3 Thoughts for the Boston Startup Community
In trying to decide what to write about today, I found myself torn between a number of topics. None of them jumped out for a full post, so instead, I decided to do shorter thoughts on all three topics.
In the aftermath of the spat between Kirsner and Whadwhatever, it did leave me thinking about what the real challenges in our ecosystem still are and most importantly, what we can do to make it better.
So if you're interested in the topics of Everybody Codes, Startup Ass Kickings and Startup Knowledge sharing, read on...
3 Thoughts for the Boston Startup Community
1) Everybody Codes. Everybody Sells.
A year ago, Antonio Rodriguez (@antrod) gave a presentation at PyCon arguing that everyone on at startup team should code and thoughtbot resurrected it with their post this week. The video is embedded below:
Does this mean marketing needs to go buy a "Python for Beginners" book? No.
Antonio's argument is that you should understand what is relevant to your job. If you're doing analytics, knowing a little MySQL will make it so you can look up whatever data you want, without asking anyone in engineering to do an excel data dump. Removing that barrier is likely to have you look at more data, which if done right, will lead to better analytics. The same can be said for if you are the chief blogger at your company: learning a little HTML would be helpful to your job.
At the same time, it's easy to forget the other part of Antonio's argument is that Everybody Sells, too. This means engineering has to get outside the building with the business team. Performable is a perfect example of this as Elias, Andrew and others on the team spend a significant portion of their time on calls with customers to better understand how they use the product. Unless you're building GitHub or another tool for engineers, your engineers are not going to be the customers and need to get inside the head of the people they're building for.
In the end, I think the real theme of this is that Startups Have No Silos. Having everyone code and everyone sell is the shortest path to removing the silos that plague big companies, but shouldn't happen in startups.
So where do you stand? Should Everyone Code & Sell?
2) Startup Ass Kicking: Do We Have Enough?
Ever have a meeting with a mentor that gave you a real, quality ass kicking? My definition of a startup ass kicking is that that the mentor (or other startuper) critiques your startup and your progress with a strongly critical eye. They're not being a jerk, but they are asking the right questions that make you take a "big picture" view of your startup that might just leave you asking yourself, "is what I'm working on the most important thing right now?" The best part about it is that after they make you feel really dumb, they build you back up by helping you figure out where to go next. I've also found them to be energizing and lead to greater progress for a short while after.
I've gotten a few startup ass kickings along the way here in our community, but they're honestly been few and far between. Mike Champion and I discussed this recently and Mike put it to Twitter. The names that came from the discussion and tweets were: Rich Miner, John Prendergast, Apollo Sinkevicius and Shawn Broderick.
Those are all great, smart guys, but there are a lot more startups than them. Getting just one even very smart person's perspective can be skewed. You need more perspectives so you can take the best of everyone's feedback.
So how can we get more Startup Ass Kickings? We need to all be more critical about each other's startups.
Instead of just asking "how are you doing?" and "what's new?" let's start asking each other, "What have you shipped lately?", "What's holding your startup back?" and other tougher questions that will challenge each of us.
Have you given or recieved a Startup Ass Kicking lately?
3) Startup Knowledge Sharing: Are We Sharing?
When was the last time you talked specific tactics about your role at your startup? Do you talk about marketing with other marketers? What about Analytics or Product with other folks working in the same roles? I'd be willing to bet you can only name one or two brief conversations you've had with friends.
This is a major Boston weakness! Everyone has to reinvent the wheel in their jobs and that's just silly.
Every time I talk to Sarah Hodges about Analytics at RunKeeper, I'm reminded how much more I could (and should) be doing at oneforty. Meanwhile, even she has a lot of questions about what others are doing. I don't have the answers to her questions, but I do have an answer to the greater question of sharing knowledge:
We need to organize topic groups for folks actually doing this stuff.
So I've been pushing a number of people to do this for different topics because they talk about this too. Unfortunately, they have a few excuses why they don't take the lead and do it:
- "I don't have enough time."
- "I'm not connected enough to do this."
- "I've never organized anything."
To back up my tweet to Sean Lindsay this weekend: "Everything I do is about rallying to action...Become a Do-er," I encourage all of you to Just Do It.
To specifically address those concerns:
1) "I don't have enough time."
Actually, you don't have enough time not to do this! Learning from others will help you work SMARTER and FASTER at work as you learn what worked and didn't for others around you. Taking a few hours out of your week to organize a meetup will pay you back tenfold.
Also, you need to realize it doesn't take much time. You need a place to have it (There are tons of free spaces around and your office is a great place too if you can hold a few people) and pick a time. By being the organizer, you pick the time and the place, so it's guaranteed to be convenient for you.
2) "I'm not connected enough."
That would be a legitimate excuse, but I AM. Anyone that wants to organize a topic focused event, email me at Jason[at]GreenhornConnect.com and I will solve that problem.
3) "I've never organized anything."
There is nothing Earth-shattering about organizing something like this. There's really only 2 formats: dinners or presentations. Both are great.
Dinners = group of 4-12 people sharing common roles sit down and talk shop and tactics. Elias at Performable has a CTO's lunch that does just this.
Presentations = bring in a local expert and have them present a key topic. The challenge here is to make sure the presentations aren't fluff and that discussions become very actionable.
Are you wishing there was more tactical discussions within your role type at startups in Boston? What are you waiting for? Start a solution!
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