Startup Day 2009
I was lucky enough to attend Seattle 2.0's Startup Day, Sept. 26, at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue. Here's a little synopsis of the day's events.
Startup Day 2009
Hillel Coperman started with a talk about why he decided to go startup - as opposed to why you should.
I missed the next presentation to sit down for a few minutes in the Advisory Room with two attorneys at Foster Pepper. The Advisory Room was the idea of the event's founder, and founder of Seattle 2.0, Marcelo Calbucci. Apparently this was a pretty unique idea and it was a huge success. I sure appreciated it. Anyway, I met two awesome guys, Attorneys Vincent Ricci and Mark Munro. They help out startups with business formation and converting business structures, with stock plans, M&A, all that good stuff. And you know for all the confusing talk about this stuff that usually leaves your head spinning, these guys actually make it sound interesting. I highly recommend them.
Colin Wong talked about choosing co-founders and advisors, how to choose them and arrange things, like money :) His take was to measure share by charting opportunity cost against investment and coming up with percentages that way.
Alex Algard from WhitePages.com pretty much laid it on the line. Don't let the VC's fine print rip you off, and don't worry about a business plan, just build the thing. You shouldn't have that much in the way of costs anyway, beyond living expenses. Have yourself a complimentary skills team, a year's run of cash, then make decisions based on the cash you have today, sell it now and build it later.
T.A. McCann from Gist has won the Americas Cup and traveled the world. He said if you're an entrepreneur then that's where your spare time should be, and when you have a spare moment this is what you should be thinking about. He talked about customer centered development and warned that if you seek funding 50% or more of your time will be spent on VCs, and when you find a good one they'll be intimately involved in your business, so be ready to make time for the relationship. He also talked about how intense it is working with a VC like Brad Feld, getting emails from him about business on Christmas morning, and how VC's make their decisions. It's 50% you, 25% the space, and 25% your process. They'll be really involved, so exude confidence and qualify them. This is another reason why having a good operational plan is more important than writing a biz plan.
Kelly Smith talked about naming and branding - those things that get you noticed. He reminded us that you the CEO are the brand, the ambassador of the brand, and its chief evangelist. You must love your product more than anyone, have a deep knowledge, don't be boring, and love your job to death, for there is more marketing to be done than hours in the day. He thought 37signals' slogan "now with fewer features" was pretty damn clever and admonishes us to not be shy and say the most audacious thing that's truthful. He believes a name is an empty vessel, and to ignore the typical advice. Just be a promoter, keep it short, keep simplifying and be a very, very good marketer. And in a nutshell, if it's not going to work in a loud bar then it's not going to work.
We broke for lunch, which was a little heavy on the meat, but there was some passable salad and a pretty good barley dish, and next up was Dave Schappell. Dave talked about the importance of your first hires and shipping often. Don't want to be perfect, ship something awful, but ship and get the feedback you need.
Alex Berg from WetPaint talked about user experience and establishing your UI design patterns early. Also, hire slow, fire fast, because jerks become jerk factories. He also admonishes to have an enemy, that'll help you keep going.
Mike Mathieu of frontseat.org says to avoid the worst insult: "that's not a business, that's a feature". A business implies customers.
Shelly Farnham talked about professional networking, building social capital, and know what you're looking for, whether it's a partner, customers, investors, colleagues. Seek out diversity, hang out in bars, and give away ideas. She recommends Seattle Tech Startups as a great start. When bringing in new people, be selective, practice working together and formalize your relationships. A good partnership is like a good relationship.
Ben Huh gave an entertaining talk on monetizing traffic through ad networks, Direct, Premium, and Remainders.
I then got a chance to speak with Voyager Capital in the Advisory room. These guys are interested in startups with target valuations of a billion dollars, but they kindly sat with me anyway, asked a lot of tough questions and gave me some great ideas. I can't say enough good things about the VCs who came to this event and donated their time.
Alex Castro talked about SaaS as a business model but I missed most of the talk, alas. But he did say there's some unique approaches to this line of business, and knowing key metrics is critical.
Ksenia Oustiougova talked about when it all fails, and how to rescue yourself from a failing idea. She reiterated the theme of the evening, if you don't make a sale then you don't have a business.
Jonathan Sposato talked about your three responsibilities: the biz model, the team, and your exit. How to get acquired involves salesmanship, and sounds enormously complicated. His best advice was to ask the other party for their intentions at some point, and to get a strawman term sheet, after that it's just negotiation.
Rich Barton of Zillow gave the keynote. He says that entrepreneurship is "a passion for changing the world in some way", and less flatteringly called it "your big hairy audacious idea". If you have that, and can build a team who share it with you, then you're a revolutionary too. Most important is your passion and mission. The biggest takeaway I got was that your success will mean you have created a consumer driven revolution. I kinda like that.
With cocktail hour that about ended Startup Day 2009. Thanks to Seattle 2.0 for the event and to Buddy TV's Andy Liu for sending me there. Looking forward to next year!
Posted by LocaVori on September 29, 2009 at 5:12 p.m..
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3 comments so far
On October 1, 2009, Kevin McCarthy said:
Wow, Joe!
This sounds really cool - I totally should have gone to it.
Great write up - that's awesome about the advisory room, what a great idea.
I can talk to my lawyers all I want, for $400/hour.
On October 2, 2009, joe said:
Yo Kevin! Hey, maybe next year you'll be presenting OtherPage.com ;)
On October 3, 2009, Pat said:
Excellent reporting and I liked the personal touch, too. I learned something.l