I’ll be speaking toward the end of February on transitioning to entrepreneurship and what to expect. The presentation will be turned into an ~15 part …
This concept is likely tightly correlated to the Pareto principle. Basically 20% of your effort accounts for 80% of the result. Consider learning how to …
I’ll be speaking toward the end of February on transitioning to entrepreneurship and what to expect. The presentation will be turned into an ~15 part blog post series that I’ll start writing today.
So … where to begin … well at the beginning of course. I like to use mind maps and find for a visual learner like myself mind maps are a great way to remember a presentation. This post will give a bit of an overview of the mind map. Basically the presentation flows clockwise around the mind map; A bit about me (in green), THE Leap (in red), Being an Entrepreneur (in yellow) and Entrepreneur test (in grey).
What qualifies me to speak on the topic? Well to start with I have personally made the transition and have many lessons learned for others thinking about taking the leap. I have worked for a variety of technology companies, large ones then going to progressively smaller companies until venturing fourth on my own. I kind of migrated toward entrepreneurship and then decided to jump right in. More on this in a future post.
The first part (in red) of the mind map highlites the leap to entrepreneurship and the associated mental challenges … this is perhaps the biggest adjustment for most people moving from employee to entrepreneur.
Transitioning from being an employee to an entrepreneur is a huge leap and a significant challenge for someone that has spent their career in a large enterprise or government. As an employee (the larger the company the more appropriate) your domain knowledge is a thin deep vertical slice … as an entrepreneur you need a very broad horizontal base of knowledge with domain spikes. This is a huge paradigm shift. Perhaps the most significant challenge is the mental change associated with this vertical to horizontal knowledge transition where you are your own boss and free from the 9 to 5 routine. On the surface being your own boss and freedom sounds great but, there are challenges too.
The second part of the presentation (in yellow) deals with what it is like to be an entrepreneur, how to prepare, planning and then execution. Then of course there is what to expect as you are going through the process of starting your business. Ian draws much of his insights from the experience in starting up TheCodeFactory and the many bumps in the road along the way and of course the many small victories too.
Finally, (in grey) How do you know if you have the entrepreneurial right stuff. Ian has a very simple 3 step process to see if you might be suited to the entrepreneurial life.
Next post a bit more on my experience transitioning from employee to entrepreneur.
This concept is likely tightly correlated to the Pareto principle. Basically 20% of your effort accounts for 80% of the result. Consider learning how to use a new software application. Usually acquiring that minimum level of knowledge (20% of the functionality) that provides access to 80% of the capability you need. Afterwards you learn those other functions as need arises … which usually means digging into the help files and acquiring that more difficult to obtain knowledge.
Let’s now apply the Pareto principle to knowledge required to run your business. The BIG stuff that covers 80% of what you need to run the business (the none core stuff) takes 20% of the effort to learn and add value to your business. However, the core part of your business … that 20% that makes up your domain specific knowledge probably requires 80% of the effort to learn. Those thin deep slices of knowledge. Why is that?
Lets revisit an old blog post “The Learning Leap” and overlay that with the core part or domain specific knowledge and overlay that with the Pareto Principle. The initial (1st time) knowledge acquisition is broad and shallow. With each successive leap the knowledge acquired becomes narrower and deeper. It is those deep narrow slices of knowledge that only time and experience can provide. Each slice of knowledge requires roughly the same amount of time to learn; however, those thin, deep narrow slices of domain specific knowledge are probably the most valuable.
The thin deep domain specific knowledge, while it can take years to acquire can often be taught relatively easily. This is a key concept in why mentorship is valuable to first time entrepreneurs working with a more experienced mentor.
Let’s start by looking back … way back. In 2001 Ottawa was a tier 1 technology center acknowledged as “Silicon Valley North” a world leader in Telecommunications, Semi-conductor … Tier 1 … World Class.
Fast forward a decade and Ottawa is still in the news “Which Canadian city will be 2012’s Silicon Valley North” and “How Ottawa’s tech sector lost its edge”. The latter article could be written off as Ottawa’s tendency to self flagellate … the former is from TechVibes and far more authoritative on the Canadian Tech scene. Regardless the tone of the two articles is similar. To quote one of my favourite Ottawa tech guru’s (and speaker at TheCodeFactory opening) Denny Doyle from the TechVibe article “To put it harshly, it’s not just in decline. It’s in decay.” It refers to the city of Ottawa tech sector.
Life is not fair get over it. How we got here is largely irrelevant but what is incredibly important is where does Ottawa go from here?
