They are no longer limited to historically well-known entrepreneurial regions and large cities such as Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, and Seattle.
Although many of these cities have a history of entrepreneurial activity, their growth, development, and importance in this economic cycle is unique. The way startup communities are created and evolve has changed profoundly as a result of our networked society. I strongly believe that startup communities can be built in any city and the future economic progress of cities, regions, countries, and society at large is dependent on creating, building, and sustaining startup communities over a long period of time.
This book will show you how, both in theory and in practice. Through this book, I use the Boulder startup community as an example. However, by not trying to create a history, I can cover enough ground to give you a feeling for how things evolved, while I focus on the underlying principles that you can apply to building your startup community. These five startup communities exist in parallel universes. My time and expertise have been focused on the tech segment.
I periodically have intersection points with the other startup communities through friends, events, and an occasional personal investment in a company outside of tech, but my understanding, experience, and engagement with these other segments are limited. My hope is that you do not view the use of Boulder here as Boulder tooting its own horn. I use Boulder as an example of a lasting and vibrant startup community because I know it extremely well at least one segment.
This approach is called synecdoche, where the part stands for the whole. There are many things the Boulder startup community can do better and many more for it to discover as we continue on our journey; my hope is that by exploring it in depth it helps you with your journey in your startup community.
Although this book is not a textbook, nor is it an academic treatise laden with footnotes and references, it is a serious book. My goal is to give you a framework and tools to create and enhance a startup community in your city. In November , I left Boston and moved to Boulder. Two months before I turned 30, Amy told me she was moving to Boulder and I was welcome to join her if I wanted to.
Neither of us wanted to live in the Bay Area, which was a logical choice given the work I do, but we wanted either ocean or mountains wherever we lived. After six months, we loved Boulder and never looked back. When we moved here, we knew only one person, and he and his wife moved away a few months later. However, within a year we had already found a community of friends and entrepreneurs and were quickly learning our way around town.
Boulder is a small city; as of , there are less than , actual residents with , people in the extended metro area, which includes the neighboring towns of Superior, Broomfield, Lafayette, Longmont, and Lyons. Boulder is small enough that you can get your mind around the whole place but big enough to be interesting. Boulder is a smart city. The University of Colorado Boulder is located right in the middle of town, and students, faculty, and staff comprise about 30 percent of the population of Boulder.
Other alternative education centers, such as Naropa, call Boulder their home. I define entrepreneurial density as follows:. Although there are not a lot of local venture capital VC investors active in Colorado, there are plenty of VCs from around the United States who view companies in Colorado as attractive to invest in, with many of these companies located in Boulder. Finally, Boulder is an incredibly inclusive community. Although there is some competition between companies, especially over talent, the community is defined by a strong sense of collaboration and philosophy of giving before you get.
If you contribute, you are rewarded, often in unexpected ways. I moved to Boulder in This, however, was not the beginning of the rise of the startup community in Boulder; the seeds were planted a long time ago and there was a significant amount of entrepreneurial success in and around Boulder between and It was not by accident that a university town nestled at the base of the Flatirons would emerge as the densest cluster of technology startups in the world—it was the result of a generation of entrepreneurs drawn to the region first by business necessity, who stayed by choice.
Together, these successful companies spawned an industry of home-grown biotech companies to compete with Syntex, which based its manufacturing in Boulder, and Ciba-Geigy, which had acquired Geneva Generics, a local generic pill manufacturer. Based on the work of these entrepreneurs, additional pharma successes in this period included Hauser Chemical Research, Somatagen, and Nexstar Pharmaceuticals. A small but devoted group of venture capitalists stood behind these early entrepreneurs and helped put Boulder on the national map of startups.
John Hill, a former StorageTek investor, and Carl Carman, a longtime IBM executive, teamed up in the s to form Hill Carman ventures, which backed many of the technology successes in the region. Finally, Jim Roser, a renowned East Coast investment banker, moved to Boulder in the s and provided a critical link to capital for a number of local companies. Together, these five individuals pioneered the venture capital industry in Boulder.
When I first arrived in Boulder, I had no work expectations. At the time I was investing my own money, which I made from the sale of my first company, in startups around the country, and I was spending my time in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Because I was already crisscrossing the country, I figured that having a home base in the middle of the country would make my life easier. Amy and I found Boulder to be beautiful, and, within six months of moving there from Boston, we bought a house just outside of Boulder behind Eldorado Springs State Park, where we still live today. As I got to know Boulder better, I realized it was perfectly configured for the entrepreneurial revolution that took place around the first wave of the commercial Internet.
