Category Archives: Leadership

Does Boston Have Too Many Startups? A response to Kirsner’s Sunday Globe Article

18 October 2011

This post originally appeared on Greenhorn Connect and has a boatload of comments. See here: https://greenhornconnect.com/blog/does-boston-have-too-many-startups-response-kirsner-s-sunday-globe-article

In the Sunday Globe this week, Scott Kirsner posed the question, “Does Boston Have Too Many Startups?”  The article seemed to try to make the argument that all our little startups should just be employees at bigger startups (disregarding how bigger startups, start out…).

The article is really best summed up in the quote in the article by Craig Driscoll, “companies that hope to grow need to do more than complain about how tight the talent market is.” I find it fitting that coincidentally, Ryan Durkin, COO of CampusLive (and mentee of Mr. Driscoll as a Highland Capital portfolio company) writes about attracting talent today:  http://www.ryandurkin.com/blog/2011/10/how-to-hire-dudes-showers-kitchens/

I’ve spoken with a number of friends about the article and had some interesting Twitter conversations as well and wanted to highlight some of the key points that came from them.  (Note: Kirsner sought out some thoughts which you can see on his Globe blog here.)

1) We don’t talk about logical career paths enough

Quick: explain, with examples, a logical career path for someone to evolve to be a successful entrepreneur.  Stumped? I know I am. Most examples I think of fit in the “Zuckerberg” files of folks who didn’t have much of a startup pedigree before launching their monster success (think Matt Lauzon, the many TechStars companies, etc).  I look at the titans of our community like David Cancel, Dharmesh Shah, Jeff Bussgang and know very little about “how they got here.”

It’s easy to tell people “go work for a startup first,” but you need to show them examples of people that have succeeded in doing that, and if you didn’t as a founder, then you have to acknowledge you have some hypocrisy on your hands.

2) We don’t have enough serial entrepreneurs and mafias

We are all familiar with the Paypal Mafia and some of the many startups the former employees spawned, but where are Boston’s Mafia’s? There was a great Bostinnovation series covering some of them, but it seems like there are fewer and certainly less celebrated.

These mafias are exactly what would convince someone to *join* a startup instead of start their own: join a team and have a great exit and then have peers and valuable experience to start another.  Maybe an offshoot of Eric Paley‘s Founder Dialogues needs to be “Mafia Dialogues” and bring in a few people from a successful team to share their combined story. We also need to think about whether it’s good for a CEO of a billion dollar company to be proud that all of his first 10 employees are still working at his now billion dollar company.

I think Rob Go was also on the right track highlighting the power team of Brian Balfour, Aaron White and Ariel Diaz teaming up for Boundless Learning (and also happens to talk about the importance of “more shots on goal,” not less startups as Kirsner suggests).

3) We don’t take enough chances on Greenhorns

I am very lucky. What few of you remember is that no one was interested in hiring me when I came into the tech scene. John Prendergast was the first to give me a small shot doing some work for him, which then led to the opportunity to pitch Laura and the oneforty team on joining them (John was on their board).  That was a 6 month journey to get that full time offer from oneforty.  If I didn’t live as lean as possible and have the luxury of a little savings, I may have never made it.

Just like our investors are often criticized for wanting too much traction before they invest, many of our companies only want to hire people that have done a role before.  I know too many young, eager people who want to work at startups, and yet there doesn’t seem to be many roles available to them.  I get asked about Janet Aronica, who I hired at oneforty, a few times a month it seems and the irony is, I doubt anyone else would have taken a chance on a young, eager talent coming from the low rungs of a PR firm.  I also look at Kristin Dziadul, who once made videos trying to get HubSpot’s attention and was smartly hired by Rob May and Backupify.

This is not to lump everyone together. Matt Lauzon and the Gemvara folks have taken chances, and I know Diane Hessan has been an awesome advocate for some of the truly hungry Gen Y folks. Unfortunately, the rest of the community hasn’t caught on yet.

4) We don’t take recruiting seriously

It bears repeating via Craig Driscoll, “companies that hope to grow need to do more than complain about how tight the talent market is.”  Vinod Khosla went as far as to say “New CEOs should spend 50% of their time recruiting.”  I’ve seen the aggressiveness of Sequoia firsthand as they held an event the night before Startup Bootcamp for their founders who were speaking to tell a bit of their stories, answer questions and meet people. I know Dropbox has spoken at at least 3 Boston area schools in the last 6 months.  How many schools have you spoken at in your own back yard?

Maybe we need an event or two to talk more about recruiting talent (One of my favorite events ever was a fireside chat with Akhil of MassChallenge and Paul English talking about recruiting).  I think it’s a competitive advantage for some companies while others throw money at it, but it certainly seems like it might help.  More awesome posts on the subject like Brian Balfour’s and David Cancel’s would help too.

