Startup News Archives - Page 7 of 53

25 Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs

Here are Nibletz, where it’s our job to know what’s going on, we spend a lot of time reading. A lot.

We hit all the normal spots, just like you do. Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, and the Andreesen Horowitz crew are all in our feed readers. But, we’ve also found some fantastic VC and founder blogs that don’t get shared quite as often or have growing audiences. These are smart people who have won and lost in the startup game and have lots of wisdom to share with the rest of us.

In compiling this list, we included blogs that update regularly and that have a unique perspective or a wide range of experience. We didn’t include company blogs or VC firm blogs, though they can also be great sources of startup knowledge.

So, what do you think? Do you have these 25 blogs in your feed reader?

Investor Blogs

Above the Crowd–Bill Gurley has been a GP at Benchmark for more than 10 years. He’s been a design engineer, a Wall Street analyst, and a VC. So, he’s seen a lot. His most recent post On Bubbles is a must read for anyone trying to understand the current climate.
Instigator Blog–Ben Yoskovitz is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. His recent post Startup Founders: Why Do You Care About What You’re Doing? should be a wake up call to entrepreneurs struggling with the daily grind.
Passionate Intensity–Kirill Sheynkman has founded 3 companies and been a partner at 2 venture firms. His recent Be a Deckless Wonder flies in the face of all we hold dear about pitching investors. “This year, I will not let companies show their coveted pitch deck at our first meeting. We will talk, like humans..”
Rob Go–All of the blogs at NextView Ventures are worth plopping into your feed. Rob’s recent post on Seed Round Dynamics sheds light on the process of raising a small seed round. (Ok, obviously. But, it’s a great read.)
Progress Report–The blog of the Collaborative Fund shares the collective wisdom of all the managing partners. Only Good News is…Bad News reminds founders and investors to share the whole truth with shareholders.
Uncrunched–Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington is never shy, and he’s been around long enough to call it like it is. This old post Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, and Quit All the Whining will kick your butt.
This is Going to Be Big–Charlie O’Donnell is a partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, with previous experience at First Round Capital. He recently wrote an awesome post on The Rules of Inclusion.
Continuations–Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger has plenty of experience in the VC world. He and his wife, startup founder Susan Danzinger, also homeschool their 3 kids. His talk on The Big Questions About the Future is worth watching.
Adventures in Capitalism–Like a lot of these, Chris Yeh could fit into an investor or founder category. Many years in the startup world has taught him a lot. Don’t Stay Hungry is so common sensical, and yet many lifetime founders forget the lesson.
BZNotes–Bilal Zuberi has some serious academic chops, with a Ph.D in Physical Chemistry. He’s currently a partner at Lux Capital. His post Capital intensity and cost of capital for “big idea” startups shines a great light on what it takes to build the new technologies.
Hunter Walk–Former Googler Hunter Walk just finished his first year as the partner of Homebrew. “Never Heard of It,Must Not Be Big” Has Never Been More Wrong is a great testimony to how fast things move these days.
Dave Lerner–Dave is an entrepreneur and angel investor. His current project Startup Genome is mapping the startup world. This post on venture capital disruption forecasts changes in the VC indstury.
Haywire–Semil Shah is another entrepreneur/investor combo. Like the rest of us, he’s wondering what’ll happen with Facebook’s new app Paper. He talks about it in Unpacking Facebook’s Mobile Strategy.
Life in Beta–Being a venture capitalist and a marketing/economics nerd, Adam D’Augelli has a great background to manage the blog lifeinbeta.org. Here you can read about what the market will look like in 2014 or you can see what races Adam will be participating in. Go checkout his Themes to Watch in 2014.
Tomasz Tunguz–While he’s not looking for the newest company to invest in at Redpoint Ventures, Tunguz’ blog covers everything from startup management, SaaS, and content marketing. You can check out his most recent post here: Do Larger Seed Rounds Lead to Bigger Series As?

