David Cummings on Startups

Blog

  • Ways to Grow a Startup Community

    So, I’m on a mission to help grow the Atlanta startup community into one of the top 10 in the country. Much like Austin and Boulder are mentioned as two up-and-comers, my goal is for Atlanta to be mentioned in the breath. Atlanta has all the natural resources to be a major player, including an awesome engineering school (GA Tech), tons of young professionals, a low cost of living, the world’s busiest airport, low taxes, and a mild climate (if you don’t mind humidity). Some of the knocks on the Atlanta startup community include a risk-averse culture, lack of high-risk capital, geographic dispersion of startups, no anchor billion dollar tech company, and few venture backable entrepreneurs.

    On the risk capital and venture backable entrepreneurs front, the debate is around what’s needed first. If we have more high quality entrepreneurs, we’ll attract more capital vs if we have more capital here, more quality entrepreneurs will emerge that will be successful. My personal belief is that capital is portable such that it will find the best opportunities, regardless of geographic location. Even with the theory of the Series A crunch, there’s plenty of money out there to fund the best ventures.

    Here are a few ideas to grow a startup community:

    • Increase the density of startups in a geographic area (see Atlanta Tech Village and ATDC)
    • Recruit talent from outside the region to the region
    • Keep more of the talent that’s already in the region (e.g. get even more of the GA Tech engineers to stay in Atlanta)
    • Facilitate recycling of talent so that there’s rapport and awareness of talented team members to join other teams in the event their startup fails
    • Actively work to build community to learn, share, and create relationships
    • Highlight successful startups and great exits
    • Accelerate the rate at which startups achieve profitability so that they can then control their own destiny
    • Coordinate more introductions between entrepreneurs and capital providers including angels, venture capitalists, and family offices

    At the end of the day, the sure fire way to grow a startup community is through cultivating more successful startups. More successful startups will then breed more successful startups in a virtuous cycle.

    What else? What are some other ways to grow a startup community?

  • Laying Out Bar Code Graphics By Hand

    At home over the holidays I came across a box of personal stuff that had a large, industrial paper cutter. This paper cutter was part of the many supplies I purchased in high school to manufacture CDs and CD-ROM cases to sell my shareware software in stores. Using the Internet it was easy to purchase everything needed: empty CD jewel cases, writable CDs, CD labels, paper cutter, high gloss paper, shrink wrap plastic, and shrink wrap gun (like a hair dryer).

    For the graphic design of the CD label and the CD case, I laid out everything using PageMaker and Photoshop to get it just right. In retrospect, I’d give myself an A for effort and a C+ for the actual quality of the visual design. One aspect of the CD case design was putting together a bar code. I paid a couple hundred dollars to get a UPC number and set to work on a bar code. After looking at bar code generation software, which cost $50+, I decided to hand craft a bar code in Photoshop.

    Bar codes work off a strict formula that involves the width of lines and spacing between lines. Everything has to be precise and perfectly laid out otherwise the scanners won’t be able to read them. Imagine zooming in on Photoshop to the maximum level and hand crafting lines to a precise millimeter-level width. Needless to say, it was a tedious and exacting process that was better left to technology.

    In the end, when the CDs and CD cases were done and shrink wrapped, I took them to several stores in town that had agreed to sell the product on their shelves. After convincing one of the stores to take several on consignment, I casually asked the manager to scan the bar code to make sure the UPC number was returned successfully. Success! I had hoped I had laid everything out correctly but without a bar code scanner I had no way to test it (iPhones didn’t exist back then).

    While it worked out in the end, I realized during the process that my time was better spent on productive tasks that couldn’t be automated with software. Generating bar codes is a perfect task for software and spending a few dollars on a product to take care of it made sense. Now, I repeat to myself the saying “you have to spend money to make money.”

    The next time you’re working on something that isn’t the best use of your time, and there’s an affordable substitute, remember the bar codes.

