Helping prepare tech entrepreneurs for business war
By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published October 29, 2003
How many hardened veterans swear they owe their survival to the hard lessons learned as raw recruits in boot camp?
Tampa Bay area entrepreneurs - each armed with a technology idea, a sketchy business plan and a naive hunger to succeed - slogged through their own version of boot camp Tuesday. Although push-ups and forced marches were nowhere to be found, these business newbies faced their own obstacle course about hard-to-reach investors, legal pitfalls and leadership challenges.
Their goal: to graduate with more street smarts about start-ups, a tougher hide, and perhaps some renewed motivation to build a successful tech business.
More than two dozen people signed up to attend the two-day "entrepreneur boot camp" taught by some of the bay area's leaders in funding, structuring and running young technology companies.
"How many of you are looking for money?" posed one veteran entrepreneur and instructor. Most of the attendees raised their hands.
"You've been looking weeks? Months? Years?" the instructor asked the group.
"All my life," quipped one recruit.
Christian Wetzel, who calls his business Nitride Consulting, is attending because he wants to convert his expertise in LED (light-emitting diode) technology into a tangible business. Wetzel had worked at Uniroyal Technology's once-promising LED facility in Tampa. Though Uniroyal ultimately sought bankruptcy protection, he remains convinced of the business potential of LEDs.
Darren Shields, an ex-TECO Energy staffer, hopes the boot camp adds an edge to his business, Workflow Mobility. The Tampa start-up helps companies automate information exchanged between employees in the field and their corporate headquarters.
Most entrepreneurs in attendance had a software, telecommunications or PC-related business to build. About a fourth of the two-dozen-plus boot campers were women. The annual boot camp, which concludes today, is run by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum. This year, it's operating out of space provided at Raymond James Financial's St. Petersburg headquarters.
The bottom line? Since the Internet Bubble burst in 2001, tech start-ups still face a daunting array of risks and uphill battles to survive. As an observer of the opening day of entrepreneur boot camp, I had to admire the roomful of folks willing to take tech ideas and try to push them through so many legal, money and manpower hurdles.
Amid the technical details required of business start-ups, the best advice of the day came from three instructors - the boot camp's role models - who are successful CEOs of local tech businesses. Here's their Top Five leadership tips:
5. Make mistakes - and learn from them. It's a key part of running a growing business.
4. Find a mentor for both business expertise and inspiration.
3. Establish a vision, a set of values and a culture that create a strong identity for a business and its employees.
2. If you start a tech business but are unwilling to lead, find someone who will.
1. When hiring, aim high and pick people who are smarter than you are.
If these sound rather corny in print, they were right on the mark in Tuesday's boot camp.
The most intense hour of the day came courtesy of instructor Kurt Long, CEO of Clearwater's OpenNetwork Technologies, which helps companies run secure online corporate networks.
Long recalled the moment when he tried to hire his very first employee - a van-sleeping, night-clubbing guy whom Long was so glad to see walk through his door that the entrepreneur nearly clung to the job candidate's legs to make sure he stayed.
Times have changed. Long now tries to hire "all stars" whenever possible, and conducts intensive reference and background checks to make sure he's getting the worker he wants.
For small companies that can't afford to make hiring mistakes, Long's got a list of red flags.
Skip people too concerned about titles and office size. Forget applicants, no matter how smart, who have not worked in jobs where they were ultimately responsible for revenues and actual results. Avoid candidates who swear all they do is work; employees should be driven but balanced. "People need time to recover," says Long.
Marc Blumenthal, the CEO of Tampa's Intelladon Corp., who several years ago sold a company he founded, offered similar counsel.
"Hire slow, fire fast," he told the boot campers.
Realize as CEO that what you do sets the company's overall pace. "Speed of the leader is the speed of the pack," he said.
Not all the advice was nose-to-the-grindstone. Blumenthal told a story of how he spent three days alone on the beaches near Apalachicola, writing down what he would do if he had only five years to live. Then two years to live. Then six months. He was doing none of those things, so he sold his business and later invested in Intelladon.
George Gordon, CEO of Tampa's Enporion, urged his boot camp audience to recruit directors for their young companies that know things about business nobody else on staff does.
Half of the boot camp attendees are planning to select directors within the coming year.
"Boards of directors may be a legal necessity, but they should be a competitive advantage," said Gordon, whose young company helps energy companies manage purchasing over online networks.
Will a two-day intensive primer really help these tech start-ups? Maria Weisnicht thinks so. To help build up her company, Computer Education & Design of Florida, she traveled all the way from Pensacola to attend.
Like the graduates of real boot camps, there's no guarantee these entrepreneurs' start-ups won't perish. But these recruits are definitely improving their odds.
