Don’t Be in the “Startup” Industry

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This week, Cedric, our Managing Director, asked my opinion on an article that appeared on Medium last month by Arthur Attwell. Attwell shut down Paperight recently, and it’s an emotional post about some of the mistakes he thinks he’s made, but also on the industry he has chosen to inhabit. He’s not done with startups, but he’s done with “the startup thing.” The conferences, the competitions, the startup media, and the accompanying apparatus that is designed to funnel investor money through startups, into the hands of people in the know.

“What do you have to say to that? It reminds me of some of your opinions as well- maybe there’s an article there?” Indeed Cedric, there is an article there.

The Startup Industry

Attwell makes reference to the “startup industry.” That is the endless and sometimes bemusing list of events, conferences, competitions, breakfasts, lunches, brunches, innovation slams, hackathons, and every other possible flavor of sponsored, packaged, pre-digested infotainment that startups are sold as steps on the ladder to success.

My own feelings on this subject are mixed. I’ve been to a lot of conferences. Cedric’s are much stronger- maybe because I still feel I have a lot more to learn about the industry in general. But I often wonder what startups are doing there, particularly when they’ve already been funded, and when their customers are not the event’s audience.

Either a rave or the Slush conference in Helsinki

Either a rave or the Slush conference in Helsinki

Worse still can be pitching competitions, where again, startups are not necessarily pitching to an audience that is as interested in their products or them, as they are in seeing whether that person will fail on stage. Admittedly, I have rooted for startups to fail at pitching competitions, either because I didn’t like the idea, didn’t like the person, or for some other reason. I have never been inspired to help that startup achieve anything.

And while prizes are often involved in competitions, the terms involved in those prizes are rarely that attractive. A $500,000 “prize,” especially for a startup that can actually win that prize (meaning they’re good enough to beat up to a hundred others at the same competition), is not necessarily something that a good startup wants, particularly when there are better investment offers already in the offing.

At Slush 2014, for example, one of the finalists for the half-million euro prize stated flatly, when asked how he would use the prize money, that he wouldn’t take the prize, because the terms weren’t favorable enough, and he had better offers. That’s not that uncommon.

That’s the same sort of strange logic that Hollywood stars or famous musicians sometimes talk about: once you’re rich and successful, everyone wants to give you things for free. If you’re good enough to win a 6 figure pitch competition, you can probably land a far better private investment already. So what’s the game really about?

The TechCrunch Bump and the Trough of Sorrow

Andrew Chen famously wrote about the phenomenon of the TechCrunch Bump and the Trough of Sorrow. Namely, that the publicity associated with the “startup media” and acclaim in the “startup industry,” doesn’t actually translate to real success. It can help you land a few early investors, maybe, but it won’t actually make your product anything that your target users want to actually use, much less pay more. However, as Chen points out, far too many startup CEOs think that the name of the game is to become successful at being a startup, and so follow all the wrong signposts on the route to that goal.

Used for educational purposes: you can find the original at Andrewchen.co

Used for educational purposes: you can find the original at Andrewchen.co

And that route is expensive. There is unquestionably an industry of bells and whistles that is selling things to startups that they should, if they’re competent, confident, and energetic enough, never actually have to pay for.

The whole structure of startup conferences is weird. And the structure reveals the primary motivations. Conferences that charge startup founders to attend, while letting the press in for free, make it clear where their priorities lie, and it isn’t in helping startups.

While investor passes are often more expensive than entry-level tickets for entrepreneurs, the money is in up-selling the startups to tables, booths, and other “opportunities,” that are of questionable value, while the investor passes will in reality find their way into the hands of investors who get deep discounts off the sticker price.

If you are a non-funded startup struggling to survive, you should not have to pay to attend a startup conference. Full stop.

We Can Be a Part of the Problem

And we’re a part of this as well. Recently I was invited to speak at a local event where Startups from this region will pay up to 160 Euros to hear me and a list of interesting people speak. I know that part of what they’re paying for is the opportunity to meet me (and people like me), and pitch me their ideas. Which is a shame, because if any of those people emailed me, I would gladly meet with them for free.

All the truly valuable partners, investors, and friends of our organization that I’ve met and seen at conferences would do the same.

The thing is, I’m creating value for this event by being there, and making it possible for the organizers to profit from my presence without paying me- and the money is coming from startups who can probably ill-afford to waste money on hearing me talk about anything.

Meanwhile, I’m getting a lot of value out of this event for free. I’m speaking, which means I’m helping the StartupYard brand, and I’m getting a look at all the startups in attendance. I am the real customer for this event- everything has been tailored to suit my needs.

There’s the notion that you’ll “network,” at such events, and like Attwell, I’ve had limited success in doing this. If networking is about building relationships with people who have a common interest, then success would be defined by the number of working relationships that have come out of conferences. I have made a few of these, and I value them, so I credit the allure of conferences in allowing that to happen. It’s not a lost cause.

But again, the people who I’ve gone onto having a very productive relationship with from conferences were at the conferences looking for me, just like I was looking for them. So the conference was a *really* expensive way of meeting them, considering our shared interests.

I still see some value in a certain type of tech conference, particularly ones like this Sofia’s Bulgaria Web Summit, which is run by StartupYard Mentor Bogo Shopov. There, the startups paid a nominal fee, there was little window dressing, and the speakers were by and large not investors, but real thought leaders and passionate advocates for new types of ideas.

Likewise, I attended Howtoweb in Bucharest in 2014, and was delighted by the fact that the organizers brought mentors in to do actual mentoring with real startups- all of whom paid very little to attend. Mentors were not there for their own ego-stroking purposes, but to meet and engage with interesting young people. I loved it. So good conferences are certainly possible.

Things have also changed for the good in other ways. The famous flap over Demo, for example. In 2008, disgusted with Demo’s practice of charging startups up to $2500 to pitch their startups on stage at their popular events, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington scheduled TechCrunch 50 at exactly the same time, and offered startups the opportunity to pitch for free. TechCrunch would charge investors to attend the event. One needn’t now ask which side won that argument- TechCrunch now possibly runs the biggest startup pitching events in the world.

The Moth Trap

Cedric describes the “startup industry” as a “moth trap.” You know those lamps that lure moths to them in order to zap the life out of them? That’s a bit harsh, but it can be accurate.

With so many attending startup events hoping to make breakthroughs with their startups in terms of investment, hiring, or partnerships, the expectation levels are often over-hyped. It takes a lot of work to turn even 2 or 3 contacts from a conference into something that might eventually move the needle at your startup. It takes a lot of false starts and false friends to find those people who are really going to make a difference for you.

Worse yet, startups show up at these conferences with unreal expectations about what they’re going to get out of it- to the point that they ignore real opportunities when they’re presented. I’ve talked to more than one interesting startup that has paid for a small space at a large conference, that has not been funded, and invited them just to apply to StartupYard, even if they don’t see themselves moving to Prague.

For an application that takes maybe an hour of a startup’s time, we offer the option of real funding, and a real direction for a young startup. Few apply, and the more they’ve paid to be a part of the conference, the less likely they are to apply. It’s as if when I mention that we offer funding and a program that’s designed to help them make real progress, they have been conditioned not to believe me.

It’s as if they think that because they have a few pieces of swag, t-shirts, and a rollup so that they look like a startup, and have had conversations with investors (and only conversations), that they would be taking a major step down to consider submitting themselves to anything resembling a reassessment of their priorities.

They have been conditioned to believe that their goal in life is to land a big funding round, and that giving up 10% of their company (which is worth exactly nothing until someone invests in it or it makes a profit), in exchange for real, tangible help in moving forward will be a hinderance when it comes to future negotiations, rather than a net gain.

As I’ve mentioned previously, and as has never failed to amaze me, I have heard from startup founders who have never raised money, that our terms are too steep, because “a VC told me that we could get a valuation of X Million Euros.” You could, if that VC invested in your startup. But they haven’t. And the notion that you’re going to get an investor at that valuation at a startup conference might be a little unrealistic.

In fact, I know a few VCs who might look down on the fact that you’ve paid for swag and a conference booth without signing a real live customer. These people are smart, and their job is making money. They will be looking at your traction, not your logo.

But still, the conference environment is like the California gold rush of 1849. The people who made money then weren’t the prospectors (the startups), by and large, though a few of them got filthy rich. The people who made the steady money in the gold rush were selling the shovels and the whiskey. Or in today’s terms, the metal water bottles and the keychains.

In that environment, we sometimes feel like the guys who walk around offering to lend the prospectors our heavy excavation equipment, and help them dig for gold, and being told that 10% of the loot is too high a price to ask, given what treasures might await. Keep shoveling.

Attwell blames himself for being a moth to that flame- falling for the adulation of the “TechCrunch Bump” rather than focusing on his startup. He’s right to blame himself, but he’s also right to blame the industry for perpetuating the myths it does in order to sell the show, and perpetuate its own legends.

Breakthroughs are not magic, and they don’t happen accidentally. And it was with not a little irony, I thought, that the speaker line-up for last year’s LeWeb conference in Paris was a parade of people who all said more or less the same thing, to the point of it being a sort of idée fixe for the whole conference: “this is not magic.”

There were more presentations about failure at LeWeb last year than there were about success- at least that was my impression at the time. There was an overtone of exasperation with the magical thinking that has been associated with startup culture in recent years, and this manifested as a pragmatic appeal to the people in the audience to be a little more grounded, and to understand their own limitations.

Summing it Up

In a brilliant essay, Paul Graham (of Y-Combinator) wrote last year about the problem of “startups,” with respect to our education system, and our business culture. He points out that education teaches young people to fulfill adult expectations, not to fulfill their own passions. Education and work is a game with rules, and can be won if you know how to game the system. In the same way, we teach young people to “do startups,” according to a paint-by-numbers system, rather than encouraging them to follow their passions in any way that might work: “It’s not surprising that after being trained for their whole lives to play such games, young founders’ first impulse on starting a startup is to try to figure out the tricks for winning at this new game.”

