Guidewire » entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs Create Jobs: Stand Up and Be Counted

chrisshipley — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:57:04 +0000

As I write this, the President of the United States is taking his place at the front of a joint session of Congress to present his jobs plan for America. A critical speech to a supremely critical audience – the Republican caucus, most certainly, and the American people at large. He will talk about extending unemployment benefits, tax breaks, and public works projects. His critics will talk about bigger tax breaks and cutting away at regulation. And some pols may even pay lip service to small businesses and entrepreneurs as the engines of job creation.

Meanwhile, all across the country in small offices, dining rooms converted into command centers, co-work spaces, coffee shops, libraries and just about anywhere an entrepreneur can jump onto a WiFi network, startups are going about the work of actually creating jobs.

I was talking about this reality to my colleague yesterday morning and the light went on. The only way we can move from the recipients of lip service to an empowered seat at the table is to actually show the nation exactly the impact we have. So, we went to work to create Startupjobscount.org. It’s a very simple Web app that asks entrepreneurs to register the number of jobs they have created. We’ll keep a running total, as well as roll call of the nation’s Jobs Creators.

No matter what market or industry you are in, please take a minute now to be counted as the Jobs Creator that you are. Let’s show Congress exactly who’s doing the hard work of putting America to work.

Special thanks to Dierdre Gibson, Guidewire Group’s senior developer, and designer Tom Loveman for scrambling to put this site together so quickly. StartupJobsCount.org went from idea to launch in under 30 hours.

A New Era for Guidewire Group

chrisshipley — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:21:21 +0000

This morning, I kicked off my 24^th and last DEMO conference. By the end of the day tomorrow, Venture Beat’s Matt Marshall will be the sole executive producer of the DEMO Conferences and I’ll be on to something new.

History shows that companies created in down economies are just as likely to be successful as those started when times are good. According to research done by the Kauffman Foundation, 51% percent of companies on the Fortune 500 list between 1929 and the present were started during a recession, a bear market, or both. Nearly half the companies listed on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies in 2008 were founded during an economic downturn.

It’s true that funding is less available and some people are unwilling to leave a good job to start a company. It’s also true that recessions can put an emotional damper on startups. Starting a business is hard work regardless of the economy and this economy doesn’t make it any easier.

Still, many entrepreneurs – and I suspect all of those who are launching products at DEMO today — see even greater opportunity during a recession. They figure that the larger established companies that might pose competition have just as many woes as a brand new startup, which needs less money, can be more nimble, and doesn’t have to answer to Wall Street.

When unemployment rates are high – as they are now – there are really good people available to work in a startup, people who might feel that a startup poses less risk than it might have at other times.

Perhaps most importantly, startups can have a broad impact on the economic recovery and growth by stimulating innovation, and creating new industries and new jobs.

Of the more than 600,000 entrepreneurs in the United States – and many more around the world – who have or will start a company this year, some small number of them will in fact make it to the Fortune 500 list in 10 or 20 years. And a few hundred will be on the Inc. 500 just a few years from now. They will have created jobs and economic value not just for themselves, but for their communities near and far.

Bottom line: Now is a great time to start a company.

In many ways, that’s what we are doing at Guidewire Group: we are re-starting our company with a clear, sharp focus on entrepreneurs. We have always held to a couple of core principles. We believe in the power of entrepreneurship to drive the economy and, as we move on from DEMO, we’re devoting all our time and energy to helping entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports them. We believe that when entrepreneurs succeed, the entire ecosystem benefits from that success and so we align ourselves with startups to help ensure their success.

Today, Guidewire Group is taking advantage of this unique economic environment to launch new initiatives that will deliver on this promise: the Guidewire Assessment Framework, Studio G, and Innovate!100.

The Guidewire Startup Assessment Framework assesses a young company’s business viability, business and product execution, team, and business model. We developed this consistent, objective assessment framework based on interviews with more than 30,000 startups over the past 25 years. It is the codification of the selection criteria and methodology I’ve used to select companies to launch at DEMO over the last 13 years.

The Innovate!100 is a ranked order list of the most promising early-stage technology, media and telecom startups in the world. The Innovate!100 will be selected from among hundreds of eligible startups by Guidewire Group analysts and a world class network of advisors using the Startup Assessment Framework during the course of the Innovate!2010 Program.

Mike Sigal, Guidewire Group’s co-founder and president, will be leading those initiatives and other soon-to-be announced products, as I turn my full energies to Studio G.

Studio G is a high-performance workspace for high-potential startups. It is both a physical workspace and a private Web community, guided by the key principles that innovative technology needs business innovation to reach its full potential; that smart people working collaboratively in dynamic workspaces with experts, mentors and community can build business value more rapidly; and that collaborative creative process, coupled with performance-driven metrics, drives innovation and business success.

