[Music]
[Music]
well I guess you could call me an
entrepreneur but honestly that word gets
used so much these days I’m not even
sure I could define it so let’s go with
this I’m just a guy who loves building
software products in software companies
about eight years ago I co-founded a
company called Nebraska global with my
partner’s Steve keen and Patrick Smith
the idea behind Nebraska global was to
create bring together nerds people like
me and the dollars from our Nebraska
based investors in order to create a
technology ecosystem here in Lincoln by
building and launching startups the
reason we were doing this is we weren’t
seeing a lot of momentum in the startup
community and we thought we could use
our experience to do something about it
the problem was actually much worse than
we realized at the time Nebraska ranked
52nd in the country in venture capital
activity which means we were below
Washington DC and Puerto Rico well fast
forward to today and the startup
landscape in Lincoln has changed
dramatically
the amount of energy and motivation and
inspiration that I personally get from
this is really hard to describe the fact
that this city got behind this idea and
really supported is one of the reasons I
love living in Lincoln incidentally
Nebraska recently ranked 25th in the
country so we have certainly come a long
ways in the last eight years well
Lincoln is a decent sized city but I
still consider it on the small side I
say that because of its ability to move
quickly and to make things happen
something I think is really difficult
for larger cities so this got me
thinking why can’t every small city in
this part of the country experience
these type of transformational changes
why can’t we democratize startups in
middle America
well it turns out if we follow a
conventional formula we will find that
the deck is stacked against us
traditional startups tend to follow a
similar path a few years before Nebraska
global I co-founded another company with
two other individuals two of us were
living here in Lincoln and our third
partner Ron was living in San Francisco
our big idea was to create software that
would automatically provide customized
internet content to end-users something
we refer to as Google alerts on steroids
well we quickly built a prototype of
this product and Ron leveraged his
venture capital Network out in Silicon
Valley to raise a round of funding and
to get us some experienced advisors to
help us out and we worked really hard on
that product for a couple years to find
just the right features that would
resonate with a with a broad user base
and show our investors that we were
really onto something unfortunately we
couldn’t make a business out of the
small but passionate group of users we
had and we eventually had to shut that
company down when we ran out of funding
what turns out my traditional startup
experience is actually quite common
depending on how do you measure failure
anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of
traditional startups fail the bottom
line is this is a risky business even if
you have access to resources like we did
unfortunately there’s some additional
factors working against us as well the
the level of support venture capital
support in terms of the number of deals
funded and the number of dollars
invested per capita is not evenly
distributed across this country it’s way
more grossly weighted in some parts of
the countries as opposed to others and
this results in almost 10 times the
amount of resources available on the
coast as opposed to this part of the
country if that wasn’t bad enough we
have some social science working against
us as well it turns out that the rate of
idea generation and innovation is
proportional to population density
in other words you’re gonna see a higher
rate of innovation in more populated
parts of this country so it seems to me
you I think you can see how this is a
problem and it seems to me that
following a traditional model for
democratizing startups could be a fool’s
errand I think we need a different model
well rather than accepting these
limitations we cannot change why don’t
we change our dependency on these
limitations rather than pretending we
can somehow generate more ideas or
magically bring in more investor dollars
why don’t we do something a little
different
why don’t we change the equation in
other ways we should leverage the
advantages that we have that are a
result of being in this part of the
country we actually have a lot going for
us cities in this part of the country
have a strong sense of community and
we’re built by people to embody the
entrepreneurial spirit that continues
today the fact that that we really
genuinely depend on one another and that
the reality that a small group of people
can have a significant impact means that
we can do transformational things we
should take advantage of this and
capitalize on this back in 2013 we were
working with Mike the CEO of a company
here in Lincoln he was interested in
modernizing in evolving their current
products and services they clearly
understood their customer needs and had
deep market experience but we sensed
that they were a little uncomfortable
with the path to follow to do this they
originally felt like acquiring
acquisition of technology might be the
path and they finally decided that the
best approach was for them to somehow
build these products and services in a
house I give them a lot of credit for
recognizing that not only did they need
some technical skills to do this
but they also needed help the building
the entrepreneurial culture that could
bring these ideas to reality and so they
reached out to us and the model we
landed on was a joint venture that
brought together the business and sales
experience of Mike’s company with the
product development and startup
experience of Nebraska global everyone
in this joint venture had skin in the
game and would benefit from its success
we even located this company down at our
offices so they could be closer to other
startups well this company quickly began
