Presenter: David Cohen
David Cohen is the founder and CEO of TechStars. Previously, David was a founder of several software and web technology companies. He was the founder and CTO of Pinpoint Technologies which was acquired by ZOLL Medical Corporation (NASDAQ: ZOLL) in 1999. You can read about it in No Vision, All Drive [Amazon]. David was also the founder and CEO of earFeeder.com, a music service which was sold to SonicSwap.com in 2006. He also had what he likes to think of as a "graceful failure" in between.
David is a active startup advocate, advisor, board member, and technology advisor who comments on these topics on his blog at DavidGCohen.com. He recently co-authored Do More Faster with Brad Feld. He is also very active at the University of Colorado, serving as a member of the Board of Advisors of the Computer Science Department, the Entrepreneurial Advisory Board at Silicon Flatirons, and the Board of Advisors of the Deming Center Venture Fund. He is a member of the selection committee for Venture Capital in the Rockies, and runs the Colorado chapter of the Open Angel Forum. His hobbies are technology, software/web startups, business history, and tennis. He is married to the coolest girl he's ever met and has three amazing kids who always seem to be teaching him something new.
A summary of 12 chapters of his "Do More Faster" book.
Not planning on taking tons of notes.
- Venture Capital ($80M, lots of companies)
- Sounds like YCombinator
- Tips on what they've learned
- Stuff about TechStars
- Developers are the new investors
- We decide which companies are worth working for/with
- Average age of TechStar is well over 30
- TechStar is really a mentorship
- 12 tips learned from TechStar
- #12: "Trust Me, Your Idea is Worthless" by Tim Ferriss
- Execution is what matters
- 5 things matter: Team, Team, Team, Market, Idea
- #11: "Turn Work into Play" by Howard Lindzon
- What is your source of passion?
- You'll flame out if your work is not your passion
- #10: "Do or Do Not" by Brad Feld, Foundry Group
- This mindset will actually change your results
- #9: "Be Tiny Until You Shouldn't Be" by Jeff Powers
- Just bootstrap if you can
- Don't stress over investment
- Occipital couldn't get funding, so they bootstrapped and actually made money
- #8: "Look for the Pain" by Isaac Sandana
- Sendgrid founder was tired of trying/failing to just send email
- Build something amazing to heal anguish
- #7: "Avoid Tunnel Vision" by Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital
- Take the time to consider if you're on the right path
- #6: "Engage great mentors" by Emily Olson, Foodzie
- Lose a lot of opportunities when you don't have mentors (esp negotiations, David lost big $ opportunity in acquisition)
- How do you find them? All of us are mentors
- Don't just look at rockstars, there are awesome mentors locally if you just ask
- #5: "Assume that you're wrong" by Howard Diamond
- Sold more than $14 billion
- Think "I'm wrong and I need data to prove myself right"
- #4: "Be Open to Randomness" by David Cohen
- Kinda like office hours
- Just be open to meetings and meetups
- Never know what can happen
- #3: "Show, Don't Tell" by Brad Feld
- Show the thing you're pitching, don't just talk
- TechStar presentations aren't allowed to have bullet points
- #2: "Quality Over Quantity" by Andy Smith, DailyBurn
- Everthing you do has to be incredibly high quality
- If you put your name on it, it must be great
- #1: "Usage is like oxygen for ideas" by Matt Mullenweg, Founder of Automattic/Wordpress
- For a year, Wordpress didn't iterate enough, and the community lost out
- Called "The Dark Year"
- Need to put your thing out there to get input
- For a year, Wordpress didn't iterate enough, and the community lost out
- #12: "Trust Me, Your Idea is Worthless" by Tim Ferriss
- Questions
- Have you taken on teams with no ideas?
- Hard to take an idea and passion of idea and transfer it to a team
- Team typically have a drive to fix or build something and know their market
- How do we as developers evaluate companies that we want to be a part of?
- It's about the people
- Spend time with the people
- Momentum with users can be a signal, but really, it's about the people
- Spend a couple weekends helping them with a project
- What should we create or prove to show someplace like TechStar?
- Depends on the market season
- Sometimes it's just a name and a team
- Past successes or portfolio are good 'proof' of your ability
- Entreprenurial ecosystem
- Actually wrote a blog post about this
- People want to live/work with other creative minds
- Dense populations can form communities, which fosters entrepreneurialism
- How do you draw the distinction of great ideas vs dumb ideas?
- Everyone passed up on Pinterest and Twitter at first
- One thing to trust your gut, another to ignore your brain
- Follow the data
- Are we in a tech bubble?
- Not a bubble yet
- Yes, there are some exuberance going on
- But we still remember the 90s
- 3 years ago it was a bad time to raise money, now it's awesome
- Just cycles
- What kind of pitfalls should entrepreneurs look out for?
- Huge list of things to watch out for
- Two big reasons
- Problem with the team
- Dysfunctionality
- Not the right talent
- Not gelling
- Ego
- Lack of market
- Inexcusable failure
- The belief that something is there, despite the data
- Building something the market doesn't care about
- Problem with the team
- How can we learn from failure?
- Any successful entrepreneur or mentor can give you advice from their failures
- Blog about your failures
- You wanna pitch your idea, but investors have opinions and crap. How do you not distract yourself?
- Just bootstrap
- Too many companies default to 'get investment' mode
- Just raise the minimal amount you have to
- But if not, sorry, it's gonna be distracting
- Have you taken on teams with no ideas?
- Developers are the new investor
- They pick where they want to work. They decide where their talent goes, and who benefits from it
- TechStars is growing, and not just young folk
- TechStars is a mentorship
- TechStars had a reality show (wow!)
- Do More Faster
- Should be from the community
- 12 Tips:
12. Trust me, your idea is worthless - Tim Ferriss
- Everyone has tried to convince others of something
- 5 things they care about: team, team, team, market, idea
- Turn work into Play - Howard Lindzon
- If you're not doing something you love, change it.
- "Do or Do Not" - Brad Feld
- It's a frame of mind.
- Be determined
- "We will raise 1 million dollars" vs "We're in the market for 1 million in investment"
- "Be Tiny Until You Shouldn't Be" - Jeff Powers
- Occipital wanted to raise a bit of money, but then decided to stay tiny
- Bootstraped company themselves, and built the company on app
- "Look for the Pain" - Isaac Sandana
- "Avoid tunnel vision" - Bijan Sebet
- "Engage Great Mentors" - Emily Olson
- How do you find them? Everyone in this room.
- Everyone is an expert in something
- "Assume that you're wrong" - Howard Diamond
- "I'm wrong and need to get data to prove I'm right"
- "Be open to randomness" - David Cohen
- Initial funding for TechStars came from VC having "random days"
- Meet with anyone for 15 minutes
- "Show, Don't Tell" - Brad Feld
- Your product speaks more than your words
- Show the thing, don't talk
- "Quality over Quantity" - Andy Smith
- "Usage is like Oxygen for ideas" - Matt Mullenweg
- Does #10 conflict with #7 and #5?