5) Complaining about funded startups is an insult to entrepreneurs

The funding climate in Boston has improved, but it’s still hard to raise money.  As the opening to the Bloomberg TV show states, TechStars is more selective than Harvard. If you manage to raise money, that’s quite an accomplishment, as David Friend says in his message to Kirsner.  If you have an idea that goes far enough to funding, you have an at bat and need to go try to execute. The amount you’ll learn with your small team will be tremendous and put you in a great position to contribute to another company.

Now, living off of savings, is obviously a big risk and so if someone is risking financial ruin to keep their fledgling startup alive, it most likely makes sense to go work somewhere. Then again, the Valley wouldn’t have Airbnb if those guys weren’t relentless.

6) We need to clarify what a startup is

Wayfair is a $350Mn+ company. HubSpot has over 300 employees.  Are both of them still startups? Neither? I worked at E Ink when they went from about 90 employees to 165.  From my experience, the Dunbar number is very real.  The culture really started to shift at that point and more HR rules and regulations hit, not by choice, but out of necessity.  Few companies are really like Google and provide the independence and opportunities similar to startups, and even there, I don’t think you get the same thing.

I’ve heard about HubSpot’s education classes that try to teach some business and entrepreneurial lessons, but I have a feeling they’re the exception, not the rule. I also wonder how they’ll be able to maintain it as they grow further.

7) What motivates an entrepreneur or early stage employee?

Another great quote from Craig Driscoll on advising companies was, “They need to figure out how to recruit and create jobs that are attractive for entrepreneurial people.”  An entrepreneurial person cares much more about working with other smart people, having flexibility and independence in their role and a feeling of true contribution and influence in the big picture of what they do.

When I worked at E Ink, everyone looked forward to their quarterly meetings where Russ Wilcox explained the state of the company.  It lifted the covers on how the company was doing and especially during the wild ride that was the exploding popularity of the Kindle, you could feel everyone having a renewed sense of purpose after work as they were a part of the amazing opportunity to replace paper books with E Ink technology.  I think that same sentiment is happening now with Gemvara as Matt hammers home the vision to change jewelry and e commerce on the web.  Entrepreneurial employees want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, while feeling like they’re really making a contribution.

—-

I’m glad Scott brought this conversation out for discussion, but feel like it missed the mark on what really matters in this ecosystem developing.

Competition and Inspiration: Environmental Effects of Nantucket and Beyond

19 June 2011

When I was a freshman in high school, my father and I attended the Cumberland Valley High School Track and Field banquet. It was an annual event to celebrate the end of another track season by looking back on the season, recognizing great contributors to the team and providing the coaches an opportunity to send off seniors and talk about plans for the future.

My freshman year, I was far from good. I barely made the team that traveled to away meets (they only took the top 5 for each event).  I only ran track that season because soccer hadn’t worked out in the fall and my parents wanted me to try another sport.  It helped that my father ran track when he was in college, which made me think I’d automatically be good at it. I was wrong.

It was a good enough season for a freshman as I enjoyed personal victories fending off challenges for that last spot for away meets and taking 25 seconds off my time (2:40 to 2:15).  However, in the grand scheme of things, no one but my parents and I noticed these “victories.”

At the banquet, our coach reflected on the conference championship we had won and the top athletes on the team that were returning the following year.  I watched from my seat as I felt envy for the high regard the top runners were given. I realized that for all the accomplishments I thought I’d had that season, they were really empty; I hadn’t scored a single point for the team and wasn’t even on the coaches radar as an “up and coming” runner.

As I was leaving the banquet, my long distance coach asked me if I would run cross country in the fall. He told me it would help make me a better runner for the next track season.  I agreed.

As I got in the car with my father to head home, I told him I was going to train all summer and do whatever it took to make varsity for Cross Country.  My father was supportive, but reminded that varsity meant one of the top 7 runners at the school. I had just finished a season where I was barely the 7th best runner on the team in one of a dozen different race lengths.

That summer, I ran over 620 miles in 3 months.  I built up to running 10 miles a day. Every day, my father would wake me up when he went to work and I would run 7.5 miles. An hour after dinner at night, I’d run 2.5 miles more.  During those 3 months, my mile pace went from 8:30 per mile for the 7.5 mile run down to 6:30 per mile for the 7.5 mile run.

To everyone’s surprise, I showed up in great shape at the start of the season and made the last varsity spot.  The hard work had paid off and now I was mentioned as an “up and coming” runner and had the respect of my peers. From there the work was just beginning, but I had made the leap necessary to work alongside the top athletes and take the steps necessary to eventually captain the Cross Country team my senior year.

—

Going to the Nantucket Conference last weekend felt like the Track and Field Banquet all over again.  Greenhorn Connect got me in the door, but it felt similar to just making the away squad to run the 800 meters; I’m as much a rookie (if not more so) as the other sponsored young entrepreneurs that attended.

Sitting here at the genesis stage of my next startup, I can’t help but feel the pressure to do something big and find a way to raise my game to hopefully work to one day be an equal of the more distinguished Nantucket attendees.  I have every intention of working just as hard on my next venture as I did that summer to make the varsity cross country team.

