Goodwill and no-nonsense values

StartupBus began with a premise that if you put sharp people on the bus, including all associated constraints, interesting things come out of it. Last year it was one bus with dreamers that come from distant parts of USA but also UK and Australia. The dreamers kept dreaming and today, a year later, 6 buses hit the road at around 7am in their respective timezones. Equipped with determination to find new ideas to improve or build technology that will help the world, these buspreneurs have witnessed yet again how hard work and goodwill prevails. Yesterday people bussed, flew and drove to Chicago from surrounding states including, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, and Arkansas. To kick things off Lightbank hosted a launch party in one of Chicago’s poster child (aka Groupon) offices, where buspreneurs met some of the founders in Lightbank’s portfolio of companies. This set the tone nicely for the event showing buspreneurs what is possible with determination and right mix of tech prowess and execution. In fact, having spent a few months in the valley, I was clearly seeing how midwest attitude was enmeshed in the way businesses are done here. Quite a few of Lighbank’s portfolio founders were non-technical founders; men and women with vision, persistence and ability to identify the needs and address them with the right solution - were closing funding rounds to rival those in the valley. In contrast on the west coast - focus is spotlighted heavily on technical founders and other skills are looked down upon. 

Day 1 on the bus picked up speed fast with only one stop Wisconsin Dells (not really… looking at you Mikey). We hit St. Paul, MN by 5pm where tables were set and power outlets were dusted off for buspreneurs at CoCo Coworking & Collaboration space.

People were down to earth, food and drinks were aplenty with enough wifi to share for everybody. ProjectSkyway, a new incubator footed the bill for food and drinks. They have an unconventional approach to funding entrepreneurs, which again confirmed my previous observation about the no-nonsense, midwestern attitude toward business founders’ background. Unlike most other incubators, they fund single founders and they supply them with technical employees that help execute the business. We had a great time and it was thanks to a real warm reception of all people at CoCo and ProjectSkyway. 

As conductor of the Chicago bus I am confident that we’ll put on a real fight to show both coasts (NYC and Silicon Valley) that midwest has talent to match. 

Highlights from today: Wired article on StartupBus | Pitches at CoCo | StartupBus Stock Market Game - go invest in startups as they are being created. 

Photo credit: Wired - people on the San Francisco/Silicon Valley buses

Where do good ideas come from?

As I watched this video, parallel between it and the environment that we create on the StartupBus was stark. In this beautifully illustrated video, Steve Johnson asks a question you see in the title and specifically drills down on the impact that our surroundings have on our ideas. Breakthrough ideas are a result of rinse-and-lather process of perfecting a hunch. Hunches are unpredictable, but it’s clear that when one hunch collides with another, often something greater than the sum of their parts is created. On the StartupBus we’ll have people from different walks of life, but all interested in technology and creating something great. I am confident that many of them already have hunches that need to collide with another tiny hunch that can make a big difference and result in something great. Though there’s no short-cut to greatness, the constrained environment of the bus is exactly the type of “space” that encourages collisions of ideas, as discussed in the video. 

Being on this subject begs a couple more additions that have been on my mind in recent months. I’ve been wondering if breakthrough ideas come completely unpredictably, a sort of big-bang in someone’s head, or do they grow out of the process of continuous improvement. Last November world-class chess champion visited this cool company, Palantir, in Palo Alto and spilled his beans saying that “America’s innovation engine is slowing to a grinding halt” and that Apple II was the last revolutionary technology. To add on top of his statements, Peter Thiel (high profile investor known as “Don” of the Paypal Mafia) spoke at Stanford a few weeks later and drilled into idea of “extensive” vs “intensive” innovation. He believes that currently we’re seeing too much extensive innovation, which is the type of innovation where new companies simply copy or slight modify existing ideas and don’t really add to the greater picture of technology landscape. He backed it up with a great example of car industry, when in 1920s there were more than 40 car companies and instead of joining one a smart businessman would have created his own company, just like entrepreneurs are doing today. So both Gary and Peter think that we’ve really slowed down innovation process and that now is the time to wake up and go big.

