I frequently get emails that say something like:

I have an idea for a product that I want to build, and I need to hire a web developer or find a technical co-founder. Where should I start?

I’m going to try to give helpful guidance that I give to people who approach me with this.  First, I want to give personal context.  I am a mechanical engineer and a partner in a software development company, but not a programmer.  I am much more of a hustler than a hacker.  So, I do understand when people need to find and depend on someone else to build out their vision.

Step 1 – Check Your Ego

• Talk about your idea. Don’t waste people’s time dancing around your pitch. There is a much higher likelihood that you’ll fail for lack of execution than someone stealing it.
• Don’t ask people to sign NDA’s. You’re already asking for their time and guidance.  Now you’re asking them to take legal risk. (Hint: they won’t)
• Your idea is worthless. Until you have a product, and then a business, you don’t have anything of value.  Ask Paul Graham.

Step 2 – Get Perspective

• You are asking for help. Whether you are looking for a co-founder or a consulting firm to build your product, you can’t do it without them.  And you need them more than they need you.  Any engineer you want already has a job, so you’ll need to be persuasive.
• What value do you bring? The technical co-founder perspective may be – “what do I need you for?” Know what value you bring and communicate it.  Be the hustler to their hacker.

Step 3 – Get Out There

• Go to tech meetups. You’re unlikely to find a co-founder on a job board.  You raise your chance of success monumentally if you start attending meetups and meeting programmers in person.  Here are the NOLA meetups.
• Go online. Learn how to approach the conversation by reviewing these resources on Quora and searching the web.
• Go co-work. I gauge how serious people are by inviting them to work at Launch Pad and meet people.  (If you don’t take me up on free co-working and introductions at Launch Pad, then you’re not committed.)
• Go to conferences. Get out of town, go to SXSW, TechCrunch Disrupt, RubyConf.

Step 4 – Value Your Need

• Reward risk – for a co-founder, even after you get them to buy into your vision, you’re going to have to come up with a compelling equity/cash compensation package.  Remember, they are evaluating their opportunity cost.
• Have a budget – if you’re not looking for a co-founder, but you want to talk to a development firm, then you need to know your budget.  If you’re not prepared to spend 20k+, then you probably need to re-evaluate.

Alternative Approach – Learn to code yourself.

If I sent you a link to this post in response to your email, I hope this is a good starting point for you. Good luck.  Have feedback or other resources? Please share in the comments.

My friend Kenny Nguyen asked me for some tips on where to focus his time, because he, like many of us, feels like he’s doing too much. Since I’m trying to do the same thing, I thought about what I am doing to focus. Here goes:

Decide what is urgent, what is important. Separate the way you think about things and prioritize truly important things.

Accomplish one thing a day proactively, not just reactively. Answering emails does not count as forward motion.

Focus on what helps you accomplish your goals – building a company – or whatever it is – and spend the large majority of your time on only that. If you’re doing more than 20% peripheral stuff (ie community service work) then you should probably cut back.

Last Friday HB 597, the Angel Investor Credit Program was signed into law by Gov. Jindal.   I fully expect this incentive to have a major impact on the flow of early-stage risk capital in Louisiana, but its important that you understand it and get an early jump in it to be best positioned to benefit. Now its time to figure out what this means for you.

Here are the bullet points:

• A credit of 35% of the money invested by an accredited angel investor in a certified Louisiana business, credit delayed by 24 months
• Credits capped at $1 million per year and $2 million total per business.
• The total angel investor rebates are capped at $5 million.
• Credit is transferable.
• Program effective from Jan. 1, 2011, through July 1, 2015.

Beyond this, I have been getting some questions for clarification so I reached out to Erich Rapp at Kean Miller.  My questions and his responses are below.

1) The company has to be a Louisiana based company – can the investor be anywhere since it’s transferable?

It would appear that the investor could be from anywhere. I see no prohibition on out of state residents investing in Louisiana companies and I would not think that the La DED would object to having someone from another state invest in a Louisiana business.

2) Can the investor credit pass through to angel groups?

The credit can be earned by an individual or an “entity” such as the South Coast Angel Fund or Launch Pad Ignition. It could then be transferred to the owners of those angel investor groups or the benefits might be passed to those individuals automatically depending on the tax status of those entities

3) Does the 5m available prorate or is it first come first serve? What is the most opportune time to file?

The Act authorizes the La DED to determine the allocation method. They are expressly authorized to use a first come, first serve method, but it does not appear they are required to use that method. Anyone that wants the credits should probably get an application in as soon as the state will take such applications.

Have further questions? Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments.

It’s a simple formula: the higher level the person you are trying to reach, the busier they are.

