The panel consisted of:

• Evan Tennant – Phar North (clothing)

• Lex Uhlmann – Kendama Co. (toys)

• Terry Jackson – OP/TECH (camera accessories)

• Doug Warner – Que Ver (caving headlamps)

• Will Ritter – Spark R&D (splitboard accessories)

• Wiley Davis – Hondo Garage (camera accessories)

Phillip had prepare a great set of questions for the panel, you can see the whole discussion here:

Thanks Phillip and panel for taking time out of your busy lives to inspire us and help spin the flywheel for the Bozeman startup ecosystem!

The post Maker Presentation appeared first on StartupBozeman.

In the space of three hours we were able to get nearly 100 kids exposed to and excited about robotics and programming.  Our core tool for this mission was the incredible Sphero, made by Orbotix.

While I’ve been involved in teaching middle and high school students on this subject for a couple of years, I’d never attempted anything at the lower grade levels.  Luckily Pippin has an amazing talent for this.  He started out asking the kids about making breakfast as a paradigm for a simple programming task – something I never would have thought of.

I neglected to take a picture of his whiteboard effort, but it looked something like this:

Get bowl

Get cereal

Get Milk

Get Spoon

Put Cereal in Bowl

Put Milk in Bowl

Eat

From there we jumped into a demo using the Sphero.  First, we showed the students how to connect the Sphero’s brain (the iPad we were using to control it) to his body (the ball).  We followed that with a short demo of the ball moving around manually based on input from us.

Next we related back to cereal example using the Macro program that is part of the amazing array of apps Orbotix has produced to complement the sphero.

Using the diverse set of pre-created macros, we were able to show the students how each of the macros were created, run them and then show how easily they could be modified to create different actions and behaviors.

Every time I’ve done an activity like this, I am awed and humbled, both by the incredible job our school teachers do with our kids and with the kids’ energy, motivation and enthusiasm for learning, asking questions (some of which are pretty amazing) and being so curious about the world around them.  As entrepreneurs, I strongly believe that it is on each and every one of us to help the next generation of entrepreneurs in any way we can.

Orbotix is a great partner for educational activities, if you are at all inclined to invest in the future of America, you can reach out to Jenica Watts to get details on their educational program.

The post Investing in the Future appeared first on StartupBozeman.

I reached out to Dan Andrews, a friend I met through Montana Programmers & who now lives in Boulder, trying to figure out where to stay.  Dan graciously invited me to stay at his place, this turned out to be a huge win as we ended up talking for hours both nights I was there and he did an incredible job of plugging me into the crew at TechStars where he works and I got to spend two days working out of their offices & learning some of the history as well has how they do things now – great info for helping build out Bozeman’s entrepreneurial ecosystem!

When I arrived on Wednesday afternoon, I spent some time walking around the core area of Boulder soaking in the energy and buzz of activity then working outside a coffee shop next to TechStars, it was great to see reacquaint myself with the incredible energy of Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem and the plethora of startups there.  When Dan finished work we went to Reuben’s for some amazing burgers and I picked his brain about both his job at TechStars (awesome) and the organization itself (incredible).

We then retired to his place & spent several hours talking about my new startup.  He gave me some great ideas and advice from the perspective of someone who has seen hundreds of ideas pitched and knows a lot about what’s been tried & worked or failed…

On Thursday I spent the morning at TechStars, meeting the team, learning about how they operate and thinking about how we could use some of their concept and process in a scaled down version in Bozeman.  Dan and I then made a visit to the amazing office space designed by my good friend John Kembel, followed by lunch at Jaipur.  I was particularly interest to catch up with John to talk about bringing some D school thinking into Bozeman based on conversations I have been having with the leadership team at MSU.  We also dug into customer experience as the future of business, another passion we both share.

Later that afternoon (thanks to an introduction by Brad Feld) I visited Orbotix, makers of the incredible Sphero.  When I walked into the lobby and saw four developers had cop-opted the comfortable couches for a programming session, I knew I was in for a fun time.  CEO Paul Berberian spent a good 45 minutes answering my questions about manufacturing in China, giving me a product demo and talking about their program to use Sphero as a tool to teach kids about computers.