On the opposite side we’ve got Steve Blank who quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson with his essay titled “When it’s darkest, men see stars”. Steve is very optimistic about the future and lists a number of constraints that served as barriers to entrepreneurship and then goes about showing how each one of those have been or slowly are being removed. 

Something to think about, definitely. Personally I think that big-bangs that Gary Kasparov and Peter Thiel are hinting at, come as a result of long and continuous process of improvement and refinement. Yes there are thousands of startups that can barely be distinguished from one another, but there were dozens of companies that were trying to build a better computer before Apple II came out and got it right. It takes many failed businesses and many iterations of a business to produce something great and that’s what’s happening right now. Granted we just went through a recession, Steve Blank is spot-on that men begin to look at the stars when it’s darkest. 

StartupBus community is about to get much larger

Last February my friend Julie brought to my attention this article on TechCrunch about this 48-hour hackathon on a bus, known as StartupBus. Of course I signed up, as the idea passed my personal threshold of “crazy enough to fly across the country”. Within just a couple of weeks from signing up for the StartupBus 2010 I flew to San Francisco and joined a bunch of cool people. They came from across the United States, including NYC, Cleveland, Florida and… of course Chicago. What’s more - people hailed from across continents, some from UK, others from Australia. They marched with all kinds of skills: hackers, designers, community managers and non-techies like me who like startups and can do numbers and marketing. The experience was surreal and here’s a really good story plot of what happened (thanks to Justin Wilden who also participated last year). 

(Crunching numbers on a bus at 60mph in the Texas dessert)

Aside from having a really good time on the bus and at the SXSW conference we witnessed a network of entrepreneurs emerge. Some of them went on to found startups, like Whereoscope and Opzi, others quit their jobs and joined various startups. All of us are involved in a number of different cool projects and the value of the network only keeps expanding over time. I moved from Chicago to the Silicon Valley party because I was now in a group of like-minded individuals who were willing to help each other. 

That was with 25 people last year. This year we’re doing it again but this time it’s going to be 150 people! I cannot tell you what ideas will be born at 60mph on a bus, but I can guarantee you that an amazing network of buspreneurs will emerge. 

I am also stoked about the rivalry that will light up among the US tech regions this time around. Five buses (SF, NYC, Miami, Chicago and Cleveland) will compete to produce the best ideas and implement the best prototypes in time for SxSW, where a panel of VCs and a team from a local incubator, Capital Factory, will judge to determine the best businesses. I will not be surprised if some teams will come home with real investments to take their 48-hour-bus-born-babies to market. 

You think you’ve got what it takes? Apply: StartupBus 2011

Related articles

• Looking for a Ride to SXSW? Get on the Startup Bus (readwriteweb.com)

Smart move by Tony Conrad (Founder of About.me)

AOL’s acquisition of About.me was the fastest exit I have ever read about - less than 1 week after the public launch. It’s a huge win for Tony Conrad and the team at About.me as they will be raking in millions in double digits. But in today’s startup environment there is a big emphasis on growing the business before selling out, a merger or an IPO. Take for example Facebook, Twitter and most recently Groupon - all of which have rejected hundreds of millions (in Groupon’s case >$5 billions) in favor of growing their company organically. Mint.com was heavily criticized when it sold out to Intuit late in 2009. 

Therefore it is a valid question to ask why did About.me sell so quickly? Tony Conrad answered that exact question for Business Insider. According to the founder, the exit was too good to pass, especially for the team which consisted of some first-time entrepreneurs. They raised very little money to start the business and thus the current exit provides an extraordinary rate of return for the investors, whereas continued operation would require further fundraising rounds and as a result a much higher exit in the future to produce a similar ROI. Given that it’s a fairly straightforward profile platform, the prospect for huge growth and revenue potential was unlikely, but in the hands of AOL it might breathe a bit of life into the old company and integrating AOL’s existing userbase will provide a spurt for the business. For these reasons, I am convinced that it was a smart move on the part of About.me founders. It’s very rare for a business to do so well so quickly so there are lessons about the execution to be learned here.