Welcome to NOLA, let’s get started

The #nolabound migration continues, I am meeting a dozen people a month who are moving to New Orleans.  Just this week I met a startup founder from NYC who is moving to nola, and was surprised to learn that I had just gotten off the phone with an ex-boyfriend who also is moving here.  

I realized, every time I meet, I’m having the same conversation about getting “plugged in” so its time to put together a post I can share out and you can too.

STARTUPS (that might be hiring)

COWORKING & OFFICES

ACCELERATORS

INVESTORS

EVENTS

MEETUPS

BARS / RESTAURANTS (where startup folks hang out)

UNIVERSITIES

PRESS

JOBS

—-

Note 1: What am I missing?  This is a work-in-progress, I’ve tried to be as comprehensive as possible, but I’m sure I’ll miss things.  If you’ve got an add, please comment, and I’ll update the post.

Note 2: Many ecosystems have been putting together Startup Ecosystem decks.  I’m working with Aaron Matys to turn this into a deck for NOLA.

I just don’t think this is going to be your big thing.

- Me to Jen Medbery, founder of Kickboard. Sometime in 2010 @ Launch Pad

Boy was I wrong.

Jen recently reminded me of this conversation we had a few years ago when she was embarking on her first capital raise for Kickboard (then Drop the Chalk). She’s since gone on to raise 3 rounds of capital, recently a $2MM series A. 

The important thing to me here is that investors love it when you prove them wrong (or at least they should). We should celebrate any entrepreneur who succeeds, even if we didn’t have the foresight to make a good bet on them.  And founders, you’re going to get  a lot more no’s than yes’s, take the rejections as inspiration to keep building and stay focused on customers, revenue, & growth.  It’s an awesome feeling to prove someone wrong.

Join the Niko Niko beta tester team

I need your help.

I’d like you to join our beta test for the new custom prompts functionality in Niko Niko.

Join team: Niko Niko beta testers

We’ve just launched the ability to create custom prompts, and we’re testing these in a team environment to see what questions are meaningful, mindful and generate actionable data for a team.

These prompts are based on Martin Seligman’s PERMA construct and are designed to generate information about positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning & accomplishment in team environment. 

We are focused on testing two primary things:

  1. Do the prompts generate meaningful responses?
  2. Determining the correct frequency for the push notifications for each prompt.

Here’s how it works:

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We’re taking feedback on relevancy directly through Niko Niko, so we’d love to have you join and help you test the product.  Thanks for your engagement and input.

I’m excited to see how things work on the Niko Niko beta tester team, and I hope you’ll join us.  We’re limiting participants to the first 25 people who sign up, so join the team today.

Pitch the Vision, Communicate the Fundamentals

I’ve seen a lot of pitches in the last couple months, and one consistent weakness I see is founder’s focus on pitching rather than communicating.  Perhaps calling these pitches is doing them a disservice in terms of preparing entreprenuers for what investors really want to hear.  Pitching sounds like selling.  Maybe we should call it Persuading rather than Pitching.

Building a Persuasive Pitch

  • Pitching = future, unknown
  • Communicating = presently known

It’s important to answer questions in an investors mind.  Let’s break them down.

What problem is this solving?

  • Communicate a problem that exists and is understandable.

What’s your solution?

  • If its built - communicate what it is. 
  • If its not - pitch what it will be.

How big is the market?

  • Communicate market size
  • Pitch addressable market segments you plan to go after
  • Communicate market segments where you have validated customer acquisition strategies

Who is your customer?

  • Pitch who you think your customer will be.
  • Communicate customers you have identified, targeted and onboarded.

What is your technology solution?

  • Pitch what you plan to build
  • Communicate what you have built and tested.

What traction do you have?

  • Can’t pitch traction.
  • Communicate your users, revenue, & growth.

What is your revenue model?

  • Pitch your sales forecast for next 3-5 years.
  • Communicate the unit economics of your product.

Who are your competitors?