Founder Blogs

Ma.tt–Matt Mullenwag’s resume isn’t that impressive really. He’s just the founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, Gravatar, Akismet, and others. His post The Four Freedoms is an awesome defense for free (as in speech) software.
Only Once–Matt Blumberg is the founder of Return Path and the author of Startup CEO. His blog title comes from an old Fred Wilson post about only being a first time CEO once. Check out his post on sabbaticals for a healthy look at work/life balance.
Justin Jackson–Justin is a product manager and host of the Product People podcast. His post on This is Real Life will remind you that everyone–yes, everyone–has real stuff going on behind that avatar.
Ryan Hoover–Ryan is the guy behind the newest craze, Product Hunt. His post Nostalgia: A Product Designer’s Secret Weapon is brilliant.
Alex’s Tech Thoughts–Alex Taub recently started adtech company Modern Mast, but he has lots of experience in the startup world working at companies like Dwolla and Aviary. The Worst Thing You Can Do as a Founder is so true it hurts a little.
Ben Milne–Ben is the founder of Dwolla, in case you’ve been under a rock. The recent 2013. Hard Lessons Learned post will have you nodding and sighing a little.
Making New Mistakes–Adii Pienaar is the founder and ex-CEO of WooThemes and the currently paused PublicBeta. He has so many good posts, but Startups are Getting Easier. Entrepreneurship Isn’t is a must read.
Matt Mireles–Matt Mireles is the CEO/Founder of Buttr a peer to peer grocery shopping service and has experience in cofounding SpeakerText and Humanoid which were both acquired by Cloud Factory. His story about negotiations will have you shaking your head in disbelief.
The Startup Toolkit–Rob Fitzpatrick proudly states that he has been bankrupt twice in his quest to build a startup. He resides in Barcelona where he helps European accelerators design better startup education programs. He admonishes the startup world to Ignore posterity; build features.
Marc Barros–Marc is an entrepreneur and creator. His post from last November When I Got Fired From My Own Company is a wake up call to all entrepreneurs.

Aron Schoenfeld to Join KAYWEB Angels as Entrepreneur-in-Residence

kayweb

New York-based angel group KAYWEB Angels announced today that it is naming Aron Schoenfeld as an entrepreneur-in-residence for the group. Schoenfeld’s company Do It In Person is a KAYWEB portfolio company that is building a web application for event ticketing. (You can check it out here, and while you’re at it, sign up for #EETN!)

“Aron has been an exemplary CEO of one of our marquee portfolio companies, and we felt bringing him on in the role of Entrepreneur-in-Residence will allow our board, the current portfolio companies, and future portfolio companies to benefit from his expertise and feed off his considerable energy,” said KAYWEB Angels’ CEO Haig Kayserian.

The EIR role means that Schoenfeld will work with Kayserian and KAYWEB General Manager John Buckman, meeting with the board and portfolio companies regularly and representing the group at events around the US.

The KAYWEB Angels already have a strong web and mobile design and development staff, and Schoenfeld’s expertise in building a web company will add to those strengths.

“Since before KAYWEB Angels invested in Do It In Person, I believed in the vision of an investment company offering much-needed development resources to startups, in exchange for equity,” commented Schoenfeld. “I have had a very productive working relationship with KAYWEB Angels, and was honored and delighted to accept a formal role within the organization alongside my full-time duties as CEO of Do It In Person.”

10 Kick Ass Quotes from @DaveMcClure

Dave McClure has become notorious for speaking his mind in very–ahem–colorful ways. From his blog and Twitter accounts to his pitch sessions with 500 Startups companies, McClure doesn’t hold back.

“He will go through and tear up people’s accents, and these things feel sometimes politically incorrect, but they are not,” Populr.me CEO Nicholas Holland told The Tennessean. “He is speaking the truth. He makes fun of my Southern accent. He called me a hillbilly on day one. First, you’re thinking, I can’t believe he is saying this, but he is basically saying what everyone is thinking.”

Tough love aside, Dave McClure is also one of the most passionate startup advocates out there, championing women, minorities, and startups from all over the world. Here at Nibletz, we’ve learned a thing or two from him, including how to handle a PR snafu.

Here are some of our favorite Dave McClure-isms:

“Find investors who have a clue about the products & services they invest in, who use the products & maybe even write/speak about them”–Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, and Eat Your Own Consumer Internet Dogfood

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“being an entrepreneur is a friggin’ FEAR FACTORY, and a living nightmare every day of the week.”–Fear is the Mind Killer of the Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

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“Here’s the secret: PITCH THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION.”–Your SOLUTION is Not My PROBLEM

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“There is no better time than the present to build cheap & scalable software-based businesses that make money.”–What Hasn’t Changed: The Internet Keeps Getting Bigger

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“DON’T do a startup…you will fail!”–Why NOT to do a startup, because you will fail loser.

