation” Between 2002 and 2008 TVC offered a set of six monthly classes twice a year in Silicon Valley:
- Entering the Entrepreneurial World
- Market Research & the Marketing Plan
- Financial Management
- Preparing & Presenting the Business Plan
- Operations Startup, Monitoring & Human Resources
- The Term Sheet & Lessons Learned
- “Startup Epicenter Offers Intensive Workshops, Challenge, and Festival“
January 5th, 2010
“Federated Entrepreneurship” was a phrase that William Krause used to explain 3Com’s model for management and innovation when he was CEO. Federation comes from a Latin word foedus for covenant or treaty and describes a union of partially self-governing units with a constitution that does not allow unilateral changes by a central governing body. It was a good model for the entrepreneurial business units at 3Com to pursue opportunities both independently and in concerted action.
I think it’s also a good model for what’s required to create an economically dynamic region. One parallel would be to a barn raising or Finnish talkoot, where a community comes together to solve an urgent problem that is beyond the means of a member or family in the community. As one of my old clients once remarked “it takes a village to raise a startup” and I think it takes a federation of entrepreneurs to improve the economy in a region.
Justin Bacon described this as a goal for his Minnesota Lean Startup Group in a comment on the LinkedIn Group
What we all hope to learn, the encouragement and advice that we give and/or receive, the lessons learned that we share and the relationships that we build, are as much about building this kind of community here locally as it is about helping us foster our own bootstrapped tech-startups.
I like the concept of simultaneously bootstrapping a startup and building a community. Many regions around the world aspire to improve the level of innovation and dynamism in their local economy. But the Silicon Valley model of technology entrepreneurship combined with risk capital is more than 100 years old: it can be traced to the founding of Federal Telegraph in 1909 (it’s noted by California Historical marker 836). Today’s efforts build on prior practices and institutions. See “Steve Blank on the ‘Secret History of Silicon Valley’“ for more details and the Silicon Valley Historical Society.
I think this means that each region needs to leverage its unique strengths new industries and local entrepreneurial activities. Put another way, Silicon Valley has already been invented, now we need to invent the regional models that will replace it.
It’s interesting that a number of the engineers behind the semiconductor revolution were from Midwestern Congregationalist Church backgrounds that emphasize a lack of hierarchy and a commitment to education and hard work. Some excerpts from Tom Wolfe’s “Robert Noyce and His Congregation” (a re-write of his earlier “The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce.”):
ROBERT NOYCE, INVENTOR OF THE silicon microchip and co-founder of Intel, grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, one of countless small towns in the Midwest that had been founded in the 19th century as religious communities by so-called Dissenting Protestants: Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and many others. What Dissenting Protestants dissented from was the Church of England and its elaborate ties to British upper-class life. […]
The Congregational Church had no hierarchy. Each congregation was autonomous. A minister was a teacher rather than a holy shepherd with a flock. Each member of the Congregation was supposed to be his own priest, in direct communication with God. […]
This attitude had a fascinating corollary in education. Back East, as in Europe, engineering was an unfashionable field for any truly gifted student to go into. It was looked upon as nothing more than manual labor elevated to a science.[…]
An extremely bright student, the one possessing the quality known as genius, was infinitely more likely to go into engineering in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, or Wisconsin than anywhere Back East. As a result, the way to today’s Information Superhighway, more recently known as the Digital Revolution, was paved entirely by geniuses from the Midwest and farther west. […]
A decade later at Intel, Noyce decided to eliminate the notion of levels of management altogether. He and Moore ran the show; that much was clear. But below them there were only the strategic business segments, as they called them. They were comparable to the major departments in an orthodox corporation, but they had far more autonomy. Each was run like a separate corporation. Middle managers at Intel had more responsibility than most vice presidents Back East.
Joel Kotkin’s “Little Startup on the Prairie” has a section on “The Rise of the Brain Belt” (which builds on his earlier “The U. S. Brain Belt“) that outlines some other sources of opportunity:
“The Rise of the Brain Belt”
Perhaps even more important to the revival of the Heartland may be the growth of high-technology services and communications, energy production, manufacturing and warehouses as the critical levers for new employment and wealth creation. Only 10 percent of rural Americans live on farms and only 14 percent of the rural workforce is employed in farming. The area’s future clearly lies in the continued expansion of other industries.
