

Is the startup community relying too much on fate? Connecting the outliers - mikepk
http://tenzerolab.com/blog/is-the-startup-community-relying-too-much-on-fate-connecting-the-outliers/

======
ryanelkins
I've been involved recently in a local incubator YCombinator/Tech-Stars type
program (BoomStartup in Salt Lake City). For a while they would have some sort
of get together every Friday (mostly to discuss the program and let people
meet those involved). I thought it was interesting that the vast majority of
people that showed up were "business people". While I'm sure some of them are
legitimately worthy of being called a business person, for most of them, that
really just meant "want to start a company and can't code". We also had alot
of issues with people being too paranoid of having their ideas stolen to feel
comfortable talking about their ideas.

I'd love to see someone come up with a good way for the right people with the
right mindset to come together and socialize in order to help form teams.

~~~
mikepk
Regular socializing is a first good step but it seems like the real filter,
the way to get at the people you want, is to get people _doing_. When you're
actually working on a project (even a small project) you learn pretty quickly
who actually gets things done and who wants to be the "idea guy", occupy
volume, and waste precious oxygen.

I think as technology / hacker types we tend to undervalue the business side
of the equation though (I know I did). My experience with my first startup was
made a lot more difficult by the fact that no one in the company was really
business/marketing/sales focused. There are valuable business skills that can
help an early stage company but the question is, how do we filter and find the
real business "makers".

I think we can come up with ways to move people's various projects forward by
small increments. I led a discussion at Boston BarCamp on this topic and
someone brought up the "don't want people to steal my idea" thing. I made the
person mad by saying that I wasn't interested in people like that. Ideas are
ways to _start_ the conversation/process, they're not an end in and of
themselves. I find people like that are (usually) not really serious about
building something.

------
mikepk
I'm working on hacking the startup process. I'm focused on the Boston area but
I don't think the point in this essay is specific to Boston.

------
failquicker
I had my own idea for dealing with this phenomenon. After reading your post I
decided to try and make it a reality instead of an idea.

MiniLeap: A pickup game for startups

www.MiniLeap.com

~~~
cianestro
I think minileap has some merit in a slightly different arena so to speak. I'm
presuming the winners go on to polish off what they started while the
"community at large" follows? I think this would be a fun way for hackers who
are already friends to kill a weekend--kind of like Apple's insomnia contests
for film students but for coders. My two suggestions would be 1) to think
about incorporating some sort of money pot where you require users to submit
like $10-20 to make things interesting, and 2) I wouldn't rule out there being
two programmers per team.

Best of all, developers get to indulge all those little ideas floating around
in their heads, so even if they didn't win the pot they still come away with a
feeling of release. Basically, the equivalent of the one-night stand for
startuppers :)

HN please review minileap!!!

------
cianestro
Been working on this project for a while with a friend. Just a prototype I'm
making to match people based on their resources. It's really barebones right
now (full documentation should be up soon) but thought this was an organic
moment to drop a shameless plug. Should be able to match programmers (or
anyone) based on the required skills the startup needs.

link: <http://kxs.miceswitch.com/>

Hope the little guy can be of some use to HN.

------
carbocation
You leave us with a great question at the end of that essay. I'm interested in
learning about how you plan to hack the startup process, especially here in
Boston.

~~~
mikepk
I've got some high level ideas, but most of them revolve around getting people
working together, especially in a common space. I think physical proximity is
important but another potential key is defining clear agreements that reduce
the natural inhibitions we have to working on each others projects (especially
across communities, like biz types and hackers). We have talent and passion, I
think what we're lacking is trust. You can't build trust over a beer and a
15min conversation at a networking event (IMHO).

~~~
necrecious
I thought there was some startup labs and incubator spaces around here?

I keep hearing about something like it at OpenCoffee and Mass Inno.

~~~
mikepk
It might have been me :), I've been going to OpenCoffee a lot talking about
this idea. I think this fills a gap in the ecosystem between social events and
seed accelerators (that are looking for more fully formed startup teams).