  • Pitch your competitors feature matrix and how you stack up favorably.
  • Communicate the market positioning & dynamics of the industry and how you are targeting the whitespace.

Why should your team give me confidence?

  • Pitch your advisors and loose connections to recognizable people.
  • Communicate the credentials of people on your team and committed to your success with skin in the game.

How will you acquire customers?

  • Pitch your marketing plan that includes PR, SEO and Business Development
  • Communicate the conversion metrics for the acquisition channels you’ve been testing.

What is your use of funds?

  • Pitch how you think you’ll spend it, 30% marketing, 50% technology, 20% SGA
  • Communicate next year’s hiring plan, technology milestones and segmented marketing spends based on validated channels.

The difference between pitching and communicating is confidence.  When you’re confident in what your communicating you are more persuasive.  That is because you’ve tested and validated your assumptions.  You’re communicating what you know to be true rather than what you hope happens.

Focus your pitch around communicating and watch what happens, I bet your investors will like it.

On Natural Assets & Unfair Advantages

Two years ago at Launch Fest, Scott Case challenged New Orleans to figure out how to leverage our natural resources to build our startup ecosystem.

What companies make sense for New Orleans? Where do you have competitive advantages?

For that last several years, I’ve been describing the NOLA ecosystem as “emerging” while we’ve waiting to see what sectors take root.  We’re starting to see that happening now.  It was through the lens of what companies have an unfair advantage being in New Orleans that we selected the companies for the 2013 Launch Pad class.

Companies you won’t see in our class

The latest consumer facing social media app because it has no unfair advantage and isn’t leveraging any natural assets.

Companies you will see in our class

Companies like Sidework, a restaurant employee training platform because it has the unfair advantage of the New Orleans world-class service industry mindset as well as the natural assets of the New Orleans restaurant industry. 

I’m seeing the sectors for New Orleans coming into focus quickly, witness Jim Coulter’s battle cry for the Ed Tech sector in New Orleans last week during NOEW.

While they are still coming into focus, here are the sectors I’m excited about in New Orleans right now:

  • Education Tech
  • Food Tech
  • Energy Tech
  • HealthCare Tech
  • Disruptive Transactional Marketplaces
  • Creative Media Platforms & Products
  • Talent Recruitment, Management & Retention technologies

To understand what’s taking place, I think its helpful to consider the shifting phases of technology revolution.  Read Chris Dixon’s post about moving from the computing installation phase to the deployment phase along with Mark Andreesen’s post about how software is eating the world.  

What we’re seeing is a new technology layer being applied across industries where we have traditional strengths in our region.  Because of our industry expertise and natural assets, we have an unfair advantage in these industries as the are eaten by software.  This will be industry disruption we can win.  Let’s go get ‘em.

Let’s Solve the Talent Gap

The most frequent question I get from people about New Orleans is:

Does NOLA have the talent for tech companies to scale?

I spoke about the city’s tradition of creative talent back in my talk at TribeCon last fall.  But the lack of talent in NOLA is a recurring theme and we need to solve for it.

I’ve been brainstorming with a lot of folks about solving this, and I’d like to lay out a three-pronged approach:

1) RECRUIT

There is tremendous opportunity to continue to recruit top technical talent to NOLA.  Kumar Thangudu just moved to NOLA from Houston and is on a mission to bring more engineers with him.  Talent attracts talent, and we need to keep nurturing the flow of tech talent.

Here are some actionable steps for recruiting:

  • Stay - we have a French Quarter apartment we rent for Launch Pad mentors during our class.  We can open this up to anyone who wants to put someone up.  I hear of some folks working on a “hacker’s den” which would be awesome.  We need an AirBnB place for folks hang out together.
  • Work - we offer up Launch Pad as a free place to work when folks come through town.  this offer is standing.
  • Meet people - hit up the hack night on tuesdays, meet folks at Capdeville
  • Jobs - We’ve got a listings source on WorkNOLA.  I believe everyone should be posting jobs on AngelList too.  We probably need a way to easily link to all tech positions in NOLA.
  • Fun - It’s our brand, shouldn’t be too hard to show people a good time.