Next I jumped on the bus for Denver to join the Angel investor dinner.  I decided to walk from the Market Street station to the venue, taking the beautiful Cherry Creek Trail.  I arrived at Jim Deters’ incredible Galvanize space, got the full tour from Jim, if you’re ever in Denver you owe it to yourself to visit!  By that point everyone had arrived & we got in the room and Brad got right into the discussion with a brief history of his career followed  by a great, interactive discussion about angel investing.  Elizabeth Kraus wrote a great post about the evening here, great reading for anyone interested in the topic.  I also dug up this Jason Calcanis interview with Brad that covers a number of the topics we discussed.

After dinner I bummed a ride back to Boulder with our host Bart Lorang.  We had a brief discussion about his upcoming keynote at BigSkyDevDevCon then I asked him a bunch of questions about his amazing startup FullContact and we spent the ride talking about that and our philosophies on entrepreneurialism, software development and building teams.  I’d been wanting to meet Bart since we first connected on Twitter when I saw his Paid, Paid Vacation story.  I’ve worked at and with a bunch of companies.  The ones that stand out (and killed it from a success perspective) all had great people.  Great people can have any job they want, so they choose to work in companies with great cultures.  Building great cultures is HARD.  You have to care about the people as humans, learn about their hopes & dreams, skills and flaws, then use that knowledge to weave them into the tapestry of our company’s art.  You also have to be transparent, and be you, not some facsimile of what you think people expect in a leader. Bart clearly has this figured out, check out the presentation he used to announce this program here.

On Friday, I spent the morning at TechStars again then had a great lunch with the TechStars staff and Sarah Jane Coffey, the community cultivator for Global Accelerator Network.  We had a great discussion around accelerator models for various locations & communities and what worked / didn’t as well as some specific things we could try in Bozeman based on the stage of our ecosystem.  On return to TechStars I got to spend some time with founder David Cohen, asking questions about the origins and evolution of the organization.

Overall, it was an incredible 72 hours of learning that will help guide activities here in Bozeman – thanks to everyone I met during the visit!

The post Learning from Boulder & Denver appeared first on StartupBozeman.

I took the leap at the end of April last year, this weekend I took stock of what I’ve accomplished and decided to write it up in the hopes of inspiring others who may be thinking about taking this path.

First, a couple of disclaimers:

• If you are going to head down this road & are in a relationship, make damn sure that your significant other is on board and has some sense of what to expect.  It will be scary, exhilarating, frustrating and incredible by turns & you both need to be fully committed for it to work.  It’s likely to feel something like this:

• I also STRONGLY recommend that you get a copy of Brad Feld’s book, Startup Life and each of you read & discuss it.  I owe Brad a post about the book & am way overdue (sorry Brad, it’s next in the queue).  Do that by February 2nd and you have a shot at the opportunity of a lifetime!
• Ensure that you are in a financial postion to succeed.  Figure out what you think it will take to do it, double that and add half.  Think about when you  expect to see revenue coming in and add a year to it.  I was in a unique postion, having joined a very successful startup, RightNow Technologies, relatively early and rode it through the growth curve to about 1,100 people that ended in an acquisition by Oracle.  I wasn’t in a financial position to retire (nor did I want to) but having saved wisely through the arc of my business career and thanks to stock options from the exit I had a cushion that allowed me to make the leap,

When I made the decision I had three high level goals I wanted to accomplish:

1) Help the burgeoning startup community in Bozeman and across the state of Montana along the trajectory of growth, learning from the Startup Revolution that is going across the US and around the world while resisting the temptation to copy what is happening in other places ala the Silicon X meme that is all too prevalent today.  Every community is unique, that’s a big part of the strength & potential, copying from others is not a road to success.

2) Find a way to use my passion for teaching to help our school system and local students see the real-world side of what they are learning.  Bozeman has an excellent school system  but can benefit from private enterprise bringing in real world examples of how what they teach is applied in business.

3) Found or co-found a startup so I could experience the “full stack” of the experience – entity formation, market validation, product development, figuring out the funding, launching product and growing a company.