He goes on: “Since fundraising appears to be the measure of success for startups (another classic noob mistake), they always want to know what the tricks are for convincing investors. We tell them the best way to convince investors is to make a startup that’s actually doing well, meaning growing fast, and then simply tell investors so. Then they want to know what the tricks are for growing fast. And we have to tell them the best way to do that is simply to make something people want.”

We can see in this a horrifying regressive cycle. Successful startups all make the same “noob” mistakes that unsuccessful startups also make. Only when they become successful, the lessons of their failures are always forgotten. They had swag, so you have to have swag. They won disrupt, so you have to win disrupt.

Karl Marx once wrote of something said by Hegel: “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice.” Marx comments: “He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

The axiom has often be applied to geopolitics or to cults of personality (Marx was applying it to Napoleon and his nephew Napoleon III). But it can as easily be applied to generational differences.

Every generation makes its own unique mistakes; generating its own unique tragedies. But there were reasons to make these mistakes- they were made in the process of trying to accomplish something new and different. The next generation repeats the same mistakes again, but this time only as a matter of form; only because that is what is expected of them, with no sense of the purpose behind them. Tragedy becomes farce.

That’s why we exist- just like Y-Combinator. That’s what keeps us relevant. Because at a good accelerator, and we try to be the best accelerator we possibly can be, with the best and most engaged mentors we can find, mistakes are things you learn from. And they don’t have be your mistakes- they can be someone else’s. They can be ours.

Failures are productive. We are here to make sure that our startups are not slaves to fashion, but are remaining true to themselves as they grow. That they are being realistic, and honest with themselves.

We naturally want to be like the people who we idealize as models for success. But people are very bad at recognizing what matters when it comes to repeating that success. So you get entrepreneurs who dress like Steve Jobs, or think that the habits and peculiarities of successful role models are the “trick” to being as successful as they were- rather than the more common sense reasons like hard work and some good luck.

You make life about becoming something, rather than accomplishing something, and no matter what else you teach people, they’ll focus on the appearance rather than the reality. In our attempts to be the things we think we need to be: “entrepreneur,” “startuper,” “winner,” we end up betraying the things we care about. Or worse- we don’t even pay attention to the things we actually care about, because they don’t have the caché necessary to turn us into something others will recognize and respect.

An unfortunate part of this business, and we’ve seen our share of this at StartupYard, is that many of us are pretenders. That’s not a bad thing. That’s nobody’s fault. A person can be a pretender, and find their true passion later, when they’ve exhausted themselves or gotten wise to the game and stopped playing it. That people pretend is a sign also that they are seeking something they recognize as valuable.

I would in fact posit that the existence of the StartupLand circus and the attendant conferences, seminars, events, and other time-wasters, is an indication that there are enough really passionate people circulating in the tech community to sustain such high numbers of pretenders and play-actors. If there wasn’t anything real, the whole thing would eventually collapse under its own weight. It still might, but at the core, I see more genuine innovation, energy, and passion now than I did when I started working with startups.

And while I see a self-adjustment in StartupLand may be in the air- a common feeling that the game has gotten old- I also see that most of the startups we work with recognize the real work that remains to be done.

Ondrej Krajicek, Part 2: “Density Doesn’t Equal Cooperation.”

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On Wednesday, we started a two-part interview with popular StartupYard mentor and Y Softer Ondrej Krajicek. Here is part two, where Ondrej dives deep into the systemic issues he sees in the Czech approach to entrepreneurialism, education, and government policy surrounding business.

Check out Part 1: “Make Failing Legal in the Czech Republic”

What do you think investors in Central Europe need to do more (or less) to improve the startup ecosystem here?

I understand that I am always talking about this mysterious thing, this “added value” when there are so many bright ideas and it is so difficult to get an investment, isn’t it? It is quite common for VCs in the USA to provide recruitment / head hunting, i.e. to hire key people for the startups, provide financial governance, etc.

So we are not inventing the wheel, we just need to follow its tracks. As there is no VC training out there, I hope that more people who became successful with their own companies will contribute by becoming investors and telling their stories.

We as a community of investors in the Czech Republic need to focus on delivering value; not just money. This is what we are trying to do with Y Soft Ventures and fortunately, there are others.

StartupYard is based on delivering value as an investor. From the feedback I have from some startups, the best thing about StartupYard is that it delivers “a hell of a ride”, shows tens thousand of things to the startup teams in a very short period of time and by doing this, creates awareness.

We, as investors, shall also strive to build a community. To communicate, cooperate and co-invest.

Are there political, social, or educational reforms that you would like to see in the Czech Republic to improve the prospects of entrepreneurship and the tech industry here? What would they be?

Well, we really need to increase the speed limit on D1 and stop putting money in speed traps. Seriously!

Well, the Czech political and business climate has its strengths and weaknesses, that’s no surprise.

Take the cost deductible research and development for one (“double deduction”). It is quite an easy and accessible system, but on the other hand, will become more interesting once you are able to generate profits and start paying taxes. After that, this can substantially help you to reduce your corporate income tax.

Accessible education, including university education is another one. I really like the direction towards inviting students from abroad to study here. And open borders with Slovakia. Many talented people from Slovakia end up here, because they had the opportunity to study. These are two positives I can mention off the top of my head.

There are many things I see that must change. This can be a topic for a blog post or an interview on its own, so let’s mention several of the biggest issues I see:

Failure equals punishment. When you fail and your project goes bankrupt, the state punishes you and the society punishes you. Instead of appreciating that you tried and failed, you are the one who’s bankrupt. Moreover, you cannot even establish new business for some time, not to mention the social stigma.

1. Czechs need to acknowledge that there are foreign languages. Czech content should be in Czech, but unless we stop stubbornly translating foreign content (movies, books, TV programmes) into Czech, we will always be strangers in a multicultural world.

2. Difficulty of establishing a company and becoming an entrepreneur. Czech society is still not used to entrepreneurs and does not appreciate them. Being a founder of successful business, you are still envied or despised rather than celebrated. Even some politicians still live in the past and call small entrepreneurs and small companies parasites.

3. It is still too difficult to establish a company and even more difficult to hire employees. I believe that in many cases, our social systems drives employers (not just startups) against creating new jobs instead of motivating them to do so.

4. Czech Republic lacks an explicit strategy on investments in terms of research, development and education. Let’s face it, we are a small country and we should really think twice about where we put our money and resources in terms of funding research, development and education. We need to be conscious about where our strengths are, decide on where we want to lead and put money in it.

Today, when you increase or rather cut budgets for education, the cut usually impacts all fields of study, all departments proportionally. This has a negative impact on everybody, the students (they cannot take this into account when deciding what to study), the schools (they cannot make long term decisions on where to invest for growth) and the employers (they cannot be sure that they will have enough good employees with potential for growth).

When a company is considering whether to bring their R&D operations to the Czech Republic, they have no guarantee they will have enough educated specialists in the future. Sustainability, or the lack of it is one of the main effects of our current education policies.

How would you like to see the Czech government distribute money more efficiently?

The real problem is that they follow the same pattern in terms of subsidies as everybody else. Make a call for projects, then wait. Companies and schools put together artificial projects, many of them are designed only to get the money. They should consider acting more as investors, or in empowering more investors to guide public money by co-investing.

Like StartupYard has been doing with the FiWare program from the EC.

Exactly. And I’m sure you see your fair share of projects that are only designed to look like they are worthy of funding, even though they don’t represent a real need or a real passion on the part of their owners.

It happens to us from time to time as well that companies approach us with projects that don’t really need our involvement, but need a corporate partner for government funding. I don’t accept these sorts of arrangements as a rule.

We have projects at Y Soft that also seek public funding – I find myself in an awkward situation thinking: how can we differentiate as a real project with these projects designed to get funding? We are a real project, not one designed to meet the specifications of a grant, so we ironically have less of a chance of getting the funding for that. And that isn’t the way it is supposed to work.

Where is the real Bureaucratic problem? On the EU level, or with the Czech government?

Well, here is where I see the issue generally, whether it is the EU level or with the Czech government. We have a lot of skilled people, willing to work. But we have a structure and system in place, and that structure and system is not necessarily designed to allow people to work on what matters most. There are inherent flaws in redistribution – it’s always messy.

I don’t expect that the EU or a local government can suddenly change that system. I would just like to see a bigger amount of money utilized in new ways and with different approaches.

Back to my list:

5. All the time, the government, the state-run institutions focus mainly on bringing big investors to the Czech Republic without caring much about the companies which are already here or which may grow here. This is becoming absurd.

When I discuss this with some of my friends or colleagues who work for some of these big investors, they make sad jokes about how difficult is the position of local companies compared to them. It is important to bring investors, but never stop focusing on whether they bring value or they just seek cheap labor.

I have heard the argument, that investment incentives are equally accessible to everybody. That is true on paper, but in reality, do you think that a small Czech startup can achieve the same level of access to public funding as a big international corporation? I am not refering to anything illegal, the small startup simply has neither the experience nor the manpower to do that.

6. And subsidies. Don’t get me wrong. First I need to say, that Y Soft implemented a few successful projects funded from subsidies and received funding for that. We invested a lot effort into it and the system supported is when we needed that support. Despite that, I think that just giving money to anybody who asks for them is not generally good enough. Those who award them should behave more like investors, looking for companies which can be worth it, which have growth potential and will bring jobs and taxes in the future.

In regards to how the Czech government invests in the Startup ecosystem and in education, what kind of specific investments would you advocate, and why?

Education is something very close to me. I take it as one of my personal missions to change the way IT is being taught here [in the Czech Republic]. I spent 8 years in academia, and for me that’s still a big part of my life at 34. We really should think where we want to go as a country, and choose a direction.