We need a systematic way to share candidates across tech companies hiring around town so candidates can get exposure to all positions and don’t have to work through multiple processes with all of them.  Let’s get organized between companies to make it as easy as possible.

In addition, let’s focus internationally.  New Orleans is a port city and has always been a city of immigrants.  What if we were the easiest and best city in the country for international engineers?

2) TRAIN

Let’s map the grads coming out of LSU, University of Lafayette, UNO & Tulane once the get back on track.  Let’s know where every engineering and CS grad ends up and make a point of ensuring they know positions exist in New Orleans.

We need grads with 4-year degrees entering the workforce, but there are plenty of folks who are capable of being programmers but don’t need to go back to college to do it.

It’s time to get serious about recruiting a code school to New Orleans.  These organizations run short, intensive programs and produce entry level engineers.  They are proven effective and are a great model.  Carl Nelson and I chatted about these last week when he was here for NOEW, so thanks Carl for the information.

Here are a few well respected code schools:

Let’s recruit, franchise, or start up one of these. 

(Aside - why doesn’t Launch Pad do it? We have run the alpha test. Last year we ran 6 week classes in iOS, RoR & Javascript taught by LP members.  They worked great and were all full, the demand was there.  I believe these need to be run by a committed organization that’s focus is on education of programming and its outside what we have the capability to do at Launch Pad, however we’ll host them and do everything we can to support.)

 3) MESSAGE

We need to start to talk about the talent that is here.  We’ve branding ourself as a startup city and do an incredible job highlighting the entrepreneurial ecosystem over the last 5 years.  You can’t miss the headlines about New Orleans as a startup hub.

We need to focus on the same marketing for technical talent.  We need an organization as dedicated to engineers as Idea Village is to entrepreneurs.   We need to brand our city as a great city to work in tech.

When anyone asks, “is there enough tech talent in New Orleans?” The answer needs to be “hell yes” and we need to be able to point to it.

I believe this should be a primary focus of the economic development agencies.  GNO, DDD, LED - start talking talent and getting the message out there.

The way to do it is not to talk about jobs.  Any engineer or programmer can get a great job anywhere they want right now.  It’s to talk about the talented folks who are here.  Focus on the community, highlight and celebrate the amazing talent we’ve got.  This will help to change the perception of the lack of talent and it will help us to recruit more.

Sound like a plan?  Let’s get to it.  I’d love to hear any other ideas you have in the comments.

 

2-fer-1 advice for first time founders

I was just asked to answer the question:

What’s the most common mistake new businesses/entrepreneurs make when they go to approach investors and lenders?

I encounter two mistakes that new entrepreneurs frequently make.  

  1. Entrepreneurs frequently will ask an investor to sign an NDA.  Savvy investors will never sign NDA’s. Google it. I am not willing to put myself at risk just to hear you pitch your idea.  I may come across the idea years from now from entrepreneurs who are better suited to execute on it, and I can’t have the liability of the NDA I signed with you out there.  Talk about your idea early and often. Your success is going to be based on your ability to execute on it, and not the risk of someone stealing your idea.  It’s not about the idea, its about execution.
  2. Entrepreneurs often think it is all riding on one meeting or introduction.  The truth is, the first meeting is a data point.  You set expectations for where you are headed.  The next time you meet with that investor, you better have gotten further along.  Investors are looking for trend lines, and when I see someone who is really hustling and moving their company forward relentlessly, that is when I get interested.

Testing & Validating Your Market Assumptions

There are three distinct phases of risk in a startup’s life-cycle: Product, Market, & Growth.

  1. Product Risk - can you build it?
  2. Market Risk - does anyone want it? can you get it to them?
  3. Growth Risk - can you scale it and make lots of money?

The cost and challenge of mitigating Product Risk is dropping.  I believe the cost and challenge of getting through Market Risk is increasing proportionately because of the relative ease of building a product.

