Jeff Carter on What’s It Take To Be Successful?

What’s It Take To Be Successful?

• Posted by Jeff Carter
 
• on August 6th, 2014

A lot of people are searching for the path to success.  They want it to be textbook.  Finding success isn’t solving the quadratic equation.  There isn’t a button to push.  Success also doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means.

Howard Tullman is running 1871 in Chicago.  He is transferring what he knows about success to the startups working there, and in and around Chicago.  In the video above, he makes it clear one of the elements to success is hard work and sticktoitiveness.  Woody Allen used to say, “90% of life is just showing up.”  That may have been true when he said it, but the game is different now.

At first when 1871 opened, it was Chicago’s shiny new toy to show everyone.  Heads of state came here to see.  Politicians still come through the doors everyday to see.  When people came, they didn’t know what they were witnessing because it had never been on display here before.

What were all the visitors searching for?  The keys to success.  They wanted to export it.

Success though isn’t what you think it is.  I think the best definition I ever read about success was John Wooden’s.  For youngsters, he was a basketball coach at UCLA and won national championship after national championship.  At one point, his teams went on an 88 game win streak.  Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.  There is a lot behind that simple quote.

Success doesn’t mean conquest.  It doesn’t necessarily mean victory.  This is why understanding failure is important.  A person can give their all, strive to become the best they can become, and still fail.  But, the lessons they learn from that failure help them the next time they attempt something.

As I noted at the top, there is no equation, no sure algorithm to guarantee victory.  In our data driven environment, you can sift through all the data.  You can correlate it and look for patterns.  You can talk to people and solicit other opinions.  Data can be a guide.

But, at some point no matter how much data you have, there is a point of uncertainty.  There is that uncomfortable feeling in your gut.  That flutter.  That’s where success begins.  Either you embrace the challenge and are all in.  Or you are not.  If you go half way, you are setting yourself up for failure and excuses.

There is an old story Lon Chow told me.  “At breakfast, chickens participate, but pigs are all in.”   One of them is successful.

The Chicago Tech Scene is Different

• Posted by Jeff Carter
 
• on June 5th, 2014

Recently, there has been a bit of a dustup in the Chicago tech scene.  Every year around this time, TechWeekcomes to Chicago.  People come from all over to attend, hot companies showcase and people network.  It’s good for our tech scene. This year, TechWeek sent out an email that was demeaning to females.

I am the father of two daughters.  One works for a startup company in Chicago, and the other interns at another startup, Dough.  I didn’t get either of them their jobs.  They networked and found them by themselves.  The Chicago tech scene is hot enough that anyone can come here and find a job at a startup.  Virtually all the companies I am invested in are looking for talent.  You can go to the website, BuiltInChicago and look job postings for startup job after startup job.

There are parts of the world of work that are tougher for women.  There are things that they have to worry about and deal with that I don’t. My wife has a marketing degree from the College of Business at the University of Illinois.  She’s sharp.  She was a top salesperson with Ortho Pharma when she was working.  She dropped out to raise our girls.  I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  Who better to raise your kids than an intelligent college grad that loves them?  But, for women like her it’s awfully hard to find their way back into the work force.  The only options are minimum wage jobs.  Having kids and dropping out is a black mark.  She is working with female entrepreneurs now that are trying to start businesses.

Today, Gotham Gal highlighted the opting out phenomena on her blog.  She dropped out of the work force to raise kids too.  Now, one of her daughters is doing a research project on it.  A while ago, I created a hackpad that lists support resources for women.

Chicago is unlike a lot of tech scenes.  We have a lot of active and extremely capable female founders, and we have a fair amount of minority founders here. I have backed both.  I don’t think anyone planned it.  It just happened.  The angel group I co-founded has always had a large amount of women.  Our current Managing Director, Karin O’ Connor is a woman.  We are a better group because of them.

Those women and minority founders and leaders aren’t getting special treatment.  They are damn good and they are earning everything they are getting.  Maria Katris wrote a really good post that I agree with.

