Guest Post By Mital Patel - Triangle Startup Weekend - (Co-Founder)

How Should We Measure Success In Our Startup Community?

I’ve learned a lot in my 3 short years of organizing Triangle Startup Weekend (TSW). For one, you can get a lot done in 54 hours if you just focus on doing things rather than talking about what you plan to do. All of the Triangle Startup Weekends we’ve organized have been successes, each building on the previous and becoming a more efficient and impactful event for the startup community.

This past weekend, we hosted TSW EDU, North Carolina’s first Startup Weekend focused on spurring innovation and reform in the education space. Based on feedback from attendees, coaches, judges, sponsors, other organizers, and community members that followed along on Twitter, the event was a success. But how do we define success? Better yet, how should we define success?

How do we define success?

The first question I get after TSW usually relates to how many companies were formed or how many of the companies survived and are still operational businesses. How many got funding? How many are still around?

That’s understandable – it’s very human to think of the companies themselves as a measure for how successful TSW is at impacting our startup community. Don’t get me wrong, they’re definitely part of the equation. And there’s nothing worth hiding – both of the winners of TSW since 2011 are still around, operational, and joined by other companies that launched during TSW.

How should we define success?

I can tell you that after years of organizing TSW, the companies themselves are far from the most important measure of the event’s success. Just as website visits aren’t the best measure of success for a startup, the companies that form at TSW don’t tell the entire story worth telling.

When we tell people about what role TSW plays in the startup community, we start with the fact that it is one of the few events that engages the entire entrepreneurial stack. Brad Feld explains the importance of this engagement in Startup Communities and if he were to touch on the metrics that matter to a startup community in Startup Metrics, he would probably focus on more than just the companies that form out of Startup Weekends.

It’s common for attendees to meet future co-founders and find jobs. In fact, last year, one of our participants drove from Arkansas because his fiancée was starting graduate school in the Triangle and he needed a job. He walked away from the weekend with strong leads and found a job shortly thereafter.

One of TSW’s past mentors and judges, Richard White, CEO of UserVoice, came to TSW two years ago and points to the energy and engineering talent he saw as the sole reason he decided to open an engineering office in downtown Raleigh.

Scott Moody, founder of Authentec (recently acquired by Apple for $356 Million) often cites TSW as a factor in his decision to move from Florida to the Triangle.

It’s those types of things that we should be talking about when we talk about startup events.

Just as we have done (or should do) in our businesses, we should rethink how we measure success in our startup community and ask ourselves whether we’re using metrics that matter or merely vanity metrics.

Broadly, TSW EDU introduced entrepreneurship to educators, and education to entrepreneurs. It’s very likely the EdTech community in the Triangle will point back to TSW EDU as a tipping point. It’s too soon to measure all of the things that will come from TSW EDU, but I can tell you the companies that form from the weekend are just the tip of the iceberg. And they’re impressive enough in their own right.

Guest Post By Kent Oyler – OPM Financial – (President)

Not long ago the guys from Awesome Inc arranged for startup guru Brad Feld to speak at the Kentucky Center about the Boulder, Colo., startup phenomenon. Somehow Boulder has attained the mythical entrepreneurial status we also attribute to Austin, the San Francisco Bay Area and Research Triangle.

Now back in the post-Nam days, when I was a longer-haired undergrad at CU-Boulder, the only local entrepreneurs I can recall utilized baggies to distribute their product. Gnarly for sure, but definitely not a global hot spot.

So, I wondered, what changed since the late ’70s, besides the merciful death of disco? How had the most liberal college town in America transformed itself into one of the preeminent entrepreneurial communities in the world and a birthplace of TechStars?

Maybe Feld’s speech would provide some answers, so I bought a ticket (and later, his book).

From Boulder to Louisville

In Feld’s TED-style talk, he used a flip chart to quickly lay out what he calls the “Boulder Thesis” (which he stretches to 200 pages in his book, Startup Communities). In short, Feld’s Boulder Thesis states that a vibrant entrepreneurial community must:

1. Be led by entrepreneurs who
2. Have a long-term commitment, and
3. Be inclusive of anyone who wants to participate in it, and
4. Continually engage the entire entrepreneurial stack.

