Boulder has a thriving tech community that has been well documented in the last 12 months alone via The New York Times, MSNBC, CNBC, and lots of other sources. I consider myself to be a reasonably active member of the community through visible roles as a TechStars mentor and [...]]]>

Boulder has a thriving tech community that has been well documented in the last 12 months alone via The New York Times, MSNBC, CNBC, and lots of other sources. I consider myself to be a reasonably active member of the community through visible roles as a TechStars mentor and as the organizer of the monthly CEO Lunch. However, it is the less visible stuff that often makes me feel like a real member of the community. For example, when I leave my downtown office to grab a coffee or lunch, I almost always bump into a local founder or an entire startup team. These chance encounters usually lead to a quick “how’s it going?” chat that can last anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. I also find myself doing a lot of waving to various tech community folks from across the Pearl Street Mall or as I ride to/from work on my bicycle. I very rarely go anywhere in Boulder without seeing at least one person I know from the tech community.

In addition to these random encounters, I average 5 to 10 emails per week from local entrepreneurs. Sometimes these entrepreneurs have a specific request but they usually just want another opinion on their new business. I try to squeeze in at least one face-to-face meeting per week with local founders/teams and often find myself feeling guilty that I can’t respond to all requests faster. Two quick side notes:

1) Some people have decided over time that they can get bumped up in the meeting queue by offering to buy me a beer. I can’t confirm this technique works, but I can assure you it doesn’t hurt to try.

2) I realize that sometimes people want to meet with me because they believe it will help their chances of getting in to TechStars. For the record, meeting with me will do very little to improve your chances of getting in to TechStars. Your team, your application, and your attitude will get you in.

Being part of the Boulder tech community is fun and rewarding, and I take great pride in being part of something that I believe is truly special. But, here’s the thing, it wasn’t always like this for me. There was a point in time where I felt almost completely isolated living in Boulder and I was fairly miserable working from here. As the late Paul Harvey would say, here’s “the rest of the story.”…

I moved to Boulder from Boston with my wife, Sarah Ahn, and our one-year-old son, Jackson, in 2004 (we have three amazing kids now). We bought a house within walking distance of downtown and I’ve worked in various downtown office locations ever since. Even though I basically forced Sarah to move to Boulder, she was the one that immediately embraced the community. She joined a bunch of different organizations, became a board member of a local non-profit, and made a ton of new friends. Within a couple of months of moving to Boulder, it felt like she knew half the people who lived here.

It was clear from the start that raising our family in Boulder was going to be a great experience. The problem for me is that I was the only person from our company working from Boulder. Everyone else was scattered about the country with a high percentage of people working in Boston. Going to work in my one-person office each day was like going into an isolation chamber. I would often go to work, spend a full day in the office, and get home without having a single face-to-face conversation with an actual human being. I spent all my time on email, on the phone, and on videoconferences during that time. The lack of real human interaction was definitely taking a toll on me.

Then one day in 2007 Sarah showed me an article in the local newspaper about four guys who were forming a new tech incubator in Boulder called TechStars. The only person I recognized from the article was Jared Polis. Sarah suggested that I reach out to see if they needed any help. A few weeks later I had coffee with David Cohen. The plans for TechStars were coming together quickly and David appeared to have it under control. I asked how I could help and he said he wasn’t sure yet. He mentioned that they had plenty of mentors signed up already. We agreed to stay in touch and I left the meeting feeling like I most likely wouldn’t be involved with the program going forward. Things were hectic enough for me at work and there didn’t seem to be any obvious ways for me to contribute from the start.

Fortunately for me, the impact of that first TechStars class on Boulder was unavoidable. I couldn’t visit a sandwich shop or read a local blog that first summer without running in to one of the TechStars companies. Through a series of events that I don’t completely remember, I ended up having a few mentoring sessions that first year with a couple of the companies. I also attended Investor Day that year and was blown away by the quality of the pitches. I got a little more involved in 2008 and started attending various tech events around town that year too. By 2009 I was fully engaged in TechStars and the Boulder tech scene. We launched the CEO Lunch in the fall of 2009. I distinctly remember having lunch one day with Brad Feld shortly before I started the CEO Lunch and he said “you are part of the community, just enjoy it.” Brad’s message was simple but impactful: you can give to the community, but you can take from it too.

These days I feel like I take way more than I give. I’ve developed some wonderful friendships, participated in a thousand stimulating conversations, and witnessed first hand a bunch of talented people achieving their goals. Somewhere along the line I realized that Boulder wasn’t only a great place to raise my family, it was a great home for me.

Thanks Boulder!

“How do we hire a bunch of new people and grow the company quickly without losing the culture we’ve worked so hard to establish?”

I’ve been fascinated by different company cultures for as long as [...]]]> I hear some form of the following question a lot from founders that are starting to have early success:

“How do we hire a bunch of new people and grow the company quickly without losing the culture we’ve worked so hard to establish?”

I’ve been fascinated by different company cultures for as long as I can remember (maintaining culture is also a hot topic at our CEO Lunches each month) and I’m frequently asking entrepreneurs to describe the culture of their companies. Over time I’ve come to realize that when you break down culture descriptions you’ll often find a mix of two components: values and vibe. Although each component can have a significant impact on the overall feel of a company, the way you establish and manage the two should be different.

Values

I think of values as the guiding principals or a code-of-conduct upon which a company was founded and which it operates on a daily basis. If you establish the right set of values early, these principals won’t change with time. Values establish your company’s view of the world and determine how you treat others including employees, customers, etc. Most importantly, values serve as the foundation on which tough company decisions are made. Values are 100% controlled by the company and should be unaffected by competitors, market conditions, etc.