Leadership Lessons First Time Entrepreneurs Forget

7 June 2011

1 Comment

While building Greenhorn Connect, I’ve spent a great deal of my time with young and first time entrepreneurs.  If there’s one thing I’ve come to appreciate, it’s the absurd odds stacked against any of us succeeding; there’s just so much that you have no idea about and need to quickly learn.

You could spend years learning just one small subsection of your duties like SEO, analytics, customer development, copywriting, design, fundraising, product development, development architecture or simply great coding, but the demands of startups says you need to become competent and relatively adept at all of those and more.  Amongst all those hard skills, I didn’t even mention leadership, which I think is the most underrated skill to develop as a young entrepreneur.

Leadership is a bit different, because it’s a soft skill; it’s not as easy to measure as the success of your marketing campaign or the elegance and functionality of your code.  However, it’s an immensely important skill and one with more long term value than becoming an expert in any one of the aforementioned hard skill areas; if your goal is to build a company with more than yourself as an employee, then you’re going to be leading others.  As you grow, you’ll be leading more people and spending less time on any of the individual skills you used in the early days and much more on communication, vision and goal setting and coordination across teams.

As I’ve learned through my own errors and in talking to other young entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed there are 2 major concepts most of us don’t recognize that are absolutely critical to leading your team even when you only have one or two employees:

1) Your employees don’t work for you; You serve them.

Having employees means that you’ve been able to convince others to work with you on your idea.  Appreciate the incredible feat that it is.

However, do not think that because they work for you that they are now enlisted to your dictatorship. You need to involve them in core discussions, listen to their ideas and feedback and cultivate a culture of appreciation and shared passion.   A happy, engaged employee is 5x as productive as a frustrated, stymied or sad employee.  This ebbs and flows, so you really need to watch for it on a daily basis.

Showing appreciation for those that work for with you is not optional; you cannot over-recognize their best efforts.  At the same time, it is a balancing act.  There are times for the carrot and other times it is best to lead them with a stick.  Each employee will respond differently, so it’s a skill that requires fine tuning for everyone you work with.   Personally, as much as I love a good reward, I value constructive criticism significantly more; I’d much rather hear how I can do even better next time than dwell on what went right. Unfortunately, what I, you, or anyone else prefer is completely different than the next person you hire.

I constantly feel humbled by the fact that I have a team helping me make Greenhorn Connect a success today.  I do everything I can to make sure Pardees and Ian know that and have learned well the power of having excited, motivated people helping you fulfill your vision. An hour spent cultivating your employees will pay you back exponentially.

2) Uncover and fix problems when they’re small.

With all the hustle and constant activity buzzing around a startup, it’s easy to overlook small problems. Don’t.

When problems are small, solutions are small as well. When problems grow up, then it takes big, dramatic solutions to overcome them. If it’s an interpersonal issue or a major team issue, then suddenly that small issue can lead to someone having to be let go.

Catch problems when they’re small by reading your employees;  look at their face and posture, and if an employee seems down or upset…asking them if something is up and if you can help has huge immediate and long term benefits.

Conflicts and small issues are often simple misunderstandings or honest mistakes. Tackling them head on breeds a culture of accountability and openness to healthy criticism.  When you get your team in this habit, it becomes much easier to avoid major problems, because they never get that big.  Having a discussion about firing someone is a much more dramatic discussion than talking to an employee about a minor issue that may have caused conflict or hurt the company.  Nip problems in the bud and encourage your employees to do so as well.

—

This post may seem like stating the obvious, but theory and practice are two very different things.  Just like hard skills require practice and active use to become sharper, leadership skills like the issues above require active diligence to become adept at them. Ask yourself how your team is doing at managing these issues; I bet there’s times you’ve noticed your team’s mood affected productivity or a problem grew larger than it should have and caused trouble.

Have you learned these lessons the hard way? What key leadership skills do you think first time entrepreneurs need most?

Why Unlimited Vacation is a Bad Idea for Startups

18 May 2011

20 Comments

One of the really cool things about being a startup is that you can make your own rules.  There is no HR department to try to make you act all “corporate” and instill strict rules and guidelines or even have an “employee manual.”  There is no doubt that this added freedom creates much of the innovative culture that drives a startup and attracts great employees.

One common area to experiment in for a startup is with the vacation policy. Talking to founders, I’ve heard startups use the entire spectrum from no vacation to unlimited vacation.  Today, I’d like to examine the unlimited vacation policy and why I think it may not be the best idea for startups.

There are really just 2 sides to this issue I see: how your best and worst employees handle it.

Unlimited Vacation takes advantage of your best employees.

I’m a workaholic. So are many other startupers. Especially for an employee punching above their weight class, there can be a lot of pressure to constantly move the ball forward and make progress. That can mean taking very few breaks, and risking burn out.

When you have unlimited vacation, there is no finite number. That number feels very foreign and it’s hard to understand when you are allowed to take time off and how much is appropriate.  When you become a veteran entrepreneur, the concept may make sense and be easy as you’ll know when you should take time off; you fully appreciate the concept that a recharged version of yourself is much more productive than the borderline exhausted version of you slogging along for months.  However, when you’re new, knowing the actual amount of time you’re allowed to take off can really help you not feel guilty taking time off when you need it.