Understand that Boulder, which is fondly referred to as “eight square miles surrounded by reality,” sports five major research labs and the most degreed population in the United States. So it’s a pseudo-Oz, and whatever they do or (now legally) smoke out there might not translate to Kentucky.

But what if it does? What if our most ambitious people self-organized into the best job and wealth creation machine this side of the Rockies?

I’m here to proclaim that the soul of the Boulder Thesis is, indeed, beginning to trend right here in the Bluegrass. Granted, we don’t yet match their 2013 Rockin’ Mountain High community, but (cue Journey) we are at least in the ’80s, or maybe even (fade to Pearl Jam) the ’90s in Boulder time, edging ever closer to the so-2009 Black Eyed Peas’ “I Got A Feeling.” (Way to remix those metaphors.) 

My point is that this region is slowly but surely crafting its own energetic entrepreneurial community under flag bearers such as Phoebe Wood, Doug Cobb, Bob Saunders, Kimberly Nasief-Westergren, David Jones, Charlie Moyer, Tendai Charasika, Mark Crane, Greg Fischer, Adam Fish, Alex Frommeyer, Kris Kimel, Brian Raney, Suzanne Bergmeister and many others.

This isn’t a planned and managed affair; it’s organic and authentic. It’s like cat herding. It’s highly inclusive and spans the “stack” from investors to entrepreneurs to supporters. It includes long-standing groups such as Venture Connectors, KSTC, Nucleus and Enterprise Corp.; alongside rogues like Forge and Startup Weekend.

With the Gil Holland-led re-entrepreneurization of NuLu, the community even has a homeland.

From Louisville to the Commonwealth

To paraphrase Brad Feld, we are witnessing the birth of not just the Louisville Thesis, but the Kentucky Thesis, which I might point out is miraculously overcoming basketball rivalries and connecting with like-minded clusters of entrepreneurial diasporas from Paducah to Lexington to Covington.

A good thing? I damn well think so, and cheer on all comers who are willing to pitch in, whether by starting a company, investing, working, sponsoring or just showing up. We don’t have to become Boulder.Who needs weed dispensaries and 300 days of sunshine anyway? We just need to be ourselves and stick with it.

We have strengths in logistics, healthcare, food and manufacturing combined with that bull-headed Kentucky long-rifle sense of independence – hey, not every region is so blessed. We have plenty of bright people and ideas. And nobody sees us coming.

Granted, it was probably a hair easier to grow a vibrant entrepreneurial community in progressive, highly educated, uber-cool Boulder. But when we do it here, Mr. Feld will have an even better book to write.

Or maybe we’ll just write it ourselves.

Related articles

• Brad Feld: Humble, generous and just plain smart
• Announcing TechStars in London
• Do You Need A Board Chairman?

Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City
March 25 to April 21 - FREE

Last October I decided to offer and take part in my first Cojourneo workshop for Startup Communities. The workshop went extremely well and due to its success we’ve decided to offer it again starting March 25th.

By participating in this workshop, you’ll receive exclusive videos I created that expand on the content in the book. You’ll also be able to interact with me directly via “Post Workshop” and “Ask the Guide.” Even more importantly, you’ll actually begin the process of building startup communities by connecting and collaborating with fellow entrepreneurs near you and taking steps together towards making this book a reality in your city.

I will do my best to guide you with my own experience and use real-life examples to show that any entrepreneur can and should create in their city an “entrepreneurial ecosystem” that will generate energy, activity, and innovation. The future economic progress of cities, regions, countries, and society at large depends on it!

Dates & Timing: You can watch workshop videos and participate online at any time that fits your schedule. I will have a “Post Workshop” live class debrief session April 22nd, 1:00-2:00pm MST. Virtual Meetings will be coordinated by Cojourneo staff and held in the evening to accommodate work schedules.

Creating Your Own Circle: If you’d like to create your own private small group for this workshop with your colleagues or friends, please email the team at help@cojourneo.com and they’ll be happy to help you coordinate.

