Life of FBi | Non-Tech Start-up Founder

Helping out some Babson Freshmen through my involvement with E-Tower, the Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Open Gate Initiative, the questions of i) should I be investing time into networking, and ii) how to I develop a personal brand and meet interesting people, have come up very frequently. Given I’ve only been in the country for just over half a year, settling into a new startup world, quite a few have found my advice, or at least thoughts on the topic, useful so as always I thought I might share it here.

To address the first point, Network, Network, Network. And then Network. The three most profound values I’ve benefited from were completely unexpected. I thought networking was for getting jobs or in my case helping my startup. Now this is definitely true, however I really see other great advantages as well.  I meet people outside the Babson bubble, and I get perspective. I meet engineers from MIT and BU, passionate thinkers from BC and Brandeis, I speak with industry professionals from tangential but related industries, I engage with investors on what they think about my space, I get inspired by serial entrepreneurs who genuinely love their life. So to those three reasons why I network; first, it gives me perspective, second, it keeps me motivated and on task, and third, meeting really passionate people is just something everyone should do once in a while.

As how to go about doing it? Many students appreciate the notion of networking as being important, they’ll nod to the statement, ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’. First of all, I disagree with that statement. I much prefer Susan RoAne‘s ‘It’s not what you know OR who knows you, BUT WHO KNOWS YOU.’ When peers start name dropping, ‘oh I know CEO of X, and Founder of Y’, I’m like great, but do they know you or are you just one of 100 people they met that one night out of 100 nights of networking events they go to every year. Therefore my first point about networking is not to go for as many ‘big shots’ as possible, rather try and deeply engage with a handful of people every event you make it out to. If you’re able to have genuinely stimulating conversations with seven people, exchange cards, and follow up with five of them via LinkedIn and Twitter, and even a couple by email, you’ve done fairly well. For a list of events, there are still left on this list I wrote up a little while back, Scott Kirsner recently wrote up the Five Best Monthly Networking Events, and Eventbrite and Meetup searches are always interesting.

Now not everyone can always make it to physical networking events, or at least at the regularity that they are online, so I actually think it’s really important to maintain relationships and further develop personal branding online. Complementary with interacting in person, engage and speak with people on the blogosphere and Twitter. For blogging, you don’t have to actually blog, but rather be aware of what’s going on in your ecosystems (if that’s mobile, cloud, social networking) and giving back to your respective communities by providing your opinions. You’d be surprised at how few people regularly comment on blogs, and how much bloggers recognize the return visitors. So when you regularly comment on OnStartup.com and you see Dharmesh Shah at an event, it’s a much more interesting conversation when you can speak about your favorite post, and he remembers your perceptive comments.

The important thing is to get out there, get out to Waltham or Cambridge for that event, get on that blog post and give your $0.02, and Network!

After two days of engaging with excited founders, networking with west coast investors, speaking with passionate entrepreneurs, hash-tagging dozens of #tc50, I’m inspired, curious and frankly bloody tired! I guess I’ll mention a few things in this post, what I thought of the general west coast vibe, my impressions of the conference, and a couple of my favorite demoing companies.

The stereotype of west coast startup founders of being web consumer focused, young and brash, and web consumer focused was definitely evident at TC50. In Boston, I discovered two buckets of entrepreneurs. You have the ones who are truly passionate about a particular pain, who want to dedicate themselves for the greater cause, and for the most part have already identified the specific destination. There is the other bucket who creates for market opportunity, targets it with a broad vision, is flexible and mobile and attacks the ever-changing vertical. At TC50, I discovered another startup founder. The one who did it, just because. There were quite a few sub-27 founders who would be working on several different web app products, with no really desire to solve some deeply felt-pain, had not over-whelming interest to target a niche beach-head and scale with funding. They did it because they enjoyed building web apps with their friends. Check out Lissn, their team falls into that exact description.

First kudos to TC50 for giving away 100 free student volunteer tickets, and as a result of having so many volunteers, ‘work’ for me was assigned to an afternoon of speaking with demoing companies, especially the ones receiving less attention, to boost their spirits. Most enjoyable conversation talking to deeply passionate founders of Vid School, travelling all the way in from Dublin, Ireland. Now that’s pretty cool ‘work’ – speaking with startup founders about their newly launched product, and them desperately seeking feedback because you’re the only one talking to them. We’ve all been there, and it was a lot of fun. The conference itself seemed fairly tame in terms of startups demoing, experts judging and general activity. There lacked a sustained energy level, e.g. it would have been cool for the judges to have more engaging and passionate debate among themselves or the startup founders. It just felt very reserved and never really shifted into the higher gears. Nothing about the conference itself really seemed that news worthy, that TechCrunch worthy, except when big Mike walked off-stage. Even the after-parties seemed really tame. The first night the club had less than 100 people at its peak, and the second night the after party was a burlesque show which received some weird reactions, but the after-after party was cool, with some of the big guns including Jason and Tony Hsieh mingling with the crowd.