Meaning they will have less time for lunch, coffee, phone calls, and to respond to your email.

Many entrepreneurs I work with get frustrated because they aren’t getting emails back from investors, or upset because I don’t have time to meet with them at their whim.  Don’t let this discourage you, they probably still want to help, but you have to know how to ask.  Here are some tips:

• Send 3 sentence emails. Not 3 paragraphs, 3 sentences.  If it can’t be read in 15 seconds, it won’t. (ref)
• Don’t ask for meetings, ask for the one thing you want.  If I can have a conversation over email rather than in person, that’s what I want.  I definitely prefer to meet people at networking events or have them drop in Launch Pad then to schedule lunches or meetings without a clear agenda.
• If you don’t hear back, ping her again. Try a DM or a quick email.  The reality is most busy people can’t / don’t read all their email, so if you’re off the front page, you’re probably buried.  Don’t get frustrated and send a passive agressive email, just ping her again nicely.  You’ll be surprised how persistence pays off.
• Don’t send attachments, send links.  I’ll click through to blogs & projects way before I read resumes.  I’d much rather get an actionable eventbrite invitation than a PDF attachment invitation I have to send an email reply to.
• Make it easy for people to do what you want.  Pre-write a tweet and send it to them and ask them to tweet it.
• Use good plain text formatting.  HEADERS are great capitalized and phrases are emphasized by bolding them.
• Write a clear subject.  I like giving context at the beginning with brackets [Invite] or [Response needed].  Assume that the subject is the only thing they will read on their phone and give them enough information to want to open the email.  Subject lines of “hey” or “following up” get deleted.

What tips do you have on reaching out to busy people?

Are you headed to Jazz Fest this weekend?  Um… YES! It’s my favorite time of year.

And this year, it’s getting even better with the inaugural Work Week Conference Series.  Using the world-class music festival of New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival as a building block, we’re filling up the entire week with incredible speakers and sessions where you can learn to launch a startup, inspire innovation and succeed in the music business.

Our vision for the Work Week is to build a business conference series complement to the great music experience on the scale of what SXSW has become in Austin.  There are 3 great events that you won’t want to miss.

• Sync Up – 4/29-30 & 5/6-7 @ NOMA – This is the 4th year of Scott Aiges’ music industry conference.  Swing by the conference in the morning before you headout to the fest and learn from musicians, festival bookers and film producers technologists.  Sync Up has a talent packed lineup including Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, Mystical sitting down for a chat with Wild Wayne and PJ Bloom, music supervisor for Glee. A special addition this year is a screening of the Arcade Fire film ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ with Thomas Gayno from Google produced by Bryan Bailey.

• Second Line -  5/2-3 @ XLIV at Champions Square – The inaugural Second Line conference launches this year with a focus on disruptiveinnovation, value creation, and sustainable social impact.  Hot of the success of last year’s TEDxNOLA, Gerard Cox is producing the conference and has lined up an impressive roster of talented speakers.  James Carville & Wendell Pierce headline in addition to Scott Gerber, John Besh Matt Candler and Matt Galligan of SimpleGEO.

• Launch Fest – 5/4-5 @ NOMA – With two half-day sessions, Launch Fest returns for year two, and takesonnew significance this year as the demo day for New Orleans’ only startup accelerator, Launch Pad Ignition. Day one features programming for entrepreneurs and those who are thinking about starting a company.  Day two features investor focused discussions by Brad Feld and a Startup America panel with Scott Case, CEO of Startup America and Sean Greene of the SBA.  Highlight speakers include Leah Culver of Convore, Stephen Dimarco of Compete.com, Brent McCrossen of Audiosocket, Anne Driscoll from Ning and Bob Dorf a Customer Development guru.

Jazz Fest has grown into more than just a music festival with the arrival of the Work Week. Look forward to feeding the mind during the week and the soul on the weekends.  I highly recommend all these great events and can’t wait to see you at these events and out at the fairgrounds!

This morning, as we are about to embark on the first class of Launch Pad Ignition, I got to thinking about the mentors who are helping to get me to the finish line with Ignition, which is a startup itself.

I’ve had many mentors in my life, and now more than ever as we move into uncharted territory, I’m leaning on them, and they are responding.  A mentor is a person who:

• sends you an email, asking “how’s it going?” out of the blue
• shows up when its a big day for you, at a talk, a presentation or a pitch
• responds to your email within minutes, not weeks
• introduces you to people they think you should know, without you asking
• and most of all… genuinely cares about your success

At SXSW and over the last week as Ignition is hitting its stride and the pressure & stress level rising, I felt my network kick in.

• Schlaf was making connections to StartupBus folks, and making sure I got into the AOL Ventures party at SXSW
• Jann Schwartz took me under his wing at SXSW, making great intros and being an advocate for what we are doing
• Brad Feld emailing me at 10:30pm last night engaging me in Startup America
• Leslie Jacobs helped us work through our term sheet
• Elon Boms said “let’s make this happen in New Orleans”
• Tony Ciaccio and Big Sam drove all the way from NOLA to make sure our party was a hit
• Taylor Davidson swung by the NOLA party, shared where he was personally, and his excitement about engaging our founders
• Eric Marcoullier pinged me to ask “how’s Ignition going?”  to which I replied “great! when are you coming down?”
• Andrew Hyde made sure my core convo at SXSW went well, from the iPod tunes to start to keeping the convo flowing
• John Barnett & Brent McCrossen hanging at Capdeville with Pete, constantly checking in with us

So, thank you to all of you. I feel the value of mentors.  People rooting for you to succeed, and making sure they are taking an active, not passive role in it.

I can’t wait to personally play this role and see the impact of it next week when Ignition kicks off.

A lot of us are thinking today about 2011 and making New Year’s resolutions. I’m thinking a lot about what I want to achieve in 2011 and reflecting on 2010.  As I’m reflecting today, I’m drawn to a framework for feedback that Peter Bodenheimer taught me and we use in feedback sessions with clients.

Make three types of resolutions:

• Keep doing
• Start doing
• Stop doing

My resolutions this year are going to be less about goals for 2011 and more about doing more of what’s working, less of whats not.  The Keep, Start, Stop framework helps me isolate my resolutions and change behavior and set plans to achieve them.

Happy New Year! Wishing you a happy, healthy and successful 2011.

I want to invite you to join me on Dec 17th to spend the day hanging out and volunteering to help get a New Orleans family home for the holidays.

I did my first build with the St. Bernard Project as part of TribeCon and it was a blast and felt really good.  We painted and swapped brainstorms for businesses… it really was a lot of fun to get a chance to have in depth conversations about startups while helping to rebuild a home damaged by Katrina and get a family home.

I really believe in the St. Bernard Project and their mission to get people back into their homes that were damaged by Katrina.  At the orientation for our TribeCon build, I learned:

If reconstruction of all the houses damaged by Katrina by all of the organizations involved continues at the current pace, then all families who want to move home will be able to get home in 16 years.

Wow, that’s not good enough. This is a really motivating projection to me.  It makes me want to do more.  And I can tell you it really feels good to step away from the computer and volunteer at a family’s house where you can see the impact of your work at the end of the day.

After a great day of volunteering our time to bring someone home for the holidays, we’ll all head to the 2nd Annual Launch Pad Holiday Party to celebrate the spirit of the season with a few cocktails.  You’ll be so radiant with goodness no mistletoe will be required.

• Home for the Holidays Volunteer Day
• December 17th – 9am-3pm
• Location TBD
• Anyone who wants to connect with great people and rap about startups, technology and have fun rehabbing a house. No construction skills required! Don’t worry its fun, and you can do it!

Update: I’ll be making a $25 donation to the St. Bernard Project on behalf of everyone who comes out, so please help lighten my wallet and support an this important organization.

Dear David -

Last night we had the pleasure of attending the TechStars demo day in Boston where we saw 10 great companies present to 250 mentors, investors, and members of the tech community.  Wow, what an impressive evening and showcase for TechStars.

I’d like to respectively submit for your consideration New Orleans as the next city for TechStars.

You and I have had several conversations over the last year, facilitated by Andrew Hyde, about my desire to launch a mentorship-based seed fund in New Orleans.  We’ve done our homework: studied the models, attended your session at SXSW, and talked to mentors, entrepreneurs and investors all involved with TechStars. You said to me last night “New Orleans is on my radar…” to which I respond: I’m making it my mission to do what it takes to attract TechStars to launch in New Orleans in January of 2011.

I believe we can demonstrate to you that the tech startup community in New Orleans and Louisiana is activated and it would be a winning move for you to launch your Winter session in New Orleans.  Here is what I plan to demonstrate:

• we have a roster of local and national mentors ready to commit
• we have sources of capital that will get behind a TechStars New Orleans
• we have an startup ecosystem of intelligent, passionate, creative, driven entrepreneurs who will provide the core of and be impacted greatly by TechStars
• we have a favorable climate for tech startups with the 35% digital media incentive which makes Louisiana one of the best places for software and Internet companies in the country
• we have a collaborative workspace, Launch Pad, ready to house TechStars companies
• we have activated local leadership lined up to get behind TechStars and make it a success

I have been passionate about the need for a mentorship-based seed fund in New Orleans for the last two years, and I fully believe that the stars are aligned to make it a reality right now with TechStars.  We are committed to making our case to you, learning what we need to know, and answering your questions to make as convincing an argument as possible.

Please make space on the TechStars calendar next January for New Orleans. Thank you for your hospitality in Boston and your consideration. We will be in touch.

Who’s with me?  If you are a startup or entrepreneur who would love to see a TechStars New Orleans, holla back in the comments!

Sincerely,

Chris Schultz

[PS: for those who wonder who I'm writing to here: David Cohen is the founder and CEO of TechStars, a mentorship-driven seed stage investment program for Internet startups.]

This post has been coming together for a while, and I’m excited that I am finally getting a chance to share the coming capital options for startups in NOLA.  My feeling for a while has been that the seed capital gap and lack of VC in general in Louisiana has been one of the biggest challenges facing startups.  The Receivables Exchange had to go raise its capital outside of Louisiana.

As far as local angel funding, here’s what I wrote to Ben Rosen after his visit to New Orleans last week during Launch Fest:

The next step is to develop a strong, active, angel community to fund these companies, and keep them in New Orleans, rather than needing to go to Austin, NY, Boulder or the Valley for capital & talent.

A big part of our mission at Launch Pad is getting the investment community familiar and comfortable with these types of investments, which may be non-traditional for the region where wealth has traditionally been generated through oil and gas and the port.

It appears that we are on the verge of a tidal shift in the availability of capital for startups locally (fingers crossed).  Here are some of the things that are happening now and on the horizon.

• Idea Village – open – an eight year old non-profit that provides grant funding & educational curriculum. The 2010 class has just completed, and the application process for 2011 will be open towards the end of this summer.
• Leap Frog Ventures – projected launch Q3 2010 – a non-profit evergreen fund that Leslie Jacobs, Rick Rees, and Ben Allen are putting together in conjunction with GNO Inc.  The fund is based on the JumpStart program in Cleveland OH. Projected to raise $5-8 million from public and private sources and make seed investments of $250,000 – $500,000.
• GNO, Inc Opportunity Fund – projected launch Q3 2010 – this is a fund that will package CDFI funds from local banks into an evergreen investment fund that will make low interest convertible debt loans to local startups.  I am unsure of projected raise, the average size of loans is likely to be around $250,000.
• South Coast Angels – open, currently accepting pitches – this is a local angel fund managed by Clayton White and Choose Taurman.  This is a member managed angel fund, so it is different than an angel network like the events we do at Launch Pad.  My understanding is that they have $2-3 million committed and they are currently seeking investment opportunities of $250,000 to $500,000. They are using AngelSoft software to manage the application process and you can find out about it here.
• National VC Activity – starting – one of the best opportunities I see is to build strong ties to the national VC community, particularly NY, Boston & Austin.  The Kraft Group investment in NakedPizza led to Steve Schlafman’s participation in Launch Fest.  In addition, David Safaii of Windspeed Ventures came to Launch Fest and is getting connected with the local community.  Nurturing and strengthening these ties is critical.
• Barrett Vernon Montgomery LLC – open - Disclosure: Investor in Launch Pad.  Currently managing two funds.  Funds under management: $30 million. General size of investments are seed investments of $100,000 to $300,000 with follow on capital of up to $3 million.
• Long Branch Ventures – open – Michelle Oaks has been an active angel investor in the New Orleans community over the last two years.  Long Branch invests in early stage companies with an investment criteria that includes the company be based in Orleans Parish.
• Trumpet Ventures – open – Spun off from Trumpet Group in 2009, Trumpet Ventures invests financially and also by providing services in exchange for equity.
• Launch Pad Angel Network – open – We host quarterly angel pitch events at Launch Pad at the IP.  We hosted the last one during Launch Fest where we had ten 5 minute pitches by entrepreneurs.  70% of the startups were invited to contact an investor following the pitches.  Range of capital has been early stage prototype to seed capital.
• Voodoo Ventures – open – Voodoo recently made an investment in Jackson Square Group.  I am open to other strategic investment opportunities.

I am particularly excited about the new funding sources coming online listed above.  While I still believe that we’d benefit greatly from a seed accelerator program, and Launch Pad has some things underway to launch one, I think the capital is going to be flowing locally in the next 6 months to a year looking for deals.  If you have a startup idea, now is the time to get your business plan, or better yet, prototype together.

If I’ve made any mistakes above, feel free to contact me.  If you are a source of capital, and would like to be listed, please add a comment, and I’ll add you to the list.  Here’s to solving the seed capital gap in New Orleans!