To this end, I divided my time across these three goals and was amazed to see how much I could get done outside the hierarchy where all time is productive and there are no unnecessary meetings, conference calls or powerpoint presentations requested.

Here’s the list of stuff :

StartupBozeman

• This blog
• A series of entrepreneurs lunches that will continue on a monthly basis this year
• Open Coffee Club
• A mailing list that is now around 100 people interested in growing the network in Bozeman and across Montana
• Some good press on our efforts

Montana Programmers (there’s a whole big team here, I’m the evangelist & not much of coder either … <G>):

• Arranged for Brad Feld to speak about Startup Communities at a meetup during his trip here for  a marathon, here’s a trailer for the book:

• Worked on the core team that launched BigSkyDevCon, Montana’s first statewide technology conference that drew over 100 people

• Helped grow the organization to over 620 people statewide (from 8 in 2008), expanding to Helena, Billings, Great Falls and Kalispell

On the education front, my goal of getting software development into Bozeman High School took a first big step this year, teaching one group of students coding and another product management and marketing as we worked on our entry for the Verizon Innovative App Challenge:

This is just the beginning, students self-select into this class over lunchtime on Thursdays without getting credit, based on our success the school has decided to incorporate it into a for-credit class next year  - more to come!

I also joined the organizing team of Bob Clay, Nathan Stephens, Dawn McGee, Mike Archer and Liz Marchi for Montana’s first StartupWeekend in Missoula, it was an incredible experience with over  100 people registered, 35 of whom pitched ideas which resulted in 12 teams being formed and some amazing outcomes, you can read about it here, here and here!  Critical to our success was our Startup Weekend organizer Sheikh Shuvo.

Toward my goal of doing the full stack startup, I helped my incredible friend and (now) business partner Ryan Stout raise funding to productize an incredibly powerful machine learning system he , his brother and a friend of his had built.  We launched the first phase of that via the free Facebook app Social Me and have a new product coming out in February.

In parallel, we started another hardware & software idea from scratch based on a consumer problem I had experienced, more on that soon!

On the basis of what I’ve been doing & my past history, the College of Business at Montana State University asked me to be their Entrepreur in Residence for the spring semester of 2013 – I’m honored to be selected and excited to get into the program and work with students that have their sights set on a career as an entrepreneur!

Most recently, the Big Sky Weekly newspaper did a nice write-up that captures the essence of what I set out to do with StartupBozeman, there is still much work to do & as Brad Feld points out, it’s a 20 year journey.

Throughout the journey I met many, many people from across Montana that inspired me to no end with their energy, passion, creativity, salt of the earth work ethic and willingness to share their time, ideas and skills to help build the flat network that is so critical to Montana’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

In the end, if you’re thinking about taking the leap and you’ve thought through the points I outlined at the beginning of the post, you might be ready to try it – I think you’ll be surprised at how things fall into place…

The post Take a leap, you might surprise yourself! appeared first on StartupBozeman.

Shortly after we moved to Bozeman in 1999 I was asked to join the advisory board of the business education advisory committee at Bozeman High School. I am, by nature, an impatient person and the fact that this team met once a year was a warning flag for me given the fast changing pace of the technology world. The board was filled with great people, in particular Sandy Wood and Cynthia Redmond.  By definition, teachers are working for below market rates at a difficult and often thankless job that is one of the most important for the future of America & they thought my experience would be helpful so I accepted the postion. For me the pace and the constraints of any hierarchy are frustrating, but the end game was critical and everyone’s heart was in the right place so I stuck with it.

Cutting to the chase, we made a number of improvements along the way, but more in the nature of evolution vs. the revolution I was looking for. That all changed last year with the appearance of a new player on the team, a phenomenally dedicated catalyst who put her reputation and her career on the line based on a request from her students. Her name is Kerri Cobb, she’s a shining example of what can be accomplished when you think big, go (way) outside your comfort zone and ask for help in areas where you don’t have expertise.

Kerri led the charge for significant change in the program for teaching kids technology in concert with local entrepreneurs. There wasn’t time to get the program into the curriculum, so she gathered the group and asked if they would give up lunch once a week to achieve their goals. This is a tough ask in the demanding world of High School, the future entrepreneurs rose to the challenge.