Unlimited Vacation is a dangerous option for bad employees.

What do you do when one of your employees wants to take time off repeatedly in a short amount of time or a time that is far from ideal for your startup? How do you rein that in without conflict? When you talk about issues around “wrongful termination,” it’s a hard argument to say you’re firing someone for taking too much “unlimited vacation.”  This can cause all kinds of conflict in your company as you can have resentment between employees and frustration for both parties; those taking the vacation think they’re merely exercising the rule as written and those working hard and not taking breaks see it as abuse.

So what’s the solution?

Have an open vacation policy with a finite number of vacation days. 

What does this really mean? It means you shouldn’t have to apply for vacation days, but there should be a specific number you get each year. That finite number means employees can’t abuse their freedom to take time when you need it, but you can also tell your workaholic employees, “Hey, you have 90% of your time still unused…take it!”

Obviously vacation and sick policies are a complicated issue at startups. This is just one piece of a larger question about how to get the most out of your employees while keeping them happy, healthy and motivated.

Have you worked at a startup with Unlimited Vacation or another creative vacation policy? What were the pros and cons?

Leadership Lessons from Pixar

15 May 2011

Last night, I watched the documentary, The Pixar Story, which is exactly what it sounds like: the story of Pixar becoming the powerhouse computer animation film company it is today.  You can view the documentary by clicking here.

It’s a fascinating story hearing how they built a team of people sharing a common and seemingly impossible dream when they started: making a full-length, feature-film made entirely with computer animation.

There’s a lot of awesome anecdotes in the film and the documentary’s creators did an excellent job of capturing the emotions of creating these movies many of us know so well: Toy Story, the Incredibles, Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo.

I’m a bit of a leadership geek, so I wanted to share leadership lessons I saw in the film that stood out.  (Note: some of these are also inspired by the book I just finished reading: Little Bets, which uses Pixar as one of the key companies it draws stories from.)

1) Collaboration and spontaneity matters

After their first major success, Pixar opened a new facility that embodied the culture they had built and worked to foster it to greater levels.  This new facility is expansive and open and allows for employees to be creative and collaborative in new ways.

This is why cubicles are the enemy of any great company. Those random connections that happen in an open environment vastly outweigh the costs of interrupting others.

2) Openness to criticism and feedback is essential

Everyone sees the world a bit differently, which is hugely valuable.  At about 68 minutes in the film you see an artist showing his peers a rough draft of Nemo the fish talking to his Father.  The artist had focused all his efforts on the father and Nemo looked basically dead. His peers helped him realize the importance of showing life in both characters.  Throughout the film, collaboration is emphasized as a key item.

Without a collaborative environment where feedback is welcomed, you will never be able to move quickly enough.

3) Celebrate real success

The Pixar team worked insane hours and under unbelievable pressure as they more than once put their backs against the wall in making a film and trying to rewrite it with tight deadlines.  In one scene, the director of Monster’s Inc announces to the Pixar company the box office receipts for opening weekend, which were huge.  The whole company was celebrating with champagne and cheers.

Many have talked about the distorted reality of celebrating funding for a startup.  It’s important to remember that especially after a major struggle for your team to celebrate key successes and recognize those making extreme efforts.

4) Take bold chances

After 3 straight hits on their hands at Pixar, the reigns of directing their next film was handed over to someone who had never even been an assistant director.  As it turned out, this led to Monsters, inc, a huge success.

Recognizing talent within your company and giving them the opportunity to grow beyond their current role can yield great results as demonstrated here.  The director of Monsters, inc, was employee #2 at Pixar.  He was ready.

5) Push the Limits

At Pixar, it was a constant back and forth: the tech team would give animators new possibilities to try to animate and then the animators would come back pushing the tech team to allow them to do even more.  In A Bug’s Life, the tech team said they could only render 50 ants on screen at a time. The animators pushed back and the tech team delivered; they made it possible to render over 400 ants on screen.

The greatest inventions of man have always come from those willing to try to make the impossible possible. It is a worthy exercise to ask your team “what if” and make things happen.

6) Never Settle

After a string of hits, Pixar was on top of the world. They could have tried to stick to their formula and made more great movies, but they didn’t. Continuing to push themselves, they brought on Brad Bird, who had just mad the flop, Iron Giant.  He brought fresh ideas to the company and thrived in the Pixar culture that assimilated him.

When you get comfortable and rest on your laurels, that provides a window of opportunity for your competition. If you continue to push the limits and innovate, you will never be caught.

7) Be your own best customer

It was said best right in the documentary, “We’re a team of people that love film…We just make things we all just want to see.”  As it turns out, when they were unhappy with films and pushed themselves to rewrite and improve what they were doing, they created great movies that they were proud of and people loved.

Every startup knows the best customer in the early days is full of ideas and constructive criticism. Make your people a great customer of their work.