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“Crap. any minute now these fuckers are going to realize I can’t keep this up very long and then I won’t be a Golden God anymore.” —Fear of Flying

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“A ‘startup’ is a company that is confused about: What its product is. Who its customers are. How to make money.” On Quora

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“I figured maybe I had some talent as an investor… since it seemed like I was only a half-assed entrepreneur.”–late bloomer, not a loser (I hope)

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“We’re happy to discover we have a few black swans, but our MISSION is to groom ugly ducklings.”–Screw the Black Swans: Ichiro is our role model not Barry Bonds

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And that tweet he probably wishes we’d forget:

“HAY MISS THANG: female founders, u apply to #w2pitch yet? Only 6 days left.” Poor Dave…

Photo credit

Why the Series A is Both Bigger and Smaller Than Ever

From Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Medium

A couple months ago, I was chatting with a first-time entrepreneur who had recently raised a couple million dollar seed round after graduating from a well-known startup accelerator. He told me of his fundraising plan:

NibzNotes9

I’m guessing I’ll raise a $15-20M Series A in about a year… by that point, we’ll have shown product/market fit so we’ll be ready to step on the gas.

5 years ago, that wouldn’t have been “the plan.”

Series A rounds used to be different. The prevailing view back then was that the Series A, defined for our purposes as the first round of institutional venture funding for a technology startup, was typically a $2-6M round after which investors would own 10-30% of the company.

31 Highest Venture-Funded Travel Startups

From Rafat Ali, Skift

Yesterday, travel startups HotelTonight and GetYourGuide announced major funding rounds, and both of the travel startups are now well into double-digit millions on the amounts they’ve raised so far — HotelTonight may soon even touch $100 million mark. NibzNotes8

That gave us an idea to compile a list of all the biggest venture-funded startups currently in travel and we came up with this list of 31 companies, with the lowest cutoff of around $20 million.

Some observations:

Airbnb and Uber, never really billed as travel startups per se, are the two biggest venture-backed startups that exist now across tech, not just the travel tech sector.
Chinese car rental, sharing, and booking companies have raised huge amounts to compete on scale.
Russian booking companies have raised large amounts to compete in an especially competitive market.
In general, room sharing and car sharing requires lot of investment to build, disrupt, and compete.
Only four B2B startups are on this list. Surprisingly, two are aimed at the intersection of travel transactions and advertising/retargeting.

Start Co Announces Funding for 2013 Seed Hatchery Cohort

One of the biggest success indicators for accelerators is follow-on funding for its graduates. If a company can lure in more investment, the accelerator can consider its job of training, mentoring, and–well–accelerating the startups done.

Yesterday Memphis-based Start Co announced follow-on funding for half of its 2013 Seed Hatchery cohort. The 3 companies received a combined $700k from the Start Co Angels.

“This is a significant milestone for startups in the Memphis community, and we’re proud of the graduates and our role in building out an angel fund and network in Memphis, something the community has not seen in nearly a decade,” Start Co’s founder and CEO Eric Mathews said. “We see these funding rounds as a tipping point for our current programs, where later stage investment will be less of an exception and more of an opportunity for the teams that move through our programs and utilize our resources.”

Start Co as an organization is overseeing much of the growth and development of the Memphis startup community. From office hours to mentorship to a free coworking space, they offer entrepreneurs a full range of tools to grow from idea to company.

Of the three companies who received funding, 2 of them (MentorMe and Screwpulp) got their starts at a Start Co 48 Hour Launch event, where they presented their ideas and spent the weekend building them out.

Ebook publishing and purchasing platform Screwpulp received $330k to continue to build out their service.

Musistic overcomes the limitations artists have when trying to collaborate from a distance. Their $200k investments validates the pivot the team made during the accelerator.