  • If You Don’t Know What You Want to Do, Join a Startup

    Earlier today I was talking with a friend that’s finishing up his senior year of college this spring. He’s smart, outgoing, hard working, and talented. From a school perspective, he’s a finance major with a good GPA at a large public university. From a career perspective, his current thinking is to get a masters in finance or a masters in management (like a lite MBA) with a goal of getting a job out West.

    After talking for 30 minutes I probed further with questions like “what’s the value of a one year masters if you still don’t know what you want to do?” In the end, my recommendation was to join a startup or an entrepreneurial company where he can have a ton of responsibility and get exposed to a variety of areas before spending a year getting a degree he might or might not use.

    Here are some benefits of joining a startup or an entrepreneurial company:

    • Things move fast creating a great environment for learning
    • Meritocracies are more rewarding, especially for an eager 22 year old
    • Job responsibilities are greater, on average, at a smaller company, and more fulfilling for an ambitious person
    • Startups are more a team sport than individual affair resulting in more exposure to different areas and opportunities

    The message is simple: if you don’t know what you want to do in your career, join a startup or entrepreneurial company.

    What else? What are your thoughts on joining a startup for people that don’t know what they want to do for a career but are interested in business?

  • Ideas for Building Community at Atlanta Tech Village

    With the new Atlanta Tech Village a reality, it’s time to start brainstorming and planning what we need to do to make it a success. The true measure of success, over a 10 year horizon, is the number of startups, tech or otherwise, that grow into real, sustainable businesses creating jobs and wealth for our community. More successful tech companies will also enhance the tech-related service providers in the Village as well as the desirability of larger tech companies to have a remote office in the building (e.g. for engineering or sales). Now that we have the end in mind, let’s backup to the present and start working on how to build community at ATV.

    Community isn’t something that can be forced and will come from a number of places including serendipitous interactions (imagine how many great conversations will take place at Chipotle across the street!). Here are a few ideas to help build community at ATV:

    • Host meetups, get togethers, and conferences in the cool boardroom and awesome event space (room for up to 150 people as well as smaller options)
    • Provide an amazing training lab for teachers and training companies to teach courses (e.g. learn Ruby on Rails in 10 weeks) and do workshops (e.g. SEO 101 for entrepreneurs — a half day session) — learning with a group of peers or as a cohort is one of the best ways to build trust and relationships
    • Facilitate office hours with venture capitalists, coordinate job fairs, and “speed dating” for members of the Village to meet each other
    • Collaborate with other tech and startup organizations in town (e.g. ATDC, Flashpoint, Hypepotamus, TAG, etc)
    • Great coffee shop with tons of indoor and outdoor seating

    Community is one of the most important aspects of the Atlanta Tech Village and it’ll take time to build it.

    What else? What are some other ideas for building community at Atlanta Tech Village?

  • Announcing the Atlanta Tech Village

    In late August this year I was heavily involved in the Pardot acquisition process with ExactTarget and an idea hit me: if this deal goes through, I want to buy a large building and turn it into the Atlanta Tech Village. On August 30th I blogged about the idea generically, calling the post Physical Atlanta Startup Village Idea. The idea is a combination community center and office complex geared specifically towards innovative companies doing cool things while promoting serendipitous interactions. After thinking about it for a while, the name Atlanta Startup Village was too narrow as it implied it was only for startups whereas a technology community needs remote offices of larger tech companies, startups, and tech-related companies like marketing, PR, accounting, legal, and venture firms. A community is all types of people, not just fledgling two-person startups.

    Post Pardot acquisition, I immediately set out looking at all different types of office buildings and empty land throughout Midtown, West Midtown, and Buckhead. After 30 days of researching options and talking to as many people as would listen to me, one building became obvious as far and away the best option: 3423 Piedmont Rd NE (Google Maps). Super important things like great interstate access, MARTA access, walkability to a dozen restaurants, large windows, tall ceilings, indoor/outdoor areas, tons of parking, massive space (100,000 square feet!), and immediate usability were all present. There were some good land options in Midtown and West Midtown but no good buildings that were for sale at a reasonable per square foot price, and I didn’t want to get in the construction business and have a three year horizon before having something usable. Nothing on the market even compared to 3423 Piedmont Rd.