The UK, the United States, even South Korea manage to do that, and for such a small country as the Czech Republic, it makes sense to make these decisions: ‘we will invest in this, and we will not invest in that.”

There are so many projects and new companies in the IT field, not just here, but everywhere. As an industry, I think, (pure) software-only IT is losing the potential to generate value over time, which is why I advocate for combining software and hardware. But even more, we as a country have to support engineering, material sciences, geology, and resource and energy management as new fields of endeavor.

In the last 15-20 years, IT has had a lot of traction – also here. But the people in these other fields have hardly lost focus. Quite the opposite. We should make these other sciences more visible, and the government should focus on encouraging more investment and more study in these fields.

So you want the Czech Republic to look more like California or Israel, then just Silicon Valley.

Exactly! Everybody talks about how we have to replicate Silicon Valley culture. It’s funny because when we say that, or try to do that, we are completely missing the point. What I see when we try to replicate Silicon Valley culture, is that we take a few companies, we cram them into a small space, and we simply believe that density equals cooperation. Do we work according to the right principles and values? What do we contribute to the system? Are the startups staffed and surrounded by people in a culture of cooperation? Do they understand how cooperation will benefit them as an industry? We don’t know, or sometimes, we don’t care.

The Valley is a mix of a highly result-oriented culture and an almost communist approach to contribution to a common good. Ideas, technologies, and people as well. We don’t have that approach to the way we work or the way we think, and until we do, we are not going to replicate that kind of success.

And people forget that Silicon Valley culture of today is based on the publishing industry that was there before IT.

Yes, and Steve Jobs learned a lot about bringing aesthetics to IT from the publishing industry, precisely. You have to have a long-standing culture of sharing and changing. You can’t manufacture that. And it is difficult to replicate.

I am not saying that we should stop caring about business models and just help each other. This is not the way how the Valley works. I am pointing out that we have the opportunity to build our own culture and we should take inspiration not only from them. Valley culture is to be admired because they are able to sustain business results with pervasive cooperation.

You mentioned also that the Czech economy is dominated by foreign investors who may be looking for cheap labor rather than new ideas. How can local players like us (StartupYard), do better to improve this situation?

Not sure if dominated is the right word. But they are here and we should learn from other industries. How many manufacturing plants have been opened and closed already because the investors moved further to the east for even cheaper labor? And we see it in the area of software development as well.

On the positive side, having a high demand for people in software engineering lowers the risk for people to establish startups.

It happens with StartupYard quite a bit – many of our companies are transitioning from consultancies or outsourcing, to making their own products. They are going from steady sources of income, to bigger risk propositions.

Yes. On one hand, it’s good for you because it decreases the risk in entrepreneurship. They can always go back. But on the other hand, it’s bad for the same reason.

It’s all about the amount of real value we are generating here. How we are (not) learning the real craft. When an investor comes here looking for cheap labor, do you think that their products will be designed, that important decisions will be made, or market investigations made here? No. The project managers will be somewhere else.

They’re looking for coders and laborers, and they are looking for quantity, not quality. They are not looking for creators. This doesn’t help us to grow as a nation, because we aren’t learning product management, or marketing. We aren’t learning about customers. You must have experience with this at StartupYard as well.

Yes, that’s a big part of our work as an accelerator.

It’s not about that we don’t want foreign investors. We do. But when I see the news, every time a Czech politician wants to look sophisticated, he talks about attracting foreign investors. But what about the local companies? Tools are available to the investors which are also available to local companies. We can do the same work that they do, for the same customers. But we think they’re somehow naturally better at these things outside pure development.

We both know companies that are bringing really interesting projects to the Czech Republic. But many of them are just seeking cheap labor. What a local player like StartupYard can do, is not necessarily (just to) get bigger, but really promote how important these small local companies are for the Czech economy, and for our future as a country. We have to own our own ideas in the future. We can’t just work on other people’s.

For politicians and big players, it’s too intangible to understand – too fine-grained to grasp. So we need to explain and be patient and promote how important this process [of developing our own products] is. When they start to listen, then we need to talk about how the government can support it.

Like with new education, immigration, and employment policies.

That’s exactly what I was thinking – particularly about education. Our open borders relationship with Slovakia for example.

There’s a big difference between people who come to study, and those who come to work, generally. I don’t like to categorize people so strictly, but there’s a difference between someone who comes to get their education, and a person who only comes here to make a living.

School influences our thinking and our values. A person who comes here at an early age learns how to work in this culture, and how to improve it as well. Plus, they have a very positive influence in challenging and bringing new ideas into our culture, through our native students, which is very important. It introduces healthy competition, new ideas, diversity, and new talent. It also brings new perspectives and shapes our students, making them more open to new ideas and cultures.  

Of course, If you are used to travelling for your work, it needs to be easy to do in the Czech Republic. We have to be welcoming to people who find this a good place to work, but we need to encourage even more people to come and be educated here as well. When you decide to study here, it’s much more difficult to do, and the most motivated people decided to do that.

So I’m very glad that we provide the same conditions for foreign students to study here as we do for our own citizens. Well, those who don’t understand Czech still have to pay for teaching in English, but even that is changing and will change in the future. Education accessible under the same rules and conditions for all who qualify. That’s the right thing to do.

6 Entrepreneurs’ Blogs We Keep Coming Back To

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We read a lot at StartupYard. In fact, if you were to visit our offices at the co-working space Node5 (and here we are defining offices in the loosest sense possible, as we don’t even have chairs that swivel), you’d likely find Cedric or me reading something or other.

When the accelerator program is running, we’re usually too busy to do more than browse headlines, or steal a moment to tweet something, but when our startups aren’t here, we’re busy reading. Occasionally, one of us might remove his headphones and say: “hey, did you see this thing about…” at which the other will interrupt to say that of course he had.

Given how much is available, it can be difficult to tell what’s really worth reading. With blogs especially, so much of the attraction is not in what content or news is covered, but rather in the personal appeal of the author- the way the person thinks, as much as what they say. Reading a strong personality can be a brilliant way of resetting and challenging your own thinking. Could I be more like this person? What would this person say about my situation? These are helpful thoughts to have as an entrepreneur and a startuper.

We read more than just these blogs, but one of our rules in narrowing this list down was to provide a list of bloggers who are dependable, experienced, post fairly regularly, and are not as interested in news as in deep thinking about technology, business, and the future. In short, these bloggers write out of a passion for their subjects, and not a need for attention.

So here then is our list of 6 entrepreneurs’ blogs that we come back to week after week: 

@AndrewChen

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Andrew Chen is probably most famous as a blogger, but his blog, which features nearly 700 essays, many with original research on the topics of mobile products, user growth, and retention, is one of a kind. It’s probably the best blog I read on a regular basis, and certainly the most quotable. If there’s an issue that one of our startups is encountering when it comes to marketing, there’s probably a relevant post on @AndrewChen.

Chen has a habit of creating and defining very sticky and useful terms, which he self-references within his essays. Over time, as you read his work, you become familiar with the way he thinks, and can follow his logic from one topic to the next, gaining context with each click. This also allows you to get lost in his little universe of ideas- which is not a bad place to spend some of your time.

It’s hard to pin down a few favorites when it comes to Chen’s blog, but I’ll name a few essays I refer to often:

Why Are We So Bad at Predicting Startup Success?

Anyone Can Start A Groupon: And Other Startup Myths

After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”

The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs

Minimum Desirable Product

Paul Graham

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You probably know the name. But do you read his essays? Paul Graham is the infamous founder of Y-Combinator, who had his first high-profile success with the sale of his web-store creator ViaWeb to Yahoo! (later to become Yahoo! Store) for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock.

Graham is now best known for his work with Y-Combinator, and for his writing, which includes 3 books, and a handful of essays every year, any one of which would make the common blogger jealous for their popularity and influence.

Over the years, Graham has honed his blogging craft over time to reflect his work. These days, his essays usually hover around a central thesis which he elaborates on from personal experience. Unlike Chen, Graham focuses less on data, and more on ways of thinking and behaving which he believes to be ethical, fair, and workable for his readers.

His advice is mostly practical and day-to-day, rather than technical or proscriptive. Rather than lists of “dos and don’ts,” he presents simple maxims like “mean people fail,” and “The Island Test,” which prompt the reader to consider a few basic principles of doing business or leading one’s life, and reflect on whether those principles matter to them.

Again, almost every single one of Graham’s essays have been influential in some way, so it’s hard to pick favorites, however, here is a list of some really good ones:

Why Nerds are Unpopular

How to Start a Startup

What You Can’t Say

Before Startups

Unicorn Free

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Written by Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman, founders of Freckle, a service that allows you to track your billable work, individually or as part of a group, such as a digital agency, and bill clients using the same system, Unicorn Free is a little bit of everything. Mostly, it’s a practical look at the real-life problems associated with running a small startup that has become a moderately successful business.

Unicorn Free calls itself a guide to Bootstrapping- running a startup without outside funding, but in practice it covers a big range of topics, from product development, to marketing, to copywriting. There’s a little something for everyone, and Hoy and Hillman both have an infectious energy and enthusiasm that makes them easy to read. Often, what they write is not as much practical as it is motivational. They constantly exhort their readers to recalibrate their expectations, and question their ways of doing things.

Some of Unicorn Free’s better known posts:

Why you should do a tiny product first

How do you create a product people want to buy?

Don’t Fave This Post: How to REALLY Launch in 2014

Why Blacksmiths are Better at Startups than You

NirandFar

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Nir Eyal, the author and creator of NirandFar, calls his subject “behavioral design.” His essays usually center around aspects of UX/Ui, economics, human behavior, and neuroscience. He wrote a popular book companion called Hooked, which promoted the popular “hook model,” for user behavior, and which has been lauded by Andrew Chen, among many others. Eyal also writes for TechCrunch, Forbes, and Psychology Today, among others.