Looking forward … IMHO the greatest impediment to success isn’t any external factor(s) but whether Ottawa (Holistic city and all of the stakeholders) has the will to collaborate and strength of character to succeed. Ottawa is a political city and this is evident in many aspects of local culture from the significant civil service presence complete with all its bureaucratic cultural overtones, the snail’s pace of almost any major project in the city and the result is the city of comfortable brown shoes. Comfort and conformity are the enemies of disruptive innovation. Fortunately disruption this way comes (The winds of change, The gathering storm) and 2012 may be the year for Ottawa to show its true character.
I’ll end the post with one of my favourite quotes by Thomas Kuhn: “The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature’s transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to feared our subdued.”
I received this picture in an email today entitled smart and I must say after reflecting on it a bit I am truly inspired. The sentiment I took from it was “Don’t work hard … work smart”.
My initial reaction was great point it is important to work smart. The person in the picture that took the time to turn his cube into a sphere is making great headway. The cost of the time it took to turn the cube into a sphere will be recouped by the speed of progress or at least that is the theory. That is working smart.
Then I reflected on it a bit more … working smart is important but so is working hard. The analogy that springs to mind is an Olympic athlete. To achieve a world class level of competitiveness an athlete has to work both hard and smart. The athlete has to work hard in the sense that “no pain no gain”. I used to lift weights on a daily basis and the tactical measure of success was feeling the pain of a good work out. The pain meant that the muscle tissues were broken down and would rebuild and become stronger. Building a business is a lot like that and there is defiantly some heavy lifting required and some sacrifices to be made. Back to the Olympic athlete … Becoming world class athlete also means being smart about how you train. Elite athletes have to be smart about how they eat, manage their time and condition their mind. There is much more emphasis today on sports psychology than a decade or two ago. I chatted with a friend that is a coach and had trained an Olympic athlete to visualize their run before the event … the athlete one the first ever gold medal for Canada at home. Elevating your game means working both hard and smart the two are closely intertwined.
A sphere is definitely a superior shape for moving the ball forward on a plain. What if the terrain changes to a steep hill either up or down? Then managing the sphere may actually be more effort than the cube with no opportunity to pause and rest. There is a lesson here but I am not certain what it is.
Working hard and working smart are not mutually exclusive and IMHO both are essential for starting a business. An important consideration to remember is that working hard does not equate to working smart and lots of activity isn’t necessarily progress. When you are feeling busy but don’t seem to be making progress that may be an indicator to pause, reflect and work smart not hard.
Long before starting TheCodeFactory I had blogged extensively about the challenges and opportunities facing the Ottawa Tech community. Topics covered everything from funding to entrepreneurial support systems. One of my favourite posts and IMHO one worth revisiting is called; The Entrepreneurial Hockey Analogy written on April 3rd, 2007 (roughly the same time as TheCodeFactory aha moment). Considering the post was written 4 years ago many of the concepts and principles are still valid. Looking back at the post with the accumulation of knowledge having worked in close proximately with start-ups for four years it is time for an update.
It takes a village to raise a start-up and the goal of collaborative economic development should be to promote the advancement of all participants to their maximum capability. This will produce maximum economic benefit to the region.
Hierarchy principles;
- Everyone that wants to participate should be given the opportunity
- Team advancement to the next level should be based on merit
- Healthy competition will benefit stakeholders at all levels of play
- Support mechanisms should be appropriate to the level of play
The top most level of play is labelled “Super Elite” and the equivalent of the NHL in North America. In the entire continent there are only 32 teams of roughly 32 players each for a grand total of 1,024 players in a population of 360,000,000 … companies that can compete at this calibre of play are exceptional. There are maybe one or two growing start-ups founded in the past 7 years at this level in Ottawa today.
The goal of a healthy and functional ecosystem should be to incubate and accelerate the growth of start-ups through the various stages as quickly as possible. The type of support needed by a start-up in the super elite league with Series A funding is totally different than the company of two founders with an idea that just incorporated last week.
Building a healthy ecosystem means incubating start-ups in the formative years, accelerating growth once the business model is scalable and then connecting the start-ups with the appropriate resources to continue to scale and grow even faster. To get a single team to super elite probably takes close to a decade … to get multiple teams to that level require a truly collaborative network of support services based on the open source principles of; open, transparent and meritous.
TheCodeFactory is excited to announce we have our first graduate. Ian Capstick and MediaStyle have grown from a single desk on the 2nd floor to a full office and studio on the 4th floor with plans to continue growing. We wish Ian, Travis, Sara, David and all the rest of the team much success as they leave the warm confines of our incubator and venture into a bigger space. Best wishes and much success moving forward.
That said we have two new offices coming available soon. The former MediaStyle offices are pretty funky space with lots of natural light and original turn of the century hardwood floors. If you are just starting out or a little further along and looking for that first office we would love to help you out. Please feel free to get in contact with ian [at] thecodefactory [dot] ca if you would like to check out the space. Maybe two years from now we’ll be writing about how your company has successfully outgrown our space too!