    Midtown, with its startup density at Tech Square, would have been ideal, but land and buildings in that area are significantly more expensive than 3423 Piedmont Rd. Buckhead as a location opens up northern suburbs like Alpharetta, Roswell, Dunwoody, and Sandy Springs to a shorter commute to get to a high density tech community while still being very accessible to the intown crowd that lives in Midtown, Virginia Highlands, and Inman Park. There’s another important piece being in the heart of Buckhead: proximity to the wealthiest Atlantans with an eye towards helping increase investment in local tech companies.

    After a quick tour of the building (it was the last one I looked at), we put in an offer on it the week before Thanksgiving, negotiated for a week, and had it under contract by Thanksgiving. Now, 30 days later, the closing is done and the building is called Atlanta Tech Village.

    Take a look at the Atlanta Tech Village website, read the Atlanta Business Chronicle article on the Atlanta Tech Village, and check out the post on it on the Startup Communities site. I’m excited to get tech companies in the building and start renovations.

    What else? What are your thoughts on the Atlanta Tech Village and what are some ideas to make it great?

  • Getting Involved in the Startup Community

    Earlier this week two separate people that are in the process of moving to Atlanta from the Northeast reached out to me to learn how to get involved in the local startup community. In both cases there’s the desire to be closer to family — a popular reason for people moving to Atlanta.

    Here are a few ideas on how to get involved in a startup community:

    • Look for your college’s local alumni group (hopefully there’s a local entrepreneurship group for your college as well)
    • Network to meet the connectors who enjoy putting people together and help out
    • Find the influential venture capitalists in the area as they are almost always very involved
    • Attend meetups and entrepreneurial get togethers to find like-minded people
    • Write blog posts about your community experiences and tweet interesting information
    • Join organizations like EO and YPO

    Getting involved in a local startup community is rewarding and worthwhile. It takes time to develop rapport and build relationships, as with anything you get out of it what you put into it.

    What else? What are some other ways to get involved in the startup community?

  • Running a Zombie Company Web App

    Startup failures are a standard part of the technology world. One of the interesting aspects of web-based businesses, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or otherwise, is that many times no human is necessary to service existing customers or sign on new clients (e.g. it’s a self-service tool). What happens when the founders determine the startup is no longer viable and decide to move on yet there are a modest number of paying customers?

    More often than not, I hear entrepreneurs that are moving on from their startup decide to keep the app running, along with the small amount of revenue coming in. Here are a few thoughts on running a web app for a zombie company:

    • Rarely does maintaining a web app prove to be worthwhile financially if you truly value your time (e.g. value your time at $200/hour and see if it’s actually worth it)
    • Many customers would like to know that the app is no longer going to be improved, or at least what the company status is going forward
    • Fully shutting down the web app, with appropriate notice for the customers, can be cathartic and help with closure for the entrepreneurs

    More often than not, it’s better to shut down the service rather than leave it up.

    What else? What are your thoughts on zombie company web apps?

  • Always Pay it Forward

    In entrepreneurship and life there’s a concept I’m a big fan of: pay it forward. The idea of pay it forward is that you help other people without expecting anything in return. Sometimes the help is returned 100x over and most of the time nothing is returned. Regardless, paying it forward is the right thing to do. Now, I can’t respond to every inquiry for help, especially requests for an hour of my time in person, but I do shoot to spend at least a few hours per week helping others.

    Here are several ways to pay it forward:

    • When your product or service doesn’t meet the needs of a prospect, you go out of your way to find someone that can help
    • When an acquaintance forwards a resume over, you pass it on to someone that might be interested in it
    • When an entrepreneur asks for help, you spend 15 minutes listening and giving feedback (it’s amazing how effective 15 minutes can be when you remove the layers and get right to the important stuff)
    • When you identify two people that should meet, OK the intro, and connect them such that they meet and get value

    Entrepreneurs should always pay it forward.