Many of Eyal’s posts center around user acquisition, retention, and what he called “behavioral economics,” or the study of what people are willing to do with technology, and what they’re not willing to do. But they’re a little more “newsy” than similar pieces by Andrew Chen and others, offering more background reading, and often less of an insider view on the subjects they cover.

NirandFar is frequently just fascination to read. Here are a few examples of great articles that will get you thinking in a new way:

The Limits of Loyalty

People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently

Your Fitness App is Making You Fat

Habits Are The New Viral: Why Startups Must Be Behavior Experts

ViperChill

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ViperChill is a little different from the other blogs we usually read. Glen, ViperChill’s author and creator, has a biography that reads a bit like a get rich quick scheme. He claims to have started making “thousands per month,” at the age of 17 offering online marketing services. His posts are sometimes rambling, disjointed, or lacking in context for the casual reader.

More importantly, a lot of the activities that ViperChill advocates to its readers are, well, not always tasteful. There is much info on building link networks, building websites to cash in on consumer interest in specific subjects, and generally scheming about ways to make money online without really contributing anything terribly unique or new.

If you’ve rolled your eyes at the unavoidable noise of SEO driven websites that appear high in search returns, but read like they were written by a sleep deprived university student who was skimming a Wikipedia article, then you’ve probably run into something that ViperChill, or somebody a lot like him, has created or funded. While his more recent work has hedged towards calling an end to the SEO madness of the past, his work often reads as somewhat nihilistic in its view of the internet as a money machine, rather than something slightly more humanistic.  

Still, ViperChill offers some fascinatingly geeky looks at hardcore online marketing techniques and strategies that few marketers have time to think about. In the weird hidden world of SEO aficionados and affiliate marketers, ViperChill is a strong presence.

While most of our readers are not looking, as ViperChill advocates, to become totally immersed in the world of link-building, SEO, and affiliate marketing, ViperChill presents an insider’s perspective on that business- one many of us have to dabble in to draw attention to our real world projects. If you think you’re being clever with your Facebook pages, your adwords, and your homepage SEO, he’s being downright devious.

Some of ViperChill’s more fascinating pieces:

How to Build a Billion Dollar SEO Empire

How 3 Guys Made Over $10,000,000 Last Year Without a Single Backlink

Why Google Pushed Me to Build a (Bigger) Link Network

BothSides of the Table

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Mark Suster has sold two companies to SaleForce.com, and has since become a VC and prolific blogger. Much of the advice he offers on his blog is focused on relationships between investors and startups. Having been on “both sides of the table,” Suster offers a great deal of advice from his own experiences, particularly for startup founders who don’t know much, and are naive, about finance and investment.

Suster’s hallmark is explaining complex and dry topics in really human terms; breaking down the complex nuances of investment rounds, seed funds, A-rounds, and convertible notes into more practical exercises in figuring out what an entrepreneur wants, and whether that is aligned with what investors might want, and if not, how to pick an investor with similar priorities. You can learn more from one of Suster’s posts about any flavor of startup investment, and how it really works in practice, rather than just in theory, than you can from reading a handful of articles elsewhere.

The blog also contains some great advice in sales and marketing, but the real gold is in Suster’s practical experience with investments and the enormous amount of time he’s spent working on both sides of the table. It’s a must read if you’re thinking about raising money.

Some great advice from BothSides:

VC Seagulls

Finding and Investor Who is in Love with You

What I Would Look for in a VC, Knowing What I Know Now

Ondrej Krajicek: Y Softer and StartupYard Mentor, Part 1: “Make Failing Legal in the Czech Republic”

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(This is a two part series. Click here for Part 2: “Density Doesn’t Equal Cooperation”)

Ondrej Krajicek, one of StartupYard’s most popular mentors, serves as Chief Research Officer at Y Soft Corporation and Y Soft Ventures. Y Soft is a global leader in print management systems, and has also branched out into 3D printing. In addition, through Y Soft Ventures, the company has begun to support and invest in startups in its field as well, investing in Czech startups Comprimato, and OrganizeTube, among others.

Ondrej, when he visits StartupYard at Node5, can often be seen animately drawing on a flipchart. He’s the sort of person who can find passion for almost any subject, and when he’s talking with startups, there are few who can match his skills as a mentor.

Ondrej and I talked several times, about mentoring, investing, and the Czech tech ecosystem, in what became an increasingly long interview (our longest ever). Still, we think it’s really worth reading, so we have decided to split this behemoth into two parts. Part 2 will be posted by Friday. For today, please enjoy part one of this interview:

Hi Ondrej, tell us a bit about yourself first. What is your background, and how did you get involved with Y Soft Corporation, and Y Soft Ventures?

Pretty straightforward. I am Czech, I was born here and grew up here. Studied and worked at the Faculty of Informatics and Institute of Computer Science of Masaryk University in Brno. That is also where I had my first teaching experience, tutoring students on Object Oriented Programming and found out that I like to teach.

Later, I joined the team teaching Functional Programming at Haskell and also started two courses, which are being taught at the Faculty of Informatics to this day. Both are related to C# and Microsoft.Net platform. By the way, I have recently returned to teaching, having the opportunity to teach Software Quality at Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University. It always feels nice to return.

I had some experiences with big companies like Microsoft, HP, but I left the university for Y Soft in 2007, never finishing my PhD (and that’s still on my TO DO list!). My background is applied Computer Science, Software Engineering and Software Architecture.

At Y Soft, I am member of company management and I have always been involved with R&D. Recently, I became Y Soft CTO. At Y Soft, I also became acquainted with Y Soft Ventures and the startup community, roughly 3 years ago.

When I work with startups, I simply sell what I know, what I have learned at Y Soft and whatever insight I might have. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t sell the Y Soft way of doing things, trying to shape every challenge to whatever Y Soft went through. Every company is unique and that starts with culture and ends with products, technology and know how. But I try to use my insight and perspective which I have thanks to this experience and I am open about it.

I enjoy building products (focusing on combination of HW and SW) which have value. I enjoy challenging myself with customer needs (fighting with my engineering inner self which knows best what the users need) and bringing developers and customers together (which is anyhow seen as very dangerous thing to do). I love diversity and working in multicultural, global environment with all the lessons it brings. And I like matching business with technology and vice versa.

And I am a YSofter.

YSoft doesn’t seem the sort of company that one would normally expect to invest in startups and entrepreneurs. What drove your decision to give back to startups in Central Europe?

I look at this as a healthy mixture of pragmatism and patriotism. Patriotism is about wanting to give back something to our country and our region and support others to live up to challenges and establish companies, turn their ideas into products and products into business. I always shared the vision of Vasek (Muchna, Y Soft founder) to give positive examples that you can build successful companies here in CEE… or die trying!

From the business point of view, we want to utilize our experience with building Y Soft, delivering HW / SW products (which the world now calls Internet of Things, IOT) and accompanying services and also leverage our global sales and support network. Y Soft is only now changing from a single to multiple product company and our affiliates cover global business worldwide, and have the capacity to cover more than just SafeQ and potential to further grow their operation if necessary. We are utilizing this internally, such as with be3D printers, a recent Y Soft acquisition. 

What are some of your favorite investments from YSoft Ventures so far, and what makes them special to you?

A: The Y Soft Ventures operation is small so far, so I can say that I enjoy working with all our portfolio companies. However, the closest to me is Comprimato, the provider of GPU accelerated JPEG2000 codecs for professional use. I like the technology and I share some background with the founders. I strongly believe in their product, but most importantly in their technology and the team.

For me, every startup can be viewed and evaluated on three levels: (current or upcoming) products, technology / know how and the team and its culture. For instance, Comprimato is very strong on all three levels and they have very sound technology and team. Besides high performance video codecs, they can deliver value in parallelization on GPUs in many different fields. 

All our portfolio companies have their unique trait. Take OrganizeTube, for example: they managed to develop a second product just by trying to solve one of the problems they had with their web portal. That is another reminder of how flexible the startup can be and that new products and services can really start as “accidents”. 

What do you see as the unique advantages and disadvantages that startups have in the Czech Republic and in Central Europe generally?

The ecosystem, or I should say the lack of it. I recently had very interesting conversation with one of my colleagues about the cost of failures in entrepreneurship here. On one hand, you have the illegal chains of companies relying on surrogates (which we refer to as white horses) and on the other, we have lots of people with bright ideas facing the big risks associated with trying and failing.

We need to support trial and failure cycle on the system level. Not only will this make startups more accessible to everybody, but also this will give a strong message to the society, where we as a nation want to go.

 I understand the protective measures which are built in our legal system, but we need to be aware that this might also hinder the creation of new companies. Startup culture is one of the strong drivers for innovation and creation of products and services with high added value. This (and I am not a macroeconomist) translates to more qualified jobs and the push for more educated people. When we combine this with the strong tradition the Czech Republic has in some fields, this might really change our economic outlook for the next 20 – 30 years.

We just need to “legalize” trying and failing.

And this is not just a legal thing. Establishing a company and going bankrupt still has a lot of negative social connotation. We as a society need to learn to distinguish whether we are looking at somebody who really broke the law or if we are looking at an entrepreneur for whom his current idea failed, but who can succeed with a new one.

As a StartupYard mentor, what were your impressions of some of our most recent Startups? Did you have any favorites? What are some of their biggest challenges, in your view?

 First of all, thanks for this opportunity. I learned a lot! My first impression, when I came for my mentoring day was “How can you do this without a whiteboard or a flipchart?” So you gave me that flipchart :-).

I spend approximately 40 – 60 minutes with each company, which is how StartupYard works and I am still in touch with some of them. Every company is completely different and I enjoy talking to every single one of them. What’s even better is that I am staying in touch with some and as far as I know, this is one of the positives that StartupYard brings. Many contacts persist and lead to long term cooperations with the mentors.

All the products and ideas I saw were interesting. I really appreciated their depth and the technology behind them. But I believe that it’s the team that’s most important and I have met great people at StartupYard this year. A lot of positive things and also much to improve and learn, but that holds for all of us. Let’s discuss some particular topics which I met with.