testing and validating their ideas and
building products and selling them and
in their market and things went well and
within three years
Mike’s company decided to acquire this
joint venture back into the parent
company so here’s the Epiphany we had at
no point during the forming of Nebraska
global did we ever envision going after
opportunities like this but as we got
further down the path with this we
recognized that this wasn’t some
diversion or side trip from our goal of
creating startups this was a startup it
just didn’t look like a traditional
startup but it everybody involved had
equity and skin in the game and there
was risk but not the same kind of risk
you have with a traditional startup that
doesn’t have customers and doesn’t have
a ton of market experience and while we
didn’t have venture capitalists
investing in this Mike’s company
certainly puts significant resources
into this to get this off the ground we
like this model so much that we changed
the way we started looking for
opportunities to find more that look
just like this so let me bring us back
to the challenges we face here in Middle
America cities in this part of the
country have many of them have
industries and companies that have been
established around for quite some time
these companies probably have
well-established customer bases and and
good market experience and they might
even have access to capital like Mike’s
company had they’re probably also
filling
sure to evolve and innovate to stay
relevant in their marketing and while
they probably very well understand the
operations of their current company
they’re probably a little uncertain
about how to go through a path of
innovation so let me paint this picture
for you imagine these companies exist in
a progressive community that has strong
civic leadership that recognizes the
need to bring together these companies
with entrepreneurs that have the the
drive and the energy but lack the big
idea and the access to capital these new
joint ventures will create opportunities
that will attract people into the city
from outside and will inspire young
people in this city to stay or return
after college this company will continue
to thrive and grow as these new
innovations start to gain traction in
the marketplace this new startup model
will create and educate the next
generation of entrepreneurs though it
will create the next generation of
companies in these cities that’s the
picture I want to paint across middle
America so here’s my challenge to you
think differently differently about what
makes a startup
think about your community or city could
you see this happening there what are
those companies in the in your community
that could evolve and innovate in their
marketplace and who are those civic
leaders that might be able to bring this
vision to reality and then think about
yourself what are the skills and
connections you have that could be
leveraged to make this happen
together let’s reimagine startups in
middle America thank you
you
[Music]
well I guess you could call me an
entrepreneur but honestly that word gets
used so much these days I’m not even
sure I could define it so let’s go with
this I’m just a guy who loves building
software products in software companies
about eight years ago I co-founded a
company called Nebraska global with my
partner’s Steve keen and Patrick Smith
the idea behind Nebraska global was to
create bring together nerds people like
me and the dollars from our Nebraska
based investors in order to create a
technology ecosystem here in Lincoln by
building and launching startups the
reason we were doing this is we weren’t
seeing a lot of momentum in the startup
community and we thought we could use
our experience to do something about it
the problem was actually much worse than
we realized at the time Nebraska ranked
52nd in the country in venture capital
activity which means we were below
Washington DC and Puerto Rico well fast
forward to today and the startup
landscape in Lincoln has changed
dramatically
the amount of energy and motivation and
inspiration that I personally get from
this is really hard to describe the fact
that this city got behind this idea and
really supported is one of the reasons I
love living in Lincoln incidentally
Nebraska recently ranked 25th in the
country so we have certainly come a long
ways in the last eight years well
Lincoln is a decent sized city but I
still consider it on the small side I
say that because of its ability to move
quickly and to make things happen
something I think is really difficult
for larger cities so this got me
thinking why can’t every small city in
this part of the country experience
these type of transformational changes
why can’t we democratize startups in
middle America
well it turns out if we follow a
conventional formula we will find that
the deck is stacked against us
traditional startups tend to follow a
similar path a few years before Nebraska
global I co-founded another company with
two other individuals two of us were
living here in Lincoln and our third
partner Ron was living in San Francisco
our big idea was to create software that
would automatically provide customized
internet content to end-users something
we refer to as Google alerts on steroids
well we quickly built a prototype of
this product and Ron leveraged his
venture capital Network out in Silicon
Valley to raise a round of funding and
to get us some experienced advisors to
help us out and we worked really hard on
that product for a couple years to find
just the right features that would
resonate with a with a broad user base
and show our investors that we were
really onto something unfortunately we
couldn’t make a business out of the
small but passionate group of users we
had and we eventually had to shut that
company down when we ran out of funding
what turns out my traditional startup
experience is actually quite common
depending on how do you measure failure
anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of
traditional startups fail the bottom
line is this is a risky business even if
