A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Not trying to insult you, but do you truly innovate or are you basically a third-party idea extension?

There are thousands of start-ups on these sites and in press releases, most with some level of funding, that are variations on Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Tinder, Snapchat, Craigslist, Airbnb, Pinterest and a “for” for any other half-successful start-up out there.

Silicon Valley and its clones are following in Hollywood’s footsteps as it continues its sequels, prequels and remakes.

It’s not that some of them won’t succeed and even turn into significant businesses.

And some actually do address real pain (as opposed to inconvenience), but that doesn’t make them truly innovative.

While you have to sell your “innovation” to investors and include it in your vision to excite your employees, at least be honest when you are alone with yourself.

Honest as to its originality and honest regarding the need.

I seriously doubt that providing yet another way to have meaningless sex compares with creating jobs out of poop.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Innovation is hot. You hear it everywhere; I even heard a pastor talking about how he “innovates his sermons.”

In 2007 I wrote that the word “leader” was being badly abused; five years later I added “entrepreneur” to the abuse list and today I’m officially adding “innovation.”

It has lost its meaning.

There was a time it was used sparingly and when it was used it referred to stuff like the printing press; steam engine, penicillin, transistor, computer, Internet.

Things that rocked our world.

These days innovation refers more to brand extensions and iterations.

New versions of old stuff are termed innovation to a ridiculous degree—Kellogg CEO John Bryant used the i-word when talking about the company’s new Pop-Tart flavor.

I’m not saying the i-word shouldn’t be used more broadly, since it also signals both a goal and a special type of MAP. 

Let’s just agree to limit its use to the appropriate, as opposed to the ludicrous.

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I am seldom effusive in my praise of any conference I’ve attended.  

Most conferences bring in speakers who simply recycle the presentations they’ve done for many other audiences, people clap and get a momentary high from associating with others and hearing engaging speakers.  But a few days later, it’s all gone.

This is even truer for conferences dealing with the startup ecosystem.  

These are focused on getting already poor (sometimes starving) entrepreneurs to pay hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars to go and listen to the same stuff.  Often the carrot is meeting angel and VC investors, but very few people I’ve encountered (if any) ever received an investment based on meeting an investor at one of these conferences.  

The Lean Startup Conference is very different, in fact, I cannot be more enthusiastic.  

This is one of the few conferences I’ve attended as a company founder and serial entrepreneur that has provided practical knowledge that I can use in building my company.  

Low bullshit factor, lots and lots of case studies related to company problems and solutions, great strategic insight and golden nuggets strewn through all the speakers’ talks.  In addition, the conference was well organized and the logistics worked flawlessly.

The audience was very diverse – race, geographical origin, profession (software engineer, bioengineer, marketing, C-level execs, tech support, etc.), size of company (everything from pre-revenue startups to major companies like GE and Intuit), and industry (pharma, tech, government, automotive…).  

It is doubly impressive that they managed to pull off a conference that worked for such diversity.

Maybe there is excellence in the conference business after all.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

The words of Jeffrey Wright should resonate with every entrepreneur who isn’t connected through past work experience or an “in” network that provides personal introductions to the investor community—because they are facing a long, cold trip on the road to funding and success.

Moreover, the wrong gender (female) and/or ethnicity (not white) create even greater challenges to be overcome.

“I don’t really consider myself a black man in Hollywood.  I live in Brooklyn … and on purpose.  At the most base level, what an actor represents to the film industry is an investment.  Depending on the risk profile, an investor needs 1,000 reasons to commit and one reason not to.  That means you’ve got to do more work on your own and that the machine is not going to necessarily do the blocking for you.  The machine rarely accepted my code.  That can be frustrating, but you just have to be aware.”

The quote was sent to me by KG Charles-Harris; I added the emphasis.

When I commented that it applied just as accurately to venture investors KG responded that that was why he liked it. 

Granted, it’s not fair, or even defensible, but it is reality.

And while it’s great to work towards an ideal, I’ve always believed that you still have to function in the real world.

As Wright points out, the difficulties are great enough without exacerbating them by playing ostrich, pretending they aren’t there or will go away if you ignore them.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Entrepreneurs are in love with their technology, whether it’s software, hardware, services, food, etc.

Doesn’t matter, given their druthers they would much prefer to tell you why the technology is so awesome and how it will change the world—or at least a part of it.

That’s OK when talking to another techie, but investors are far more interested in the market.

And, other than cutting-edge outliers, the market doesn’t really give a damn about the technology.

The market is strictly WIIFM or, as Asana cofounder Justin Rosenstein puts it,

“Ultimately everything else we do is essentially a means toward an end of providing the user with some experience. We are really constantly grounding the whole company in that empathy of realizing that all the work you’re doing is a means to an end in service of and dedication to other people, an act of service to help others.”

Asana’s numbers are impressive.

It was founded in 2008 (think Recession), exited beta in 2011 (three years), has over 50 employees and is used by hundreds of thousands of teams from the likes of Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and dozens of others.