I believe that there were some common traits to all of the teams I have met. They were mostly in the stage of technical obsession, still trying to think about how to sell how great their technology is. Some of them were undergoing the paradigm shift from thinking inwards to outwards thinking, i.e. instead of focusing on how they solve problems to what problems of their customers they are trying to solve and why. It sounds obvious, but this is one of the most difficult changes you need to undergo in our approach.

Another important aspect is quantification. They yet have to learn how to quantify the qualities and benefits they are delivering and how to communicate this in a straightforward way. One specific example was a datasheet covering a great product with 4 pages of full text. Somewhere within, the text says that customer can integrate the technology in 10 minutes, because it is so easy to use. This is something which needs to shine on the first page, with calculated savings of TCO on a real or model example.

Forget words. Qualities, metrics and measurements, communicated in a simple, straightforward way is what works (as far as I know ;-). Your message needs to be strong and for that, it needs to be short. Even Martin Luther King’s Gettysburg address took mere 16 minutes!

 You were very popular as a mentor with our teams this year. What makes mentoring worthwhile to you? What makes it challenging?

 First of all, being 34 years old it is difficult for me to call myself a mentor or feel like one. My approach is simple, get to know them, get to understand them, be one of them and apply whatever I know or have experienced in the past.

 I always try to make things clear and be open about what I think I can help with and where I can’t. I usually do not act as filter, I rather try to generate ideas and insights and it is up to the startups to filter what they see as useful. It is difficult to explain, sometimes I fit seamlessly with the culture of a particular startup and our discussions and workshops just flow, sometimes it’s like a struggle. Being able to accommodate third party ideas into your startup is a good test of your culture.

So if I may say “mentoring”, what I really enjoy about mentoring are three things: getting to know new people / companies, the opportunity to use what I know and what I am good at to solve different problems in different domains (I have always been a big believer in diversity), and most importantly, the learning opportunity.

I have always learned a lot from any company I have met and as a mentor, I am humbled, because if I am contributing something to them, they always give something back to me – a new thing to learn, an opportunity to practice, a thinking experience a challenge to master.

 And now we are getting to what makes it challenging. Looking at it from the perspective of the startup, they do not have that much time and usually their problems are connected with a high sense of urgency, they are fighting for survival. Some of them have cash for just few more months, not more.

So the challenge is to accept the constraints they have and come up with ideas for improvement or solutions. I believe that they don’t need a mentor telling them what is right but more like a teammate who can share their story with them, even if only for a short time. Simply put, I try to treat the startups as my customers. I always ask myself, whether the time we spent together delivered some value to them and what value it was.

There are some things you need to learn as a mentor, most importantly saying “I don’t think I am the right person to help you with this.”. And if you are a great mentor, you add “and I know this person, who is great at that and I will connect you.” One thing which I admire about the Valley culture its Pay It Forward approach, meaning you help without expecting any return. Eventually, somebody else will help you in return. So I try to practice that. Not that it is easy, finding enough time.

Last but not least, everybody needs to bear in mind that mentoring has its limits. Robert Kaplan very nicely defines the quality of mentoring as being as good, as the story being told to the mentor. I completely second that.

 As a representative of an investment fund, how can entrepreneurs and startups better prepare to pitch you and other investors on their ideas, teams, and businesses? What do you look for, and what most often kills your interest in a particular startup?

 Be honest. Be specific. Tell us who your customers are. Tell us why they should care? Tell us how to monetize on it. Or tell us that you don’t know. And most importantly, be honest and specific.

 For example, this year at StartupYard, most if not all startups I have met with had nice products and sound technology and they were struggling with finding ways how to monetize on them- how to approach customers. This is fairly common. I learned the hard way that it is one thing to have sound technology, another to turn it into a sellable product, and yet another to generate ongoing business. So we mostly discussed how to turn the technology into products and how to leverage it.

 Strangely, we had just one really technical discussion. I am a software architect myself, so for me, this is very difficult. But I can share what I have learned so far.

 One last thing, very important. Please be honest and specific. Forget statements like: “My product brings new, unparalleled ways how to optimize your workflow, streamline your working process and make you much more productive.” Ask yourself: what our customer’s  specific problem? How do we want to solve it (what advantages you bring), and what benefits do we generate (specifically – numbers, figures), and why will they pay?

So be honest, short and specific.

This is a two part series. Click here for Part 2: “Density Doesn’t Equal Cooperation”

StartupYard’s 3rd Unconference: Remote Year, Work/Home Balance, and Blogging

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Wednesday night, at Node5, StartupYard hosted our 3rd “Unconference.”

Unconferencing is an alternative take on a conference in which the participants help shape the talks and sessions offered.

An Unconference differs from a traditional conference or set of workshops, chiefly in that none of its content is planned or scheduled ahead of time. Instead, the content of workshops is decided spontaneously, by whomever is in attendance, and is interested in contributing.

 

The whole process looks a bit like this:

1. Introduce the format to attendees.

2. Attendees write down a workshop topic they would like to host or to attend on sticky notes.

3. Participants vote on the topics to be included in a series of time slots, with multiple workshops running simultaneously. The total number depends on the space and the number of attendees.

4. The moderator proposes a schedule of the events, striking a balance between topics, and not putting the most popular workshops in competition.

5. Attendees suggest changes, and the conference kicks off, with the topic owners either presenting themselves without preparation, or asking for others to present on the topic they’ve proposed- in some cases, workshops become idea-sharing and brainstorming meetings.

Remote Year

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This unconference was presented in cooperation with Remote Year, an interesting organization from the US. Remote Year collects a group of people who work independently or remotely, and offers them a once in a lifetime chance: to work in a different city, every month, for an entire year.

The object is to get to know their fellow travelers (people from around the world, not just the US), and experience life in a huge range of cities around the world, while continuing to work remotely. The organization plans and organizes all travel, accommodations, and workspaces for the workers, as well as occasional events, such as our Unconference.

The group we met, about a third of Remote Year’s 75 current members, were engaged and interesting. I’d love to hear more of their feedback about how Remote Year works for them, but they’re just at the start of their journey. They’ll soon be moving on to Slovenia, then to Croatia, Turkey, and later to Asia and South America, visiting Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Argentina, Chile and Peru.

Remote Year doesn’t seem cheap, at $24,000 for the full year (paid twice a month), however, considering that this is probably competitive with rents in many American cities, and it represents travel and accommodation expenses, it might not be as expensive as it seems.

Topics

There were a wide range of topics, including “video games as a business,” and “monetization of mobile apps: subscription vs. one-time payments.” But as I often do, I gravitated to soft skills topics, so these are the sessions I’ll talk about here.

Session 1: Understanding Neuroscience for Sales and Pitching

Cedric Maloux, StartupYard’s Managing Director, has given this presentation a few times, and it is always interesting. He based his talk on two books: Pitch Anything, by Oren Klaff, and Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini.

He talks about the concept of human evolution being related to “three brains:” the “reptilian brain,” the “middle brain” and the “thinking” or intellectual brain. One brain has been built “on top” of the other through the course of human evolution.

The important insight here is that while we think of ourselves as intellectual beings who make rational decisions, we in fact base many of our actions and thoughts on more primal, less rational instincts. The reptilian brain assesses the world according to the most basic terms of survival, more crudely put: “can I eat it, can it eat me, or can I have sex with it?”

Advertisers have long known that fear, aggression, and reproduction are the most powerful drivers of human action. But that insight shouldn’t be limited to advertising. So Cedric talks about how to appeal to the “reptilian” brain in all of us: by evoking these same feelings, either with images in presentations, certain words, or ideas that appeal to our basic survival instincts.

At the same time, Cedric highlights the “power of because.” Also long known to marketers, psychologists, and salespeople, research dating back to the 1970s shows that by supplying reasons for our need to do something, or for our need for others to do something, we can influence them to go along with us at a very high rate.

The classic experimental proof involves a woman asking to cut in line at a copy machine, but there have been variations that included people asking for seats on metro cars, and other situations. Research shows that when you ask to cut in line at a copy machine, even giving a bogus reason like “I have 5 pages,” you only stand a 60% chance or so of getting what you want. However, when you state the reason more clearly, using “because,” you can reach a 94% rate of assent from subjects. If you ask: “can I cut in line because I’m in a rush?” you’re over 50% more likely to be allowed to do so.

Interestingly, the increase in acceptance also applies even if no new information is added. So, for example, if the “I have 5 pages,” is reworded to “because I have 5 pages,” the results are the same as when giving a valid reason.

These experiments also showed that the power of because extended even to unreasonable requests, although its power diminishes as the request becomes more unreasonable. While a person with 5 pages could get up to 94% acceptance, a person with 20 pages might get only 42%, but that would still be almost double the amount that they could get without a “because.”

Work/Home Balance

Cedric Maloux introduces the concept and organizes the conference.

Cedric Maloux introduces the concept and organizes the conference.

A topic of interest to me as a newly minted dad who annoys his co-workers with pictures of his kid, this was more of a discussion group. The StartupYard team, along with the Node5 team and a few members of Remote Year got together to discuss the issue of balancing life and work, or, for some, the concept of there being a difference between life and work.

This session focused on two things: the problem of balance and priorities, and the issue of extraversion vs. introversion.

We first discussed the “four burners theory,” a concept popularized the American writer David Sedaris, which poses the problem as one of priorities. A balanced life has 4 burners, as on a stove. One is for family, one for friends, another for health, and the fourth for work. It being difficult or impossible to cook on four burners simultaneously, a successful person will usually choose to remove one. For example, a person who values their work and family, must then choose to abandon either their health, or their friends.

It stands to reason that a successful career, a solid family, and a healthy lifestyle doesn’t allow someone to keep up friendships, which involve nights out, hobbies, and other time consuming activities. At the same time, a person may choose to have a great career, and time to go to the gym and eat healthy, but must then choose between spending time with their friends, or going out on dates in the hope of finding a mate.