MentorMe is an online platform that matches mentors and mentees. Brit Fitzpatrick pitched the idea on a whim at the first Women’s 48 Hour Launch in October 2012. When she was accepted to the Seed Hatchery in January, she quit her job and never looked back.

“Right now we’re in beta with select partner organizations,” Fitzpatrick told me. “By March we’ll have at least 8 customers using our platform. The funding will allow us to complete our betas and continue to develop our product so that we can scale nationally this year in the youth and higher education mentorship spaces.”

Start Co is currently accepting applications to its 3 accelerator programs which will start later this spring.

You know what else is in Memphis this spring? Yup! We’re excited, too!

Mobile Startups Raise $3.8B in VC Financing in 2013

Q3 of 2013 posted the largest quarter in financing for the mobile sector ever, CB Insights reported this week. Venture capitalists invested $1.12 billion dollars across 150 deals in that quarter, and Q4 didn’t see a significant decrease in investment. Across all 4 quarters of 2013, VCs poured $3.8 billion dollars into the mobile industry.

That money isn’t just going to finance the next consumer app, either. (Though $190 million did go to consumer apps.) With 2013 being the year we all woke up to Internet threats, startups working on security took the largest portion of that funding (10%). Travel was the next hottest sub-industry, but the money spreads out a good bit after that. Payments, customer relationship management, and business intelligence/analytics were all sub-industries that pulled in big VC money last year.

Unfortunately, the money wasn’t as spread out over geography as it was over industries. San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Mountain View pulled in a combined $1.36 billion dollars. The next closest region was New York/Brooklyn with a combined $269 million.

What does this mean for startups everywhere else? Well, obviously, there’s money to be had out there. With some projections placing smartphone sales in the billions this year, and fewer companies than we thought going mobile first, it’s safe to say the market isn’t going anywhere.

Companies dealing in mobile security will probably still be attractive to investors in 2014. After all, black hat hackers and the NSA aren’t going anywhere.

Check out the whole report from CB Insights here.

When the Sharks Miss a Shark Tank Success Story

Online privacy has been a buzzy topic since–oh, June or so. Amid revelations that all of our favorite tech companies have knowingly or unknowingly handed over mounds of our personal information to a government some of us trusted, everyone’s still trying to figure out how to move forward in our uber-connected reality.

It seems like insult to injury to realize that those ubiquitous webcams are powerful spying tools in their own right. Schools are spying on kids. Beauty queens are being blackmailed. And, it turns our, Macs aren’t immune.

With these realities in mind, CJ Isakow created Eyebloc, a small clip that slips over your webcam to protect you from unwanted eyes. (Which is probably more convenient than my thumb, which is what I’ve been trying to use since I watched CJ pitch on Shark Tank.)

Why not just use tape or Post-its? CJ has a good explanation for that:

At first I looked at duct tape and Post It Notes for inspiration, but I didn’t like how it left gunk on my computer. Some people are happy with tape or stickers, but I actually like to use my webcam – and a sticky cover makes using it a pain. I also ordered some of the products in the market but they all had adhesives. The ones that claimed to leave no mark also didn’t protect me the way I wanted. Then I bought a bunch of chip clips, thinking I could clip over my laptop. But that (predictably) didn’t really work

With a simple prototype and not too many sales, CJ pitched his product on Shark Tank a few weeks ago. Despite a great pitch, none of the Sharks were impressed. Perhaps the biggest blow came from Robert Herjavec, an expert in cybercrime.

“There’s definitely a market to protect kids,” he said. “I don’t think this is it.”

Well, even experts are wrong sometimes.

The response to Eyebloc late last year and especially after the episode aired convinced CJ that his instincts were good. Maybe the Sharks didn’t see the need–or think he had the solution–but the public sure seemed to.

With growing sales, CJ put Eyebloc on Indiegogo, and he’s reached 1/3 of his goal with 10 days left. He’s taking some of the Sharks’ suggestions to make his product cheaper and sleeker. If they double the goal, though, Eyebloc wants to begin development on protection for video game consoles like Xbox 360.

No one gets it right all the time, and there’s still plenty of time for CJ and Eyebloc to sink. But, at this point, it’s looking like the Sharks may have missed a huge Shark Tank success story.

18 Surprising Facts About Entrepreneurship

We all have a picture in our minds of an “entrepreneur.” In startup world, that picture usually involves pizza, Red Bull, and a hoodie.

