Building A Startup Ecosystem

The Silicon Valley startup ecosystem - this is the presentation I delivered to senior members of Global Entrepreneurship Week partners in Ramallah.

Transcript

1. Startup Ecosystems Angie Chang Tech Entrepreneurship & Innovation Fall 2013
2. Lesson #1 Entrepreneurs need a lot of support. This is why a startup ecosystem is important.
3. Startup Ecosystem Players Includes but not limited to:  Universities  Funding organizations / investors  Support organizations  Incubators & accelerators  Co-Working spaces  Research Organizations  Service Provider Organizations (legal, financial)  Corporations
4. Composition of Startup Ecosystem  Ideas, inventions & research  Startups - at various stages, all stages of funnel  Entrepreneurs & their team members  Investors  Mentors  Advisors  Other business-oriented people  Startup activities & events (bplan competitions)
5. Creating Startup Activity  Event organizers  Startup competitions  Hackathons  Investor networks  Venture capital companies  Crowdfunding portals  Other funding providers (loans, grants, etc)  Startup blogs & other business media
6. Factors Affecting the Ecosystem  Skills  Time  Money  Financial climate  Big market disruptions  Significant transitions
7. Ecosystem Management  Need to have clear goals  Need to put policies, protocols in place  Need to make all local ecosystem resources easy to find and one place online and off  Encourage, ensure evangelism  Keep it positive, celebrate all successes (small and big) in the funnel  Perceptions become reality  Establish campaigns, themes → Twitter hash tags or blog series
8. Accelerators, Incubators, Oh My.  Goals: rapid education of entrepreneurial teams in immersive program, network effect  Accelerator/Incubator examples: Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Rock Health:  Basically, accelerator/incubator staff invite entrepreneurs/teams to a dedicated space for mentorship and accelerated bootcamp learning/hacking on MVP to premiere at a demo day with investors & press invited  VC firms (even seed) offer programs/perks
9. Ecosystem Best Practices  EVENTS: build communities (e.g. hackathons, conferences, unconferences, crawls, HHs...)  LOCATION: do you have a dedicated space to synergize across groups (ie. engineers w/ business folks)? A cafe for entrepreneurs?  INSPIRE:  Put inspiration quotes on walls about startup grit, hard work, failure (it's OK!!)  Celebrate entrepreneurs and founders at all stages of success
10. Communications  Is it clear –  Who is the target market?  What is the desired result?  Who are the previous successes / role models  All stages of the startup funnel  Who has a voice and the platform to share it?  Identify media companies, or create your own  Create voice from inside organization  Empower existing bloggers or those with high Twitter/Facebook followering  Keep a Pinterest board (it's aspirational)
11. My Favorite Quote
12. How Facebook does it
14. Silicon Valley Startup Ecosystem  Educational institutions & organizations:  Stanford, UC Berkeley, etc – lots of talent  Startup Digest (email digest of startup events)  Gather the like-minded with a Meetup.com  Lots of support & community for entrepreneurs  Too many events! It's great :)  Beginners can learn from experts  Experts like to give back by sharing knowledge and speaking, and potentially give back as advisor or angel investor
15. Case Study: Y Combinator  Founder Paul Graham blogs w/ essays titled:  “How to get startup ideas”  “Frighteningly ambitious ideas”  “How to convince investors”  Products:  Venture Fund (with focus on seed investments)  Startup School: day-long program at universities  Hacker News: popular crowdsourced news  Demo Day → Companies get TechCrunch-ed
16. Case Study: First Round Capital  First Round Capital (early stage investments)  Has an amazing website: http://www.firstround.com/  Has an amazing blog: http://www.firstround.com/blog/  Shares best practices: http://firstround.com/review/  Held a CTO summit (videos shared online): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4LExVkv4Pw  Tweets (40k Twitter followers): https://twitter.com/firstround/
17. Case Study: TechCrunch  Popular tech blog has:  Staff writers with strong opinions  Op-ed articles written by “thought leaders”  Venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, high-level executives, developers who have a product behind their name...  This makes their names recognizable  Conferences (e.g. “TC Disrupt”)  Hackathons (e.g. “TC Disrupt Hackathon”)  BOTH OF THE ABOVE get lots of coverage  Meetups in local cities
18. Case Study: Startup Digest  Weekly curated newsletter of tech events, deals, etc.  Operates across 81 cities to date  People submit events thru website  Curated event listings, job postings, article recommendations
19. Email Subject Line: “Silicon Valley-SF Bay Area - StartupDigest - September 30 - October 7” Email Subject Line: “Silicon Valley-SF Bay Area - StartupDigest - September 30 - October 7”
20. Importance of Email  Best way to drive conversation  Because Facebook feed posts get lost  Most marketers find emails have highest conversion rate  See Codecademy's newsletter:  Sign up on site to receive their newsletter, the emails are easy to digest! http://codecademy.com/
21. Media Companies to Pitch To  Submit stories to:  Wired  Fast Company Co.Exist  TechCrunch  Huffington Post Tech -OR- Impact X  Mashable  The Next Web  Identify writers/bloggers who have covered MENA entrepreneurs/startups before
22. Most Startup Ecosystem Players..  Keep their website updated with logos, headshots, title/company, bios/descriptions  For portfolio companies & founders  For mentors in your network  For the team / organizers  Also:  Provide thought leadership, establish culture  Provide videos of talks on their website  Provide simplified, shareable paperwork (e.g. incorporation docs, employee agreements, term sheets, etc.)
23. Encourage Online Participation  Let people watch talks streamed online, and then archive and promote them continuously
24. Startup Weekend  Encourages entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, business/marketing types to come together for one weekend to build something  Attendees come with an idea, or to join a team  Make it obvious that beginners are welcome  Rotate the focus/goals (ie. edu, mobile, health)  Event organizers have the benefit of global presence/brand and easy-to-follow template to line up speakers, sponsors, mentors, food/drink, prizes, marketing (distribution)..
25. Suggestions  Focus on building from within, on strengths:  Perceived competition advantage  Startup hits redone in-house: what internet startup can be redone for MENA population?  Run more competitions & idea workshops  Create more opportunities for recognition, teamwork and creativity  Encourage use of founder title, blogging  Develop engineering talent in-house  Offer summer or school-year internships at startups as credit for college students
26. Do entrepreneurs understand markets?  Should they tackle new markets?  Or should they tackle existing markets with new, better products? (e.g. resegment markets with niche products)  Do they think big? (e.g. market size of 10B vs market size of 10M)
27. Exercises  Map the startup ecosystem in Palestine  What exists?  What does not exist yet?  What are the action items for change?