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The majority of pitches I am seeing these days make the leap from having a product to assuming that the market wants your product.  This assumption that there is market demand for your product is not tested and validated using Lean Startup Customer Development principles.  Many founders are talking Lean Startup, but very few pitches I’m seeing have hard data on things like Customer Acquisition Costs and clear distribution strategies for their product.  In the absence of testing & validating, you’re proposing a field of dreams strategy - if you build it they will come.

In the diagram above, I refer to this as the Field of Dreams Gap - an unvalidated customer acquisition & distribution strategy.  In the new world where developing a product is no longer difficult, the challenge is going to be: does anyone know about it? and do they care?

One place to start is validating this strategy is understanding Growth Hacking, and a great starting point for that is Thomas Knoll’s answer on Quora. The diagram above on the stages of risk includes data from Dave McClure’s post, Moneyball for Startups.

If it doesn’t have a URL it doesn’t exist. - @jbarnette
As seen in such movies as: Resumes, Job Postings, Event Invites. Post it online and send a link, don’t send an attachment if you want me to share something, I ain’t gonna spam your attachment around.

The story behind Mardi Brah on Kickstarter, brah

I’m excited to announce a new project that I’m involved with, a new iPhone game called Mardi Brah.

Mardi Brah is an iPhone game that has been entirely drawn by hand by my good friend Lionel Milton.  Our team at Flatstack has been hand-coding the app, and together we’re working to launch Mardi Brah at the Super Bowl in New Orleans next month!

I wanted to share the personal story of how this project came about and our goals for Mardi Brah.

Lionel and I have been friends for 10+ years.  He is literally the first person that I met in New Orleans after moving here in 2002.  I had just rolled into town and we decided to head over to an art opening at Lionel’s gallery.  The parties back in the day at the Elleone gallery were the perfect welcome to New Orleans, it was an awesome scene with Ed Maximillion on the turntables and lots of cool lower garden folks.  I introduced myself to Lionel and we got to be friends.  

Over the years, we’ve been looking for a way to collaborate.  We both have tried a lot of things over the last 10 years, and whenever we hooked up, we always said: “when are we going to hook up to do something together?”

Two years ago I went to a Saints game with Lionel.  I pulled out my iPhone and showed him Angry Birds.  

“What if you produced an iPhone game like this using your art and street style?” I asked.

We tried a few things, thought about Launch Pad Ignition, finding a co-founder, hiring a developer.  

This fall we ran an internal hackathon at Flatstack, and most of the projects our engineers chose to work on were games.   They were having fun working on this stuff.

With the Super Bowl approaching, we all want to showcase New Orleans as a creative community and highlight the technology products emerging.  The talk I gave at TribeCon focused on adding a technology layer to the existing creative fabric in our city.

Lionel is a great example of our natural creative talent as a visual artist, and has had a great career.  We realized that building an iPhone game is simply a new medium for his art, and that is exactly what it means to tech-enable the talent we have in New Orleans.

The collaboration between Lionel & Flatstack has been a blast.  Lots of funny Skype calls and a lot of hard work has gone into building the game.  We’re on track to have the v1 release to the app store in time for the Super Bowl.

We’re launching the Kickstarter campaign because we need your help to launch the game.  We want to license original music by Flow Tribe and Nesby Phips to include in the same.  We also want to host a party during the Super Bowl.  We’re launching a PR effort in conjunction with the Super Bowl tech committee to showcase the talent and collaboration and launch Mardi Brah as a brand that we can continue to build on.

My personal goals for Mardi Brah are:

  • Build a game that becomes a successful iPhone app showcasing Lionel’s art
  • Inspire and maybe hire other New Orleans artists and teach them Lionel’s process for turning hand-illustrations into files that developers can work with to build games
  • Continue to build momentum for New Orleans and Louisiana as a digital media & gaming hub, in particular building games & products that feature our own natural talent & resources
  • Launch a game that you’ll have fun playing!

It would mean a lot if you’d back the Kickstarter project for Mardi Brah, and thanks for your support!

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