Who should take this workshop? Entrepreneurs, startup employees, investors and government and university officials who are interested in entrepreneurs and startups.

What is the recommended time commitment for this workshop? 15-20 minutes per session to watch video content

Optional: To get the most out of your workshop experience, we recommend you allocate additional time (1 hour) per session for collaboration and Virtual Meetings.

 Register Here

Guest Post By Jesse Anderson – NNSDG – (Founder)

I run a software developers group in Reno, NV called Northern Nevada Software Developers Group. Within the contexts of Startup Communities, our group acts as a feeder, but unfortunately we haven’t been as welcoming to entrepreneurs as we should have been.  Conversely, some of our guest entrepreneurs haven’t been as good at consuming our material as they could have been.  What follows are some observations and pointers to help make industry groups better feeders and entrepreneurs better users of such resources.

We get a wide range of entrepreneurs that attend our meetings.  Unfortunately the vast majority of these entrepreneurs only attend one meeting. During that meeting, they make a feverish pitch for their newly minted company which typically motivates one or two developers to get more information, but many pitches often result in no interest at all.

I didn’t quite know how to put this issue into words until I read Startup Communities.  The mantra of “give before you get” really applies to our situation and having entrepreneurs blow in and out after one session certainly doesn’t have any “give” to it.  In the group members’ and my view, most of entrepreneurs are only showing up to get a few warm bodies on a project.  They aren’t there to learn something or foster any sense of community. Meanwhile, I’m spending time, effort and money to engender a sense of community for developers and I want entrepreneurs to be a part of our ecosystem.

This pattern of “get before giving” has led me to be less accommodating to the entrepreneurs at our meetings.  In most situations I’ll allow them to do a short pitch, but I’m often not very encouraging of their ventures and am generally quite standoffish.  Over time this behavior stifled entrepreneurial interest and the experience has taught me that I need to be much more inclusive and welcoming to the entrepreneurs that attend our meetings, no matter their intentions.

I started inviting entrepreneurs to speak to our group in the hopes that it would help inspire more entrepreneurship both within the group and the community, but our meetings haven’t been well attended.  I think this bears out Startup Communities’ point that there are entrepreneurs, and then there’s everyone else.  I’ve come to understand that our role as a feeder is to encourage entrepreneurship and the commingling of professionals with entrepreneurs seeking talent.

My perception of the startup ecosystem has of course been colored by my own experiences.  Having been one of the first full-time employees of a local startup I know the trials and tribulations of working at a young company.  Long story short, the company failed and the experience didn’t exactly motivate me to want to join another early stage startup.  Since then I’ve often dissuaded others from joining startups in the hopes of saving them from having to experience the same end result. I’d like to believe that I’m protecting the group members, but I’ve learned that I need to let everyone make their own choices. The fact is, their individual startup experiences will ultimately differ greatly from my own.  So, if a group member wants to hear my stories, I’ll open up and tell them, but I’ve ceased trying to actively persuade them.

Expecting startups to fail is a failure on my part and is a perception I need to change.  It’s not easy to walk away from a failure you’re a part of and for a long time I was embarrassed about my own startup failure. Young startups fail all the time, many of them for reasons that are impossible to overcome, but in my case I felt I should have and could have done something about it. Becoming comfortable with the the natural life-cycle of the startup ecosystem is something I need to work on and attending various events like startup wakes, open coffee clubs and hackathons will hopefully put me on the right track.

Industry groups are an important part of the feeder ecosystem.  As a group, we can add a lot of value to our startup community, but in order to do so it’s vital that we check our preconceived notions at the door or we’ll never be the best feeders.

Related articles

• 3 Ways Feeders Can Support the Atlanta Startup Community
• A Meeting For Entrepreneurs
• Who Ever Said There’s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch?
• Startup Weekend Honolulu Brings Entrepreneurs Together

Last month Brad visited Rokk3r Labs in Miami to discuss building a startup community… 

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• StartUp Miami: Making the city more of a place where ideas are built