State of the DC Tech Scene

It’s been a little over a year since we held the first DC Tech Meetup, and a little over a year and a half since we launched ProudlyMadeInDC, which can be considered a catalyst for the Meetup. One can confidently say that everything has been up and to the right with all aspects of the greater DC startup ecosystem; more startups, thriving startups, investments, acquisitions, M+A, etc. For actual community resources, we’ve seen a lot of that grow. New events and organizers are coming about, and new people are attending them all the time, with demos getting better and better. It’s remarkable how I can walk into a DC Tech Meetup (which, thanks primarily to the hard work of fellow organizer Peter Corbett, is now one of the biggest meetups in the country), or a Lean Startup meetup and the first reaction that pops into my mind is how many unfamiliar faces there are.

More recently, I’ve pulled back a bit as my primary focus is putting all my passion and energy into making Contactually “blow up” to quote Paul Singh. We still operate ProudlyMade, which continues to grow despite having never spent anything in marketing, and generally really sucking at PR. I still assist with DCTM, and help run each show. I have no regrets about pulling back, as I believe the best community organizers are those who are deeply entrenched in the startup battle. It’s also great to see new resources pop up and provide a lot of auxiliary support for those in the greater community.

There has been a lot of attention among the entrepreneurial blogosphere towards fostering strong startup communities, as more and more “hubs” pop up, galvanized by the knowledge that a startup can exist and thrive outside of the Valley Mecca. As I think about my involvement and passion for growing a strong community, and what would provide the biggest returns for the region in the little amount of time I’m able to provide, that leads to what I believe the primary goals are for a community, and what DC needs.

What qualifies a strong community?
More startups going through the full life cycle – inception, prototype, funding, pr, growth, liquidity, recidivism.
A swirling pool of talent, jumping into and among nascent and growing companies.
A strong support base of resources, professional services, investment cash.
An active sense of community and camaraderie among founders and employees. Whatever will end up with the first-time entrepreneur with the glint of an idea in his mind to connect with the battle-hardened serial entrepreneur/investor and get enough of an ass-kicking to get him on the right track (Glen, Aaron, I love you guys).
What should the priorities be for the community as a whole, especially any self-proclaimed “leaders”?
Kill the wantrepreneur. Whatever it takes to get the guy with an idea off the sidelines and into the game. Vet their idea, help them find their team, give them the crawl-walk-run(thanks for letting me steal your phrase, John Casey) steps they need to take, with a “I’ve been there, let me help you” attitude.
Build better companies. Help those already on the path, and their companies, kick ass. Throw resources, mentors, investors, press at them. And ask for nothing in return, other than hoping they pay it forward.
Keep swirling and feeding the talent engine. Connect those hiring with those looking. Get people out of their government/corporate cubicles and into startups, sometimes even before they gradute. Encourage them to take a risk. At the same time, build confidence that if a startup fails, that’s not game over for the employees and a sign that they should run back to their golden handcuffs. If you know that you can easily attain an open position in any number of thriving startups, you have enough of a safety net to take a bigger risk with your own.
But what can do more harm than good?
Event overload. Already if you look at Ross’ excellent and long running DCTechEvents, every night is loaded with events geared towards entrepreneurs. While networking is great, and the content is always a value-add, the best thing one can do is work on your startup. I’ve found the the best events inspire me to the point that I end up leaving early, hungry to get back to work. When people ask me why I don’t go to many events at night anymore, I normally respond by saying that the best thing I can do for the DC community is ensure Contactually is a success.
Incite dependence on resources. Again, there’s a trend that going to an event and talking to one of the organizers will be your solution. I can maybe point you in the right direction, give you some advice based on my limited experience, and if I can think of a possible introduction, make it. But I’m not going to help you find your cofounder. I’m not the one to judge your idea. I’m not the one who will spend my day helping you, solely because you happen to be in DC. I and many others have recently become overburdened with requests like this. More than once I’ve been confronted by someone at an event, furious that I can’t find them a ruby instructor, or that unicorn-like technical cofounder.

Happy 1 Year Anniversary Contactually (the idea, that is)

On May 15th, 2011 was the day I first wrote down in Evernote (where I collect all my product ideas) an idea for a Proactive CRM

The failure in CRMs is that YOU have to actively decide to put a contact into the system. Lame.
Google Apps hook-in
It monitors your email, then when you reply to an email from someone, or send someone an email, it then knows that it’s someone who should be added to the CRM.
It then will see if it knows of this contact.

If it doesn’t, it’ll send you an email, saying “how do you know this person?”

you reply to that email, with a few different things about them.

that response is then ‘turked into machine readable data.

then it will be added into it’s own CRM system, and can optionally get added to highrise/salesforce/whatever

But of course the inception of the idea is nothing but a sentimental datapoint. In fact, the product idea that I had is very different than the product we have thousands of users engaging with every day.

What has really mattered is the ability to successfully verify market demand, execute on the product vision, ruthlessly iterate, and rally a conglomerate of co-founders, employees, investors, advisors, supporters, and thousands of passionate users around our product and mission.

Why I’m So Incredibly Excited About Crowdfunding

We’re mere hours away from the new JOBS act being signed into law. While it’s an all-around awesome bill for entrepreneurs, the fact that it will legalize crowdfunding in startups by non-accredited investors will revolutionize the way startups are built.

Take where we are at this moment with Contactually. We have thousands of users. A large portion are heavy users. Our paid user metrics are growing rapidly. I spend a good chunk of my day doing sales calls, talking to top users, etc. Quite often, I hear things like “this is going to be huge” “you are going to kill it” etc. And this is from business owners, not just individuals.

What if I can ask them, at that moment, if they believe enough in it to invest?
What if they believe in the vision enough that they, right then, are willing to?
What if we offered additional incentives for investing, like a year of service, etc (a la Kickstarter)?

This completely flips around investing in & building web startups. In my eyes it puts more incentive into getting your product out there, proving your idea, getting to product market fit, and finding the users who not only would pay for your product, but believe in the idea enough to invest.

Do you spend months with no product development, raising a few hundred thousand and then starting to build something? Or do you focus on building your product, getting distribution, and gaining users, while at the same time find a few hundred incredibly passionate users who so strongly believe in your idea that they would invest a few hundred or a couple thousand each? Which one puts you in the better position?

Wow.

Will there be fraud? Undoubtedly. But this is too much of a game changer to worry about a few bad eggs.

Am I totally wrong here?

2011 was…

the year I got a dog.
the year I asked Alex to marry me.
the first year I went to SXSW.
the first time I visited Europe.
the year I hired my first employee.
the year that the DC startup community blew up.
the year I got involved in community building.
the year I spent way too much time in airports.
the year that I finally dropped everything to pursue a grand vision.
the year that I first raised outside funding.
the year that I built a team.

ProudlyMadeInDC Turns One

One year ago today, we launched ProudlyMadeInDC. I sent out this message to our mailing list

In the wee hours of the morning, on December 2nd, 2010, the two of us
started throwing together a simple WordPress site, after a dinner discussion
with other entrepreneurs about improving the scene in DC. We posted a list
of startups that we knew about (a total of 40!), and shared it with a few
close friends. On December 13th, 2010 – we opened it up to the world. And by
“open it up” – we actually mean making a couple tweets/FB posts. We expected
maybe a couple hundreds hits to the site, and eventually it would just trail
off and disappear.

But you, the community, latched on to it. You took what we built, and ran
with it, turning ProudlyMade into something we could never have imagined.

More importantly, we’ve seen the community grow. While we could focus on the
birth and growth of so many follow-on efforts (DC Tech Meetup, DC Tech
Summer), as well as dozens of other resources coming online in the DC
area… That doesn’t matter. What matters is that every day, more and more
people are seeing that realizing their dreams is possible in the DC area.
They’re escaping their cubicle prisons, working nights and weekends,
validating their ideas, raising funding, and building companies. We’re
creating jobs and making the world a better place. Sites like
ProudlyMadeInDC, events like the DC Tech Meetup, and thousands of other
resources, meetups, and groups… we’re just here to support that. Just a
few years back, would anyone have dreamed that DC would be a place where
hundreds of startups would bloom? We certainly didn’t. Yet here we are. DC
is on the map. And you are making it happen.

So here we are – roughly a year after launching, still going strong. We’ve
established ProudlyMadeInDC as a home for entrepreneurs helping
entrepreneurs. We work 24/7 on our own startups (it’s currently 1:30
in the morning as we write this), and try and put whatever remaining time we
have into helping you. Going forward, we’re going to be adding more
resources, both internally and on our site, with the aim of helping you. So
thanks.

Oh yeah, we’re throwing a little party too.

Cycles

I had an idea.
(repeat 1,000,000x)

I had an idea.
I wrote it down.
(repeat 86x – based on Evernote usage since August ’09)

I had an idea.
I wrote it down.
I talked to a lot of people about it.
(repeat ~30x)

I had an idea.
I wrote it down.
I did a basic landing page, or mockups.
(repeat ~20x)

I had an idea.
I wrote it down.
I did a basic landing page, or mockups.
I told everyone I know.
(repeat ~3x)

I had an idea.
I wrote it down.
I built a prototype, 90% of the way there.
(repeat ~20x)

I had an idea.
I wrote it down.
I built a prototype.
I finished it.
I opened it up for the world to see.
(repeat ~5x)

I had an idea.
I wrote it down.
I built a landing page.
I told everyone I know.
I built a prototype.
I told everyone I know.
I pitched it all the time.
(repeat ~1x)

I had an idea.
I wrote it down.
I built a prototype.
I told everyone I know.
I pitched it everywhere I could.
I assembled a team.
I wrangled advisors.
I dropped all other  professional distractions.
I got us accepted into an incubator.
(in progress)

Burning the Boats

It’s legend* that Cortez, upon reaching Vera Cruz, burned his ships so there was no way for him and his crew to retreat. It was all-or-nothing from then on out.