Entrepreneurship is getting white hot in the US.  By 2020, 45% of the world wide workforce will be contingent, unattached and solopreneurs.  As we transition from an industrial economy to an information based economy, we are starting to see politics come into the community.  Rev. Jesse Jackson recently was in Silicon Valley trying to get more minorities on boards.

I don’t like that trend.  We don’t need quotas or check the box diversity.

Entrepreneurship is merit based.  All the labels that are used to divide people get thrown out the window.  Ideas and execution matter.  That’s why I love it, and love working with all kinds of entrepreneurs from all walks of life.  We have some tremendous role models in Chicago for budding female entrepreneurs.  We have some tremendous role models for minority entrepreneurs too.  Too many for me to name in this post.  If you are a female and want to start a company, you can get funded here.  Chicago is probably the best place for you to startup.

I am really proud of the way the Chicago tech scene handled this.  I am also very happy to see the open, non-accusatory, constructive discussion that is happening on blogs, comments, Twitter, and in the halls of startup offices.

Jeff Carter: The Future of Start Ups: Howard Tullman at Excelerate 5 Tech Trends

On Tuesday, I was fortunate to hear Howard Tullman give a keynote speech at an angel excelerator. I thought it was interesting in how it was presented, and left me with some thoughts about how to advise businesses and kids going forward.

Howard started off with five trends for start ups and the macroeconomy going forward. You may or may not have contemplated them, or their effects on your daily life. Here are his five trends:

1. Hyper Personalization
2. Know Before You Go
3. Constant Connection
4. Who Do You Trust?
5. Mocial

All these trends point to one interesting topic; the decline of randomness. Starting a business and finding customers, targeting them, and engaging them used to be very random. It was a shotgun approach to marketing. How many times have you looked at marketing strategies and just thought they are throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

The big problem. Random approaches are hard to measure, and they eat working capital. How many businesses in the past simply burned through their working capital and went out of business, even though they had a good idea?

The web 2.0 allows business to target customers with precision. They know where the fish are, and when they are biting.

Value exchange will be important to try and get serious engagement. Consumers are going to be so bombarded with targeted information, that if you don’t add value right away you will strike out.

Trust and credibility will be crucial. Who do you trust? How is the message? Currently, your family, friends, and associates are the ones you trust. Will that be the case in the future? How can a sterile flat website develop community so you see it as “associates” even though you aren’t in contact with them to build trust?

There will be new, objective measurement tools. Companies won’t waste a penny marketing until they know what the landscape looks like through data driven metrics. The tools will be able to measure the messaging. What’s a “like” worth or a “follow” worth?

No longer will you have a trial and not know the results for days. You will be able to monitor it in real time and make the adjustments you need to do to execute better. Randomness will be wrung out of the go to market strategy.

People will never forget. Smart phones and tablets will remind them. Everything will be in the cloud. You won’t be chained to one computer anymore, but will be able to log on with any device at any time and instantaneously be able to pick up where you left off. Everyone will be more productive.

Location based service will increase business efficiency, create jobs, and destroy jobs all at the same time. Things will happen faster, here and now.

New kinds of currency will stimulate different kinds of behavior. Status will be a currency.

Achievements, accomplishments will become things you can trade and get things for. Gaming and badges will be earned, and you will become more wealthy because of them. Risk in interaction will be reduced.

There are three major paradigm shifts that are important to any business. They are happening right here, right now, today. Ignoring them will put you out of business in the long run.

First, infrastructure improvements don’t matter. It can all be rented cheaply in the cloud. Why use precious capital to buy it?

Second, existing pricing models are going to change. They will be demand driven. Fixed prices won’t exist. Prices will be individually determined. The world will be flatter, more horizontal. Layers of middlemen will be eliminated.

Social media will play a big part in the development. However, while broad social media will survive, like Facebook, there will be more niche players. Social media will concentrate on narrow verticals.

This is much like Google+ and its circles.

This has huge ramifications for financial markets and governments. Huge.