We now have 15-20 students who show up every Thursday, 2/3 of them want to learn programming, and are being mentored by my good friend & amazing technologist Chris Omland.

When we did the initial interview of the coders, they all wanted to learn Java, C or assembly language – not what we expected! Turns out that the goal was to write mods for Minecraft, so that’s the track Chris has them on, teaching them software development principles, tools and best practices along the way.

The other third are (though they didn’t know it) are future product managers and marketers. This team is being mentored by another amazing person, my friend Emmy Chuck.

Emmy’s crew had done some incredible work before we even arrived on the scene. In classic product management fashion (though they didn’t know it) they had identified the product need (mobile app for the school), surveyed 400 students to gather requirements, skipped straight to agile by creating a wireframe of the app (we had to explain what a wireframe was, they had done it purely on instinct) and were trying to figure out the next step.

At this point, as so often happens when you move towards a goal, opportunity arrived in the form of a flyer about the Verizon Innovative App Challenge.  The contest provides some pretty interesting prizes including $10,000 that support a longer term plan we have for this team

Word got out into the community about the work we were doing & we started getting offers of help and got a nice writeup in our local paper, the Bozeman Chronicle.

The team worked hard  on the contest, which required creating a video and writing an essay.  They gave up lunches, time outside of school and the entire day on January 2nd to finish the video and meet the deadline – just like it happens in the real world!

The video was an incredible team effort, and the result was amazing:

The project was hard work for the team, through the process they learned much about each other, teamwork, technology, and the world of business.

The story is not over yet (contest results will be announced at the state level in late February and at the national level in March – stay tuned for an update) and the school has decided to formalize the program as part of next year’s curriculum!

It’s been an incredible experience for everyone involved, it couldn’t have happened without Kerri, Chris, Emmy, the support of Bozeman Superintendent of Schools Rob Watson and the leadership team at Bozeman High, particularly Ken Gibson who has been our advocate and champion.

The post Give, and get a nearly infinite return appeared first on StartupBozeman.

After reading Brad’s post, I vowed to read the book again through my older, more experienced eyes.  I’ve now (re)read it twice & am riffing on Brad’s post, hopefully you will find it useful…

Jonathan reminds me a lot of another of my heroes, Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead.  Both are self-contained beings driven by a vision to constantly push the envelope of what’s possible, regardless of conventional wisdom, alienation, or the seeming impossibility of their quest.

I’m going to pull some direct quotes from the book and relate them to what I consider the driving forces of entrepreurialism:

“Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon?” – By definition, entrepreneurs see things that others don’t, are driven to make them reality and are willing to do whatever it takes to see their vision through regardless of what others think.

“Jonathan Seagull exploded in midair and smashed down into a brick-hard sea.” - Throughout the book Jonathan experiments, fails (often painfully) , recovers and tries again, core skills that any entrepreneur must get comfortable with on the long road to success.

“A falcon’s short wings.  That’s the answer!” – Great entrepreneurs tune into their inner voice, thinking through possible paths to success, then iterating through them until they find an approach they think will work and experimenting until they get to success.

“Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short…” – Having lived in the corporate world for a long time I came to learn that these three elements are core, unsolvable problems with the hierarchical system, ones that are finally (and frighteningly) coming to light as that world devolves and the flat, networked world begins to replace it.  Conversely, the flat, networked world that is emerging eliminates this as people follow their dreams and only work with others that share them.

“One school is finished and the time has come for another to begin.” – For those of you still living in some form of the hierarchical world (corporate, academic, or government), it is time to rethink, either how you can rebuild your role (perhaps as an intrapreneur) in that broken world or whether it is time to take the leap into a new one as an entrepreneur.

“For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do…” – This one speaks for itself, if you are not spending every waking moment of every day doing something you are wildly passionate about, you are missing out on the best that life has to offer.

“Instead of being enfeebled by age, the elder had been empowered by it…” – I strongly believe that every entrepreneur has a duty to use what we have learned on life’s journey to mentor those that follow us, as we were mentored by those that went before us.