Studio G is a best-practices community of smart, talented entrepreneurs, mentors, service providers, and investors who work virtually and physically together to rapidly build value into emerging businesses. Engagement in Studio G moves companies from market validation to customer adoption, wrapping smart business strategy around innovative teams and technologies. Studio G works with both early-stage companies and established-brand spinouts to help them get it right from the start when making the critical transition from developing a product to marketing, selling and creating other business opportunities.

I’m thrilled to usher in this new era for Guidewire Group and hope you’ll watch this space, as we share more about these initiatives in the coming days.

TheUnFunded.com: A Conversation Starter?

chrisshipley — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:10:32 +0000

I’ve always known that Josh Kopelman is smart, but his April Fools’ prank, TheUnFunded.com, is brilliant.

Had he wanted to open a dialog on the deteriorating relationship between Venture Capitalist and Entrepreneurs he could not have found a better catalyst. While the site was intended as a joke, its coverage and commentary on TechCrunch speaks volumes about the way in which entrepreneurs and investors view one another.

In admitting to the gag, Josh acknowledges the growing divide:

The fact that so many smart people actually believed that such an outlandish site could be legitimate speaks volumes about the state of the relationship between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. . . . while I don’t want to read too much into a silly April Fool’s Day joke, I think it does shine a little light on the level of mistrust and ignorance within the VC/entrepreneur ecosystem.

If the commentary and controversy stirred by TheUnFunded.com is to be believed, entrepreneurs believe most VCs are a waste of skin and VCs believe most entrepreneurs are a waste of time.

Hyperbole to be sure. Still, the dialog does suggest that the co-dependent relationship between entrepreneur and investor is shrouded in misunderstanding and misrepresentation. As much as these firms position themselves as partners and catalysts for great ideas, VCs really aren’t in the business of building companies, except as a vehicle for making money. And there really are only one or two “next Googles” in any given fund life; most startups will be lucky to survive beyond their first 3 years and those that do will be luckier still to provide a respectable exit to their investors. Most of the vituperative commentary, I expect, comes from first-time fund-raisers who believe that because investors have money, they should invest it in their firms. And those who don’t are blindingly stupid for missing the golden opportunity which, frankly, may not be as golden as the next guy and certainly is not likely as golden as the entrepreneur believes.

While Josh intends to take down TheUnFunded at the end of the week, I’d love to see it stay, but as an open, transparent platform for an honest and constructive dialog between investors and entrepreneurs. Because if ever there were an industry that needed more transparency and a lot more trust, it’s this one.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the 'Burgh

chrisshipley — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:08:42 +0000

You don’t have to spend too much time getting to know me before you learn that I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Pittsburgh. Then, Pittsburgh was a gritty mill town. My favorite field trip was to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which I remember as a stately black stone building. In recent years, the building was sandblasted to its original creamy white. Makes me wonder how much soot went through our lungs in those days.

By the mid-seventies, most of the steel workers were laid off. Steel from Japan was much cheaper. The mills along the rivers stopped belching their smoke and, finally, they were torn down. The air improved, but the economy didn’t. Pittsburgh was an industrial town in need of a renaissance. And, like so many cities across the globe, technology would be the renewal.

That was nearly 20 years ago, and Pittsburgh still struggles to be relevant in the global tech economy, and this despite the city’s claim to two world-class universities – Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh – and proximity to dozens of other top private and public colleges (including my own Allegheny College just an hour’s drive up Interstate 79). Pittsburgh has plenty of engineering talent and an entrepreneurial spirit. But its distance from major technology centers hampers the city’s would-be startups from accessing the financial and mentor capital that accelerates business development in other parts of the country. In fact, for all the smarts in the Steel City, I can think of only a small handful of companies with Pittsburgh roots, most recently mSpoke, which launched at DEMOfall 07 and Sim Ops Studio which I wrote about last month.

In one small but important way, that may begin to change. Innovation Works, a State of Pennsylvania program that makes investment in promising startups, has launched AlphaLab, a program and incubator space to catalyze next-generation software, interactive game design and Internet-related businesses. The program puts up to six young companies through an intensive six month program during which AlphaLab provides funding, office space, access to business advisors and other services all with the goal of helping these companies rapidly develop technology, gain customer feedback, and move to commercial product launch.

AlphaLab will create an epicenter for entrepreneurs in Pittsburgh’s South Side neighborhood, an area of the city with the charm and potential of San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood.

Carla and I have written about the importance of entrepreneurial communities that lie beyond Silicon Valley. And I’m convinced that entrepreneurship is the surest path to economic development and renewal. In fact, that’s effectively the theme of Guidewire Group’s Innovate!Europe event, held in Zaragoza, Spain, a city that reminded me of my hometown as it struggled to expand its economic base from a single manufacturing industry to a broad information economy.

These transformations take help, nurturing, and support. So when AlphaLab Jim Jen asked me to join the organizations board of advisors, I immediately agreed. It’s a win/win. The entrepreneurs at AlphaLabs will get some (hopefully) good advice and insight, and I’ll get a first look at some new smart companies along with a reminder that such companies don’t all come from Silicon Valley. Present company excepted, the list of advisors and partners is impressive, and again a reminder that lots of talent lies beyond the spit of land that is the San Francisco Bay peninsula.

