Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Friday, September 4, 2009
Hey, Boston-area VCs, angels: Loosen up and connect with startups
Following the Clean Energy Council Fellows
MHT's Doug Banks: 10 Women to Watch in tech
Flash Slideshow: Mass High Tech All-Stars Thought Leadership Roundtable
With every high or low in the tech economy, there’s a lot of handwringing around Boston about how we compare to Silicon Valley: Our venture capitalists ought to be more like their venture capitalists; our angel investors ought to be more like their angel investors; our entrepreneurs aren’t as young, bright, beautiful or whatever as their entrepreneurs.
Rather than look across the country with envy, we ought to look in the mirror with some self-reflection.
First, let’s not strive to beat Silicon Valley in the first place. If we make them the bar, we will seek only to beat that bar by whatever metric we establish, such as number of venture financings, number of billion-dollar companies or number of billionaire entrepreneurs. Paul Maeder at Highland Capital was giving a presentation a few years ago that compared the East and West Coasts, and while California regularly beat us on absolute numbers — they are a lot bigger, of course — when you divided many of those figures by the respective populations, we weren’t too shabby on a per capita basis. We even beat California in a few areas, like issued patents per capita. It was a good talk to make us feel as if we have more to offer.
However, if we set our sights on being the best we possibly can be, rather than just beating Silicon Valley, we just might surpass them. Also, by comparing ourselves, we compete on their playing field. One of the basic principles of entrepreneurship is to define the market by your rules, not the competition’s. Let’s make them compare themselves to us!
Second, we’re our own worst enemies in pursuing these dreams. Chalk it up to Yankee stoicism. Blame it on our long, dark winter. Point fingers at our independent sectors of software, communications, medical devices, interactive media, financial services, health care and finance. Say it comes from our rival and culturally different universities and colleges, or hundreds of segmented towns that won’t cooperate or collaborate because of divisions that ostensibly happened hundreds of years ago. Whatever the excuse, we just don’t talk with one another as people do in other parts of the country. (Ever heard of “Northern Hospitality”?)
If we would just loosen up and get over the pretense of thinking our clique is somehow better than others’, we almost certainly would do a better job for entrepreneurs. New companies need a lot of things. They need products and services that work, the marketplace to trust they can deliver and validation from opinion leaders. They often need capital and always need bright, energetic, visionary people who are willing to try to defy all odds to achieve success.
But, above all, they need people who are potential customers, suppliers, employees, investors and a variety of other roles that are wiling to take that risk with them. Getting connected to those similarly special people is the biggest bane of many startups. I spend a lot of time each week just trying to connect teams with the right lawyers, accountants, marketing professionals, sales people, customers and investors who are a good fit with their situation and what they have to offer.
I have talked with many people about setting up social-networking sites, peer-to-peer contact-mining software, and other technological approaches. I have yet to see how those can solve the problem. It’s a people thing, and it starts with us.
If we can legitimately connect a few entrepreneurs with the types of people who are — in our judgment — a good fit with them, we risk little and help a lot. If it’s a good match, we look good to both parties. If not, we say we tried, learn a little and try again. Often, the best fit is not a big name, it’s someone who shares the vision and has a different type of available resource available to the startup than what they have or problem that they can solve.
So, as summer draws to a close and the fall kick off to the 2009-2010 entrepreneurial season begins, just try to connect a few entrepreneurs, and maybe Silicon Valley will soon be wondering how they got left behind.
James Geshwiler is managing director of angel investor group CommonAngels in Lexington. He was named a Mass High Tech All Star in 2004. <http://www.masshightech.com/high-tech-all-stars/08/>
Comments
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.
RSS Feeds