The people you hire will come with their own set of values. Every person you hire should have personal values that completely align with the values of your company. 95% isn’t good enough. In fact, if a team member violates a company value, the violation should result in removal of the individual from the company. Here are some other things to consider around establishing and maintaining company values:

- Document and talk about your company values with your team all the time. Consider publishing your values, and talking about them with customers, partners, etc. to add an extra level of scrutiny to your commitment.
- I believe a set of five or less documented values is ideal because you want all your employees to have them top-of-mind when making decisions. If you have too many values, people simply won’t remember all of them.
- Determine a set of tough “trade-off” questions that you can ask during the interview process they will help you determine if a candidate’s values align.
- Good values require tough decisions to be made in order for the values to be upheld. If you establish values that are never challenged, these values aren’t serving any real purpose.

This last point is particularly important. Watered down or generic values might be easy to uphold, but they also won’t establish a strong culture. Companies with unique cultures tend to have values that are unconventional and sometimes controversial. A famous example of a unique value is Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” (I believe the actual company published version is “you can make money without doing evil”). I’m guessing “don’t be evil” is discussed at Google hundreds of times of day when decisions are being made, and I bet it is surprisingly hard to stay true to this value even though the premise seems fairly simple. The fact that Google allowed this value to become public knowledge has resulted in a huge audience of observers that are constantly scrutinizing Google’s actions to see if they are staying true to their values.

Vibe

Vibe represents the emotional side of the company. Like all emotions, vibe can be fairly volatile and is highly influenced by outside factors. For example, think about the vibe of a company on the night that the first product is launched vs. the vibe of the same company when Apple announces they are launching a competing product or service. When it comes to vibe, management can certainly set a tone and try to lead by example, but the reality is the vibe of a company will naturally change with time as the company grows and the products/employees mature. The biggest influence on vibe is typically success. Most companies that are doing well tend to have an overall positive vibe.

When I first joined Aquent eleven years ago, I would have described one aspect of the culture as “a big family”. This aspect was all about the vibe and had nothing to do with the values of the company. The company was much smaller at the time and we spent a lot of time together during work and after work. As the company grew, it became impossible for every person to know every other person like a family member. The vibe changed…the values didn’t. Success continued.

As a leader, there are aspects of vibe that you will naturally want to try to control. However, you have to ask yourself a few questions:

- Is this aspect of the company important to our long-term success?
- Does this aspect need to be maintained forever and is it sustainable?
- Does this aspect apply to all areas of the company and to all employees?
- Will establishing this aspect help us make important decisions in the future?

If you answered, “yes” to all of the above, congratulations…you’ve just identified a new potential value. However, it can be fairly liberating to realize that the foosball table in the middle of the office is nice, but it isn’t crucial to the long-term success of the company.

I know this won’t be a popular statement, but I don’t think maintaining culture (as defined by most entrepreneurs I’ve encountered) is important. Instead, I think it critical to focus on establishing strong values early and hiring people that have aligning values. Maybe it is all just semantics on how you define culture, but I believe you shouldn’t sweat the vibe part. You’ll have an overall positive feel if you are successful and that is the only type of vibe that really matters.

Incredibly smart/tech-savvy people start a company around a cool idea. These founders build amazing tools/products that demonstrate their concept and their abilities. At this point they might decide they need to get funding. And, what will they use the money for? Often times, [...]]]> Here’s a common scenario I see with some early stage tech startups…

Incredibly smart/tech-savvy people start a company around a cool idea. These founders build amazing tools/products that demonstrate their concept and their abilities. At this point they might decide they need to get funding. And, what will they use the money for? Often times, the word “marketing” will show up near the top of their funding needs (Sales and Business Development are also near the top, but that’s another post). Seems reasonable enough, right? I mean how else are people going to know about your company/product without marketing?

The trouble begins when you start to dig a little deeper on the “marketing” bullet point. The founders often won’t have a marketing plan yet. No problem they will explain, part of the funding will go towards hiring a marketing person. The basic thinking here is “we don’t know anything about marketing so we will hire someone who does.” If you are a startup CEO, and you think you are going to hire your way in to good marketing, I’ve got news for you: you are almost certainly going to fail. Why? I could write an entire book on this topic, but let’s start with a few basic points:

1) Marketing is not a bolt-on component of your company that you can outsource to another person. Marketing is an integral part of every decision the company makes. In my opinion, it is critical that the CEO drive the core marketing strategy in the early stages because all the major decisions around the company, the product and marketing are interrelated. A good marketing person can only help execute a plan that is based upon a strong vision that is set by the CEO. Hiring a marketing person before you know your marketing strategy is like hiring a developer before you know what platform/technology you are using to build your product.

2) If you don’t know anything about marketing, the odds that you can hire a good marketing person are pretty slim. Sure, a blind squirrel can occasionally find a nut, but I wouldn’t fund a business that was based upon such a rare occurrence. You can certainly get referrals from people you trust and respect. But, unless the person that is being recommended is coming from an identical business and you are planning to steel the previous employer’s marketing strategy (see point #1) there is little reason to believe the recommended person will be a good fit for your company/strategy.

3) If you don’t have a solid marketing strategy, your new marketing hire is either going to drive you crazy or accomplish absolutely nothing or both. If your new hire is motivated to do a good job, they will be constantly peppering you with questions you can’t yet answer in order to get some direction. You’ll be reacting to questions instead of developing a good strategy. If your new hire is bad, they will just sit back and wait for you. Either way, you lose.

So, how do you avoid this common mistake? Like a lot of growth opportunities it starts with self-awareness and acceptance. Once you accept your current understanding of the subject and you recognize the fact that you have to embrace marketing as your responsibility, you can learn quickly and make rapid progress on building an effective strategy for your company.

More thought on marketing strategy coming soon…

A couple of points not covered in the video: