It’s been a little under five months since we launched the first version of ProudlyMadeInDC, a website that has helped shed light on the growing startup community in DC. It’s received more media attention and traffic than I expected when it was built. Since then, we’ve launched two additional initiatives – the DC Tech Meetup (800 attendees expected for next week) and DC Tech Summer (over 400 interns applied in one week). ProudlyMade remains our flagship destination, as well as the biggest time commitment.
In terms of hard costs, PMiDC is relatively cheap. It is however a huge time commitment. We have companies to review and add all the time. All day long, entrepreneurs, VCs, and established companies are reaching out to us asking how to get involved, to vet their ideas, and what they can do to help the community. It is an incredibly exciting thing to do, but when you’re building a startup while already running a successful business, and in general trying to find time to enjoy life a bit, the opportunity cost is high.
So why do it?
Really simple:
Main Reason: If I can do everything I can to make DC a great place to build and grow a startup, then that increases the chance that anything I create here will succeed. I could move somewhere else to do that, and that’s never out of the question, but I’m here now.
Secondary Reason: These are my friends, coworkers, collaborators. I’m lucky to personally know so many awesome founders in the region. As anyone who’s been in an entrepreneurial community for a while, the peer support is amazing. This is one of the best ways I can think of supporting the community.
Secondary Reason: I started out in the community knowing no-one, and am always out there to discuss ideas, work through problems, and figure out the best way to help each other. I want to know everyone in the community, to work with them, discuss ideas, maybe get funding. Having a central role gives me that visibility into the community.
I’m Not Doing it for Money: Sure, I want my startup to succeed and be profitable. But I’m not here to make any money directly off the community. A lot of people, after an article is published or a big meetup, will reach out to me inquiring to me about my services. I’m not accepting new clients at this time, no matter how much you ask. That being said, as our initiatives grow and become more of a time commitment, that may change in order to better balance our time.
What’s Next:
We just had a great meeting yesterday regarding the next steps in the community, and have a product in the works to support it. Just wait and see. People Discovery + Social White Pages FTW.
It’s been great watching the early stage startup community grow in the DC region over the past six to twelve months. Companies are getting funded, new ventures are being created every day, and on the whole, the entrepreneurs in the area no longer feel like lone wolves wandering around with no support network. As I’ve become heavily involved the mechanics of the community, through founding/co-founding ProudlyMadeInDC, DCTechMeetup, and Hackers/Founders, I’ve had a chance to speak with dozens of early stage companies. While the company may have an excellent founder, a great idea, and on occasion some seed funding, more often than not I hear the same thing:
“I’m looking for a technical co-founder.”
It’s a completely understandable situation to be in, putting myself in a non-technical persons shoes. You have a strong idea, (usually) a specific product roadmap, and a great marketing plan. All you need is someone to jam out some code in a weekend.
Limited Supply
The biggest issue in the market today is the extreme dearth of good, experienced developers. Even then, the good ones already have jobs, either at startups or large corporations with six-figure jobs and free cake once a month. And the more entrepreneurial types (referred to as hacker/founders) – most likely they’re already working on their own concept.
What do you offer?
A good developer knows their value in a startup. After all, they’re the ones who are actually building the product everyone is betting the farm on. In return for them getting payed a meager salary (or just equity), working 60+ hour weeks, and dealing with a plethora of product changes, users, system downtime, and all the other fun stuff with being the sole/primary developer, what do you bring to the table? What’s your track record? While they are building everything out, what are you doing? With them sinking so much sweat equity into cranking out code, what assurances do they have that you won’t just lose interest and walk away?
Here is some advice that I give out when I hear that line:
Refine your product vision: If you still think that “MVP” is a sports term, spend a good amount of team going through the plethora of content related to Eric Ries’ lean startup methodology. A good chunk of the lean startup dogma is devoted to refining your product down to the absolute minimum necessary in order to gauge interest and, hopefully, revenue. When I’m handed a twenty page spec document split up into five phases, I always try and boil it down to the most basic, ugly, product that shows that it’s worth someones time continuing to build it out.
Learn to code yourself: I’m sure I lost half the audience just by saying that. Some find too large a gap between someone who can architect software and someone who… tells them how to do it. But in truth, the difference is smaller than you’d expect. I’m not saying that you should expect to overnight become a master codesmith, but it’s certainly within your realm to learn enough Ruby on Rails (or PHP, Node, etc) to be able to crank out an initial version of what you’re trying to build. The documentation is plentiful, classes are always available, and due to the magic of open source software, there is a LOT of code that you can look at, learn from, and repurpose. Before you skip on this entirely, spend an hour starting off with http://hackety-hack.com/
Hire a Team – So you’ve given up on coding it yourself. But if you have a very strong idea about what you’re looking to build, it’s certainly possible to get a decent product by hiring outside designers and developers (heaven help you if you think you don’t need a developer…). This should at least get you an initial prototype, and hiring a local developer to help support it and make changes can be done for a lower price.
Are you a developer?
OK, you might be reading this and happen to be one of the developers that everyone is looking for. If so, get in touch with me, right now. I’ll set you up.
As mentioned previously, I’m co-founder of ProudlyMadeinDC, a central site showcasing DC’s startups, showing to the world, and to ourselves, that DC is an up-and-coming startup hub. We started it as a small side project, but it’s grown to become real movement, helping to power the rise of DC startups. I presented at Ignite DC 6 (slides below, full video coming soon), so what I have below is, for the most part, my talk.
I’m here to talk about the efforts to rebuild a startup community in the dc area and how just one step by anyone can help make a difference. Because an awkward guy like me might appear to be the most unfit for the job.
I went to school in the region, and they did an awesome job of ensuring that we all were funneled into cubicles at a beltway bandit. It was only then I started learning about the whole concept of a start-up outside of the corporate bubble.
But I didn’t know anyone who involved in the start-up world. So I read voraciously. Every book, blog, and newsgroup I could. But still, I lacked the personal contact and war stories of a peer community to help me venture out on my own.
Three years ago, I stumbled across a wiki for barcamp DC. Here was a completely volunteer organized event, that help me meet so many entrepeneurs. Many of these people I am still in contact with today, and consider them my mentors, peers, and friends.
But it seemed that every founder walked around with a chip on their shoulder because they weren’t in the valley. And because of that their chances of survival were slim. VCs weren’t investing, media wouldn’t cover them, and there wasn’t much of a peer community.
Fastforward to today. Our community has grown. What’s great about most of these events is they aren’t organized for any major financial or PR gain. They’re organized by one or two people to get a bunch of like minded folks together.
While a small group of people actively try to improve the community, far too many find solace in complaints via Twitter and Facebook about the inability to start a company in our nation’s capital.
If you’ve spent any time in DC you’ve run into these people. While I’m not telling you to join an artists’ commune any time soon, their manifesto has always resonated with me. If you see a problem, stop complaining about it and do something to solve it. Isn’t that what every entrepreneur aims to do?
When Brad Feld, a VC who helped build Boulder as a startup hub, came to DC, he had no idea that Living Social is a local company. Lesson #1: No one was really talking about DC’s startups. So we knew that marketing DC is one thing that we could improve upon.
There are a number of events and resources in DC available for entrepreneurs. But figuring out where to begin is a daunting task. Lesson #2: Provide some kid of beachhead to guide newcomers to the right resources.
It was finally time to stop talking. With just one Red Bull fueled night, I was surprised with the outcome. 2 months ago, today, actually, I emailed my co-founder of what became Proudly Mady in DC with the first version of our directory.
The lean startup methodology teaches you to launch as quickly as possible. We had lots of big ideas for what we wanted to do, and debated the what-ifs – but we quickly put an end to that, opting instead to just jump off, and figure out the rest as we plummet to our demise.
Launch day is always a rush. About a week after the first version of the site, we started publicizing. And by “publicizing” I actually mean posting on Facebook and emailing about a dozen people.
What we learned was that if there’s a community backing you, your idea grows legs, really quickly. Thousands of visits and hundreds of tweets later, our directory of over 100 startups had made its mark. We can now sit andwatch visitors come to our site, and check out the startups on the list.
When we built the site, we set up a single email address where anyone could reach out. Since the launch day, emails have been pouring in from new startups, experienced entrepreneurs, and newcomers who just want to get involved. We do our best to guide them on the right path.
You won’t get it right. You may have much more grandiose plans. And you may have a lot of critics, as we did. But we made that first step, took a few hours of our time, and made something that has provided a 10-fold return to the community.
what’s next? What can you do? We’re at a critical time in making DC into a startup hub. We need to work better together, across different groups. We need to build that herd, support that new startup, because if we can improve the community as a whole, we can make it a better place to bring our own dreams into reality.
The next phase is the DC Tech Meetup, a place where anyone who’s involved with startup or wants to be, or just wants to support startups, can work together. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lean startup enthusiast, VC, hacker, lawyer, founder, whatever. We need you and everyone you know.
It sounds like your standard cliche advice to go out and just do something. But to make a community happen, it’s going to take all of us making one small step. The next time you think that something is hard in DC, stop complaining, and figure out a way to make it better.
For us, it started with just two people. We can now happily say that we have formed a supportive community around us and our idea. Find one or two people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and and decide together what your first step is. There’s no way to build a community alone. Thank you.
—
Really, it’s an amazing time to be involved in the startup community. There’s electricity in the air that wasn’t here six months ago. The conversation is no longer about whether or not a startup can survive in DC, it’s changed for the positive. People are leaving their silos, and figuring out how they can work together. It’s great to see.
ProudlyMadeinDC is still booming. We’re getting tons of email every week, from new entrepreneurs looking to get involved, startups asking to be listed, and people/organizations who just want to help. It’s amazing to have our fingers on the pulse of entrepreneurship here, and meet so many amazing people.
As a hacker-founder (an entrepreneur who develops their own products), how familiar does this sound to you:
Have an awesome idea. Don’t tell anyone about it.
Decide to build it, convinced that everyone will love it.
Still don’t tell publicize it.
Keep working on the product. Not as wild about the idea anymore.
Come to some milestone in the product. Show it to one or two people.
Start to think about marketing. How are you going to market this? Haven’t really thought about this before…
Bleh, so many little remaining things to do.
Come up with another really great idea – even better!
Give up. Not like you had any users who gave a crap…
Move onto the next idea. See step 1.
I’ve been through this half a dozen times in the last two years alone. It sucks, as I look back on all the dead web applications and “startups” I’ve done. I still look back and think that some of them are still great ideas – in fact, similar products have come later that have been very successful.
No more. I’m not doing that again.
One of the main “lean startup” tenets is a focus on ensuring that customers want your product, making customer development more important than product development itself. As I was thinking about my next product (having built an awesome product previously, yet completely missed how to market it), I was interested in following this path myself.
Knowing how I work, an initial focus on customer development meant more than knowing that I’d be building a product that people wanted. Far more important than that, my belief is that, by gathering a following and users who actually want the product, I’d be motivated to continue it. I can’t give up if I have actual users, I’ll see it through to completion.
Here’s a generalized view of my method:
Come up with idea. Yes, this rocks.
Talk to as many people as possible about it initially. Gather feedback, generally positive.
Think heavily about my ideal customer, and figure out how to reach them.
Develop minimum viable product – in this case, a well designed landing page and screencast.
Make initial push to get users (and by users, I mean people signing up for updates via landing page).
Engage users.
Continue to network with anyone who is interested.
By step 6, something very different has happened. Without writing a line of code (for the real product) yet, I had interest – customers. Some findings:
I’ve gained a strong following of people interested in the product.
I’ve gathered commitments from a number of people to really use the product.
I’ve validated my idea as well as I can without having an actual product to use with.
Received interest from potential investors.
