Welcome to StartWest

StartWest Meeting Tuesday Feb. 23, 2010 in Sheridan

We had a great turnout Tuesday for our panel presentation on Boosting Sales and Service Using Online Technologies.  We saw a lot of new faces, including some folks who were in town for the day to attend an earlier Department of Defense session on the SBIR grant program.  We will get a summary of the presentation materials posted here as soon as we can.  In the meantime, if you attended and have specific questions that you did not get a chance to ask, please post them here and we make best efforts to get you an answer.  If you would like to be notified of future events and you think you may not be on our mailing list yet, you can register for it at the statewide e2e network site:  http://www.uwyo.edu/WTBC/network.html.  And we encourage you all to become Members.  Please email Greg Jordan for membership materials (gregj @ uwyo.edu).

October StartWest

Last Wednesday StartWest had its October meeting.  If you could not make it, you missed a good one!  We had approximately 40 people networking and listening to the evening’s speaker, Mike Thomas.  Mike is currently CEO of the Blue Sky Group.  His background includes several successful business ventures including co-founding a company that sold for over $100 million.

Mike’s presentation was entitled “Top ten things to know to stay in business (how to not screw-up your startup)”.  Many of the things he mentioned are the type of suggestions most of us have heard before but need to be reminded about.  Mike’s casual, confident style kept the presentation from seeming like a lecture and made it feel more like advice from a trusted mentor.  He mixed his thoughts in with real world examples that stimulated lots of questions and discussion.

Here’s Mike’s Top Ten:

1. Your original idea will not work.  Business must be flexible and ready to change when this happens.
2. It will cost 300% more than your best estimate.  Be overly conservative with cash.  Be optimistic with customers and pessimistic with cash flow.
3. It’s the people, stupid. Hire quality people and only quality people.  One “great” person is better than a dozen “good” people.  Always hire people smarter than yourself.
4. Not all money is the same.  Be careful where you raise money and know that there will always be conditions you did not expect.
5. Generate enough cash to pay your bills.  Become really good at managing cash flow and set up your entire business around cash needs.
6. Make a profit.  Profit allows you to stay in business, grow and invest, and keeps peace in your relationships.
7. Either grow or die.  If you are not growing you are dying.  Change and adaptation are critical to growing a business.
8. Most businesses fail from ego or greed.
9. Do it yourself.  No pretty offices and staff.  Learn to do everything you possibly can yourself so that you know everything.
10. Don’t believe the hype.  Your own hype or anyone else’s can be detrimental, look at the facts.

Mike summarized with the point that building a business can be the best time of your life, enjoy it!

Top Ten Things reprinted with permission from Mike Thomas, CEO the Blue Sky Group

My first StartWest…

My name is Greg Jordan and I’m a newbie. 

Not only am I new to the Wyoming Technology Business Center but I am new to the networking organizations: e2e and StartWest.  I took over for Heidi Peterson when she left in August and this will be my first opportunity to attend a StartWest event.   

It looks to be a great event, too.  We have a speaker lined up (Mike Thomas) who has “been there and done that” to the level that most of us with the entrepreneurial spark only dream of doing. 

I have to admit that I have not even dreamed of doing what he did:  co-founding a company that sold for over 100 million.  That’s a level of success that most of us don’t really get.  Yet he has done that and more including forming  venture capital company and a Lusk, Wyoming beef ranch.  I can’t wait to get some tips from him. 

Jon Benson (CEO of the Wyoming Technology Business Center) always makes me tell a little bit about myself when he introduces me so maybe I should do that here as well. 

I grew up in Western Kansas where my parents were both school teachers.  My Dad had a seemingly limitless flow of ideas for small businesses to do during the summers and I was cheap labor.  I think that’s where my own entrepreneurial spark started -  not far from the tree.  Of course like all children of that decade I rebelled and instead of pursuing a business of my own I did the exact opposite - I joined the military. 

After I got out of the military I went to undergraduate school and got my business degree.  Filled with ideas, excitement and brand new diploma I was quickly hit with a pile of school debt and slumping economy.  I ended up back working for the Federal Government where my military experience and a degree gave me a boost up the pay scale.  I moved to Denver and ignored my business dreams for the next ten years. 

A number of events lined up to allow me to get my graduate degree and jump out of the safety of the government GS pay scale and land in a shooting star company in Laramie.  Aspen Tree software gave me a taste of success.  Huge clients and a bigger than life entrepreneur made my spark turn into a burning desire.  When the company was sold and it was decided we would all have to move to Boulder, I declined. 

I started my own company using relational databases to connect with flash design dynamically.  It’s pretty old hat now but in ‘99 it was cutting edge.  We grew our company from 3 guys with a dream working out of a room the size of closet into 11 employees in two states.  Then came the dot bust and I was asked to move to Dallas.

Really, if Boulder did not make sense for me, Dallas made even less.  My wife and I started our own company providing technology training and assistance for people in their homes.  Unfortunately we did not have the assistance of people like Jon Benson or the technology incubator and we set ourselves up to fail with a debt financed start-up. 

So I got a job. I worked for the University for five years before I found my calling and luckily the people doing the hiring saw the fit. Now I get to help people grow their own businesses every day.  I hear about exciting products in Wyoming and get to be a part of the explosion of new technology and employment growth at it’s very beginning.  

That’s a little about me and our speaker for this coming Wednesday.  Please join us and take the time to look me up. I’d love to hear your story and see if there is some way I can help you achieve your dream. 

Conference times two

I just got back yesterday from a week out on the road.  Along the way I attended two quite different conferences, each of which I found both valuable and fun.

Last Monday, I took in the first day of the 3rd Annual Wyoming Business-to-Business Idea Expo put on by the Wyoming Business Council.  The breakfast keynote speech by Tim Gard was a hoot but also full of useful tips for surviving your business and your business travel.  I went to several breakout sessions but the two on using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in) to help promote your business and on search engine optimization (SEO), both put on by Chris Hansen, were standouts.  The best came last, however, when the regular bimonthly Laramie e2e networking meeting hosted speaker Yoshi Noguchi, of InterBusiness Corporation, who gave an extraordinary overview of cloud computing.

Wednesday through Friday, I was at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.  This event, which is now held annually, had record attendance (1600+) despite many other national conferences having a down year and attracted a star lineup of keynote speakers and panelists:  the head of technology acquisitions for Google, the CTOs of Amazon and Facebook, and many, many other influential technologists.  The conference is primarily aimed at undergraduate and graduate students in Computer Science, CS faculty, and mid- to high-level executives in large high technology companies.  So I was a bit of a fish out of water but, frankly, the Google keynote was worth the price of attendance all by itself.  It gave me some confirmation for a product idea I’ve been chewing on AND a different, probably much easier, approach for how to implement it.

(BTW, for any of you with daughters, nieces, or young female acquaintances currently studying Computer Science or a related field:  One of the main things that goes on at the Hopper conference is interviewing and recruiting for both internships and fulltime jobs.  The economy may be down and competition for jobs may be hot but GHC is a great opportunity for young women to get both inspired and hired.  And a lot of scholarship money is available each year to underwrite attendance for those whose colleges don’t send a delegation.)

On the way back home to Sheridan, which included a 3-hour flight delay in Denver, doled out in 20- and 30-minute units, a diversion to Cheyenne for the medical emergency of one of my fellow travelers, and an approach to the runway through a driving rain/snow storm, I got to apply some of the Tim Gard lessons on keeping your sense of humor when all about you are losing theirs.  I even made a gate attendant in Tucson laugh, which helped me smile the rest of the day as the travel got harder and harder.

ag

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Anne Gunn
ompeag @ wyoming.com