Nearly Nicole

I’m in the throws of reviewing applications for TechStars NYC right now, so I’m motivated to help you submit more powerful apps.

When applying for TechStars, one of the first questions is “Describe your business in 140 characters or less”. This is basically your elevator pitch.  Anyone will tell you that your elevator pitch is pretty critical to nail – you have only a few seconds to capture someone’s attention.  Same thing applies to your TechStars application – you have to nail your 140 character description b/c it’s my first impression on what you do, and once that’s set, it’s pretty hard to recover from it.

So here’s a quick tutorial on how to write your 140 character description (and also your elevator pitch!)  You start with a basic formula, then add color.  Formula is

For {customer segment},   with {x problem}  we offer {y solution}.  This is a really rough formula, and I don’t recommend that you use it exactly, but it gives you a starting point.  

The key here is to be specific.  Generic language can be deadly.  I want to know what you specifically sell or do, not who you are.  The best way to highlight this is to give some examples.

Here are some 140 character descriptions from some previous TechStars companies.  These aren’t perfect, and this was before they went through the program, so you’re getting the raw, unedited version.  But they’re pretty good and I have a very clear picture of what they do in only  a few short words.

• DealAngel’s website uses data mining and pricing analytics to rank online hotel offers.
• Birdbox is a platform for managing all your photos and videos in one place, connecting everything from Facebook and YouTube, to Amazon and Dropbox.
• Ubooly is a 6” tall, plush creature powered by your iPhone. It uses wifi to download new content every month.

And here are some examples of BAD 140 character descriptions:

• We are an internet service that will reshape a dated 27 billion dollar industry thru tech initiating a global movement.
• Solving life’s problems one app at a time.
• PalmLing is Google Translate with a Human Touch.  (By the way, this company is VerbalizeIt and did get into the program despite their description)

Notice in this last batch I don’t know what they do.  Even the last one, what is it? A web application?  A device you carry around in your pocket?  What does a human touch mean?

When I read 140 character descriptions like that, I’m left to my own devices to creatively imagine what you do, and I could be wrong.  I probably am wrong.  As I dive deeper into your app, I’m starting from a different mindset on what you do, and therefore am highly likely to misunderstand your whole entire business.  The likelihood of getting cut goes up dramatically.

So spend some time crafting your 140 character description, or your elevator pitch, and test it on people.  Take their feedback, iterate, and test again.  Keep testing until you land on something where people know immediately what you do.  You don’t just need it for your TechStars app, you desperately need it for your startup.

Good luck!  Early app deadline is January 4th – I know what you’ll be doing this holiday season… Apply now!

Recent studies have shown that having more women in c-level or board positions makes for more profitable companies.  And since profitability is good for everyone,  I’m currently involved in the National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT); they have a mission to increase gender diversity in the workplace.  They have some amazing tools to help your company attract and retain more females.

On Dec 5th from 12-1, NCWIT is hosting a lunch entitled Startups, Culture, and Why Diversity Matters.  If you’re interested in learning more about how to make your startup more amazing, please join us.

You can RSVP here.

In collaboration with University of Colorado’s Silicon Flatiron’s program, I’m hosting a crash course on how to pitch your startup.

Here, you’ll learn, uh, how to pitch your startup!  :-)

We’ve a couple of open slots for brave souls who want to pitch live, in front of the audience, then get feedback from me and the group on how to improve your pitch.  If you’re interested, shoot me an email (nicole at techstars dot com).

In Q1 of this year, I had the pleasure of running TechStars Cloud alongside Jason Seats.  It was a crazy time in my life, I was recuriting and going through applications for TechStars Boulder, I temporarily moved my whole family to Texas for the Cloud program, and I had a new baby just barely a month old.

I was really there just to be a resource for Jason as he ran his first program – making sure he avoided the same mistakes we all made our first time through.  I quickly realized that not only did Jason not need my help, but he was going to fast outpace me as a Managing Director.  Let me tell you why Jason makes such an amazing TechStars Managing Director, and how if I were an entrepreneur, I’d take my company through the Cloud program.

1. Jason’s an entrepreneur himself with a successful exit under his belt.  He’s fought the battle.  He 100% knows what you’re going through.
2. Jason’s a deep thinker.  (Contrast this to me.  I can think deeply only if you get my attention long enough for me to submerge into your problem).  He thinks about everything.  He looks at it from multiple angles.  He comes up with multiple hypothesis.  He frequently argues with himself until he comes up with a position that he thinks is the right one.  I LOVE this approach in entrepreneurship because he purposefully looks around at all the data and thinks critically before making a recommendation.
3. He dives in, all the way.  He’ll be in cell ZZ4892 of your spreadsheet if you let him.  He’ll interview hires with you if you want.  He’ll sit on customer calls.  He doesn’t just roll up his sleeves, he puts on the freaking dry suit and gets all the way in.  It’s awesome and inspiring to watch, and his teams love him for it.
4. He wears his emotions on his sleeve.  So if he’s not happy with you, you’ll know it.  If he’s proud, you’ll know it.  You never have to worry about him “grinfucking” you.
5. He’ll calls them like he sees them.  This is sort of the same thing as #4.  You can rest assured that he’s being 100% honest with you, at all times, about everything.
6. He’s not sympathetic, he’s empathetic.  He’ll feel your pain right along with you.
7. He has the respect of everyone he works with.  EVERYONE.  When we were interviewing him for the position, I tried hard to find someone who would say something negative about him, or say what his weaknesses were.  (I had basically already decided he was our guy, I just wanted to make sure we could build in support around his weaknesses).  I talked to probably 15 people, even ones he didn’t know I was talking with, and not one person said anything bad about him.  And it’s true.  I have zero bad things to say about the guy.  Why is this important?  Because when he picks up the phone to call an investor/mentor/customer/whatever on your behalf, people will answer the phone.
8. He’s a monster executor.  This actually surprised me about him.  Usually the thinker guys aren’t the executor guys, but he is.
9. He’s uber-responsive.  I don’t think he ever has more than 3 emails in his inbox.  It stresses him out to see that little red number there.  Don’t believe me?  Send him an email and test it.  I bet he responds within minutes.
10. He wrangled mentors like the best of us.  He’s great at getting the mentors bought in, participating, and deeply engaged.  Just awesome.
11. He’s a software engineer.  He speaks your language and can help think through architecture, scaling, and more.
12. He’s instinct and gut on things is spot on, even on the business side.
13. He talks in metaphors.  I love this quality.  It’s hilarious and awesome and creative.  I miss the daily metaphor from Jason.

Jason is going to kill me when he reads this.  But this isn’t to flatter Jason.  This is to spread a little of the Jason magic to entrepreneurs that aren’t sure the Cloud program is the right one for them.  I bet that it’s the best thing you ever do for your startup.  Hurry – early application deadline is October 14th, with the final deadline being November 4th.  Apply now!

I’ll be in the San Fran area next week for a blur 2 days.

On October 18th, I’ll be a judge for CloudScale in SunnyVale.   Then on October 19th, I’ll be a judge for G-Startup at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Silicon Valley.

Seems like I’m doing a ton of judging recently (see most recent post on StartupWeekend EDU).  I like judging, it’s fun and easy.  But one thing I don’t like about it is that I don’t get to spend a lot of time getting to know the teams.  That’s the problem with a pitch

competition, we’re focusing exclusively on the viability of the idea.  But as you know from earlier rants, I think the likelihood of success is tied to team by about 90%.

However, I’m looking forward to both events. They both have great speaker lineups and look to be full of great content.  If you’re at either one, come say hi!

I was a judge at Startup Weekend EDU this weekend – for those that don’t know, its a fun, frantic, sleepless event that last 54 hours where teams try to launch a startup.  This particular one focused on the education space, something that’s been getting more and more of my attention recently.

So let me start with some background info.  I don’t know too many people who aren’t supportive of education, but I don’t know one person who thinks the current state of affairs with education is acceptable.

Soap Box – If it were me, I’d be paying teachers $100+K a year, no tenures, and radically bonusing teachers and principals with highly performing schools.  I’d make the requirements to be a teacher pretty damn high.  I’d radically reduce overhead expenses (read Board of Educations and multiple layers of management).  I’d support the voucher system so parents can take their kid ANYWHERE.  Let the bad schools die off. I would force 100% transparency in dollars spent, testings, curriculums, and hold people accountable for them. And I’d get rid of the unions.  At the bottom line, everything, EVERYTHING is riding on the education of our youth.  Our government, the arts, roads, economics, fresh water supply, whatever – you name it. They’ll be the ones tasked with all of these items in a decade or two, and we should be giving them all the resources to do it better than us.  It is absolutely ludicrous that we have freshly paved roads but our kids education is below par, dare I say abysmal.     End soapbox.

Okay, but clearly everyone wants to see education improve, but its really difficult to do so.  We can’t leave it to the beaurocracy to make the improvements, they move too slowly and their incentives aren’t aligned with success.  I think its the teachers and entrepreneurs who can introduce innovation.  Sites like Kahn Academy are a great example of this.  Therefore, I’m hugely in support of all aspects of entrepreneurship and education – thus the judging of Startup Weekend EDU.

Out of 6 pitches, I saw 4 that I thought could move the needle in the education space.  Wow.  FOUR of SIX.  They had a long way to go and  most of them were just at the concept phase, but that’s impressive.  That’s only one startup weekend (there are dozens), and only one effort targeting innovation in education (I’m sure there are hundreds).  I can feel the ground swell with energy in this space. It’s coming.

Massive props to the organizers of StartupWeekendEDU – they volunteer to do this, and it was a great event.  Especially Dr. Janet Corral, she was warm, welcoming, and a force to be reckoned with (I’m sure you all were, I just got to know her the best!)

My hat goes off to all entrepreneurs and teachers and creative thinkers who are trying to solve the problems in education.  Carry on, and change the world.

At TechStars, we’ve been getting a lot of meeting requests around “I’m new in town and am looking to get plugged into the startup community”.  In an effort to get you connected quickly and meet the most amount of people, a few of us have gotten together to host a “Welcome To Boulder” event.  It’s just a simple meet and greet with some of the area entrepreneurs who are well connected.

Feel free to join us for the next one!  Check out the invite.

This summer, we filmed another season of “The Founders” – they’re 5 minute webisodes that follow 3 companies through the TechStars program.  It’s a great way to get an inside view into what really goes on during the program, and Megan Sweeney does an amazing job filming, producing, and editing the series.

Disclaimer: this is a little shameless self promotion, as you’ll see a lot of me in the videos (and more of me than normal, given I’m still losing that damn baby weight (only 8.8lbs to go!)

But regardless, its a great series.

Check out TechStars’ The Founders Series here!

I had the priveldge of sitting on a panel yesterday called the Apps Privacy Panel, put on by Silicon Flatirons and the App Developers Alliance.  When I was first asked to sit on the panel, I wasn’t sure what value I could add.  I’m not technical and I don’t follow the field of privacy and data security closely.  But Brad Bernthal said he was looking for someone with an entrepreneur’s perspective, so I agreed.  We were joined by a couple of attorneys including Bryan Cave’s Jason Haislmaier, and most interestingly by Julie Brill of the Federal Trade Commission.  The conversation was more stimulating that I expected.  Intriguing in fact.

Privacy and security are things like – what data are people allowed to collect about us?  What can they do with it?  Who can they share it with or sell it to?  For instance, we’ve all seen the Google ads, when you’re in your Gmail inbox, for products that relate to the topic of an email you’re reading.  Google is using data in your email to display relavant ads to you.  So maybe if you’re pregnant, and you’re talking about it with your friend in an email, Google might display an ad for a crib.  But can Google share info about your pregnancy with others? Can they tie it back to you as an individual?  Can they sell that data to potential employers who might not hire you if they knew you were pregnant?

The landscape of privacy and security is not well regulated YET.  There are mostly just some common sense guidelines to keep us doing the right thing.  But data privacy is a massive concern, so I believe it’s only time before legislation kicks in to regulate it to death.  This is good news/bad news for entrepreneurs.  The good news is that it’s not regulated yet, thus expenses dedicated to following law here are minimal.  Regulation = overhead/infrastructure, and when you’re a startup, you really want to be focusing on your product or service, not on overhead and infrastructure. I think (maybe naively)  if we, as software engineers and companies, can do the right thing with data and privacy, there will be little reason for the government (like the FTC) to step in and regulate it.   So – DO THE RIGHT THING PEOPLE!

The bad news is that b/c it’s not regulated yet, there are a lot of gray areas around what the right thing is – and it only takes one or two bad players to spoil it for everyone.

I won’t rehash the entire panel’s conversation for you, but I thought I’d share a few key takeaways from my perspective.  Here’s generally what I learned to help guide you in making sure you do the right thing.

• If you’re developing an app or website that is involved with youth, medical, financial, or employment information, or your selling data you collect to a third party, get yourself a good attorney that understands the landscape.  Let them be your guide.  Don’t try to learn it on your own.
• Better yet, everyone should just talk with an attorney around best practices for data privacy and security.  If you build it into your app early on, it’s much less costly to fix retroactively.
• Be transparent about what data you’re collecting and what you’re doing with it.
• Use easy to understand & clear UI/UX practices to effectively communicate to your users what data you’re collecting and what you’re doing with it.  READ – 31 page privacy policies and terms of service agreements don’t count.
• Ask for permission to collect sensitive information, and protect that sensitive information securely.
• Honor your data promises to your customers.
• When it doubt, ask around.  If you’re not sure of the ‘creep factor’ of your app or data collection/storage/usage features, ask around.  If it creeps people out, figure out how to communicate the WOW of your app and take care not to sell that data or use it in ways that would upset your customers.

Now go code something.