What was the coolest demo I saw over the two days? In terms of what I thought was most ‘high-potential’, it actually wasn’t a TC50 company, rather a startup missing that cut-off and being thrown in the demopit. The feedback I hear consistently from venture firms is i) idea has to be strong, ii) market opportunity has to be compelling, iii) team has to be able to bring it to market. Pip.io was all three of those things for me. They describe themselves as a ‘social operating system that aims to give people the ability to share in communicate in real-time’. Now there are a few different aggregators out there, but they really differentiated on their front-end development being super sleek and their AJAX platform had amazing performance. They also were able to maintain a really clean and intuitive user interface on the demo, especially given the collation of features they were trying to propagate. The founders, whose names I actually can no longer remember because they only had promo cards and not personal cards, were also crazy dudes. They were so freakin’ ambitious, and even though at times where over the top, had the craziest vision, and you just had the sense they would be able to pull off something big.

See you next year!

My parents are first-generation immigrants so I’ve been brought up on conservative spending. I’m Chinese by background and culture, i.e. I’m cheap or thrifty depending on how P.C. you want to be. And I’m a moderately poor college student, who still tries to get bang for his buck. So naturally bootstrapping comes fairly naturally for me. Now I’ve got quite a few nice stories about bootstrapping, but a topical one right now is bootstrapping this year’s Techcrunch50.

I don’t need to go into any detail, I’m just going to state the facts. It’s a two day $2,995 conference. I’m volunteering co-ordinating foot traffic and answering questions for eight hours the first day, and attending the conference as a regular guest the second day. Free. Eight hours of work and a day free at TC50. On both days equally, I expect to be giving rocket pitches and exchanging business cards. And it’s amazing how much easier meetings are to setup when you mention you’re flying in from Boston for TC50. All of a sudden, you’re taking things ‘seriously’.

The faciliation of me going to TC50 is just as good, because flights and accom can really be killers. I found flights from Boston to San Francisco for $250 on Kayak by getting some awkward flights and getting to SF a day earlier. Something I’ve been doing since I was 18 and first traveled by myself, I’m hostelling for $35 a night. It’s right by Union Square, and right by the conference. And so the total bill for conference, flight and accom will come to around $400, and the best part about it is that Babson is willing to underwrite it in the spirit of student’s taking initiative. Big kudos!

Writing this in the common area of Adelaide Hostel in downtown SF

P.S. A quick aside because I found it amusing; a lot of people where blown away by me going to TC50, yet were more blown away when I told them how I was doing it by the fact I was staying in a Hostel. Is it like in the movie Hostel? There doesn’t seem to be a very big backpacking/ hostelling culture which is a shame for two reasons; i) accom otherwise can be really expensive, ii) you meet the most interesting people in hostels.

Now I’m sure when I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, I was the only person in my room of eight that was meeting with Venture firms during the day, and again it’s probably safe to assume I’m the only one in my room of six who is going to a cost-exclusive tech conference. But it sure does keep things interesting.

Wrapping up a busy summer at Babson’s Summer Venture Program, there were your expected results from a three month incubation; some startups were able to get from idea to alpha prototype, some were able to go from private beta to generating revenue. What was unexpected, at least to me, were how much the teams grew with interns and part-time student hires.

Of course a serious constraint of any student startup is the lack of time to execute and bring to market your product. I’m all for Ferriss like efficiency, but the reality that I’ve experienced is that it simply takes a lot of man hours to get a startup from idea to product to market to growth. So what’s the logic?

- Need 1,000 hours to build this web app, and we’re aiming to get to market within 10 weeks

- Founders only have 25 hours each to dedicate per week outside of school = 500 hours total by week 10

Besides the fact that it’s probably going to take 1,500 hours because everyone ALWAYS underbudgets time for web apps, you think you’re going to need three interns to punch out 10 hours a week (total 300 hours), but that still only brings you to 800 hours by week 10. So let’s bring on another intern (100 hours), and then outsource components (120 hours), bringing you to 1,100 hours. You think you’re being smart by overbudgeting by having that extra 100 hours

The thing that I saw as consistently as growing teams was the decay curve of efficiency as each team member was added. So you’re not actually getting quality 1,100 man hours. You’re getting far less. From disengaged interns and disconnected outsourced developers you’re probably getting closer to 600 quality hours. It’s basic economic dimishing marginal returns. That’s in addition to having founders who are often over-achievers, still wanting to excel in other parts of their domain, i.e. still be top of their class, be President’s of the most respected clubs, etc, and are restricted to so many man hours on their startup.