My last post (back in July, #blogfail) was about the challenges we faced consulting while building our startup (then called Enforcery, now renamed to Contactually). We were starting to get into a pretty good rhythm of ensuring constant progress while consulting. We still weren’t moving as fast as we want to, and the little time we were able to cut out towards Contactually was spent more on maintenance and frustration than to actual progress. The context-switching was becoming a real problem.

So last week, we made the decision to burn the boats. We’re wrapping our consulting work, joining 500 Startups and heading out to CA for a few months, and going all in on our team, and our idea.

Now is the time to focus.

Already that decision has been a gamechanger for our team. Watch what we’re going to pull off.

* The actual story was slightly different. It’s more commonly held that Cortez burned all but one of his ships to stave off a mutiny. But when did we let facts stop a good story?

The Perils of Bootstrapping via Consulting

Since the last startup I was CTO of was acquired in 2009, I’ve been working for other startups and agencies as a consultant. While my main goal in life is to be building startups that I am the founder/co-founder of, consulting has been a great way to pay the bills while I iterate with different products, ideas, and people, figuring out the next big thing to throw myself into with all my heart. Everyone talks with great praise that taking on consulting projects while running a startup is a great thing – avoids outside financing and lengthens your runway.

There are real problems with consulting

1. You only have a limited amount of time during the week. Consulting takes time out of your day. What is your most precious resource?
2. When you’ve blocked a certain amount of time to work on your startup, when a client calls with a burning question or meeting, it’s a distraction.
3. Consulting encourages jumping around. I can on some days be juggling 8 or 9 different consulting projects, and have learned how to switch quickly. That is the complete opposite of a startup – where a laser focus.
4. The short-term opportunity cost of working on your own internal startup increases tremendously. When you’re being faced with the choice of “Do I work on my startup, with some chance of success in the future” vs “Do I make some good money right now” – and you’re being asked that every minute of every day, committing to your idea becomes even more challenging.
5. The biggest flaw. When you hit a rough patch with your business (bad feedback, lack of interest, technical challenge) and that little seed of doubt starts to grow… it’s effortless to take a few more consulting gigs, and before you know it, it’s been months since you’ve cracked open the code base.

What I do to prevent it (and I’m not perfect)

1. Break up both consulting work and internal startup work into manageable chunks. That way you can mix both together in a day.
2. In true GTD style, write down what you need to accomplish before you start your day. It’s at that planning stage where you can put thought into how you want to balance your day.
3. Don’t check email so often.
4. Hire other people to work with you. Task one of you with with client work, and the other with internal product.
5. Keep track of your financials. How much consulting work do you actually need to take in this month?

What I’ve seen other people do

• Block off a certain part of the week/day for client work, and part that’s just for startup work. Don’t even think about picking up the phone, or having a meeting
• As your team grows, you can have people focused entirely on internal projects, that will never touch client work.
• Magically find a product idea that your clients can pay you to build, and be your first customer

Don’t get me wrong, I love me clients. But we all know that consulting for an entrepreneur has to be treated as a means to an end.

A Solution to A Community Problem

The past sixth months we’ve seen an explosion in the DC community. Events where we normally may have expected a few dozen of the same faces to show up have now grown into the hundreds. There seems to be this constant flow of new people, new companies, and general enthusiasm around creating new ventures in the region. We’re hoping that this becomes self sustaining, and all signs point to that being the case.

With such a large community of new individuals, new challenges arise. We keep an ear open to every bit of feedback, and there is one constant piece of advice. The people sitting in the audience want to know each other, above all else.

Michael and I, and numerous others, have talked at length about this, and I’ve condensed this into a few hypotheses.

• A community relies on 1:1 connections – I can honestly state that, over the past four years of networking events, dinners, drinks, and coffee – I’ve been able to both give and receive the most amount of value by sitting down – in person – with one other person. Getting to know them, learning what they are up to, and figuring out actionable next steps to help each other out. I’ve made clients, friends, and business partners this route.
• Large events don’t provide the right atmosphere to facilitate real connections – When I walk into a large networking event, I maybe walk out with one or two people I’d actually be interested in talking with. Now, my tendency is to gravitate towards the people I already know, and just chat with them. I’ve heard how daunting it is, as someone who doesn’t know that many people, to walk into a room of 700 people, and not know who to talk to, or how to.
• Existing social platforms aren’t built for discovering other people – The initial use case of Facebook (I was in college at the time) was exploring and connecting who was in your classes, and who your friends were friends with. Over time, privacy and new features have all but destroyed the ability to connect with people you wouldn’t know otherwise. Even the groups feature isn’t conducive to connections amongst its member. Twitter’s utility as a discovery decreases with each new member being added… more noise.
• Social context isn’t necessarily the solution – Just because you’re in the same group on Quora, checked in to the same venue on Foursquare, or “like” the same social objects – doesn’t provide enough data to ensure that some kind of meaningful connection will happen.
• A platform purely focused on people discovery can serve many purposes. I’ve seen the value of connecting with others, and facilitating further connections between others. An online solution to facilitating offline connections has value.

That being said…. keep your eyes open. We’re working on something.

2011 Washingtonian Tech Titan

I’m honored to be on Washingtonian’s list of Tech Titans this year.

Onward and upward.