    What else? What are your thoughts on paying it forward and what are some other examples?

  • Trilogy Recruiting Tech Talent to Austin at Scale

    It was the first week of January 1999 and I was an eager second semester freshman at Duke camping out for the Duke vs UNC basketball game, set for early February. Camping outside for a month in the cold North Carolina winter didn’t seem like such a bad thing, especially when I got to tell my friends we were tent #1, meaning we were the first 10 people to walk into Cameron Indoor Stadium and chose the best seats on the floor (in reality, we stood the whole game on the actual basketball floor right at half court).

    Now, it was during my time in Krzyzewskiville that I had the opportunity to meet several upperclassmen and hear their stories of life at a much wiser age. Right around the corner was the main career fair for summer internship opportunities and these two computer science majors were rigorously debating the pros and cons of doing an internship at Microsoft or Trilogy. Microsoft was familiar to me but Trilogy wasn’t even on my radar.

    The debate went something like this: Microsoft pays well ($20/hr at the time), provides a convertible mustang for each intern for the summer, and you get the opportunity to go to a picnic at Bill Gates’ house and meet him personally. Trilogy pays better ($22/hr at the time), has an amazing campus on a lake with ski boats and jet skis for everyone to use, and is in Austin, TX, a fun college town with many coeds.

    I still didn’t know what Trilogy did but they were competing with Microsoft for the best academic talent at Duke (Microsoft is known for requiring high GPAs, among other things) and Trilogy was winning. At the end of the debate it was clear that Trilogy was more desirable and more competitive than Microsoft, and any other tech company recruiting at the career fair.

    Earlier today Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, tweeted out an article on Forbes titled John Price is Bringing Silicon Valley to Austin where the author recounts a bit of history about Trilogy and the fact that John trained many of the Trilogy employees at the in-house Trilogy University. Trilogy was fanatical about recruiting the best talent from around the country to Austin and taking them through an intense training program. Trilogy had a strong work hard, play hard culture where long hours and serious partying were the norm.

    Many of the Trilogy employees went on to participate in the Austin startup community and a couple hit it big with companies that IPOd, creating thousands of jobs. Even with a massive engineering school in their own backyard at UT Austin, Trilogy made it a core strength to recruit technical talent from beyond their region and train them on their own dime internally. There’s no single best way to recruit talent at a large scale but Trilogy showed you could do, and do it well, in a city outside the standard technology hubs.

    What else? What are your thoughts on Trilogy recruiting tech talent to Austin at scale?

  • The Challenge of 11 Full-Time Summer Interns

    Back in early 2007 we were just getting Pardot off the ground and had a number of road map features we wanted to crank out during the summer. With an extra 2,000 square feet of office space we weren’t using, there was plenty of room to add team members. We didn’t have much money so we did what any enterprising startup would do: we hired 11 full-time, paid summer interns (eight engineers and three marketers). Hmm, you might be thinking, 11 is a bit much since there were only three full-time people in our startup (two co-founders and a lead engineer).

    Here are some lessons learned from hiring a large number of interns:

    • Without management infrastructure, we actually had one of the interns be an intern manager and manage several other interns, which worked out well, but overall the interns didn’t get nearly the amount of attention they needed
    • Hiring standards were lax so we had a number of interns that didn’t work out, including one we had to fire half way through (a small number of the interns worked out really well)
    • Customer discovery wasn’t distributed across enough different companies, so the product progressed faster than market feedback, resulting in functionality that was unnecessary
    • Some of the interns excelled and we hired them again in the future

    My recommendation is to incorporate interns into startups, but do it in a more thoughtful and manageable manner, such that everyone has a great experience.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on hiring 11 full-time summer interns for a three person startup?