Again, a person may choose to have a family, have friends, and be healthy, but must then spend less time focusing on a career and making money.

Moreover, the theory goes that a person who wishes to be *really* successful, must only use two burners. You can be very healthy and have a great career, you can be an amazing friend and parent, or you can have a great family and an ambitious career, but you can’t perform at the top of your game in three areas at once.

While we all shift our priorities over time, I found some truth in this framework. I have sacrificed mostly friendships as I have transitioned to my interest in my family. My wife has stayed out of the workforce to raise our son, but has been able to maintain friendships and a healthy lifestyle. As some in the discussion pointed out, these changes are cyclical, and they need not be permanent. Roles can switch, and the needs of families change over time, as kids grow up and look after themselves.

We also discussed the concept of the “outgoing extrovert.” While Petra of Node5 described herself as an extrovert because of her ability to talk to groups and be outgoing, she also described her need to be alone with her own thoughts. It was pointed out that she might not be extroverted, but rather outgoing. Cedric too, pointed out that his public speaking ability and his career working with so many people was in fact a defense that he has built up because of his introversion, and not because he is extroverted.

On the other hand, members of the discussion who really are extroverts talked about how difficult it is for them to pass up spending time with their friends, while the extroverts couldn’t easily sympathize with the dilemma that the extroverts face; they would almost always rather be on their own. For the extroverts, not being among their friends was a draining experience, rather than a relaxation.

These are the sort of layered and spontaneous discussions that a really good Unconference can generate: when’s the last time you talked about your emotional needs at a business conference?

Blogging and Writer’s Block, and “Brand Building”

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Time to become famous.

Finally, I participated in a discussion about blogging. Something I’ve come to think a lot about in the past few years.

As many of the attendees were about to spend the next year traveling the world, many were thinking of writing “travel blogs.” The problem, it seems, is that many didn’t have a sense of the value of that kind of blogging. Why do it? Who is it for? How to start?

In writing, we often talk about “writer’s block.” While many people think of this as an issue of not knowing what to write, it’s actually more complicated. “Writer’s block,” is the dreaded feeling that writers have when they are unable, or don’t know how, to start writing, even when they know what they would like to write about.

A blank page spreads out before the writer like a barren desert, and the enormity of having to fill it with good ideas is frightening. This stops many people from writing, blogging, or doing many other creative activities.

I suffer this existential fear all the time, particularly when my writing is not work related. But writers can learn tricks to overcome the problem.

My trick, which works better for me in blogging that it does in longer works, is to always keep the problem in mind when I write. Just as we work with our startups to focus on the problem they are solving for their customers, and the unique value they are providing to overcome customer pain, I approach writing this blog in the same way.

What problem can I solve for our readers, by writing about something? It can be a basic problem, such as our readers not knowing about something they should know about. Or it can be more complex, such as the piece we posted earlier this week about StartupYard’s deeply held values, and how they differ from what people might expect. The problem then would be that people see something a certain way, and the writer doesn’t. So the writer must express his or her view, and persuade or at least inform people of their opinions and views.

If you aren’t writing to address a problem, or a lack of something, then you aren’t writing for anyone. If you aren’t writing for anyone, then why are you writing? Of what value is what you write?

While members of the discussion talked about having a blog in order to “build a personal brand” (an already overhyped concept on its own), the problem remains. A brand is built around values, and you have to have values (and thus opinions), in order for your brand to have any meaning.

We are all aware of this subliminally, if not intellectually.

Think of a few famous brands, and you will be able to define their values fairly clearly. McDonald’s? Family, “Americanization,” entrepreneurialism, convenience, and comfort. You may see other positive or negative connotations in the McDonald’s brand, but you’ll recognize that the brand communicates those concepts consistently. Apple? Cutting edge design, ease of use, and high-end mass consumerism. Whether you hate or love Apple, you can recognize that these are its core values, whether they are successful or not.

In “building a brand,” a blogger, just like a corporation, has to establish what the brand is intended to convey. Otherwise, readers will be less than charitable with their own interpretations. And the best way to convey your values is to talk about them passionately- to argue for them, and to make the discussion about them, rather than about yourself, your needs, or your idea of what your “brand” is all about.

If you can do that consistently, as I hope this nearly 2500 word blog post (written in less than 2 hours) will show, writer’s block may be the least of your problems as a blogger.

Central Europe Accelerator

To the Next Beginning: StartupYard in Numbers

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This month, we say a heartfelt goodbye to the six startups we’ve gotten to know and love over the past 3+ months. Every year, we have to start all over. New teams, new ideas, new challenges. We have to fall in love all over again. It’s not going to be easy.

This post is going to be partly about the past, and partly about the future.  Where have we been as an accelerator, and a team, and where are we going next? What is our next beginning? As we so often preach to our startups, we’re going to apply some numerical discipline here, and talk in numbers.

5, 6, 36

This has been StartupYard’s 5th batch of startups since our founding in 2011. In addition, we are now a team of 6: comprised of Managing Director Cedric Maloux, Executive in Residence Philip Staehelin, Office Manager Helena Nehasilova, Legal Manager Nikola Rafaj, our intern Ian Abildskou, and myself.

Cedric and I joined StartupYard’s management team in 2013, and have done two cohorts together. Philip and Helena joined us this year, and Nikola has been involved with StartupYard since the beginning. Ian will be leaving us this week. He’s been great, and if you’re looking for a junior graphic designer, I suggest you hire him.

36, 13, 4, 10, 26, 68.6%

All told, we’ve accelerated 35 companies. 14 of those companies have raised either angel or seed round financing (so far), including 4 which have been acquired by other companies, and 11 are no longer with us (though their founders are still alive and well). That leaves 25 still operating, in various stages of animation. That represents a 68.6% “success rate.” We’ll talk more about that number later.

So how are we doing? As VentureBeat has noted, that can be difficult to assess. We could (and we sometimes do) take credit for all of the financing that our startups have gained since they’ve left the accelerator. In addition, we could take credit for the acquisitions of StartupYard companies that together represent over $20 Million in market value. We could also take some credit for the at least 150 jobs that our startups have created.

Smaller, Smarter?

Those numbers might seem small if we were to compare ourselves to some other accelerators, such as SeedCamp, Techstars, or Y-Combinator, the latter of which has 37 startups alone valued at over $40 Million each. But that wouldn’t be the whole picture either. Y-combinator has accelerated over 840 companies in the past decade- a rate of 10 times more per year than StartupYard (and more than most other accelerators). And they’ve been around 6 years longer, in a much richer market. Of those companies, while the successful ones represent some $30 Billion in value, 75% of that value is represented by their two biggest successes: Airbnb and Dropbox.

What exactly defines “success” when it comes to an accelerator’s portfolio company is murky. This list, for example, shows that out of 840 Y-C companies, just under 100 are “dead,” however, the vast majority are “operating;” many on the original investment they received from Y-C. Since internet companies can “operate” by keeping up a website for years, while the core team may move on to other projects, it’s not easy to nail down a number for the companies that are effectually shuttered.

So exact figures and failure rates for Y-C, given its size and the softness of the numbers, is difficult. A recent episode of the Startup Podcast placed Y-C’s projected failure rate at over 90%, but that also accounts for the likelihood of current companies eventually failing. That would mean that less than 1 out of 10 of Y-C’s companies would either exit, or turn a reliable profit in the future. But that’s not being very generous- we shouldn’t count failures before they happen. I would estimate that Y-C’s “failure rate” is probably similar to our own.

To measure success by the only fair indicator in StartupLand, which is to say: success is the absence of failure, then we are also doing well, with a 68.6% success rate.

36, 840, 40, 6%

But here I’ve been comparing us with Y-Combinator, when it isn’t a fair comparison, either for Y-Combinator, or for us. I asked Cedric this week, what he thought he would do if StartupYard could have access to the level of funding that Y-C enjoys.

“Well, I would love to invest in 80 startups a year… but there have to be 80 startups I would invest in.” Just as Y-C has ridden the waves of growth in the startup ecosystem in California for over 10 years, and just as Y-C in many ways helped create that wave, we are on a different wave, and we have to help create it for ourselves.

Part of the frustration, but also a positive challenge, of working in the shadow of places like London, Berlin, or the Bay Area, is convincing the brilliant, innovative, and energetic minds in the Czech Republic and across central Europe, that we too can play this game. We too can grow, year on year, and offer more.

Our team consists of native Czechs, and of expats who have been living here for a long time (a combined 40 years), and we understand the region, and the culture, very well. For two decades, Central Europe and the Czech Republic have battled an inferiority complex and a brain drain that fixates local media, local politics, and local investors on what is happening in other places. The Czech economy is dependent upon its skilled workers (few countries boast more qualified IT workers and engineers per capita), but also on the larger economies that surround us.

But that ignores the totally unique accomplishments of the Czechs in their own backyard. We are home to the only search engine outside of Asia that beats Google in its own country- Seznam.cz. We are also home to two of the world’s leading software security companies, AVG and Avast, and we are a major hub for DHL, the world’s leading logistics operation.

Due to sensible fiscal policies, a business friendly tax structure, and a conservative debt culture, the Czech economy was one of a very few to expand during the most recent economic crisis- growing around 6% from 2008 to 2011.

Prague, the Capital, also leads the world in various indicators of quality of life. We are in the top 10 ranked countries with the fastest growing internet speed, and Prague has one of the densest and most used urban transit systems in the world, and a quality of life index score higher than South Korea, Poland or Italy, and just below France.

Europe comes to the Czech Republic for its top-shelf engineering talent, its low prices, and its productive and no-nonsense work culture. Just as the communist world relied on “golden Czech hands,” to innovate in transportation, heavy machinery, medicine, and material sciences, so too does the west now look to us for an even broader range of talents- a dependence that keeps Czech unemployment persistently low, rivaling the US and the UK, and beating Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Poland, France, and Canada, among many others.