8) Your competition doesn’t understand your value prop

Towards the end of the film, they mention the decline of 2D animation and the fact that other studies gave up on the medium after a string of Pixar successes.  As it turns out, they seemed to think that audiences no longer had an interest in the 2D animation form and that the success of Pixar was attributed to their technology.  They couldn’t be more wrong.

Know what your company is all about at its core and focus on delivering your best possible product. Don’t worry about competition, because they are likely to look at your success and be unable to understand what the real reasons for your success are.

9)  Empower your people to have control of their work

Everyone at Pixar has a great level of accountability to themselves and their peers. Everyone takes great pride in their work and believes in the mission.  Pixar’s employees are operating at the highest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the quality of their work demonstrates it.

Give your employees the opportunity to surprise you. Give them ownership and the opportunity to see their work to the end.  This empowerment will give them new vigor in their work.

10) Overnight successes are far from overnight

Pixar was a fledgling arm of LucasFilm in the 1970s when their journey began.  It wasn’t until two decades later that Toy Story finally came out. They were constantly on the edge of going out of business and had many sleepless months producing their hits.

No success is overnight. It’s a collection of small victories that eventually add up and one day reach the tipping point of success.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Lessons Learned from Observing the OnSwipe Investment Announcement

13 January 2011

3 Comments

I really enjoyed seeing the explosion of stuff for local Jason Baptiste and his startup OnSwipe. To really see how this all works, you need to read all the articles surrounding the events of the last 24 hours:

This morning:

TechStars NYC Announces their companies in their first class with one Mystery company:

BostInnovation: “NYC TechStars Companies Announced”

note the allusion: “And a mystery company focused on building a “Platform for Tablet Publishing and Advertising.”  I immediately thought of PadPressed (the old name for OnSwipe) for a lot of reasons I won’t go into, but couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t be announced.  Then it was cleared up…

Tonight:

1) TechCrunch Announces the Funding:

OnSwipe Raises, Like, A Million Dollars

2) Jason’s take on the OnSwipe Blog:

“The Road Ahead: Why Tablet Publishing Is Transforming The Way We Consume Media”

3) And Boston Angel Wayne Chang talks about his investment in OnSwipe:

“Proud To Be a Part of OnSwipe”

——————————————————————————————————————-

So what to learn from this? A few quick lessons and observations:

1) A mystery breeds intrigue

Being the mystery company…of the first TechStars…in tech hotbed and media mecca New York City…is a heck of a way to start things off with a bang.  TechStars tries to help companies make more noise and this is huge for OnSwipe.  On top of the buzz the other companies get, OnSwipe gets a huge extra magnification as people were looking to see what that 11th company was up to.

Lesson: If you can create some intrigue…definitely do! People love a good mystery.

2) Announce it and be AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE!

So we’ve got the source for Startup Tech News aka- Tech Crunch, writing about your funding announcement, a brilliant manifesto on the company blog by a truly gifted writer and the Angel investor that was the first to commit all writing about it at the same time.  Now that’s how you burn up Twitter and the social webs!

Lesson: The more ways you can get your message out, the wider the reach and the greater the buzz you can create.  Buzz = ongoing press attention, easier recruiting of employees and plenty of opportunity for serendipity.

3) The First Commit Came from BOSTON and was a new Angel

I’ve heard more than I care to about what it’s like to try to raise angel money in Boston and so it’s thrilling to hear that the first commitment for investing in OnSwipe was a Boston Angel (see Wayne Chang’s blog post).

Lesson: Boston.is.not.dead. There’s good people and if you show you have the right idea, the right team and the right skills, you can get funded around here.

4) Jason is the PERFECT choice to execute on this idea

Jason is a truly gifted writer/blogger both on his own blog: http://jasonlbaptiste.com/ as well as for the past few months Dharmesh Shah’s widely read OnStartups Blog: http://onstartups.com/ So when you take someone who is reaching tons of people because of his gift of writing…and happens to be giving tons of great advice on being an entrepreneur, that’s a perfect fit for someone that wants to lead a company that wants to change the way content is consumed.

Lesson: If you’re pursuing an idea, think about why you are the PERFECT choice for the idea. Then make sure the investors you pitch know why.

5) Jason has the BIG VISION investors love

So besides solid domain expertise, a solid personal brand to leverage and an initial product that is apparently already impressing investors, you have a guy ready to take on a big vision of how to transform an industry.  In his post on OnSwipe, he says it all:

“…50 billion dollars of traditional media spend needs to shift online.  Our belief is that it’s in a holding pattern and can’t. There’s a disconnect between award winning beautiful ads found in print and tasteless spam ads that litter the web. We think touch enabled devices can let this change by providing advertising people actually enjoy with the best of the web layered on- mobile, local, social, and more.”

Lesson: Think BIG, but be grounded in understanding the macro trends and opportunities.  Share that vision with the world and execute.

——————————————————————————————————————-

So to me, this is a home run all around at this stage. Yes, they still have to execute, but they’ve got an exciting and awesome set of pieces in motion.