We also have a picture of “success.” If you’re in software, chances are good you’re dreaming of an Instagram-level exit or the infamy of Uber. Most of us rarely dream in miniature, and even when we accept the reality that those experiences are few and far between, they’re still in the front of our minds.

The truth about entrepreneurship is a lot more well-rounded and complex than that. Read on to find out the most surprising truths about entrepreneurship and startups:

Who Are You?

1. According to Kauffman, the number of women entrepreneurs grew in 2013.

2. 95% of entrepreneurs have a bachelor’s degree or higher, despite the recent PR for dropping out of college to startup.

3. And, they aren’t also-rans. 67% ranked their college performance in the top 30% of their undergraduate classes.

4. 70% of founders are married when they start up, and 60% have at least one child.

Where Are You?

5. Colorado is the state to watch for tech companies. Colorado Springs, Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins-Loveland, and Cheyenne, Wyoming are all in Kauffman’s top 10 Metro Areas for startup densitylist, making the 170 mile stretch of I-25 one the most active areas in the country. (Silicon Valley was #3 on the list, behind Boulder and Fort Collins-Lovelace.)

6. The largest region for these companies is the Southeast, particularly Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, and Louisiana. (I told y’all it’s awesome down here!)

7. California’s share of America’s $100 million tech companies is declining. In the 1990s 35% of new, successful tech companies were in California, but today it’s only 20%.

Will You Fail?

8. Of all startups, information companies are most likely to fail, with only a 37% success rate after four years.

9. The industry with the highest success rate? Finance, insurance, and real estate. 58% of these businesses were still operating after 4 years.

10. Premature scaling is the most likely reason you’ll fail. Don’t get ahead of yourself!

Random Startup Facts

11. If you charge for your product, traditional marketing (instead of social media) may be the way to go.

12. Tech companies are popping up more rapidly than other small businesses.

13. For the last 20 years, the US has produced between 125-250 $100 million companies a year, despite economic changes.

14. It’s safer to start a business than stay in a job.

15. The average founder salary is less than $50,000/year.

16. Investors are clueless. (Sorry, guys.)

17. Balanced teams of 2 are the best combination. They raise 30% more money, have almost 3X the user growth, and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely.

18. Starting up is hard. Yeah, I know this isn’t “surprising,” but it’s the kind of thing you think you know until you do it. Then you REALLY understand that there are few things as difficult, challenging, and awesome as building a business from the ground up.

Sources:

Where to Find the Startup Billionaires…in an Infographic

We all know the dream. A few crazy years of startup life is nothing compared to the fame and prestige of a successful IPO. Oh, and the money. Let’s not forget the money!

In Forbes’ global billionaire list last year, 33% of the top 500 were Americans, and 16 of those are our golden boys. (Yup, all men, unfortunately.)

But, which companies have minted the most billionaires over the years? While the wealth was relatively spread out among the companies you would expect, there were three big winners with 3 billionaires each:

Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg ($13.3B), Dustin Moskovitz ($3.8B), and, theoretically, Eduardo Saverin ($4B)
Microsoft: Bill Gates ($67B), Steve Ballmer ($15.2B), and Paul Allen ($15B)
Google: Larry Page ($23B), Sergey Bring ($22.8B), and Eric Schmidt ($8.2B)

Do you think Larry and Sergey sit in their offices and argue over that .2 billion while they plot their next world takeover?

Where are the Twitter guys, you ask? The Forbes data was published before the IPO late last year, but Biz Stone was the only founder to become a billionaire from it.

The moral of the story? Sure, there are billions to be made in tech startups. The percentage of people that get there is pretty low, but if you’re reading this you’re probably a startup founder. You like long odds.

Check out the infographic below from businessmanagementdegree.net for the full story on who made what and when from the world’s biggest tech companies.

Source: Business-Management-Degree.net

SXSW Announces Startup Accelerator List, Leans Heavy on Everywhere Else

Earlier this week SXSWi announced the 48 startups who will present on stage at the 2014 festival. Of the 48 companies, 36 are from outside of Silicon Valley.

