Denton’s first Jelly: September 4th
August 27, 2008
In the spirit of coworking, Denton is hosting it’s first Jelly (Jellys are semi-regular ‘work-togethers’.) Stormy Shippy is hosting the Jelly in Denton in the loft above First People’s Jewelry at 117A North Elm Street. RSVP on Facebook here.
Description from the Facebook event page: Jelly is casual coworking. And a first of more to come for Denton. We invite people to work from our home for the day. We provide chairs, tables, and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of. You bring a laptop (or whatever you need to get work done) and a friendly disposition. There will be developers, designers, musicians, and more from both Denton and the DFW area. Drop in as needed throughout the day to work. When things wind down those left will stick around Downtown to eat, drink, listen to Jazz, and dance to the 80’s. Please spread the word to any friends that may also be interested.
If you are interested you can give Stormy a call at 940-293-3626 or email him at stormyshippy (at) gmail.
Startup Happy Hour: Meet Entrepreneurs from Peru!
August 26, 2008
***DATE CHANGE*** We are moving the date of the next Startup Happy Hour from September 1st to September 8th to be able to host a group of entrepreneurs from Peru. Please RSVP HERE.
The U.S. Department of State and the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth has asked if we would be willing to host a delegation of entrepreneurs from Peru at our Startup Happy Hour on the 8th. Nancy Tourk, the Director of the International Visitor Program for the World Affairs Council, attended the last startup happy hour and thought it would be a great event for the delegation to attend. Here is an explanation of the program:
The World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth in collaboration with the World Learning Visitor Exchange Program will implement a practical and stimulating training and exchange program with Peru to educate 30 emerging young entrepreneurs in entrepreneurial thinking and business leadership skills to empower them to engage in business development. This program is designed to increase the participants’ understanding of how individual entrepreneurs create economic growth, strengthen professional ties between U.S. and Peruvian business organizations and provide an appreciation of American business practices and the rich diversity of American society.
To achieve these objectives, the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth will work with its many member organizations and existing business relationships to match participants with companies that meet their interests and will expose them to professional training and networking opportunities that will enhance the development and completion of their action plans. In addition to a challenging professional program, the WAC will offer the participants many cultural opportunities to learn more about the region and to interact with American citizens. Finally, to complement the entrepreneurs’ professional and cultural program, each participant will be hosted by an American family for their duration of their time in the Metroplex.
The Dallas Startup Happy Hour is the talk of the startup community in Dallas. As a result of the events, several startups have found a) employees, b) co-founders, c) angel investors and d) had a few free drinks. We are moving the September 1st event to September 8th to be able to host a delegation of entrepreneurs from Peru. Are you interested in connecting with the local startup community? We are working to build a vibrant startup community here in Dallas every bit as interesting and dynamic as San Francisco, Boulder, Boston or Austin. The first step is engagement. This week we are excited to be able to potentially help make a few international connections possible thanks to the U.S. Department of State of the World Affairs Council. Come meet a delegation of entrepreneurs from Peru as well as a host of local entrepreneurs who live in your backyard.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the World Affairs Council and of course SpringStage - you are invited to attend, but please RSVP on upcoming.
What: Startup Happy Hour
When: Monday, September 8th, 5PM-8PM
Where: High Tech bar at the INFOMART (corner of Oak Lawn and I35)
Why: To meet entrepreneurs like you
Cost: FREE
The Startup Lawyer - Ryan Roberts
August 25, 2008
Ryan Roberts and I became acquainted this summer at our Startup Happy Hour events. He writes a top notch blog titled, “The Startup Lawyer”. Ryan is helping out with our Angel/Entrepreneur efforts (ironically I only found his blog when he wrote a post titled, ‘Making Dallas the City of Angels‘). After several conversations it became clear that we both shared a similar view of the startup world. I have referred a few entrepreneurs his way, but I figured I better get some first hand experience so this weekend I engaged him to do some securties work for a new startup we are organizing. I’ll keep you posted on a) the quality, b) the speed, and c) the affordability of his legal work. In the meantime, I will be subscribing to his blog - you should too.
83 Beers on the wall!
August 23, 2008
Wired magazine has a hit piece on Dallas-based Stampede beer. Now that Jessica Simpson owns the vitamin-enhanced beer it would seem the company is now the target of ridicule ~ undeserved in my opinion. According to Wired you could drink an infinite amount of Stampede beer and NOT get your daily allowance of vitamin A, C or E. But, in what I suspect is a shrewed business strategy on the part of Jessica, you CAN get your daily allowance of vitamin B by drinking 83 light Stampede beers. Sort of like the old shampoo trick, “apply, rinse, repeat” ~ if Stampede can get their customers to drink 83 light beers each day, imagine the return on Jessica’s investment! And they say Jessica isn’t that smart…
Developer with business, needs business partner!