The program is too new to know yet how the advisory program will work, but I’ll be sure to let you know about the companies I meet in the Burgh. And if you are one of those companies, get hoppin’: Applications for the first class of AlphaLab companies are due by April 1.

The Flaw Lies Within

carlacthompson — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:53:03 +0000

We try to stay above the fray around here – engaging in back-and-forth with other bloggers doesn’t seem to benefit the reader – but sometimes the posts just write themselves. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, based in Seattle, recently commented on the insularity of Silicon Valley, positing that perhaps one doesn’t have to suffer the hubris – and over-inflated real estate values – of the vaunted tech hub to succeed in technology. Blogger Michael Arrington zinged him for it, suggesting that, “If you don’t think you have what it takes to make it in Silicon Valley, maybe Seattle…is the place for you.” He even goes so far as to insinuate that if you’re not in the Valley, you shouldn’t bother starting a business.

It’s a competitive advantage to be here. And if you aren’t willing to take advantage of every possible advantage to make your crazy startup idea work, perhaps you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.

Emphasis his. And mine, actually. The hubris of this is astounding. What needs to be said here is that without the rest of the country Arrington dismisses so quickly, all the ideas formulated in the Valley are going exactly nowhere. Like it or not – and many in the Valley don’t like it – entrepreneurs in the consumer sector need to be ever mindful of Sally Stay-At-Home and Carl Cubicle (or vice versa). These folks don’t know a Twitter from a Pownce and don’t care to. They’re looking for technology that will make their lives easier; it’s as simple as that. Technology that doesn’t require they spend hours a day online, submitting articles to be dugg and updating statuses. Technology that insiders dismiss as “tacky garbage,” as Gizmodo called the digital picture frames that are selling well at Target and WalMart stores across the country.

This is not a new bandwagon on which I’m jumping. My ongoing (and some say annoying) mantra is to remember the outsiders. That until we recognize and strive to understand the real computing needs of everyday consumers, we can’t truly effect a change in people’s lives. And understanding everyday consumers means getting out of Silicon Valley. The majority of commenters on Arrington’s post echo this sentiment. One in particular hit the nail on the head: “…it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you’re working on something big that has appeal outside the valley.”

There’s one more point I have to make and then I’ll leave this rant. Arrington inadvertently bolstered one of Glenn’s arguments – that no one in the Valley can afford to grow up – with the following:

Making lifestyle choices is fine, but don’t delude yourself into thinking those choices are anything but a tradeoff. If staring at lakes and skiing after work are important to you, don’t pretend to be surprised when your startup doesn’t cut it.

There are many people like me and Glenn who, after networking our asses off in Silicon Valley and bleeding our bank accounts dry for rent, looked around and realized we weren’t happy. That immersing ourselves in startups 24-7 was getting a little old and that – gasp – we wanted to enjoy ourselves. That it turns out you don’t have to pay $1M for a 2 bedroom house that needs major repair and can instead buy a mansion and a T3 line anywhere in the world and still keep a close eye on all things technology.

Silicon Valley is a great environment. It is necessary to make some pilgrimages there when starting a business. It is a thriving hub of ideas that every entrepreneur should experience. But it isn’t the end-all, be-all. I don’t have the time or space to list the market-altering technologies that sprouted elsewhere. It really isn’t necessary; any seasoned entrepreneur will agree: innovation happens between the ears, not between San Francisco and San Jose.

What Does It Take To Be a Venture-Backed CEO?

chrisshipley — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:44:58 +0000

On the evening of March 13, I’ll be moderating a panel of CEOs of VC-backed companies to explore issues of leadership, skills, pressures and balance that every startup CEO faces. I’ve had the pleasure to work with Frederic Lucas-Conwell, principal at Growth Resources, in preparing for the event, and have been impressed with the work he does helping CEOs identify their leadership style and the points of stress between individual style and the requirements of the CEO role.

Frederic uses a quick and simple (at least on the surface) surveying tool to help executives analyze their leadership style in their role as CEO, as well as the style differences in their management team. It’s fascinating stuff. By understanding the points of convergence and divergence, you really can adapt style and expectations to drive to stronger leadership.

In advance of the March 13 event, Frederic is surveying CEOs of VC backed companies to identify points of similarity and strength in startup leadership. Results will compiled anonymously and presented March 13^th at the event, but you’ll have access to your individual results and have the opportunity to glean more understanding from Frederic.

I found my results fascinating, and I’d encourage any VC-backed CEO to participate in the survey. It only takes a few minutes, and you can do it online. To participate please send an email to Frederic Lucas-Conwell and mention that you learned about the survey here.

I’ve known Frederic for many years and I’m confident you’ll extract a lot of valuable learning from the experience.