Even if that isn’t the case, sometimes the notion of growing a team is just so appealing. I know Blank Label definitely suffered from that. When Max, co-Founder, exited the business, I was determined to build a team. There was a revolving door of interns, and then a zoo of sales reps on commission, developers all across India and Eastern Europe.  And I’d make two fundamentally devasting mistakes every time. I would get out the worst part of any relationship, at The Dip, the most challenging part, but just before you’d start to experience some real value. And I’d always underappreciate the overhead management time which would cripple me from driving the business forward.

My lesson: Have as few people on the team as possible, doing the most amount as possible. You cannot afford to have a 20-80 rule in a startup. It will kill you, and your startup. And Stay Lean —> Build Less, Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope

When in writing, Getting Real by 37 Signals sitting by my side for inspiration.

As I was arranging my schedule between driving Blank Label projects, starting up Open Gate Initiative, being a team leader at E-Tower, and classes, trying to squeeze startup networking events around my already compact schedule has been challenging. What that does mean is for a busy student entrepreneur, the following list has been whittled down as the essentials (and they’re all FREE!!!):

Mass Innovation Night – Wednesday, September 9

Mass Innovation Nights connect Massachusetts-based innovators with the marketplace using social media.  Held at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, the monthly Launch Parties are FREE for everyone — companies and guests alike.  All we ask is that guests help spread the word about cool new products they see at our events.

TiE ENTER Launch – Tuesday, September 15 (Free for Students)

Fireside/ interactive chat with Jeff Taylor, Founder of Monster.com, Paul English, Founder of Kayak.com, Chris Hughes, co-Founder of Facebook.com and MyBarackObama.com. This event is primarily for aspiring and first-time entrepreneurs. If you are a student working on a BIG idea – or searching for one – come join a lively discussion on how these successful entrepreneurs stumbled upon theirs, and how they built businesses around them. The speakers will share what has changed in their respective industries since they began their entrepreneurial journeys as well as what they recognize to be the prevailing trends now shaping these industries. This will be an interactive chat where you can also share your BIG ideas and get constructive feedback from the speakers.

Tech Tuesday – Tuesday, September 15

Join your fellow geeks, tech savvy professionals, DIY-ers, press, and other industry luminaries for this informal gathering. Bring your laptops, robots, OLPC XO’s, Amazon Kindles, new cell phones, gadgets, and other new-fangled devices. Got a great demo or YouTube clip? Bring it! LCD projector and wi-fi will be available for ad hoc show and tell.

Ignite Boston 6 – Thursday, September 17

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.

Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis. Since then 100s of 5 minute talks have been given across the world. There are thriving Ignite communities in Seattle, Portland, Paris, and NYC.

WebInno23 – Tuesday, September 29

At 7pm in the Grand Ballroom we’ll hold our usual format of self-/angel-funded startups demo’ing to the audience in Main Dish showcases, and select an “Audience Choice” winner of the crowd’s favorite. After a brief intermission, at 8pm we’ll hold a strictly-optional special entrepreneur’s PR breakout session. During the entire evening’s event, Side Dish startup companies will provide informal demonstrations to the networking crowd from the Skyline Suites room.

MassTLC 2009 Innovation unConference – Thursday, October 01 (Stay in MA Scholarships Available)

Four generations of entrepreneurs will gather on October 1, 2009 with the focus on early stage entrepreneurship and driving innovation.  Unlike the planned sessions and passive audiences of typical conferences, MassTLC’s Innovation 2009 is an unConference where the agenda is formed organically by all attendees the day of the event. No podiums. No stages. Just small interactive sessions taking a deep dive into issues that drive innovation and the success of your company. A professional facilitator helps make it happen.

Eric Ries The Lean Start-up Talk – Thursday, November 19

2 hour talk by Eric Ries, the well known author of the blog Lessons Learned. He was the co-founder and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU, his third startup. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Artv of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups including pbWiki, Smule, 750i and KaChing. Eric will discuss the approach of the Lean Startup.