Downside: With my particular product, I’ve received a good amount of feedback that in order to continue pursuing costumers, I really need to have something people can tinker with. However, I can continue with product development knowing that I’ll have people willing to give it a spin.
Looking to learn more? Check out my startup Structo – we’re a hosted database that enables web developers to build web applications faster.
Structo was born out of a pain I saw as a web developer, and, in speaking with many other web developers, I found I wasn’t alone. There are many components in a web application that have to be repeated every single time.
What is Structo?
Structo is a hosted RESTful database. You specify your schema in a drag and drop interface, and then have a full infrastructure for your web application. You get to focus on what’s really important in your web app – we’ll handle the rest.
While I am firmly established as an entrepreneur, having started one company of my own (skeevisArts) and been CTO of a now-acquired startup, I know that the business that I’m in is a means to an end. As much as I love to work with awesome clients and grow my roster weekly, this is not what I want to do long term. My dream is to build products.
I’ve been lucky enough to surround myself with other experienced professionals who have made the switch from client services to products, and they constantly goad me to start focusing on my own product. I’ve realized, with more and more certainty, that now is the team. And I start ideating.
Then I look up at the list of active, on-deck, and potential projects. And I get back to work.
A local developer compared client services to a cheap drug – it’s easy to get high. And skeevisArts is going well, but I must keep fighting and re-focusing myself to build out a product (or products, to satisfy my multi-track mind).
After the Google style of working – I’m currently gearing myself towards an 80%/20% solution. 80% devoted to running skeevisArts, and 20% devoted to my own ventures. It’s more challenging than I thought, as I never imagined myself being this heavily in demand and having so little extra-curricular time. Others have said “well, just take on fewer clients.” Yeah right
December 4th, today, marks a pretty big day in my life.
Since I was in middle school, skeevisArts was the moniker I used for any “professional” work I did (back then, I used the professional label pretty loosely). Skeevis was my nickname back then, and considering that I was doing mainly creative work at that time, skeevisArts was appended to everything I created.
I’ve learned so much, met so many amazing people, and been lucky to do some pretty incredible projects – especially considering how “fresh” I was. Sure, I had done a decent amount of freelance work before, but nothing compared to the experience of the past year. When I compare an “average day” – which no entrepreneur ever has – to what I had experienced just a few years ago, when I was still full time at unnamed-ginormous-government-contractor…. its beyond comparison.
DISCLAIMER: When I was working at aforementioned consulting agency and dreaming about freelancing full time – and doing a bit of it on the side – I read… a ton. Everything I could get my hands on via social media – blog posts about lessons learned, war stories of entrepeneurs, Top X tools you need to Y… I consumed it all. Everyone was willing to hand out advice. Let’s face it, most of the content out there is regurgitating information found via other sources, mindless unfounded banter just to generate page views, or just monkeys mashing at keyboards. I don’t want to be any of that. Instead, I just want to reflect upon the lessons I’ve learned, primarily to cement them in my own head, but also hopefully, that someone out there will find it useful. This isn’t a definitive list of “Steps to take to Master Freelancing” or “Why it’s so hard to start a company” or any BS like that. This is solely what I have learned for myself. This might be completely useless to you, it might be just what you needed. Take this advice at your owk risk.
Here we go.
What I’ve Learned, In One Year of Freelancing
1. Do Amazing Work. Duh, right? I couldn’t stress this enough, and still have to remind myself of this every day. First off, there are so many other tasks and activities you have to deal with – new business, accounting, new business, partnerships, new business, internal projects and processes, new business, project management (and did I mention new business?) – that sometimes the actual labor is second tier, rushed through, or put off to the last minute. No. Amazing work is all that matters. The money will come in once that is taken care of.
1b. Do Amazing Work. I am blown away on a weekly basis by how much crap there is, especially stuff put out by other freelancers. I’m disheartened that some people would actually put this out, and that clients would pay for it. But, this is also an opportunity. If you come in doing good work, clients will instantly see it, latch on to you, and – best of all – be willing to pay nearly any price for that kind of quality. 1/3 of the work I do is replacing another developer (or team of developers).
