Accidentally in Code

Tag: entrepreneurship

  • Female Entrepreneurship: Observations and Opportunities

    Female Entrepreneurship: Observations and Opportunities

    Credit: Wikipedia
    Credit: Wikipedia

    I’ve been generally skeptical of whether we would see a rise in Female Entrepreneurship, much of which was because looking at the data (female-led companies are more likely to succeed, male-led companies are more likely to fail) it wasn’t clear to me whether more women should be starting companies… or just fewer men.

    However there are some trends that make me think that this may change, and a couple of opportunities that I think women are more likely to capitalise on.

    Trends

    Some of the current coolest companies have non-technical founders (including: Pinterest, Kickstarter, Etsy). I see this as a willingness to accept less technical credibility even when founding a tech-based company. This is great for women, as even women who are deeply technical are viewed as less technical.

    Lots of startups come from ex-employees of a small number of “Pedigree” companies, which seem to skew towards new grad hires (see the average ages on the released demographic data sets). Many of these companies are new enough that we’ve yet to see the exodus of women, but because women drop out within 10 years, unless they are very different (and again, the data suggests they are not – if they were, the numbers would be better) it will come, and these women will be looking for their next thing to do.

    There’s been a massive increase of female focused programs. I know people have mixed feelings about this, but the thing about programs focused on encouraging minorities is that they (when done well) make it clear that there is a space for them. I think a big part of this is making women apply. Women tend to judge their abilities more harshly, I remember hearing that university scholarships for women were beneficial because women just weren’t applying to scholarship funds for “everyone” (although I can’t find data to back this up), and I’ve heard recurring stories from companies trying to hire women, and universities recruiting that convincing women to apply to them if the first step.

    Services like Kickstarter provide an alternative to women (women led campaigns are more likely to succeed, especially in tech which is 2/3:1/3 female:male success), make bootstrapping more viable (since it’s advance sales for a product you are making, and also tests your market – if people will buy it before it exists, it’s a good sign that people will buy it once it does).

    Increasing commoditisation of platforms – cloud is on the trend to zero, so this massively reduces start up costs (no need for data centres). Mobile app development has reached sufficient maturity that there are lots of great Open Source libraries, which can massively reduce development time. I think this is good sign, as women are much more likely to bootstrap.

    Women are the dominant users of social media (long been the case, infographic from 2012), and the drivers of consumer spending. I’m convinced that the current small pockets of successes that capitalise on that trend (notably, the non-tech founder companies listed above) is only the beginning.

    The tech bubble has caused living costs in tech hubs to spiral and makes the economics of living somewhere cheaper (and making less money) much more compelling.

    Opportunities

    I think there are major opportunities created by greed and arrogance, which is great for women because we are socially conditioned to be less greedy, and less arrogant. There are countless examples of techies building things that exploit the less technical (this about on-demand workers, is just one example), but what if we built things to empower the less technical instead?

    Other opportunities are created by the lack of empathy that is a feature of the tech industry. For example the problem of online harassment is outsourced to a (very profitable!) start up in the Philippines. Or, Education start ups are a big thing, but many of them just provide a more structured way for people to teach themselves to code. This is understandable, because this is how most techies themselves learned to code, but I remain unconvinced that it will work for everyone.

    Of Course…

    I could be totally wrong! But I really hope I’m not wrong about the outcome, even if I’m off on the reasons why.

  • #GHC13: Panel on Entrpreneurship

    #GHC13: Panel on Entrpreneurship

    baby duck
    Credit: PixaBay / PublicDomainPictures

    One of the things I really liked about this session was that it was three older women, and not all of them lived in the Valley (sadly I can’t find the description of the panel or the panelists). So much of what I read and hear about tech startups is SV based, that it’s extremely refreshing to hear an outside perspective!

    Advice from Founder.

    • Don’t start with an exit strategy.
    • 5m users and no money is not a business, it’s a hobby.
    • Aim for happy users and customers.
    • Doing a startup is like sprinting a marathon.
    • Can’t have work life balance at a startup. It’s not 9-5, but nor is it 8 hours a day. It’s not for the faint of heart.
    • It will suck you in and take over who you are.
    • When you hire someone you own their pay check. You don’t want to be responsible for them starving.
    • When you hire a board, it’s like a marriage where they can divorce you but you can’t divorce them.
    • Board can kick out founders at any time. It’s really hard for founders to buy out a board.
    • You think you are ready to launch – make sure you have a great idea. Get buy-in from your family. Gives the example of making her son a cofounder.
    • Build a strong team around you, you don’t want to be alone.
    • Objections to having a cofounder is splitting equity, but remember 100% of nothing is nothing.
    • Cofounder needs to be someone you will listen to. Sometimes you’ll be wrong.
    • Almost everything in tech can be built to some approximation, but not everything should be – because no-one will pay for it.
    • In enterprise, have to consider if it is 10x faster. The advantage has to be an order of magnitude better, otherwise not worth the switch.
    • Some things should be built, but not at that time. Gives example of first company, cloud. Timing was a big ingredient (she was too early).
    • Enterprise space, need 10-20 customers. Consumer products, need hundreds.
    • Raise seed money and experiment a lot. No real money until a few million customers, experience with engagement, retention.
    • If you don’t get negative feedback, either you are not listening or someone is being nice to you.
    • Good ideas fail big or win super big.
    • Get intelligence about what other companies are doing. Worry about competing with big companies.
    • Avoid the drive to zero (e.g. cloud). Need to be so differentiated that it won’t be commoditised soon.
    • Don’t wait for the moment where you just know; this is mostly not what happens.
    • If when frustrated, instead of complaining, you take action; you’re an entrepreneur. You can do this even if you have a job. It’s more of an attitude than DNA.
    • To start a company you need an idea.