“You need to keep finding yourself each day, that real, unlimited Fletcher Seagull.” – Insatiable curiosity is one of the core traits of an entrepreneur, being a lifelong learner an essential entrepreneurial skill.

Echoing Brad’s advice, I’d recommend taking time to read this book, with one addition – do it somewhere outside of your conventional work environment.  The first couple of times I picked it up, tyranny of the urgent got in the way.  The two times I was successful in both reading and absorbing it were outdoors, where the constraints are gone and your imagination can run free…

The post Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Entrepreneur appeared first on StartupBozeman.

The Boulder Thesis on successful startup communities has four tenets:

• Led by Entrepreneurs
• Take a long term view
• Be inclusive
• Engage the entire entrepreneurial stack

Over the summer Brad visited Missoula and did a presentation of his view on Startup Communities for Montana Programmers.  During that, he talked about the role Open Coffee Club played in the rise of Boulder’s startup ecosystem (you can see the video here, the relevant sections are at 38:48 and 42:31, I’d encourage you to watch the whole thing, it’s inspring and a goldmine of entrepreneurial information).

With that in mind Bozeman’s Open Coffee Club launches a week from today, details are here.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Open Coffee Club concept, you can find a description here and the site is here.

If you’re interested in helping grow the Bozeman startup community, good resources for learning more are Brad’s:

Startup Revolution site

Startup Communities book

Look forward to seeing you at Open Coffee club!

The post Startup Communities – Open Coffee Club appeared first on StartupBozeman.

It all started with an email I received several weeks ago from Kellie Danielson, the president and CEO of Montana West Economic Development Corporation in Kalispell.  Despite the 6 hour drive from Bozeman, I was enthralled with the idea of spending some time getting to know the entrepreneurs in this beautiful area, home to Montana catalysts, innovators & entrepreneurs Liz Marchi and Mike Kazmier, who teamed up to deliver a dynamite keynote for BigSkyDevCon’s inaugural year!

As it happened, the family was in need of a vacation & we decided to visit Flathead lake.  Having been in Montana for almost thirteen years and not having been here seemed, well, dumb, so off we went.  After lunch one day, wandering down the street in search of a coffee shop, we passed by Montana West & I stopped in to say hello.  Kellie and Kim Morisaki were both gracious and undaunted by my drive-by visit so we picked a date a few days out!

It was an impromptu, energy filled morning at Sykes Market (a great entrepreneurial story and a fitting venue for this gathering!).  Not knowing much about what was going on in the area I had expected a modest turnout, I was both surprised and thrilled to walk into a room filled with 25 attendees from business, university and government.  It epitomized for me the “everyone gets a seat at the table” thinking that makes entrepreneurial communities successful.

Kim opened with a short intro which I augmented a bit with some background on my work history.  We followed that with a discussion of what I was doing with the “give with no intention of getting anything in return” time I’ve carved out as part of my new career as an entrepreneur and an explanation of StartupBozeman’s genesis and goals.  Given the level of interest around organizing and driving the local startup scene, I followed that with an overview of some key points from Brad Feld’s soon to be released book “Startup Communities“, particularly as it relates to the network vs. the hierarchy and the “just do some stuff” mentality that is the fundamental requirement for getting the flywheel turning.

There were some incredible stories spanning a variety of industries, I’ll go on record here to Cortes four of them (along with Kellie and Kim) into becoming the leaders of the Flathead startup community:

Reed Gregerson, President of the ZaneRay Group, recently voted one of the best places to work in America by Outside Magazine.

Kevin L. Waldher, Vice President/Business Development at Zinc Air, their story is highlighted in Pathways to Prosperity, a great explanation of the benefits of living and working in a beautiful area.

Tyler Weber, founder and president of Shift Auction, a fast growing startup solving an important problem for the medical community.

Mike Kazmier, CTO of AvailTVN, whose story I’ve mentioned previously, they are the poster child for figuring out a way to build a global business from the middle of nowhere starting with just grit and determination.

This community has all the elements of a great startup ecosystem & I’m looking forward to see it grow!

The post The Flathead Valley – Pathways to Prosperity! appeared first on StartupBozeman.

It’s often been said that in life and in business you get what you negotiate, not what you deserve.