The key to this growth is not merely cheap energy or labor; it’s the quality of the workforce. Although these areas are often seen as lacking in educated workers, many rural regions of the country—from New England to the Great Plains and even parts of the Sierras—actually have a surplus of skilled labor. The basis of this surplus lies in the high level of education among young people in many Heartland states. In virtually every measurement, students in key rural states—particularly the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas—tend to perform better than those in more urbanized ones, as measured by graduation rates, college attendance and enrollment in high-level science and education programs.
[…] The Internet is rapidly diminishing the traditional near monopoly of information that throughout history has belonged to the metropolis; today a farmer, a securities dealer, a machine shop proprietor or a software writer in a small town enjoys the same access to the latest market and technical information as someone located in midtown Manhattan or Silicon Valley. “
August 27th, 2009
I have known Nanette Collins for the better part of two decades and was delighted when she took me up on my offer of a guest blog on volunteering and managing volunteers. She is the principal at Nanette V. Collins Marketing and PR with offices in Boston and San Francisco and one the web at www.nvc.com
Working as a volunteer is the hardest job you’ll ever have, or so advised my officemate after she finished a phone call with the principal of her daughters’ parochial school. My friend and colleague had once again been bullied into a pro bono writing project that clients of our Public Relations firm would otherwise pay for … and dearly.
This long-ago memory came flooding back to me after Sean Murphy of SKMurphy asked me to write a guest post about volunteering. You see, I’ve just finished serving for many years as the volunteer Publicity Chair for the Design Automation Conference, an interesting, stressful, complex, demanding, but ultimately rewarding job.
As Sean points out, volunteerism is on the rise as new kinds of communities are built online or at face-to-face events. In my experience, good management skills are just as important to a volunteer corps as they are in a business setting, and perhaps even more so. As a result, the quality of the volunteer experience and the quality of the work performed depend on the management skills that volunteers are subjected to.
Throughout my career, the best managers have been the ones who have helped define my responsibilities, gave me the authority and allowed me to get the job done without much interference. They could be counted on to pave the way or remove obstacles when necessary, helping to make me a better, more productive employee. And, did I mention a happier employee? This management practice should be the way in which volunteers are managed as well.
Volunteers come in all varieties and motivations. Some want to burnish their own image, others want to give back or need to fill out their resume or curriculum vitae. And then there are some who are moving their employer’s agenda forward. Other volunteers thrive on the kudos. No matter, all need constant care and nurturing to make them productive participants. Open lines of communications help to keep everyone on track and enthusiastic. Volunteers should understand and be committed to the mutually stated goal, and the strategy and tactics to achieve it. Each volunteer should be recognized and thanked on a regular basis, along with continual and positive reinforcement.
It seems that volunteers often have more invested in the outcome than normal knowledge workers and, as a result, want to be far more involved in decision making. My advice to leaders of volunteer corps is to let them be as involved or uninvolved as they want to be. Inspiration and creatively can come from the unlikeliest of sources.
Of course, the quality of work produced by volunteers varies widely, from exceeding expectations to being barely passable. It can be inconsistent as workloads shift and situations change throughout the year. Micromanaging, discouraged in almost any business setting, doesn’t prompt loyalty or improve sub par or inconsistent work. Neither does second guessing because it wastes time and demotivates otherwise productive workers. My advice is to take the level of volunteerism you can get and quietly fill in the rest yourself, without micromanaging, criticizing or drawing attention.
A volunteer should not commit to a project or an assignment where they lack the training or expertise, or the time it takes to get it completed. Taking it on with the understanding that you’re learning a new skill or for professional development is fine and often encouraged — within reason, of course.
I sometimes think that the school principal had nothing on some of the volunteers I came across in my many years of service to DAC. It’s no different than working at a company — you can expect both excellent and not-so-great managers and colleagues. In my many years of service to DAC, I worked with both types with varying degrees of success. But then, I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything. I walk away proud of the accomplishments of the Publicity Committee that recently included Peggy Aycinena, Annette Bley, Paul Cohen, Colleen Moran, Gabe Moretti, Emily Taylor and the team from MP Associates. All distinguish themselves with outstanding work, professionalism and a strong sense of community.
If you’re given a chance to volunteer for DAC, an online or face-to-face community or anything else, do it! You’ll be glad that you did. You may find, as I did, that the chance to give back is a thrill. The satisfaction that comes from a job well done and the opportunity to meet and work with some of the sharpest minds in our industry far exceed any perceived negatives.