Whatever path you take the destination is roughly the same and you are on your own. This post series will focus more on the latter group of entrepreneurs … those where entrepreneurship found them. The challenges with the employee to entrepreneur paradigm shift are significant and not to be under estimated.

The next three posts in this series will deal with the mental change of employee to entrepreneur. IMHO most of the paradigm shift can be grouped under one of these blog topics;
- “All in” this is the only way to approach starting a business.
- “You’re the boss” The double edged sword, yes it cuts both ways.
- “Not 9 to 5” Freedom has its price.

Next post will be “All in”.

Ian Graham

This is the premise of Students and Start-ups. We have had 11 previous events with 24 confirmed hires many of which are on our YouTube Channel (TheCodeFactory).

There are 6 start-ups signed up for SNS-12: Blindside Networks, Brierwood Design, Magnetic Bear Studio, Norada, Nuvoshift and tindr. A great mix of web and mobile start-ups something for Computer Scientists and Software engineers looking for that early stage excitement.

These are what a like to call one room start-ups or those cute and cuddly toddlers of the start-up world. You know what they say “they don’t stay little for long”. This is a great chance to get in on some ground floor opportunities but this is not for the faint of heart … while exhilarating there is risk with early stage companies.

There will be a few more students and start-ups in the coming weeks … one event aimed at those slightly more mature start-ups that are more than toddlers but not quite Multi-National corporations yet. There will be another event focused on hardware start-ups too.

If you are a start-up large or small are looking to connect with students please feel free to get in touch.

Ian Graham

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.

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.

Ian Graham

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?

Photo Attribution: Which way do you want me to go? By Vincent Ma

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.”

Ian Graham

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.

Thank you to Elias for the inspiration.

Ian Graham

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.

Ian Graham

When is Students and Start-ups 12?

Date: Tentatively Monday February 13th, 2012
Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Location: @TheCodeFactory of course!

Who is it for?

Student registration is here: http://sns-12.eventbrite.com computer science, engineering and programming STUDENTS are looking for work in the next 3 months.

START-UPS looking to hire technical students in the next 3 months.
Contact: ian [at] thecodefactory [dot] ca by email

Fun, friendly, interactive and results based. In our previous 11 events we have connected 24 students to great start-up jobs. You can check out some of our testimonial videos on our YouTube channel TheCodeFactory.

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

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.

Ian Graham