In short, we do some things pretty well, and we get a lot done. And it’s absurd to assume that we can’t be among the best in the world when it comes to mobile, e-commerce, security, and B2C online businesses.

We recently published this slideshare about the Czech tech scene, and we encourage you to take a look.

60, 240, 500

When Cedric and I joined the accelerator, it was on the eve of an open call for the 4th batch of startups. We received 60 applications- most (though not all) from the Czech Republic. This year, thanks in part to the accelerator consortium CEED Tech, which we run in cooperation with established partners in other CEE countries, we upped that number to 240. We were also able to secure grants from the EC that allowed us to invest €30,000 in each of our startups, up from €10,000 in previous years.

We received more applications this year from Slovakia alone, than we had from all countries combined in 2013.

And our mentors and investors have noticed the difference. Excitement surrounding our current batch of startups, while still early, is stronger than any we’ve seen before.

This year, we have an ambitious goal. We are looking to collect 500 applications to the accelerator, from which we will again pick only 7 to 10 of the absolute best applicants.

While other accelerators like Y-C, or Techstars, who have had the opportunity to take advantage of a groundswell of new interest in startups and startup investments, and expand both geographically and in sheer size of their programs, we are in an earlier phase of evolution at Startupyard.

There haven’t been the number of massive successes in the Czech tech ecosystem that would be needed to drive a huge movement toward startup culture. So we continue to focus on the quality of the startups we accelerate, and on seeking the drivers of the wave that will raise all ships in Central Europe.

1,000, 50 Million, 1 Billion

There are 6 startups leaving our program this month. I believe that every one of them represents a smart investment, and a potentially very profitable and rapidly growing company. But I’ll be uncharacteristically conservative and biased. I believe that the 6 startups finishing our program this week can employ 1,000 people within 5 years. They can serve 50 Million loyal users or customers, and together, they can be worth $1 Billion or more.

The defining moment for most accelerators, particularly in the eyes of this industry, is when they generate their first “unicorn.” Their first $1 Billion company. Airbnb, for example, now a household name, put Y-Combinator on the map, and they have added 2 more 10 figure companies since then.

Techstars, which has focused more on geographical expansion of its program, based on B2B successes like SendGrid, and Softlayer (both Startupyard partners), has a track record not dissimilar to our own, with a 76% “success rate.” SendGrid continues to raise money, and Softlayer sold to IBM in 2013 in a $2 Billion deal.

Time will tell whether we’ve already met our unicorn. But I don’t think that’s the right metric at all. Given $100,000 to invest in each of 800+ startups, in an industry and region where investors are dying to throw money at tech companies, I think a decently intelligent person could pick at least a winner or two. And Y-Combinator and TechStars are run by more than decently intelligent people.

But it’s a strange metric for success that would make me feel embarrassed to only to aspire to having these 6 companies, together, be worth $1 Billion. That isn’t dreaming small, when you think about it. We’ve been trained in StartupLand to view success in a strange way. We talk about “making the world a better place,” enough to make that an ironic punchline. But the story of late has persistently been about large purchase prices, and big valuations.

Instead, I think we should measure success by a metric more commonly employed back here on Planet Earth. Are we doing better than we did last year? Is our region responding to that success by taking more creative risks, working harder, and making our investment decisions ever more difficult and interesting? Does our work add value to our industry, to our region, and to the economy we participate in on a daily basis? I think the answer in our numbers so far is clear: they show that we are on the right path.

Taking these as our KPIs, we should be more than able to make a lot of money. But even better, we should be able to make money doing the right thing. We should be able to make more money, and have a bigger impact, every single year.

Defining Success For An Accelerator

Having met members of dozens of accelerators from across Europe, I’ve come to what I think is a more complete picture of our place in the industry in the past few years. Often when we discuss startups and the tech industry, we talk in terms that are only actually relevant to a relatively small number of stakeholders. We talk about valuations- the hypothetical selling prices of private companies that are too big, too expensive, and too deeply rooted, to be actually bought or sold to anyone but a few behemoth parent companies- which means they will not realize that value until they go public.

Increasingly as well, super-unicorns, worth $10 Billion or more, are privately funded, and show no signs of interest in IPOs. That means that we also talk increasingly in the terms of return on investment for a small pool of investors. We know that investors in Uber think that they can make some percentage of $40 Billion on their investments in the company, but what does that mean to the public? Do we only benefit from these successes as customers, experiencing a new layer of convenience in our daily lives? Or do we profit more deeply?

While we don’t focus on it, surely most of those very successful companies in Y-C’s club of “minor hits,” with “only” $40 Million+ valuations have also benefited the smaller investors who have bought into them. Somewhere down the line, an investment fund linked to someone very ordinary, non-super-rich person’s retirement has been doing well thanks to these successes.

Hopefully they have made people more economically free, more financially secure, and ultimately more happy and productive people. Moreover, at least a few of those who have profited immensely will now turn around and reinvest those earnings into “making the world a better place.”

Today > Yesterday

That StartupYard’s successes in this area are more modest than an Uber or an Airbnb isn’t troubling to me. We have DameJidlo, Brand Embassy, Gjirafa, and most recently, TrendLucid, Shoptsie, TeskaLabs, BudgetBakers, Myia, and Testomato. Already, thousands of people around the world benefit from the work that these companies do, in real and measurable ways. Perhaps we should be focusing on those kinds of metrics as well.

Part of what brought me to StartupYard was the credo that our investors and team shared: something Cedric pitched me on when he first invited me to work with StartupYard as a part time blogger, and later as a member of the team. If our country and region do well, then so do we.

We can define success in many ways beyond money- and if we do that, then we can be proud of the money we do make. So we have focused much of our attention on more than short term gains in the companies we’ve taken on. We have tried to take the long view.

In his landmark book The Tipping Point, pop economist Malcolm Gladwell famously compared corporate America to professional sports: the unicorns are the Michael Jordans, and the investors are increasingly the agents, managers, publicists, investment counselors, and other hangers-on of the world that benefit from a massive empire of wealth, based on relatively fleeting value- the idea that someone can perform at an incredibly high level, for a while, and generate enough interest to make money for everyone involved.

But accelerators are fundamentally different. That’s something I’ve come to see in the past few years. Startup, the Gimlet Media podcast, in its 2nd season profile of a company attending Y-Combinator, called accelerators “a school for startups.”

At first hearing, I mentally rejected this notion. We aren’t a school. We don’t give marks, and we don’t “teach” a curriculum that equips all of our startups to do the same things. I spent some time as a teacher, and one of the chief frustrations I experienced was that I changed all the time, but the needs and problems of my students rarely did.

Education is and can be essentially standardized, whereas we are and have to be custom fit for each of our companies, who live in a world that changes too fast for the lessons of yesterday to be written down in a textbook.

But as I thought more deeply about it, I struck on a slightly different realization. We are like a school, but a school that owns a real stake in the success of our “students.” We are financially motivated not only to see our members succeed and do well, but for them to grow the diversity and strength of our country’s, and our region’s, economy; providing us with more future “students” to choose from, themselves with more diverse choices about what they want to work on, and how they want to achieve their successes.

Our Next Beginning

So what is our plan for growth? We think quality has to stay our priority. Only when it is time to grow- when the demand for more space and more accelerator programs makes itself impossible to ignore; when we simply can’t turn away enough startups, or enough investors from this region, that will be the day we truly know we’ve already succeeded.

#PragueHacks Attracts 80 Hackers, Winner Announced

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This weekend’s #Praguehacks event, which involved about 80 local and visiting hackers, and focused on open city data provided by the Prague Institute for Planning and Development (IPR), has announced a winner!

The Winner

“Naše školy,” which you can read more about at PragueHacks.cz, will make previously fragmented data concerning public schools in Prague and the surrounding region, allowing users to compare schools across many different criteria. Their project involved developing an API and a showcase app that could be applied to any set of school data.

Their platform could be seen as a kind of “trip advisor” for schools, and could be applied to any city, provided that the data is available.

The team, led by Marek Lisý, and including Šimon Rozsíval, Martin Egrt, Honza Kašpárek, Lenka Moutelíková, Tomáš Fejfar, and Michal Zwinger, demonstrated how open data applications can be used to push public institutions to release data that is in the public interest.

At the same time, in only two days, the team built a persuasive prototype, showing the advantages of having the data available, and giving a clear idea of how it can be used.

 

The Weekend

Hackers arrived starting Friday evening, and were greated by StartupYard Managing Director Cedric Maloux. Anyone with an idea for the hackathon was invited to pitch that idea, which about 20 teams did. Later, hackers in attendance matched themselves with the ideas they found interesting, breaking up into groups of between 2 and 7 people each.

Then the hacking began, and continued straight through to Sunday evening, with a number of hackers even choosing to sleep the night in Node5, StartupYard’s home workspace, and the host of the hackathon. 3 meals a day, plus snacks, were provided, along with free Redbull and other energy drinks to keep everyone going.

Commercial and Non-Profit

While many of the ideas from early in the hackathon mutated and changed through the course of the weekend, often based on what was feasible in a short period of time, and what data was available, there was a steady mix of for-profit, and non-profit ideas represented.

Ideas often centered around visualizations of public information. For example, Parking in Prague, City Activity, and Signalizator, all try to give an overview of actual conditions in the city, helping visitors and residents to more easily navigate and get things done.

Teams like Storyteller Prague went even further, offering guided tours of the city, using offline content. Other groups like Walkz, LuckyMe, OpenFlats and wHeReToLiv.prg, attempted to give an overview of general conditions in the city, allowing people to see a mix of private and public information related to housing, crime, transportation, and other aspects of city life.

