Review of Startup Communities by Rob Irizarry
Rob Irizarry has a long review of Startup Communities up on the Startup Bozeman blog titled Startup Communities by Brad Feld. I met Rob a few months ago when I was in Missoula running a marathon and wrote about it in AC/VC, Mamalode, and The Missoula Startup Community.
Rob captures the essence of the book and highlights many of the things discussed. He also offers some constructive feedback that he wishes I’d written more on mentorship which I’ll make sure I do on this blog.
It’s exciting what is going on in Bozeman and Missoula around startups. Rob and the entrepreneurs there get it – they are taking action and playing a long-term game. Good job gang!
Just Get A Group Together For Coffee
I was in Missoula a week ago to run a marathon. On the Friday before the marathon, I gave a talk for a few hours to about 60 entrepreneurs who were part of the Montana Programmers Meetup along with some folks that are driving the Startup Bozeman initiative. I usually don’t do anything before a marathon, but I had a ton of fun and think I’ll start doing startup communities events on the Friday before marathon weekends I travel around the country.
My talk covered my core principles on how to build a startup community, something I’m calling the Boulder Thesis. I also gave a bunch of actionable suggestions, including descriptions of some of the activities, such as Boulder Open Coffee Club, that are key parts of what goes on in Boulder.
One of things I say over and over again is “just go out and do stuff.” Imagine my joy when I saw a post from Rob Irizarry, who was one of the key instigators of getting me to do a talk in Missoula, post about Leveraging the power of Metcalfe’s Law. In it, Rob talks about how he turned a request to meet with two of Montana Senator Jon Tester’s aides (Alison O’Donnell and Pamela Haxby-Cote) to talk about Startup Bozeman into a larger group coffee club type meeting.
Awesome Rob! The startup community in Montana gets me one more time this summer on August 4th for Big Sky DevCON. I’ll be calling in but this time talking about Startup Metrics, which is another book that I’m working on with my Foundry Group partner Seth Levine.