Ian Graham
This is the second in a series of blog posts on the inevitable change that is coming our way in the next couple of years. It is difficult and irresponsible to put a finite time frame on the gathering economic storm because the economy is irrational and sets its own schedule. Prior to the onset of the recession back in August of 2008 I wrote a series of blog posts on The Forces of Change (Decline of the TV Industrial Complex, Business Model Migration). As the storm gets closer and economic winter approaches it becomes readily apparent that the forces at work are bringing about profound and substantial change to all aspects of society.
Photo Attribution: Clouds by Mark Round
Probably most people in Ottawa feel that the city is recession proof and justifiably so. Ottawa has weathered the storm incredibly well thanks in large part to the stabilizing influence of the federal government. IMHO dramatic change is about to come on a number of fronts:
- Macro level (Global Recession)
- Federal Government reductions in force
- Provincial Government deficit reduction
- Cost of living
I’ll comment on the Federal and Provincial change in a bit more detail.
Based on my observations and assorted media releases here is my take on what is happening in the federal government. In 2011 there was an across the board 5% to 10% cut, trimming the fat so to speak. Currently in the federal government there is a massive strategic review underway across the entire federal government ensuring value for money for all government spending. 2012 will see a more surgical trimming and elimination of entire programs that are not providing value for money. This will not be an across the board cut it will be the elimination of programs that are no longer relevant or valuable and IMHO go well beyond attrition. Key leading indicators of the type of change in process are the elimination of the Wheat Board and significant cuts at DND. The trend toward removal of outdated programs and value for money will continue and accelerate in the 2012 budget.
At the provincial level IMHO the tone for the next budget was set with the reduction in the size of cabinet potentially a signal of spending reductions to come. There is also my cynical take that leading up to the election we were living in a bit of a pre-election spending binge that someone is going to have to pay. With the election over and a lagging economy my expectation is there will be revenue reduction for the province of Ontario coupled with excess pre-election spending will undoubtedly lead to a day of budget reckoning. My expectation is that the government of Ontario will be forced to significantly tighten the purse strings on spending or run the risk of a lowered credit rating which would be disastrous.
What does all this mean for Ottawa … IMHO two significant changes; a rise in unemployment from displaced federal employees and a reduction in transfer payments from the province to the city of Ottawa. The impact of these changes and what to do about it are fodder for many more blog posts.
Change can be a great thing when you embrace it and go with the flow. I have observed a few changes that in my opinion will bring significant change to our fair city of Ottawa in 2012.
Photo Attribution: Hurricane Rick / October 20, 2009 by Ani Carrington
The first is at the macro level where the winds are set to potentially hurricane force. The continued bailout of weaker Greece by the stronger members of the EU seems unlikely. There are now plans afoot by France and Germany to mitigate risk by creating a two-tiered Euro. After listening to Martin Wolf earlier this month it is really a question of when will the EU fail and how bad it will be versus “if” the EU will fail. The impact of this on Ottawa is uncertain.
At the micro level there are also many changes in the works that could profoundly impact Ottawa. Certainly there is a centralization movement in the Federal Government and Shared Services is tangible evidence of change. There is also change on many other fronts in the federal civil service such as DND rationalization, moving different departments to various parts of the city (DND to Carling, two departments TBD to Gatineau). There is also a strategic study being conducted across the entire federal government looking at ways to implement austerity measures. Change is coming to the Federal Civil service in Ottawa in 2012 and this will have a potentially profound impact on the city.
There are those that would say this all sounds very doom and gloom. Far from it, perhaps the Federal Government will be the biggest angel investor in Ottawa in 2012, responsible for more start-ups than the private sector. If you work for the federal civil service and are thinking about Plan B then a golden handshake could be just what you need to fund and launch you into entrepreneurship. Sounds pretty sweet to me.
If you are in the civil service, pondering plan B and 2012 please feel free to get in touch.
The closest I came to meeting Steve Jobs in person is watching his convocation speech on YouTube which is without a doubt one of my favourites. He is a person that I have immense respect for and a very rare individual the type of person that comes along maybe once per decade.
Anyone that can;
- Successful grow a start-up as one of the founders
- Repeat success in a totally different industry
- Turn around a failing Apple
- Guide Apple to be arguably the most successful tech company (certainly the most innovative)
If you haven’t already seen it please check out this video. I watched for a second time shortly after last week’s announcement of Steve Job’s passing. The video is even more poignant now.
The three lessons I took away;
- Have faith as you journey to connect the dots of your life
- Don’t settle
- Stay Hungry, Stay foolish
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