you have access to resources like we did
unfortunately there’s some additional
factors working against us as well the
the level of support venture capital
support in terms of the number of deals
funded and the number of dollars
invested per capita is not evenly
distributed across this country it’s way
more grossly weighted in some parts of
the countries as opposed to others and
this results in almost 10 times the
amount of resources available on the
coast as opposed to this part of the
country if that wasn’t bad enough we
have some social science working against
us as well it turns out that the rate of
idea generation and innovation is
proportional to population density
in other words you’re gonna see a higher
rate of innovation in more populated
parts of this country so it seems to me
you I think you can see how this is a
problem and it seems to me that
following a traditional model for
democratizing startups could be a fool’s
errand I think we need a different model
well rather than accepting these
limitations we cannot change why don’t
we change our dependency on these
limitations rather than pretending we
can somehow generate more ideas or
magically bring in more investor dollars
why don’t we do something a little
different
why don’t we change the equation in
other ways we should leverage the
advantages that we have that are a
result of being in this part of the
country we actually have a lot going for
us cities in this part of the country
have a strong sense of community and
we’re built by people to embody the
entrepreneurial spirit that continues
today the fact that that we really
genuinely depend on one another and that
the reality that a small group of people
can have a significant impact means that
we can do transformational things we
should take advantage of this and
capitalize on this back in 2013 we were
working with Mike the CEO of a company
here in Lincoln he was interested in
modernizing in evolving their current
products and services they clearly
understood their customer needs and had
deep market experience but we sensed
that they were a little uncomfortable
with the path to follow to do this they
originally felt like acquiring
acquisition of technology might be the
path and they finally decided that the
best approach was for them to somehow
build these products and services in a
house I give them a lot of credit for
recognizing that not only did they need
some technical skills to do this
but they also needed help the building
the entrepreneurial culture that could
bring these ideas to reality and so they
reached out to us and the model we
landed on was a joint venture that
brought together the business and sales
experience of Mike’s company with the
product development and startup
experience of Nebraska global everyone
in this joint venture had skin in the
game and would benefit from its success
we even located this company down at our
offices so they could be closer to other
startups well this company quickly began
testing and validating their ideas and
building products and selling them and
in their market and things went well and
within three years
Mike’s company decided to acquire this
joint venture back into the parent
company so here’s the Epiphany we had at
no point during the forming of Nebraska
global did we ever envision going after
opportunities like this but as we got
further down the path with this we
recognized that this wasn’t some
diversion or side trip from our goal of
creating startups this was a startup it
just didn’t look like a traditional
startup but it everybody involved had
equity and skin in the game and there
was risk but not the same kind of risk
you have with a traditional startup that
doesn’t have customers and doesn’t have
a ton of market experience and while we
didn’t have venture capitalists
investing in this Mike’s company
certainly puts significant resources
into this to get this off the ground we
like this model so much that we changed
the way we started looking for
opportunities to find more that look
just like this so let me bring us back
to the challenges we face here in Middle
America cities in this part of the
country have many of them have
industries and companies that have been
established around for quite some time
these companies probably have
well-established customer bases and and
good market experience and they might
even have access to capital like Mike’s
company had they’re probably also
filling
sure to evolve and innovate to stay
relevant in their marketing and while
they probably very well understand the
operations of their current company
they’re probably a little uncertain
about how to go through a path of
innovation so let me paint this picture
for you imagine these companies exist in
a progressive community that has strong
civic leadership that recognizes the
need to bring together these companies
with entrepreneurs that have the the
drive and the energy but lack the big
idea and the access to capital these new
joint ventures will create opportunities
that will attract people into the city
from outside and will inspire young
people in this city to stay or return
after college this company will continue
to thrive and grow as these new
innovations start to gain traction in
the marketplace this new startup model
will create and educate the next
generation of entrepreneurs though it
will create the next generation of
companies in these cities that’s the
picture I want to paint across middle
America so here’s my challenge to you
think differently differently about what
makes a startup
think about your community or city could
you see this happening there what are
those companies in the in your community
that could evolve and innovate in their
marketplace and who are those civic
leaders that might be able to bring this
vision to reality and then think about
yourself what are the skills and
connections you have that could be
leveraged to make this happen
together let’s reimagine startups in
middle America thank you
you
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