August 22, 2008
Devon Cannon had been running a family community website called FamilyLobby for the past couple of years. Devon, a reader of the blog, called me the other day and stopped by the office earlier today. The site is generating about $120,000 a year in revenue (90% from subscriptions) and he feels that with a little outside funding he can easily grow revenues signficantly. He has over a million page views per month so I suspect he could generate even more with a little targeting sponsorship dollars from someone like Geni.
My first thought was that he needs a partner. Someone with business, marketing and advertising experience. Basically a new set of experienced eyes to help look at the business and position it for the growth investment capital could help drive. Are you looking for a startup to join? Are you a non-technical business expert looking for a technical business partner with a business? Give Devon a call at 972.741.6125 or email him at davon (at) familylobby.com.
Services Startup Cash Flow Trick!
August 22, 2008
Is your startup in the services business? Having a hard time supporting your existing clients, much less new clients you want to bring on? Need to hire a few more employees to make it happen? We had this experience at one of our companies a while back. We were having a hard time finding people we wanted to hire. Lots of applicants, but none of them were a perfect fit. So instead of hiring people we didn’t like or losing our existing clients (offering a reduced service level) we increased our prices 30% across the board. We lost a few clients, but in the end the additional margin from the existing clients more than offset for the client losses. The real upside was we had a reduced workload ~ fewer clients generating the same revenue at a higher margin! (oh and fewer employees to manage makes life exponentially easier)
My two favorite marketing strategies in the services business are scarcity and exclusivity. By keeping headcount lean, you reduce your ability to add new clients. This is not a bad thing assuming you are not funded by a venture capital firm with deep pockets who wants hockey stick top line growth. In a bootstrapped services startup, this scaricity will work to your advantage. Imagine sitting with a potential client who wants to hire your firm and trying to explain that your service is so popular and sought after the first available turnup slot is three months from now. Further imagine having three clients all ready to hire you, but you can only pick one. Guess what, you get to raise your prices. Raise your prices to the point that you only have one client begging you to start. This scarcity and relative price advantage will make your service exclusive. Not everyone can a) get your service and b) afford your service. Of course your service needs to be better ~ you can’t offer subpar service for more for very long.
Jason Calacanis is DEAD wrong!
August 22, 2008
Last week in a post titled, ‘Startup PR - the don’ts‘ I asked for advice on how to get PR for a startup. Jason Calacanis was nice enought to respond in a post yesterday titled, “How to Get PR for your Startup: Fire Your PR Company“. I reviewed his post in detail and found his advice to be VERY useful. The only problem with his post is the title, ‘Fire your PR Company‘. Asumming, of course, that your PR folks are ‘doing no harm’ nothing about Jason’s advice is mutual exclusive to having PR professionals on your team. PR folks, instead of spamming people, could easily help many CEOs implement Jason’s advice. Assuming he didn’t ‘lift‘ this advice from DEMO I highly recommend taking his advice to heart: “be amazing, be everywhere, be real” in ten easy steps:
- Be the brand
- Be everywhere
- Always pick up the check-always
- Be a human being
- Bond with journalist
- How to email a journalist
- How to speak to a journalist
- Invite people to ’swing by’ your office
- Attach your brand to a movement
- Embrace small media outlets
Not every CEO is great at say, ‘being a human being’, a savvy PR professional can help turn a nasty Klingon into a loveable Vulcan in no time. Seriously, PR people can help you execute on Jason’s advice. So fire your PR company if they suck, but keep them around if they ‘get it’ and can help you execute on a PR strategy that works. Oh and I don’t really think Jason is DEAD wrong, actually I think he is mainly right.
KBZZ radio is now Big in Japan!
August 20, 2008
The KBZZRadio guys are our first colo-only coworking tenant. They are housing their online radio program in our data center free of charge. KBZZ is lead by John Porter who got into computers over twenty years ago. He began his business focusing on computer and network support. On the side he did radio in production as well as doing interviews and found out radio was something he really loved.
Approaching a VC (How-to)
August 19, 2008
Chris Wand offers advice worth a read titled, “How do I approach a VC I don’t know?” Check it out.
Dallas coworking coverage from Launchpad
August 19, 2008
Spike Gillepsie covered our coworking space here at Big in Japan in a post titled, “More coworking models: from high end to zero down“. Thanks Spike.