This year’s startups will compete in 6 categories:

Enterprise and Big Data Technologies
Entertainment and Content Technologies
Health Technologies
Innovative World Technologies
Social Technologies
Wearable Technologies

On Saturday, March 8, the companies will pitch to a live audience, including a panel of judges. Eighteen will be chosen to present again the next day to a new panel. Grand prize winners will be picked for each category. Winners will get 2 badges to SXSW 2015, prizes from the category sponsors, and the distinction of winning at the industry’s biggest conference.

“Over the past years of companies competing in SXSW Accelerator, 56% have gone on to receive funding in excess of $587M, and 9% of the companies have been acquired, so the judges are looking for truly innovative companies to raise the stakes,” SXSW Accelerator Event Producer Chris Valentine said in a statement. “All of the finalists have demonstrated the capability to change our perception of technology, and we now have to recognize the utmost potential within a very distinguished group of entrepreneurs.”

If the startups have to be top notch, the judges and emcees can’t afford to be slouches either. The emcee list is headed by John Sculley, former CEO of Apple, and the judges are a long list of successful investors and CEOs, including Scott Weiss of Andreesen Horowitz.

To check out all the startups competing at SXSW, check out the SXSW Accelerator page.

Women 2.0: Or, Where to Find the #WomenInTech

I have to admit, after this post, I feel a little like a hypocrite writing about the Women 2.0 conference. But, honestly, y’all–THIS is what access and mentorship for women really looks like.

Now, before I get into this, I don’t know the women over at Women 2.0, and I will not be able to attend the conference. This post is based 100% on me flipping through their website and being overwhelmingly impressed with the women they have involved and the things those women are doing at their day jobs.

Got it? Good.

The conference is being held in San Francisco, Feb 13-14. (Yup, Valentine’s Day.)

“Don’t look now, but tech is all grown up,” the website says. “The scrappy, young industry which began in hoodies and mom’s garage, is now re-engineering the American education system for the 21st century, commercializing manned spaceflight and hobnobbing with the President. These are big kid dreams, and they come with big challenges. Are you prepared for the era of BIG Tech?”

And, you know who’s engineering that tech, at least at the Women 2.0 conference? Women!

To be exact:

Gwynne Shotwell, President & COO, SpaceX
Sarah Friar, CFT & Operations Lead, Square
Daphne Koller, Cofounder, Coursera
Julia Hartz, Cofounder & President, Eventbrite

And many, many more.

There’s also a PITCH competition. (Oh, we’ve heard about the PITCH competition, right, Dave McClure?)

For the PITCH competition, female led startups from around the country applied to present at the conference. 10 were chosen and are being revealed slowly over at Women 2.0. During the conference, the 10 startups will pitch to the judges panel and, trying to win prizes.

They also have a mentor network packed with successful men and women on hand to help entrepreneurs.

The lineup for the Women 2.0 conference is impressive, no doubt. But I’m not trying to argue that it proves we have plenty of women in tech. Of course we don’t.

What’s great about this conference, though, is that the women behind it are actually bringing together successful women and aspiring female entrepreneurs. There’s no whining about how there aren’t enough women in tech. With this conference, Women 2.0 is attempting (and by the looks of it, doing a great job!) to actually change the momentum.

And, honestly, that’s what is great about being a woman in tech right now. Are all of the issues solved? No, of course not. But there are hundreds of women AND men attempting to a part of the solution.

Is Your Startup’s Founder Paying Themselves Too Much?

We’re all familiar with some of the stereotypes of 20-something founders at mega-financed, VC backed startups. Too often parties, fast cars, and fancy restaurants come into the picture.

We all know that’s not really accurate, though. In fact, last week we talked about how a majority of founders pay themselves less than $50,000 a year. Especially in places like the Valley and New York, that doesn’t go very far.

Location isn’t the only factor that affects salary, though. What about age, experience, and family responsibilities?

Oh, yeah, and revenue. How exactly does the “R” word affect founder salaries?

It turns out, according to Compass, monthly revenue is the most important factor in determining a founder’s salary. Until a company breaks $10k a month, most founders are still in the less than $50k range. When monthly revenue tops $1 million, founders seem to be more willing to increase their salaries above $100k a year.