This is the first of what I’m sure will be many more major steps in the future of OnSwipe.  I wish Jason and the rest of his team all the best and look forward to using it on my iPad soon.

Book Review: 10 Powerful Personas By Kevin Vogelsang

31 May 2010

1 Comment

Ever wonder what makes a leader great?  Ever spend time thinking about what the strengths are in your personality or how you might be able to become more like great people around you? Kevin Vogelsang has and he’s written a book to help you answer those questions.  In his just released book “10 Powerful Personas,“ Kevin examines key attributes of 10 different qualities found in leaders. I learned a lot from the book and I’d like to share a few of the lessons here:

1) Leaders come from everywhere

One of the most interesting things about Kevin’s book is the balance in people he uses as examples of different leaders.  He uses everyone from General Patton to his football coach to his mother as examples of the different powerful personas to great effect.  Because of his wide variety of examples, it made me think about who around me, both famous and friend, that exhibited the traits he describes; it was an excellent reminder that you can really learn from anyone around you if you simply raise your awareness and look for it.

<Click here to read the other reasons at GreenhornConnect.com>

8 Resolutions in 2010

4 January 2010

6 Comments

With the turning of the new year, it’s that time when people make resolutions. Yes, most people make them and soon break them, but I’m hoping to be different.  These are issues I’ve recognized and was already working to improve before the New Year. I’m simply using the turning of the year to make these goals public; I think by putting them out there for the world to see, you put a bit more pressure on yourself to deliver.  So, below are my resolutions and a few items for how YOU can help me make these all happen.

8 Resolutions in 2010

1) Improve my Punctuality: I’ve had many meetings over the past few months and unfortunately, I’ve had a bad habit of not making it on time to many of them. Sometimes it’s a beyond my control like when the T didn’t run for an hour while Obama spoke at MIT, but often, I’m just not giving myself enough time to get places.

How You can help me: Hold me accountable for punctuality. I’m open to creative ideas. Currently Cort, who films GreenhornTV for me, has it that I owe him a beer for every 5 min late I am. So far, I haven’t been late yet since we made that arrangement.

2)  Improve Time Management: As I launched Greenhorn Connect, I took the approach of doing everything all the time. That’s not a good strategy. I’ve gotten better as time has gone by, but I still find myself losing some days to doing things, but not Getting Things Done.

How You can help me: Any suggestions on how I can become more effective and efficient (books, articles or tips) are much appreciated. Thanks Apollo and Mike for your help already!

3) Get Back to the Gym: For my first 6+ years in Boston, I was a regular at Northeastern’s awesome gym, the Marino Center.  No matter how busy I was through undergraduate and graduate school, I always made time for the gym every other day.  Since I launched Greenhorn Connect, I’ve watched my gym attendance dwindle to not having made it since before Thanksgiving.  Fortunately, I have a pull up bar in my apartment and I’ve been getting creative by creating quick 20 minute workouts in my apartment, but it would be much better if I got back to my old workout routines that are a bit more diverse.

4) Get back to Running: I was a pretty good runner in high school on my cross country and track teams. I racked up a few thousand miles in that time and really look back at it as some of my favorite memories from high school. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to hammer out a routine in Boston that compared and so I’ve progressively lost my endurance.  I can’t run on concrete (not that I think anyone really can without injury) and this isn’t suburban PA so I can’t run on the roads.  This means I need to get out and take advantage of the 2 great locations near me: the Esplanade and Jamaica Pond.  This one will probably wait until spring when weather improves.

How You can help me: I think having the team really helped me stick to my running, so if anyone lives in the Back Bay area and is looking for a running partner or knows of any running groups, let me know.  I think I’d be running in the 7-8 min mile pace right now, looking to run 3-5 miles a day.

5) Read a Book per Week: I saw this come across the Twitter scape and thought it was great: Read a Book a Week for a Year. At first I said to myself, “I’m so busy! I don’t have time to read THAT much!” Then I read that post…and I realized, that’s like 30-40 pages a day. That’s not so bad. I can do that! So, I just started this on Jan 1st and am 3 for 3 as of this writing for getting my pages knocked out each day. As I hopefully progress on this I plan to also write reviews on Greenhorn Connect for the books I like best.

How You can help me: Two ways: 1) Recommend any books you suggest I read. 2) Loan me a book. Yes, I know I can go to a library, but if I borrow it from you, I bet you’ve read it and could then compare thoughts on the book briefly.

6) Post More Often: Keeping the Greenhorn Connect Blog going became my priority over the past couple of months, but now I think it’s starting to stabilize. I like the idea of having things I write here and on Greenhorn Connect (much like there are New Years Resolutions at both places). I’m going to try to commit to posting more often. To help that, I’m going to try adopting a new Seth Godin-like style here where I just write a couple paragraphs about a thought I have and leave it open for continued thought by you and I.

7) Keep learning: Since I started grad school in September 2008, I feel like I’ve been drinking from the fire hose in learning about entrepreneurship. I look at everything I do as a learning experience and that’s led to zero regrets in my somewhat unorthodox journey.  I hope to keep that mindset in 2010 and continue to leverage past experiences to develop future success.