Startup Happy Hour on Monday
August 16, 2008
This summer we began experimenting with the Startup Happy Hour. The idea was to hold several casual meetups for entepreneurs over the summer. To that end we have been holding a ‘Startup Happy Hour’ every other Monday at 5PM where around 50 people (20 regulars and 30 uniques) have shown up throughout the summer. I think I have met around 110 people I didn’t know over the summer. In my opinion the happy hours have been a success and quite a bit of fun - hopefully they have been fruitful for some of you.
On Monday we will be hosting the last summer Startup Happy Hour at the usual place and time (5-8PM at the High Tech Bar at the INFOMART - please RSVP here). Starting in September we will be moving to a once a month format. The new format will allow for a little more planning including perhaps organized demos or presentations. I hope you all can make it on Monday the 18th. Let us know if you are planning to come (on the Upcoming page) so that we can plan accordingly.
Finally, we are having a small get together an hour before at 4PM to talk about the angel/entrepreneur group I have been talking about. If you would like to join us just come upstairs at 4PM on Monday before the happy hour. Hope to see you either way. Cheers!
Perhaps why Dallas doesn’t have many startups!
August 16, 2008
Would you be surprised to learn that Boulder, CO has fewer than 100,000 residents, but more than 80 active startups and 4 significant venture capital funds? The DFW area has more than 6,000,000 residents, but I would be hard pressed to name more than 18 active startups and 1 significant venture capital fund. Why?
When I wrote my first business plan I had no idea what I was doing. My second or third investor pitch was to STARTech Early Ventures, one of the few seed stage investment groups in North Texas. The group listened politely to my pitch and didn’t call me back for more than a year. I kept pitching until I had talked to every venture capital group in Texas who would meet with me. Next I flew to the West coast and began meeting with investors in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. I learned quite a bit about pitching after almost 100 meetings. By the end I think my pitch was perfectly suited for the market and I began to have conversations like, “so if we gave you a term sheet along these lines… would you accept it?” By the end four groups came very close to investing including one New York group, one Sand Hill Road group and two Texas funds (Sevin Rosen and Austin Ventures). I ultimately raised money from the group from New York and the rest is history. After we closed I finally heard back from STARTech who offered to allow our company to be part of their ‘portfolio’ for a small option grant.
The plan I pitched to STARTech WAS unfundable. I didn’t have a clue how to pitch. I didn’t have the answers investors were looking for. It took me 100 pitches to learn how to do pitch (I can be a slow learner sometimes). By the time I was ready the STARTech guys were interested, too bad they couldn’t have helped me ‘perfect my pitch’ 99 pitches earlier. There is a need for a group to help entrepreneurs ‘perfect their pitches’ in Dallas. Ironically the North Texas investment community is already helping entrepreneurs ‘perfect their pitches’ without realizing it. The only problem is that investors outside of Dallas are getting the fruit of that work. While we turn up our noses at naive and inexperienced entrepreneurs pitching their startups those same entrepreneurs are learning from their mistakes. By the time they run out of investors to pitch right here in our own backyard their pitches are getting pretty good. Of course there are even more entrepreneurs who simply give up, who don’t get on a plane and keep trying. They, wrongly, assume that it must be their deal that is bad, when it is really the market.
What if we had an angel group that instead of spending time on the frontend ’screening’ out the bad/unfundable startups, they spent time helping entrepreneurs learn how to pitch their ideas to investors? What if that were the ONLY cost of admission? My goal with the SpringStage angel/entrepreneur group is to become the FIRST place entrepreneurs from North Texas come. You may not raise the money you need, but hopefully you will learn the skills necessary to raise it right here in our backyard. I am holding our first organizational meeting on Monday at 4PM. If you are interested in helping build a more friendly entrepreneurial community in Dallas I invite you to attend.
Whitebox news: first dealers coming online!