The correlation really seems pretty obvious. If founders are fighting for every monthly penny, they’re less likely to want to pay themselves higher salaries. Company growth comes first. However, there’s obviously a point at which the company can grow AND the founders can pay themselves a living wage. That’s what we like to call the sweet spot.

Revenue was a big factor in founder’s salaries, but it wasn’t the only one.

Older founders pay themselves 71% more than younger founders, even though that is still just slightly more than $60k a year. Hardly raking it in or anything.

While it’s unfair to make blanket statements, it’s probably fair to say that younger founders can generally live on less. They usually don’t have kids or mortgage payments, and for the youngest set are still on Mom and Dad’s insurance. On the flip side, founders over 50 are likely to have savings or other sources of income and can therefore afford to take a smaller salary.

Both Compass studies come from self-reported data, so some of it is to be taken with a grain of salt. For example, they found that 78% of founders are under 40. That’s not really a full picture of startups, as Darmesh Shah points out.

Neither Compass study controlled for VC funding, either. It’s safe to say a series A company will be paying its founders more than a bootstrapped one will be.

What these studies do,though, is give us a baseline for founder salaries. That helps us have perspective on some of the rigors and sacrifices starting a company requires.

It also reminds us that the rich technobrat is probably a figment of our collective imaginations.

Dear Everywhere Else: You Will Not be the Next Silicon Valley

We hear this a lot: “Such-and-such city is going to be the next Silicon Valley.”

Everyone in the startup space admires and wants to replicate the Valley’s success. After all, a lot of billionaires have been made there.

But, here’s the thing, there will never be another Silicon Valley, the way we know Silicon Valley. What’s going on there is the result of decades of dedicated tech entrepreneurship, education, and financing. Many of the success stories found there happened well before tech and startups were cool.

That’s good for us, though. Because, here’s the other thing:

The world doesn’t need another Silicon Valley.

The world needs Detroit–where they are using entrepreneurship to claw their city back from bankruptcy.

It needs Israel–where they are using tech to find solutions to many of the world’s security problems.

It needs the countless cities across the country who are seeking solutions to the many problems our healthcare system has, from administration to devices.

It needs entrepreneurs who are so focused on solving the problem they’re tackling that they don’t really care if it’s current trend or “it” thing.

Even though we won’t ever be Silicon Valley, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn a few lessons from their success.

Innovation, not imitation

One reason Silicon Valley became what it has is because it was full of people who refused to imitate. No one in the Valley has ever said, “We’re going to be the next New York.”

Those of us in startups outside the Valley can take a lesson from this. Ecosystems who know their strengths and wear their differences like a badge of honor will be the next success stories. The ones who innovate in “unsexy” ways may well just find the next billion dollar ideas.

Understand entrepreneurship

There are great entrepreneurs all over the world, from the founder of this week’s hottest app to the women in Africa who make and sell jewelry to support their families.

But startups–truly ecosystem-shaping startups–are the ones chasing the big ideas relentlessly. Silicon Valley understands this, and you won’t find many lifestyle entrepreneurs there. Not that there’s anything wrong with lifestyle businesses, but it’s a completely different game they’re playing.

Successful ecosystems will not only know their industry, they’ll know what kind of entrepreneurs they have. And smart investors and mentors will be able to pick out the truly scalable ones to help grow.

Solve your own problems

There are plenty of articles lambasting Silicon Valley for solving rich, white boy, first world problems.

This isn’t going to be one of those articles, because I don’t think that’s fair to the smart men and women doing amazing things in the Valley.

However, there are other problems to be solved, problems that, for better or worse, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs just may not be aware of. That’s the true power of building your startup everywhere else.

In a recent article on PandoDaily, tech entrepreneur Chris Nicholson says,

People solve the problems they see every day. Even with the million amazing projects getting invented in San Francisco, the tech bubble produces a monoculture in what tech produces–apps that create more apps–and how it thinks.

Maybe the problem that captures your attention isn’t “world-changing,” but that’s okay. Solve it in the most creative, compelling way possible, and you may be surprised what comes next.

Ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley are the next big thing. It’s why we do what we do at Nibletz and the Everywhere Else Conference. We don’t think anywhere will ever be the “next Silicon Valley.”

But that doesn’t mean it won’t be amazing.