How You can help me: Give me constructive criticism. I really take all the advice and feedback I get from people to heart. I find many are apprehensive to give feedback, but it’s the only way you can truly improve. So please…share your advice, suggestions and criticisms…I’m listening, and more importantly, acting on them.

8.) Pay it forward: One of the things I’ve learned over the past few months is that often, you can’t help those that are helping you. Instead, the best thing you can do is pay it forward and help others regardless of what they can do for you.  I’ve met with a number of people to share what I’ve learned from Greenhorn Connect and other recent experiences and look forward to helping when and how I can in the future.

How I can help You: Ask! You don’t know unless you try. If I can help you I will.

To me, these are more than resolutions; they’re part of my evolution. I think they actually all tie together as there’s a greater theme of curiosity, learning and organization.  Success in one is likely help success in the others.   Please comment or contact me if you can help with any of those or I can help you.

Lessons Learned: Under Promise, Over Deliver

17 November 2009

11 Comments

As the clock struck midnight tonight, a vision was officially only that; GreenhornConnect failed to relaunch as planned on Monday.  A series of technical difficulties left us unable to put the site up for you to see in all its glory.  We’d been planning this launch, in honor of Global Entrepreneurship Week, for a few weeks and had worked tirelessly to get all of the resources and content in order and start lining up our guest bloggers.  After many Monster energy drinks and little sleep, it was a thrilling, but ultimately draining experience.  We’re now inching close to the actual launch, but I wanted to hit on a few lessons I learned over the last 48 hours:

1) Nothing…I repeat…Nothing ever goes as Planned

If there’s any complexity to a problem, there will be hiccups. And usually, those hiccups will come where you assumed a task would be quick and easy.  We’re all very good at recognizing the big, time consuming tasks we face. Most of us can even budget relatively well how to get them done and project when that will be.  BUT, the problem is, those other things, the stuff we assume will be easy are not budgeted for and not planned for and so it is these problems that derail us.

Why is that, you ask? Well, it’s really simple, actually.  The more experienced and knowledgeable you are about something, the better you understand it. Those big, time consuming tasks, chances are you’ve done them before, so that’s why you can budget them so well.  But those other things…they’re probably something you haven’t done very much of; maybe it’s something you’ve done once in a different way, or it’s a new technique that should make your life easier. Regardless of the reason, it’s the stuff you don’t know that will hurt you.

So what’s the takeaway here?

Leave yourself a cushion for those hiccups to take time to be resolved and try to ask yourself what steps you’re taking for granted.

2) Over Promise, Under Deliver…err….Under Promise, Over Deliver

When you’re a young entrepreneur, you have to build your reputation from scratch. Everything you do is a small token that adds up to credibility and people believing in you.  Every time you do something good…whether it’s ask a good question at an event, impress someone with your knowledge in a conversation, follow through on a request by someone, etc, you’re adding another chip to the reputation pot. Unfortunately, when you do something bad…like don’t follow through on a promise, or offend someone or otherwise make yourself look bad, you lose many chips from the reputation pot.  Run out of chips and you’re in trouble.

So what am I getting at? If you do good things for awhile, you can get away with a mess up or two, but you still always need to be doing everything in your power to demonstrate your capabilities and why you’re not just another person who muses about being an entrepreneur versus someone who GTD (Gets Things Done).

In the case of the site relaunch, I feel like I really messed up. I promised to a lot of people we’d be relaunching Monday morning and that obviously didn’t happen. My problem was I got hung up on how awesome it would be if we did versus the reality of the fact that we had little margin for error to meet that date.  So, to anyone who went to GreenhornConnect.com on Monday and were disappointed to see the same old landing page and resource list, I apologize.  I hope you’ll check back today and see how far it’s come and join us on a journey to continue to develop and grow Greenhorn Connect.  I hope my enthusiasm and passion for this when we’ve met at events shows through in this and hopefully I have a few chips left in that pot.

So what’s the takeaway?

If you promise less than you know you can deliver, then you’ll wow people when you do more than that. (as opposed to disappoint them…)

3) Do Something You Truly Love

The last thing I want to hit on is the passion of entrepreneurship.  Regardless of what your venture is, you have to absolutely love it. It’s gotta be your passion.  Even as I saw one of my roommates going out with his girlfriend for the night as I stayed in to work on the site or as the other slept in while I got up to go to a conference, I never second guessed my choices. I love going to entrepreneurship events and solving this problem for new entrepreneurs.  If I didn’t love this, there’s no way I’d want to do all the behind the scenes labors that go into making a site like Greenhorn a reality. Motivations of profit are always good and a necessary part of business, but cannot trump passion when you’re starting a business.

When you’re searching for ideas for a startup, remember to look for things you love and problems that relate to them. Solve those problems.  Kabir loves music, which led to RiotVine. Fan Bi loves fashion, so he started Blank Label.  Matt Webster loves craft beer, so he’s running Drink A Better Brew.