2. Find What You Are Good At. Outsource The Rest. Just because a client is hiring you to do a project, doesn’t mean you’re expected to do all of it yourself. They’re paying you to get to the finish line.
3. Every Client is Valuable. When I first started, I took any client that walked through the door. I still keep in touch with them to this day, and it’s paid off – even if it’s at a lower rate, doing smaller work (example: I still do IT work for a couple small businesses at an hourly rate a fraction of my current rate). Just because a bigger, better, client has walked through the door, doesn’t diminish the importance of every single client before it. (I know, at this point, a lot of this is “duh!” stuff. I’m only saying it because every day I see more people who don’t think this way)
4. Don’t Mess Around (Too Much) On Payments - Invoice promptly. If the project isn’t a rush project, wait until you get the deposit. If you’ve set generous terms, and the client is still behind on paying you – alarm bells should go off IMMEDIATELY. I’ve learned this lesson a couple times already in a year.
5. New business is the lifeblood of a company. Don’t underestimate how much time it takes to process this. While so far I’ve been successful enough to build a business solely on word of mouth, I still end up spending 1/5 of my week in new business phone calls and meetings, writing proposals, and negotiating terms.
7. Rigidity will only lead to frustration. I’m at the point where, when I wake up in a day, I have no idea what I’m going to work on, unless I have a scheduled appointment. This is how I best function personally, as far too many things change in a day, to have a strict work plan. Keep an eye on your deadlines, get the work done, but know that every day, unforeseeable items pop up.
8. Surround yourself by people smarter than you, more dedicated than you, and more connected than you. Strive to be like them, every day.
9. Networking is crap. If you want to get business from people you’ve met, you have to do more than just the business card swap. Get to know them. Have lunch with someone every day. Follow them on twitter. Spend more than 30 seconds with them at a conference. 100% of the work I get is from word of mouth, usually kicked off by someone I know. 0% of the work I get is from a business card in an ever-growing pile on my desk.
10. Learn something every day. Stay on top of what’s going on. Clients may be paying you for what you know right now, but you’ll also need tomorrow’s skills and knowledge someday as well.
10b. Bring something new to every project. It’s far too easy to get into a rut of doing the same kind of project, for the same budget, over and over again. I keep myself on my toes by always trying a different technique, framework, or feature in everything I do.
11. Educate your clients. One of my tenets that I convey to my clients is that I want our professional relationship to be a learning experience, for both of us. I clearly state that my goal is, once the project is complete, that they’ll almost never need me for that project, barring major changes.
12. Project management is incredibly important, but the hardest to quantify/charge for. Clients won’t just leave you alone until the work is totally complete. Be prepared to spend a lot of your time answering e-mails, taking phone calls, and in meetings to discuss what you’re doing, defend your approach, and talking to anyone you’re requested to speak to. Nicholas suggests tacking on a set percentage for project management on top of estimated labor charges.
13. Strive for a good work/life balance. Yes, I’m still easily working 80 hour weeks, but I’m happy with that balance at the moment. I still find time to spend time with Alex, see friends, read, watch all my TV shows, and play DJ Hero.
14. Project minimums are important. I say this because often times, the smaller the project, the more work it tends to be. Ask any freelancer about that $500 project that ended up taking them a week to complete. Work for full price, or give it away for free. The area between that is where it gets hairy.
15. Find time for personal projects. If you have your own product startup in mind, or just want to work on some personal projects, make sure to set aside time for that every week.
Thanks to Nick for catching me doing what I do best… checking e-mail.
A big thanks to the organizers and other sponsors of BarcampDC3. It was a great experience for everyone, and it’s hard to believe that this is the the third one, organized by essentially the same group of people.
Startup Metrics for Pirates – Jared dug in depth one of the most important concepts of the “Startup Metrics for Pirates” methodology organized by Dave McClure – converting and retaining users. One especially helpful tool to come up was Google Insights for Search, that I will immediately start using.
