Want more startup hubs? Show us your faces
startupsrule.com
If you want to make more startup hubs around the world, you need each city's local heros to show their faces to early-stage entrepreneurs.
http://startupsrule.com
startupsrule.com
http://startupsrule.com
We need you to be our heroes.
Go with your associates and assistants to local events. Their eyes and ears aren’t trained like yours to find insane talent and bigtime ideas. They can’t inspire us with their experience and insight like you can.
We need your perspective and physical presence to find the best your city has to offer and to help us bust through the brick walls that are stacked in front of us.
Give us your presence at one event each week at a bar down your street. We need your instant and honest feedback. When you’re there to give it, you will make our ideas, our companies, and your city better, faster.
To be clear, this isn’t charity work. Being on the ground floor again will remind you why you got into this business in the first place (or, maybe, why you should get out). If all you think about is dollars, I bet you’ll find companies to advise and invest in that no one else has heard about yet.
But all money aside, do you believe your city can be home to the next company to shake up the world?
If you want to make your city into a true startup hub, you need to show us your face.
You may never write a check to a local startup, but we will never forget those who shook our hand and told us what we needed to hear first, even if you reject our ideas because our market, the team, or the traction isn’t right.
This is, as David Lee said last week, “a pay-it-forward business.” If you pay one night forward to your followers, your company, and your city, each one will give more to you than you can possibly imagine.
Ron Conway is a hero to Silicon Valley. Fred Wilson is a hero to New York.
Who are the heroes of your startup community?
Silicon Valley has 2/3 (investor and entrepreneur) and so does New York (investor and mayor).
What other cities have good combinations?
Being based in Cleveland right now, I have met scores of people who are very enthusiastic about building a startup community. However, everyone I’ve met in Cleveland is new to the game with only one or two startups under their belt. The vast majority of startups are extremely early stage, and I could list the number of strong, successful technology startups on one hand. There is nobody who could step up to become a hero, as that level of experience just simply isn’t here.
I believe that there is strength in numbers, however. A real sense of ownership in the direction of the city is starting to take place with the entrepreneurs in Northeast Ohio, mostly centered around the programming meetup groups. This grassroots-style startup culture takes time and is not as flashy as a big name hero, but it’s a start.
There's even this silly group that tries to connect business and creative people, but their events are so terrible I can't bring myself to go... think "The development of Disney as a cultural phenomena"... and I know others feel the same. I've offered to help them, offered event ideas, but these folks think they know it all. Too bad the time I did go, there were only maybe a dozen or so people there, all mostly employees of this partnership group.
So if there are any startups in North Carolina (especially the Triad) raise your hands, lets buy each other a beer soon.
I'm gradually turning my small town into a startup hub, and it's great. So far my efforts have helped launch a co-working space and have helped a bunch of creative and technical people meet each-other. There are some money people in my area too, and they should be getting interested pretty soon.
Even if those meeting suck, go to them. Get to know anybody worth knowing. Suggest creating a new group or club (make sure it has a specific purpose and some direction). Go to chamber of commerce mixers religiously -- even if the first four send you home empty-handed, the fifth might get you a curious entrepreneur. Pay close attention to the items in the local newspaper. Start keeping a list of who the "movers and shakers" are in your area.
I wasn't real fond of the YC process, or of living in the Bay Area, and I already had some things going here. So ... why not keep pushing things here and create the environment I wanted?
I just looked into the meetings earlier tonight, before reading your reply (sorry, I'm 6 days late) - the partnership fell apart and the meetings have stopped. Guess nobody went.
I've put ads on Craigslist, posted flyers in coffee shops, hung out in said coffee shops. Hung around Wake Forest, pestered business professors, went to several meetup.com events (completely irrelevant events, but events nonetheless)...
Thank you for the motivation, I'm going out there! :D
Just curious, in what part of the country is this small-town startup-hub?
Thoughts?
If needed, my direct email is brendan [at] thestartupdigest [dot] com.