GreenhornConnect is my passion and I’m going to try to exceed all expectations and promises from now on. What’s yours?

The Young Entrepreneur’s Guide, Part III: Building a Network, Reputation and Following

6 November 2009

4 Comments

Many people have written tips, guides and questions for aspiring entrepreneurs.  Many of them are excellent, but I don’t think anyone has captured the essence of the stages a young entrepreneur goes through and specific advice for what they should do at each stage.  As part of our efforts at GreenhornConnect.com, we want to create a central location that provides the information that an aspiring entrepreneur needs to go from starting out (Is this for me? What should I do?) to evaluating an idea (What goes into a business plan? How do I build a team?)  to being a real business (Do I need investment? What tools should I use?).

In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing different sections of this guide in my blog, pulling from my experiences, what I’ve read and advice I’ve heard from others. If you read this and think something is missing or disagree with any of the advice, please comment; I want this to be the best guide possible and will gladly give you credit for your contribution. Thanks.

Thus far: See Part I: Starting from Scratch, Part II: Getting Out There

————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Part III: Building a Reputation, Network and a Following

You’re out in the community meeting people, reading and learning…now it’s time to establish a reputation and build a following. Here’s how.

1) Understand Ideas are Free

It’s easy to get in the mindset that someone will steal your idea and that you’re giving away something of value by talking to others about their ideas.  This is completely the wrong mindset. Sharing ideas is exactly what you want to do.  It has an incredible amount of benefits:

A) It gets your ideas out of your head and refined by others.  As the CEO of Zipcar said, “every person you meet is a free consultant.”

B) Everyone in the community wants to help each other. If they can’t directly help you, they are more than happy to connect you with someone they know that can help. They can’t help you if they don’t know what your ideas are.

C) It builds credibility.  People recognize and remember those that share good ideas and ask good questions.

In the end, ideas are like a boomerang; the more you share your thoughts with others, they more they’ll share theirs with you. No one will steal your idea, because they’re already working on what they’re passionate about and your passion will always trump someone who is just copying you.

2) Actions Speak Louder…

As a young entrepreneur, you have to build your reputation from scratch. This means that everything you do makes a small contribution to how people judge you.  The best way to build this reputation is through consistently displaying the qualities people look for.  Are you eager to learn? Do you ask questions and share ideas? Do you follow through on everything you say you’ll do?  Do you help others?  Are you honest? If you under-promise and over-deliver, you will always impress people.  Pay it forward and you’ll be amazed at what others will do for you.

3) Use Twitter

It’s great to be up to date on your industries of interest and the trends and topics of the day for entrepreneurs, but to really make a contribution and get involved, you need to be an active part of the conversation.  The easiest way to do this is with Twitter.

You should already be on twitter, seeing what events are being shared as well as articles and ideas. You can do the same thing. If you like something someone already shared, give it a retweet. If you read something really interesting, make a comment about it and link to it in a tweet.  If you have a question for the community, ask it. You never know who might see it.

Also, in addition to connecting with people on linkedin, follow those people and others you see in the community on twitter. They’ll usually follow you back, which leads to an audience that will notice what you have to say.

4) Start a Blog

If you have more to say than 140 characters allows, you should consider starting a blog.  It’s a great way to share your thoughts, questions and ideas on an issue or just share an experience you had.  It also works great with Twitter as you can tweet your entry and if people like it, it will get re-tweeted and more people will read it (and likely start following you).

If you have the passion for writing out your ideas in blog form, then go for it.  To truly be effective, you need to blog a few times a week or once a week at absolute minimum. At first that my seem daunting, but in my experience, that’s not as hard as it seems. There are many great ideas out there for what to blog about; just decide what your blog’s focus will be and give it a shot. If you’re passionate about the subject, you’ll find that writing about it will come much more naturally than your last report for school or work.

There are a lot of great tips for getting started: Here, Here and Here.

5) Tie it All Together

By now you should be on Twitter, LinkedIn and maybe even have a blog. You’re also out there at events.  This means you’re now part of both the real and virtual conversation. To best utilize them, tie them all together.

LinkedIn gives you the ability to directly feed your blog into your LinkedIn page and to provide up to 3 links to other sites from your profile.  These links should be your Twitter profile, your blog and your startup, when you have one.   Meanwhile, Twitter allows you to link directly to one site, so you should then tie it to your blog or LinkedIn.  Finally, most blogs allow for links, so you should link to your Twitter account, LinkedIn and your company.

By doing this, you create a net. No matter how people find you, they can find out everything about you with just a few clicks. This can be really valuable, as anyone can see what you write about (your blog), what your thoughts are (Twitter) and your background/experience (LinkedIn).  This really works. I actually got a job because of my blog; they were able to see my background and interests and out of the blue asked to meet with me.

If you say things that resonate with people, you never know what can happen.

Are you a part of the conversation?

Coming Next Week: Part IV: Working on Your Idea

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

This is ongoing series to try to build a comprehensive, lasting guide for aspiring entrepreneurs. I would greatly appreciate any input in the comments below to make this the best it can be.  Thanks!