    Advice from VC.

    • Look for secrets.
    • Big companies are already working on the obvious ideas. Not a good idea for a startup company.
    • Secrets may look like bad ideas.
    • Look for founders who know the tech better than anyone, understand the environment really well. Had a personal experience, e.g. Lyft came from founder experience in Zimbabwe [story].
    • Believe something that none else believes. E.g. of Salesforce, really hard to get funding because regular VCs didn’t believe that anyone would store that kind of information with anyone else.
    • Look for idea that upsets the norms and challenges convention, e.g. AirBnB creates experience around travel different from staying at the DoubleTree. The pitch sounds ridiculous.
    • VCs are sometimes too old for new ideas. You wouldn’t do that, but would others? New York AirBnB stats are incredible [AirBnB stats page].

    Joanna on Entrepreneur Qualities

    • Brimming in confidence.
    • Loves to be out the box, “not sure how many of you think you are in a box”.
    • Passionate.
    • Risk-taker.
    • Perpetually interested in everything.
    • People-oriented problem solver.
    • Great storyteller.
    • Leads by example.
    • Knows when you get expert experience.
    • Tolerates failure well.

    Paula on Entrepreneur Qualities

    • You get as much joy out of the idea as you do in bringing it to life.
    • “Everyone has fabulous ideas, not many people act on them”. It’s not just about the idea, but also about the discipline to act on it.
    • How to get joy out of using the things you build.
    • You cannot imagine sitting on a good idea and not taking action.
    • You reserve the right to get smarter and learn.
    • You cannot stop yourself thinking about how things could be better, and then work on making them better.
    • Product genius is something that cannot be taught. Tech founder is best suited to track those trends and follow accordingly.
  • But, I Don’t Want to be an Entrepreneur

    But, I Don’t Want to be an Entrepreneur

    This is not a photo opportunity
    Credit: flickr / gravitystorm

    Recently, I was asked to write an article on women and leadership for a women in entrepreneurship edition of a publication. I was really flattered to be asked, of course, and was intelligent and articulate (well, I like to think so) on the phone about what I would be writing about – the idea of leadership in the gaps that I started exploring in my inspiring woman (hah) talk earlier this year.

    And then, I didn’t write anything. Because I was working, and prepping another talk, and travelling, and organizing girl geeks dinner…

    But mostly because I felt woefully unqualified to write anything on this topic. I see myself as a doer, and maybe a leader by example, never by telling people what to do. I take a wider view of leadership, drawn and inspired by books such as Leadership and Self Deception, The Anatomy of Peace, The Leader Who Had No Title, Making Ideas Happen, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 (all Amazon), not because of being in any kind of “leadership position”.

    Most of all, I don’t want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t have any desire to start a business. I don’t want to deal with cashflow, with HR “issues”, with PR. I don’t want to temper my love of building things by trying to build things that are monetizable. I don’t want to deal with tax law, with employment law, or really any law at all. I don’t want to write a business plan.

    I want… to build things that are beautiful, or functional, but preferably both. I want to work with smart people and learn from and be inspired by them. I want to be mentored, and in time pass on what I’ve learned in mentorship of others. I want to spend time and energy on getting more women into CS because it’s important.

    The financial upsides of entrepreneurship do not appeal to me. I don’t dream of early retirement to a desert island, I don’t want to be a VC. I barely want to take a holiday – I like what I do. I like not having to worry about money, but I’m not motivated by the idea of having more of it. The “freedom” of being an entrepreneur comes with too many tedious-sounding responsibilities and not enough world-changing to make me want to earn half as much, working twice as many hours.

    Wikipedia defines “Entrepreneur” as a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and is accountable for the inherent risks and the outcome.

    The word “entrepreneur” comes from a French word meaning “one who undertakes”. Undertake means – commit oneself to and begin.

    I undertake things, frequently. Many characteristics of an entrepreneur, such as, creativity, calculated risk-taking, management of resources, are all useful characteristics of any kind of leader. The biggest reason to use these attributes in setting up your own business seems to be not being able to do what you’re passionate about otherwise, or not wanting to work for someone else.

    Once upon a time, everyone was independently operating. Humans hunted and killed their own food, made their own clothes, raised their own children. But, trade allowed us to specialize. I’m really good at killing things, and you make stylish outfits, so let’s trade. Companies take that specialization further – I’m an engineer, and so I work with a UX designer to create intuitive products. Meanwhile, human resources and accounting take care of those aspects and we don’t have to worry about them.

    There’s a reason why that specialization happened. Collectively, we get more done when we don’t try to do everything ourselves.

    Personally, I love that I get to focus on building, learning, and collaborating. I don’t want to be an entrepreneur because it seems like that requires a lot of distractions from that, and lonely. I miss my teammates when we’re in different cities, the idea of having no team at all is horrifying to me.

    For all I’ve heard, multiple times, from multiple people, that I should want to be an entrepreneur, I just don’t. The desire isn’t there. The biggest reason why is “I’d have to do stuff that I don’t love”, but none of those reasons are insurmountable given a sufficiently compelling reason. For me, that reason just isn’t there.