Alan Rassaby, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Company Secretary at RightNow Technologies for 13 years presented “The Art of Negotiation” at our monthly lunch & learn.  Mr Rassaby has broad experience from his work in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.  Alan formerly worked Powerhouse Technologies, Inc. and Anchor Gaming , Inc. His presentation covered 10 tips along with various examples from doing deals in business.

He’s graciously provided his presentation below and it’s chock-full of great tips on how to effectively negotiate better outcomes for your company.

The post The Art of Negotiation by Alan Rassaby appeared first on StartupBozeman.

He nails it on the first page with, “Today, we are in the midst of a massive shift from the hierarchical society that has dominated the industrial era to a networked society that has been emergent throughout the information era.”  This incredible change (think disruptive innovation on a macro scale) is very cathartic as we’re seeing reflected in the job and financial markets.  Having spent the last 30 years in the corporate world watching it slow down and devolve due to the waste inherent in the hierarchical model and then seeing how much more could be accomplished in so little time once freed from the shackles of inefficiency I wholly subscribe to this line of thinking.

The book is a rich and detailed map for anyone participating in the startup ecosystem & is filled with practical, executable information to get things moving and grow the community.  In his usual style, Brad is direct & doesn’t pull any punches about who is driving the bus and who is taking the ride, a concept he calls “leaders and feeders”.  This is an important distinction for the leaders (as I’ve seen over the last few months) as everyone who is standing on the sidelines wants to get in the game.  As he points out, the community needs to be inclusive (everyone gets a voice) but also cognizant of the fact that there are those who do stuff and those whose efforts support the doing.

My three biggest takeaways were: 1) Just do some stuff 2) Give before you get and 3) Don’t get caught up (as I was) in worrying about funding for the nascent companies that make up the startup ecosystem.  The first one seems obvious but it has been my experience that those who have lived in the hierarchical world are inculcated with the need to seek approval before acting, forget that!  I posted about the second one yesterday, as far as the third one goes I believe that falls into the bucket of, “there is always money available for good ideas and teams.”

There is a wealth of information in the book’s 14 chapters, key points from a few chapters that resonated with me:

Chapter 3 – Principles of a Vibrant Startup Community

• Led by Entrepreneurs
• Has a Long Term Commitment
• Fosters a Philosophy of Inclusiveness
• Engages the Entire Entrepreneurial Stack

Chapter 5 – Attributes of Leadership in a Startup Communit

• Be Inclusive
• Play a Non Zero-Sum Game
• Be Mentorship Driven
• Have Porous Boundaries
• Give People Assignments
• Experiment and Fail Fast

Chapter 6 – Classical Problems

• The Patriarch Problem
• Complaining About Capital
• Being Too Reliant on Government
• Making Short Term Commitmens
• Having a Bias Against Newcomers
• Attempt by a Feeder to Control the Community
• Creating Artificial Geographic Boundaries
• Playing a Zero Sum Game
• Having a Culture of Risk Aversion
• Avoiding People Because of Past Failures

Chapter 13 – Myths about Startup Communities

• We Need to be Like Silicon Valley
• We Need More Local Venture Capital
• Angel Investors Must Be Organized

Every other chapter in the book is filled with valuable information, I just picked the above given the stage we are at in growing the Bozeman community.

If there is one thing I would add to the book, it would be an expansion on the mentoring theme that already permeates it, but does not specifically call out (what I feel is) our duty to reach further down into the educational stack and help get excitement about STEM (particularly for girls) more deeply ingrained at the K-12 level.  I’ve been actively involved over the years in Junior Achievement as well as teaching robotics at the middle school level and sitting on the technology advisory board of Bozeman High School for the last 12 years.  I feel strongly that we need to encourage this at an earlier age (before our standardized system designed to produce factory workers crushes the creativity out of the kids) and am always amazed at both how excited and how adaptable they are to these important subjects.

The close of the book is as good as the start – Do or Do Not, There is No Try.

“My favorite thing about startups is that they do not require anyone’s permission.  Great entrepreneurs just start doing things.  These are the same entrepreneurs who can be leaders of their startup community.”

Amen to that, now go get started!

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