August 14, 2008
Anyone involved in a startup quickly realizes that most everything takes longer and costs more than you originally assumed (well, at least in EVERY startup I have been involved with this has been the rule). Whitebox has taken longer and cost more than we assumed to bring online, but now we are finally seeing the fruits of our effort. Brad Merritt and his team started the process of bringing dealers online this afternoon. There were a few suprises and a few glitches, but in general we are well on our way. One positive surprise was our assumption that the average dealer would write 4 contracts per month. Turns out some dealers will write as many as 50 contracts in a month. While this is great news, it means our debt assumptions/requirements may be much bigger than we had first assumed. According to our 4 contract model, our initial launch of 800 dealers would require approximately $800,000 in debt each month until we reached about $7,000,000 (at about 13% interest) in debt. After 12 months, assuming we didn’t add additional dealers, we would be able to retire the debt in short order. If our average increases to closer to 30 the funding requirements will be daunting - anyone have some money to lend us at 13% or less? Anyway, pictures from our launch meeting:
Startup PR ~ the don’ts
August 14, 2008
Over the past few months I ahve been talking to a few PR professionals about doing some PR work for our various companies (ServiceGuy, SpringStage, WhiteBox, SimpleTicket, Architel and HighDef). The process has been confusing to say the least. I really like the people I have met and I would likely be willing to hire any one of them if I could a) afford their services and b) understood their process better. Fortunately I had an opportunity to have lunch with Angela Shah who covers the entrepreneurial beat for the Dallas Morning News and we talked about the state of the PR industry (the good, the bad and the downright scary). After my conversation I am more clear about what NOT to do, but I am still confused about how to proceed.
Steve Rubel, perhaps one of the most well known PR bloggers, has a post titled “Does the Thrill of the Chase Make PR Obsolete?” where he decries the current state of the PR industry suggest that ‘pitching is broken’. His advice to the PR industry is fairly simple, “We have to stop spamming people and make sure that companies and products are easy and a joy to discover. That’s no easy feat. Further, it means giving up control. However, in a Google age where self-discovery rules, it’s becoming a must.”
If ‘pitching is dead’ what do we do? The one thing I hear from everyone is that, as a startup, you should ensure that your PR persons ISN’T spamming people with your pitch. ‘Sending out lots of emails and hoping something sticks’ isn’t working anymore. Don’t ask me what is working, I have no idea, but would love to know…
Chairman, CEO, President and Founder
August 12, 2008
Why not add ‘master of your domain’ while you are at it. Really? Ask your self, do I need all of those titles? I really doubt it, especially if you are involved in a startup. Here at Big in Japan we decided to allow employees to pick their own title (i.e. as long as it wasn’t traditional). For example, my title is Social Ninja and our lead developer is Bento Boxer. The point was, in a startup (especially early on) titles can get in the way of the fact that everyone needs to be able and willing to do anything. Just because you have a C or V in your title doesn’t mean you don’t have to take the trash out or haul boxes.
Titles can be an even trickier subject when you are trying to raise money. Rick Segal reminded me of the secret language/code venture capital folks use in his post titled, “VC Hot Questions“. Rick is running the Blackberry Partners Fund and as a result he and his partner VCs are hearing more than their share of pitches from entrepreneurs. Rick shared a few of the ‘third rail’ questions his partners have been asking entrepreneurs and I thought it might be helpful to post them here:
“Help me understand how the current management team gets the company to 50MM a year in revenue?”
“Do you think you and your team are strong enough to get it over the finish line?”
“What’s the track record of your management team with respect to successful exits?”
Do you know what the REAL question that was asked? Venture capital folks ask it in a hundred different ways, but there is only one answer they are looking for. The question is, less subtly, “are you willing to step down as CEO at some point?” Ricks suggest avoiding the problem by simply using the title “founder” and if you are asked “who is the CEO” to simply say, “Look, I’m the founder and we’re running a million miles an hour towards being successful as you can see here… The objective is to find a financial partner and a solid board to help me, as the founder, grow the management team and knock this baby out of the park.” I advise, as does Rick, only to say this if you believe the statement. The truth is even Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell were replaced as CEO… (of course you never know, Jobs and Dell got their jobs back - maybe you will too).
Search
-
Startup Jobs
-
Recent Network Posts
-
Interview with Mark Solon on VCIR Fall
From Colorado Startups -
5 most important lessons for entrepreneurs
From Kentucky Startup Blog -
TECH Fort Worth: Business & Technology Incubator
From Fort Worth Startup Blog -
Inc 500
From Kentucky Startup Blog -
Why Building a Startup Community in DFW is Important
From Fort Worth Startup Blog -
Fort Worth Startups?!
From Fort Worth Startup Blog -
AOL buys Socialthing
From Colorado Startups -
Profile: Tallulah Cosmetics
From Kentucky Startup Blog -
BLOGGERS AND SITE PUBLISHERS MAKE MONEY WITH PERFORMANCING ADS
From Caribbean Startup Blog -
LOOK WHO’S BETTING ON A CARIBBEAN DOT COM BOOM
From Caribbean Startup Blog
-
Interview with Mark Solon on VCIR Fall
Advertisement