Sbirej.to, also known as “pick it up,” is an application that allows anyone in the city to flag and report areas in which dog owners have not cleaned up after their pets, and allow pet owners to report a lack of dog bags and bins. While such platforms do already exist, the team built Sbirej.to as a proof of concept for a more frictionless and fun UI, which would encourage typically disengaged city residents to become more active in reporting issues of basic city maintainence.

Was #PragueHacks a Success?

The object of this hackathon was twofold. First, we wanted to engage local citizen hackers and developers with the problems of modern city living, and inspire them to come up with new solutions to issues that any city’s residents might face on a daily basis.

On that score, we can count this event as a sound success: the teams came up with innovative and promising ideas about engaging citizen interest, making data more available to people, and improving the daily lives of city residents and visitors both.

Second, the object of the hackathon was to put pressure on public institutions, in Prague and elsewhere, to make public data more accessible, more comprehensive, and of higher quality.

Time will tell whether this event has been a success on that score, but we think it will be. Groups like NeverRun, which is pictured above, helped to highlight the fact that information people want, such as the actual locations of trams and busses on the transport network at any given time, needs to be made available by the city- as, they pointed out, it is available in other cities like Brno.

The hackathon winners, too, built their school evaluation app and API as a proof of what high quality data can provide to city residents. This should push more cities and municipalities to make more and better data available for these purposes. Once city residents and officials see the potential uses of the data, they should also understand the importance of making it public and highly visible.

Many Thanks

We have many individuals and groups to thank for the success of this weekend’s hackathon. Among them are Fond Otakara Motejla, which did much of the work to organize the event. We also thank the city of Prague and IPR Praha, for making the data available to our citizen hackers.

In addition, the French Embassy and British Embassy, Credo Ventures, the ReSite conference, IBM and Microsoft, along with Vodafone Foundation, lent their invaluable support, for which we are very greatful.

We would especially like to thank the mentors who volunteered a great deal of their time and energy to making this event a success, and last but not least to the hackers, without whom none of our efforts would have mattered. Thanks to all who came and shared a common goal with us this weekend!

#PragueHacks, the Pre-event, in Tweets and Pics

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What is #Praguehacks?

Earlier this year, we announced #Praguehacks, “Sharing the City,” a weekend hackathon that is taking place this coming weekend at Node5, StartupYard’s own shared workspace. The hackathon will be based on open-city data, provided by the city of Prague, and using technologies provided by our partners, including IBM, and Microsoft.

There are a raft of partners for this event, including the French Embassy in Prague, Credo Ventures, the US Embassy in Prague, the British Embassy in Prague, The Vodafone Foundation, GisMentors, and TakePlace.

The hackathon will run from this Friday evening, up to Sunday night, and will aim to generate applications, visualizations, and useful tools based on data provided by partners, including the City of Prague and the Prague Institute of Planning and Development, (IPR Praha), to make life in the city easier, safer, more ecological, and more interesting. Teams will receive access to hundreds of thousands of Czech crowns worth of services from IBM and Microsoft as part of the hackathon.

Winning teams will be eligible for fast-track selection to the StartupYard program, or to a non-profit acceleration program run by Vodafone Foundation.

129 Applications

While we had initially hoped for at least 30 teams to apply, we were soon swamped with nearly 130 applications. Clearly, this is an idea whose time has come in Prague. In the end, space limitations meant that we could accept “only” 85 teams, nearly 3 times the number originally planned.

Lead Organizer Michaela Rybickova of Fond Otakara Motejla, on the excitement leading up to the hackathon:

There have been plenty of volunteers:

The Pre-Event

Our managing director Cedric Maloux hosted a “pre-event,” Monday at Node5, to welcome the selected teams and introduce the sponsors, data, and technology to be used during the hackathon.

Speakers included: Jiří Čtyroký, director of the Spatial Information Section for IPR,  Ondřej Profant, representative of the City of Prague and Municipal District of Prague 7, Josef Gattermayer, entrepreneur and  IT consultant at Municipal District of Prague 8, Jan Cibulka, data journalist at Samizdat, and Josef Šlerka, chief of New Media Studies at Charles University, and the head of R&D at Socialbakers.

Here is some of that event in tweets and pics:

The event was highly anticipated:

 

Michal Tošovský, open data advocacy officer for Fond Otakara Motejla, talked about problems cities can solve with open data. He shared tips for city apps based on conversations with municipal representatives. 

FixMyStreet, a service presented by Lepsi Mesto (Better City), an app that allows citizens to flag and report issues in urban infrastructure and maintenance, served as inspiration for many of the attendees on what is possible with enough data.

Some friendly competition between Microsoft and IBM was encouraged by the participants:

SocialBakers’ Josef Slerka revealed a huge source of data that will be welcome at the hackathon:

One of the centerpieces of the hackathon, city data, was presented by the Prague Institute of Planning and Development.

Not all the attendees’ data dreams were fulfilled however:

Derek Eder, lead organizer of Chicago’s “Civic Hacknights” and a co-author of ClearStreets presented his work remotely. ClearStreets tracks Chicago’s snow plows in real time- giving city residents a real sense of city services at work. 

Not everybody could be there:

But a live stream of the whole weekend will be available at the #Praguehacks website:

Czech Out the Tech Scene: Our SlideShare on Startups in the Czech Republic

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More and more often these days, StartupYard gets similar questions. What’s going on in the Czech Republic? Why should startups move there? What’s unique about Prague, about the Czechs, and about the current ecosystem? What about investors? Can a startup get funded in the Czech Republic?

Well, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to answer those questions, and a few more. So here is our slideshare: “Czech Out the Tech Scene,” a brief guide to the Czech Startup Ecosystem.

This is a work in progress. Think we missed something? Got something terribly wrong? Great! Let us know by tweeting @startupyard, and we’ll make it right.

Click to share this with your followers on Twitter

StartupYard Partner SendGrid Talks Startups, StartupYard, and Central Europe

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Last month, StartupYard was treated with an enlightening visit and a full day workshop from Martyn Davies, leader of EMEA Community Development for SendGrid.

For those not yet in the know, SendGrid, based in Colorado with offices worldwide, is a nifty cloud-based email platform that allows startups as well as large companies to handle large volumes of user-interaction emails, as well as automated messages, marketing emails and more.

Anna Bofil Bert with fellow StartupYard partner Softlayer's Michael Donoghue

Anna Bofil Bert from Sendgrid, with fellow StartupYard partner Softlayer’s Michael Donoghue

About SendGrid


SendGrid helps companies of any size to ensure that their emails are timely delivered, and that their customer communications meet industry best practices. According to Martin, SendGrid now handles a hefty percentage of total email traffic, worldwide. Strong odds are that you’ve already used SendGrid extensively, even if you don’t know it.

And SendGrid is known for taking pains to help the developer community and support startups.

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Martyn’s StartupYard workshop focused on customer retention and communication best practices using SendGrid products

I met Martyn and his colleague, Development Community Manager Anna Bofill Bert, at LeWeb, in Paris last year. I was struck immediately by how dedicated their team is to educating and working directly with startups.

Not only has SendGrid offered StartupYard’s current startups and alumni a generous package of free services, but they have also offered personalized, in-depth support and mentoring for all of our members.

Martyn’s full day workshop was a tremendous help, not only to our teams, but to the StartupYard team as well. I caught up with him afterward to get his thoughts on mentoring startups, and about his experiences with Central Europe. 

SendGrid has a unique relationship with accelerators and the startup ecosystem, why do you spend so much time working with startups?

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Martyn: We were once a startup ourselves, and even through we’ve grown beyond that point now we’ve experienced a lot of the challenges that face early stage companies, so there’s a lot of advice to be shared.

We’re in a unique position to be super supportive of these great companies at a time when they need the most help, and we’re there to help them out, not just with SendGrid credit (which is a given!), but access to our network and teams of experts.

Anything we can do to help them get to the next level, we’ll do it and we encompass all that support in a program that we call SendGrid Accelerate.

What do you see as some of the biggest early pitfalls when it comes to global SaaS startups, and their community building and marketing efforts?

 Not allowing people to experience your platform, for free, quickly, and easily will be the make or break. You have to create an experience, particularly for developers that allows them to experiment in a low barrier situation, keeping that time to ‘Hello, World’ as short as possible.

There are a number of ways you can do this and it doesn’t always have to be sending a Developer Evangelist to a hackathon.

Publishing regular technical content on your blog, being very active on Stack Overflow, creating hacks that mash up your service with other great services and then telling that company about it – these are all stay at home ways to increase awareness and get people talking about what you’re doing.

As for community, you don’t have to build one from scratch if you don’t want to. Just get out there and be supportive of interesting community efforts or meetups.

If there isn’t much community in your locale, then start a meetup/group/hacking evening (anything!) and say it’s powered by your company. Watch out though, community isn’t community if you aren’t supportive, so don’t see any meetup you organise as a straight up sales pitching evening.

Several of our startups noted that you had opened their eyes to problems they didn’t know they had. Did any of our startups surprise you in turn?

We were really impressed with the SaaS concepts we were shown and just how far down the line the teams were in terms of product and traction. I’ve signed up for Testomato to use personally and we’ll be keeping a close eye on the other teams around demo day and afterwards.

 SendGrid pays a lot of attention to emerging players and markets, including the CEE. What do you see as the region’s biggest unique opportunities and strengths?

CEE is a gold mine for technical talent in my opinion. You’ve got a large amount of talented developers who came up through the outsourcing companies many larger, well known companies have used over the years. Now they’re out working on their own ideas and the technical aspects are top notch.

Likewise, what are, from your perspective, the biggest challenges that startups from this region face? What kind of help do they need most?

Breaking out of the mindset of being a CEE company is key. If you’re creating a product that works everywhere, then you’re a global company and you need to think that way. Your developer marketing, and some community efforts need to reflect that.

Introductions to people in different cities who can help out, desk space for a team member, anything that gets them out to new places when they feel they need it. That’s something we try to help with at SendGrid, we even have a desk for visiting startups to use when they’re in town at our office in London!