HTML/CSS Tips + Tricks – Russell led the most useful session on HTML/CSS tips + tricks – little bits and pieces of advice to really perfect your technique. First thing Monday AM, I was already using some of his lessons, posted online here.
Android Development – THE GREATEST TALK EVER GIVEN BY ANYONE EVER. Gyuri and I led a developer-focused session on beginning Android development. Gyuri gave a basic step by step tutorial on building an Android application, while I dug into the code for MeetroDC, an application for checking DC Metro times (Bonus Round: I open sourced the code)
Twilio Development – Two developers from the DNC gave an overview of how they used Twilio to rapidly spin out telephony-powered applications during election time. This evolved into an open discussion on possible future applications that can be built, given how easy it is now with these APIs available to developers.
Freelancing – Josh and I finished up the day by leading a session on freelancing, both moonlighting and full time. We had a great dialogue amongst experienced freelancers, newbies, and those just interested in learning more. The conversation started out dominated by legalese and fear of being “caught” – but we then focused on some of the true important topics – billing, project management, and communications. I’m thankful for everyone who came out, and especially to those who attended just to put in their 0.02. We could tell by the questions being asked and the wide eyes that this was inspirational and helpful for all involved (it certainly was for me).
As the first BarcampDC was my first foray into any kind of professional community outside my then-employer, it’s a great experience to come back each year, see how the DC community has grown, and see how I’ve progressed in my own journey. If you had told me two years ago, that I would be completely out of the government contracting world, running my own thriving business, working on multiple products, and a regular contributor to these events… I would have laughed and kept walking.
It’s hard to believe that a little over two years ago, the first Barcamp was held – being my first foray into the DC tech community. It was a life-changing experience, as it’s where I met all the people I work with on a daily basis, inspire me, and genuinely consider my friends.
I’ll be speaking/organizing on two main topics:
Freelancing
After years of moonlighting before freelancing full time for the past year under the skeevisArts brand, I’ve learned a lot, and failed a lot. Knowing that there are many others in the same position as me, as well as even more who hope to go out on their own, I figured it would be beneficial to hold an open discussion on lessons learned, and to exchange ideas and discuss issues.
Android Development
While my bread-and-butter work is web development, I’m moving into mobile application development, under the Droidee moniker. Having developed two Android applications (likely releasing in the next two weeks), I’m partnering with Gyuri to do a basic introduction to Android, and a walk through of some code.
Entrepreneurship - at least for tech-minded folk – is more often than not omitted from curriculum in college. As I was finishing up my degree at the University of Maryland, it was assumed that everyone there would go to work for one or another government contractor or large enterprise, who would dominate job fairs with huge flashy booths and t-shirts. That’s all the teachers talked about. That’s all the career center offered. That’s all your friends knew. The cream of the crop would go to Microsoft or Google.
But what about startups? What about starting your own company, or joining someone else’s nascent startup? Right out of college is the best time to be doing it – low cost of living, no strings, etc. It wasn’t until I graduated and went to work as a consultant did I realize that there was more out there than a 9-5 and a paycheck. Most of the people I graduated with still are in shock that I left that world, and since then, have been CTO of two companies, as well as building my own business. I’ve been doing my best since then to try and find college students.
That’s why I’m especially thrilled that friend and fellow alum Jared Goralnick is organizing Bootstrap Maryland, a one day event targeted towards budding entrepeneurs. It’s great to see such a powerful lineup of locals making it happen, and, best of all… right on campus. Thanks Jared. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.
I'm a hacker/founder, I'm working on Contactually, an email interface to CRMs. I'm also a freelance developer, working as skeevisArts while working on Structo, a cloud service for web developers.
While I am firmly established as an entrepreneur, having started one company of my own (skeevisArts) and been CTO of a now-acquired startup, I know that the business that I’m in is a means to an end. As much as I love to work with awesome clients and grow my roster weekly, this is not what I want to do long term. My dream is to build products.