It has a valuation north of $300 million.

Asana accomplished all this with just $38.5 million in venture funding—a tiny number by today’s standards.

Read the interview of Rosenstein and cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and their use of mindfulness to create a culture that focused on customers.

Then evaluate the focus of your own culture.

Because no matter how cool your technology, it’s worthless if people don’t/won’t buy it.

Flickr image credit: cambodia4kidsorg

Earlier this year I cited a study that demonstrates the value of experience for entrepreneurs, something in short supply if you are a twentysomething starting a company in your dorm room.

Best of all, there’s no upper end to creativity or sources of inspiration.

Mary Hunter says her ideas com from God, as do her recipes, but it was diabetes that drove her to find a better way to add flavor to the large roasts she cooks for her church.

And it was moxie that kept her moving forward for twenty years, because, whether your idea is the result of heavenly inspiration or drowning frustration in a few beers, execution is never smooth.

Now it’s finally happening.

Later this month, Mary’s Marinating Sticks are scheduled to go on sale in Target stores.

It took enormous risk, Hunter mortgaged her home at age 63; great support from family and friends; a sales force recruited from her church (a la Sarah Breedlove, AKA Madame C. J. Walker), the kind of hard work that generates good luck and a belief strong enough to overcome everything that went wrong—and plenty did.

There are dozens of entrepreneurs who are held up as examples of perseverance in the face of adversity, but few fought it through for 20 years.

Those that fight and win all have one thing in common; an edge of some kind.

Hunter would tell you her edge was God, others would say it was a spouse or friend or just plain stubbornness.

But I think they are more like the Energizer bunny and just keep going and going and going.

Flickr image credit: The Accent

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Founders are constantly considering choices and making decisions to move their company forward, but the anxiety, stress and fear that accompany the excitement and frequent highs of startup life can distort and disrupt the decision-making process.

Noreena Hertz, professor of economics at University College London, explains this in the light of her own medical drama.

When the volunteers were given information that was better than they hoped or expected…they adjusted closer to the new risk percentages presented. But if it was worse, they tended to ignore this new information.

It’s called selective hearing; hearing what you want to hear—hearing whatever agrees with you and rationalizing or ignoring that which doesn’t.

It’s a notorious managerial mindset when checking references and accounts for a large percentages of bad hires.

Founders can be subject to serious cases of selective hearing, especially when the market doesn’t fully validate their vision.

When we find data that supports our hopes we appear to get a dopamine rush similar to the one we get if we eat chocolate, have sex or fall in love. But it’s often information that challenges our existing opinions or wishful desires that yields the greatest insights.

For founders, hearing and responding intelligently to those challenges does more than provide insights.

In fact, the right response can be the difference between success and failure.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

As a founder you

• identified a market itch;
• crafted a way to scratch it that will delight and de-stress;
• polished the vision so people would get it;
• wowed investors to get funding;
• hired the best talent you could find; and
• worked your tail off building them into a team.

But deep down you believe that teamwork is actually a lot of people doing what you say.

What are your odds for success?

Image credit: HikingArtist

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

What kind of entrepreneur/person are you?

The kind who posts an “I hate” rant, then edits it and claims it as “humorous satire” when publically taken to task?

The kind who equates a problem like patent trolls to a truly heinous crime like child molesting. 

Or the kind who makes your money from an anti-societal app, with essentially (IMO) no redeeming characteristics?

Your legacy probably isn’t of primary concern when most of your life is still to come, but knowing that anything you say or do will exist long after your body has turned to dust should make you think.

Does it?

Image credit: HikingArtist

EMANIO CEO and occasional contributor here KG Charles-Harris and I were discussing an article about how being a trouble-maker as a teenager can be predictive behavior to becoming an entrepreneur.

The same urge to innovate, think outside the box, take risks and break rules that helps an entrepreneur later in life might lead them to more destructive behavior as a teenager.

But only the guys.

However, the association only held up in the case of male entrepreneurs. Female entrepreneurship could not be predicted by moderately anti-social teenage behavior.

And those guys were well-off and white.

People coming from families that were comparatively well off in 1979, where the parents had some level of higher education, and where they lived in a two-parent home through age 14 or so, were more likely to be entrepreneurs.

Essentially the whole thing says what we all know, but rarely admit.

Affluent, white, male troublemakers are more likely to become entrepreneurs.

Their families have enough pull and resources to prevent them from being labeled ‘difficult’, let alone ‘delinquent’, because once you label a person and they are treated by society according to that label they often end up believing the label themselves…whatever it is.

And that label often becomes self-fulfilling prophesy.

Are you really surprised that when a middle or upper-class boy acts out the long-term result will be substantially different than when a black, inner city boy does the same thing?

Professionally, managers often do the same thing when they treat their people based on their title—then wonder why they don’t fulfill their promise.

Flickr image credit: SiSter PhotograPher