David Cummings on Startups

Month: August 2022

  • Paying it Forward

    Last week I was at an event for the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and I bumped into an entrepreneur that I had met only one time before, a full 10 years ago. A minute into the conversation he looked at me and said, “You changed my business.” Not remembering the conversation from such a long time ago, I had to probe further. He went on the explain that I recommended the book Predictable Revenue at our previous conversation and he promptly bought it, read it, and implemented it. The methodologies and ideas from the book worked and today his company is thriving with hundreds of employees.

    Paying it forward through sharing lessons learned, building community, and helping the next generation of entrepreneurs is the real joy. Recommending a book that you believe in is easy. The harder part is proactively putting yourself in a position to be able to help. Whether it’s going to events in-person or online, participating in industry groups, or meeting people one-on-one, it takes time and effort to do so. Only, from that effort so many new relationships, opportunities, and insights emerge. Life blossoms.

    Paying it forward is a strange concept. We’re wired to act in our own self interest optimizing for instant gratification. Yet, we’re also social creatures drawn to community and clusters of likeminded people. When we act in someone else’s interests, with no expectation of something in return, we’re helping move everyone forward, which in turn helps us.

    The next time an opportunity emerges to pay it forward, do it. In a world of little certainty, there’s always value in trying to help and support others.

  • Atlanta Startups on the 2022 Inc. 5000

    Inc. magazine just published their latest Inc. 5000 awards for the 5,000 fastest growing private companies in America and it’s an incredible snapshot of new industries, growth markets, and COVID accelerants. Every aspiring entrepreneur should study the list yearly and look for trends. It’s one of my favorite lists, especially to see what Atlanta startups made it.

    Here are the Atlanta startups on the 2022 Inc. 5000 list with a three-year growth rate of at least 300%:

    Congratulations to all the companies that made the Inc. 5000 list, especially these startups from Atlanta!

  • Activating Potential Founders

    For the last 15 years we’ve been debating and experimenting with how to grow a startup community. From events to co-working to funding, we’ve tried thousands of ideas. One area that’s under-served is getting potential founders off the sidelines. I believe there are significantly more would-be founders that can build successful companies than are doing so. We need to increase the starting of startups.

    Here are some questions we’re asking about how to activate potential founders:

    • What’s holding potential founders back from starting a company?
    • What’s needed from an education, skills, funding, and community perspective?
    • How do we elevate entrepreneurship in the city to make it more top-of-mind?
    • How do we get more people thinking about entrepreneurship in high school or college?
    • How do we get more people with existing careers working on side hustles that could lead to a startup?
    • How do we get existing companies to embrace local startups?

    The rise of remote work due to COVID, especially in the startup world, has removed one of the traditional push backs: how are you going to find the talent to scale? Talent is more distributed than ever. While founders can also be anywhere, it behooves our community to have them here to create jobs (some of them, anyway), grow wealth, and give back. Plus, it’s more fun face-to-face. Let’s have the founders be local and the team be anywhere.

    While we love when entrepreneurs move to the region, the most opportunity to grow our startup community is getting potential founders into the arena. 

    What should we be doing? How do we activate more potential founders?

  • Priority Should Have No Plural Form

    Lately I’ve been studying Andrew McConnell‘s new book Get Out of My Head: Creating Modern Clarity With Stoic Wisdom and listening to his interview on The Atlanta Story podcast. With a number of excellent personal stories and interviews with entrepreneurs, Andrew captures and translates our modern endeavors with that of the Stoics from thousands of years ago. Spoiler alert: many of our life learnings and philosophical outlooks aren’t new. What is new is making it relatable to our generation.

    One of my favorite passages from the book was about the word priority. Here’s the text from the section “Less but better”:

    “…the very word priority initially had no plural form. By definition it was singular. It was the thing prior to all other things. For five hundred years, from its entry into the English language in the 1400s all the way up to the 1900s, it remained as such.”

    One of the most common mistakes I see entrepreneurs make is having too many priorities. When opportunity abounds and there are many different possible directions, it’s easy, and natural, to try and do too much. With the Simple Strategic Plan, there’s a section for “Quarterly Priority Projects” and upon asking entrepreneurs for their plan prior to meeting, 90% of entrepreneurs put more than three priorities and make the priorities too vague and broad. With too many priorities, there are no priorities.

    Making it even more simple, there should be no more than one priority per person. Solo entrepreneur? Only one priority project. Three co-founders? Only three priority projects. Similar to the idea of a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI), one single person has to own the initiative and they’re solely accountable for the outcome.

    The next time someone mentions their priorities, think single priority and ask about the real priority. Priority should have no plural form. Priority is what comes prior to everything else.