What They Can't Tell You: Starting Up Outside a Hub
wensing.tumblr.com
wensing.tumblr.com
The solution isn't to run people through the gauntlet just because you had to run through it. That's the same sort of thing that causes open-source projects to run people out of town because they asked a question wrong.
In Austin, I studied the design and tech community and the problems that both groups have were essentially the same: a comprehensive lack of professional support in all areas. People tend to only hang out with their friends and their coworkers. They don't meet people from other companies. Those companies don't support the local community and don't work together with other companies to share resources and solve problems. There's no community. There's just a bunch of companies functioning as a silo, each with one or two employees who venture out when there's a free beer or a friend at a meetup.
The answer isn't to shake someone until they realize some sort of truth. It's to build that community, the one you don't have right now to support you, for someone else. It's to provide help and be a mentor and give guidance. It's to do the fairy godmother act, the one you no-one did for you, for someone else, and as part of that, to teach people that this is how good, responsible people and companies behave.
What you want is to change the culture. You want to start raising companies that look to all of the local communities and novice developers and talk about the work they're doing and buying them beers and offering them training. It's about building a comprehensive local talent pool through supporting meetups and offering apprenticeships -- not unpaid internships, not regular internships, actual apprenticeships -- so you never lack for qualified candidates in the good times and are always thought well of in the lean times.
It's about reaching out to other companies who use the same technologies and tools as you do and sharing resources, ensuring that future employees of both places have safety nets with each other, and that you never have to reinvent the wheel because you know all of the practices of everyone else using that same tool.
It's about not thinking in terms of zero-sum games and hierarchical advancement. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the money and the power and the experience will come if there's a reason for hackers to show up: a community.
A scarier but more tractable solution is educating and arming first-time founders with the lessons and toughness they need to succeed against the tremendous odds facing them in this territory. It demands a brutal honesty that risks discouraging young recruits, but this is how the best of the best operate.
As a founder born and raised in South Florida that’s had some measure of success (insofar as survival is a major component), this is my plan. To tell people of the dangers in no uncertain terms, to take a chainsaw to their ideas, and to inspire them to find ways to collect money from customers first, so they can collect it from opportunistic investors second, and on their terms.
I realize that this is mostly about teaching (and not acts of kindness, money or otherwise), but I do believe that it fits under your suggestion to "mentor and give guidance". It definitely isn't about just getting them to "realize some sort of truth." On the contrary, I welcome engagement in a very practical way. Hope that makes it a little more clear.
That sure sounds like a gauntlet, like putting someone through the wringer just because.
You can be supportive without cutting people down. A community doesn't have to be all cat fights and proving yourself to each other. It can just be helpful.
I'm glad you're not planning on doing it that way, but your words suggest otherwise. Just something to keep an eye on.
..(vitovito) a comprehensive lack of professional support in all areas. People tend to only hang out with their friends and their coworkers. They don't meet people from other companies. Those companies don't support the local community and don't work together with other companies to share resources and solve problems. There's no community......It's to provide help and be a mentor and give guidance. (vitovito)
I have experienced the same story here in Germany. But I beleive it is not possible when you are an outlier, to do much on your own individualistic style - there must be a supporting system with you to push things through. It is wishful thinking that you can build community with few entrpreneurs. That is the reason that innovations take years and years, at least 10 years to reach market readiness.