It was a college town, full of smart, independently minded, and intellectually curious people. As I sat in a bar talking to the one person I knew in town, waiting for Amy to join us for dinner, the guy sitting next to me overheard our conversation and said, I have a friend who is starting an Internet company.
Would you like to meet him? I did! That person ended up being Andrew Currie, a local entrepreneur who was starting a business with Brian Makare that became Email Publishing, my first Boulder investment. Andrew introduced me to a few of his entrepreneurial friends, and before long I was getting to know the local scene. I discovered that there was a big divide in Boulder between the entrepreneurs and the investors.
The newest generation of entrepreneurs who emerged in the mids had a fierce bias to just do things. Open navigation menu. Close suggestions Search Search. User Settings. Skip carousel. Carousel Previous. Carousel Next. What is Scribd? Explore Ebooks. Bestsellers Editors' Picks All Ebooks. Explore Audiobooks. But many ideas remain just ideas, and many dreams just dreams.
Startup Mixology is first and foremost a book aboutturning your ideas into action. From the cofounder of media companyTech Cocktail, a veteran entrepreneur and investor who was namedone of the most connected people in tech, this book covers thebasic "ingredients" of winning entrepreneurship.
No abstracttheories here — it shows you how to tackle everything fromidea generation to launch to marketing to funding and how to startgetting things done. Once you've taken that first step, the journey has only begun. Startup Mixology tells it like it is — and it's noteasy! You'll learn about the harsh reality of starting up: whathappens when you offend your customers, get no attention, or runout of money.
These are the stories you don't always hear in themedia. In the end, Startup Mixology is an optimistic book. Youcan do this — and you can have fun doing it, too. Every chapter also shows you how to enjoy the journey along the way- because if you don't, what's the point of it all? From cakebaking to workations to llama parades, you'll learn howentrepreneurs around the world stay sane, reduce stress, andcelebrate the positive. This may seem fluffy, but it's actually oneof the biggest secrets of successful startups.
Hear in their ownwords how they survived the startup phase, and learn from thestraightforward and conversational Frank Gruber, who has metthousands of entrepreneurs and watched them grow theirbusinesses. In many ways, entrepreneurship will be the most difficultundertaking of your career. But if you can find the right balanceof hard work, support, and celebration, it can also be the mostrewarding.
Startup Mixology takes you through the wholeprocess from start to finish, so you can begin the incomparablejourney of turning your great ideas into great startups.
If there's a software startup company in your developer heart, this is the book that will make it happen. The Web Startup Success Guide is your one-stop shop for all of the answers you need today to build a successful web startup in these challenging economic times. It covers everything from making the strategic platform decisions as to what kind of software to build, to understanding and winning the Angel and venture capital funding game, to the modern tools, apps and services that can cut months off development and marketing cycles, to how startups today are using social networks like Twitter and Facebook to create real excitement and connect to real customers.
Bob Walsh, author of the landmark Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality, digs deep into the definition, financing, community—building, platform options, and productivity challenges of building a successful and profitable web application today. This book responds to the growing demand for a scientific approach to the concept of startups, which are a manifestation of the digital revolution and an innovation-driven economy.
With a focus on digital enterprises, the author presents empirical research carried out over 4 years in collaboration with the Startup Poland Foundation, and provides a developed universal definition of a startup. This book highlights the necessity of a clear definition, in order for startups to be treated as a permanent economic phenomenon, rather than a temporary whim.
Addressing the crucial need for an effective startup management methodology and more education on this form of entrepreneurship, Digital Startups in Transition Economies offers guidance for those researching entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as entrepreneurs, public institutions, startup accelerators and technology transfer centres.
Did you observe new Startups burning Millions in just a few days? This is what happened more than once in recent years, however sometimes startups are successful. If you are seriously thinking about starting your own business you need to give deep consideration to a lot of factors before taking the plunge. The distinctive feature of startups is also their organisational culture, which manifests in the creation of open communities , diversity, and belonging to startup ecosystems.
This culture has a global dimension, which is why it can be Startup Weekend's greatest impact can be felt on the community level.
As much as we like to think The unsexy category is too long to list, but is defined by people working on important problems without much media buzz or major startup community attention behind them. You are all outside the mainstream, not because you are weird
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