An Ode to Non-Technical Entrepreneurs

I'm a non-technical startup guy. When selecting my major, I was given the choice between an engineering path and a business path. I opted for business because I like the thrill of hustling and as a kid I was always figuring out how to put extra money in my pocket in addition to my weekly allowance.

I'll admit that I have some irrational fear of programming. After a weekend spent on w3schools.com learning HTML and CSS, I pathetically bumbled my way through setting up and editing a wordpress site. And along each step of the way, I could hear the proverbial ghost of every programming nerd who had their lunch money stolen in high school sneering at me. Like the IT guy from the SNL skits, I felt that no matter what I was doing someone, somewhere was having a vindicated laugh at my expense. Again, irrational. But admitting you have a problem is the first step, right?

However, I will be starting to learn Ruby on Rails with a group of other non-technicals at school so I am relieved that misery will have company. I must admit that not knowing a programming language is the equivalent to not knowing Word or Excel a decade ago. I feel that in order stay relevant, I'm going to need to just get over my childish fears and start being able to have some basic programming skills so that I can have an intelligent conversation with my future engineering guys when.. you know.. I'm COO of a 50M startup.. someday.

With all that being said, here are my thoughts about the unsung heroes of startup world: the operators. The VP-of-get-shit-done guys (and gals). I also have something to get off my chest:

I am sick and tired of hearing about someone farting a new Web 2.0 company every 30 seconds and presenting it at some overblown conference where everyone's tweeting and retweeting the same crap like it's the next Facebook or Groupon or totally pushing the edge of augmented reality. Creating a new way to send a text message is not interesting. We have text messaging. And stop calling is a mobile communications platform.

I love reading VC blogs as much as the next guy but just once I want to hear someone say, "I'm investing in the social layer because anything that requires hard goods and inventory makes me sick to my stomach."

Don't get me wrong, I would love to get investment from Mark Suster or Ben Horowitz, but it seems like unless you are an internet-based company or green-tech startup you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting any attention.

Last time I checked, the water bottle I drink out of isn't composed of C++. My jeans aren't written in Java and the individual apple I ate this morning came from a tree, delivered by truck, sold by a real person and did not have a "post to Facebook" function on it.

The point I'm making is that there are a number of things that the twitterverse takes for granted that gets a little more difficult once you step away from your screen:

1. Try getting the door slammed in your face - getting to product to market-feedback is easy when you are shielded behind a username and have a delete key at your disposal. It's a lot harder when you are in the person's office, having the conversation in real-time, looking for non-verbal cues to gauge what you should say next and personal rejection to stomach (coz they aren't buying the product, they are buying you - ask any salesperson what I'm talking about). I would love for Eric Ries or Steve Blank to try and talk as flippantly about "sell, design, build" after attempting it in the real world: cold-calling for three weeks and then going on a 1 week sales meeting bender. Month in and month out.

2. A new product is not necessarily innovative - I am thankful for the tech industry, the innovations in business models over the last decade are pretty novel. And while they might be saturating the industry, they have yet to be implemented in existing industries. Want to see a highly disruptive opportunity that will make VCs craploads of money? Find a team that is employing the freemium model with hard goods (it's the future). I personally know a team (pair of undergrads) that is tinkering to find a way to give road bikes (quality ones) away for free and still have the firm make money.

3. "Hard" entrepreneurs are operational gladiators - going "lean" is a lot harder when you are dealing with inventory and not a lot of cash. You have to be more intentional about your actions and you aren't afforded the privilege of being completely at the beck-and-call of the market, sometimes you got to move product and hustle. That being said, any freedom that the firm has to pivot is the result of operational prowess. Striking a balance between organizational agility and efficiency when working with hard goods, takes a REALLY smart person (Google: "G Score") with the cahones to even attempt it in the first place.

I'm not advocating that "hard" entrepreneurs are better than technical, "soft" entrepreneurs or that the Web 2.0 surge hasn't benefited the nation. I'm simply attempting to shed light on the fact that there are number of entrepreneurs who are quietly hacking away at innovative non-technical problems in "mature" industries. It requires someone with well-rounded knowledge and competency in areas that are "boring" and "non-sexy": accounting, operations management, and sales. And it will be these entrepreneurs who will take the learnings from the tech industry and apply them to the rest of the world (yes, there is a world outside of Stanford's walls).

And here's my strong claim: while we spent our endowment on Facebook and Twitter, China doubled down on it's clean tech investment. China is working on gaining mastery of a hard problem, cheaply producing things that tend to be expensive. The US is mastering the art of coding an app over the course of a weekend.

In the coming years, "hard" entrepreneurs are going to be more critical if the US wants to remain an economic player in the world. Maybe we should start thinking about providing them with the support mechanisms that technical entrepreneurs have been enjoying for the last decade. Places like the Foundry are a good start and we'll be reporting AUTM numbers for our first year soon. Hopefully, it will serve as an example of what is necessary to support entrepreneurial development in a non-technical realm (hint: it doesn't involve money or resources).

The Next Generation of Entrepreneurs: Drug Dealers and Hustlas

If colleges and non-profit programs want to capture and equip the next generation of entrepreneurs, they can start with their local teenage drug dealers.

Yep. Drug dealers. I'm not alone on this one and there appears to have been some research on the linkage between drug-dealing as a juvenile and self-employment as an adult.

I am fortunate to have had a post-hoc peek into the underworld of localized drug dealing through some acquaintances who are ex-dealers. Most of them are now self-employed legitimately (I think). Listening to them talk about their experience is simply inspiring. Talk about resourcefulness:

By the time they graduate high school, these teenage drug dealer know more about margins, sales, customer relationship management, building a brand, strategic alliances, viral marketing, inventory management, supply chain management, product-market fit, negotiations and government regulation than most second-year MBAs. They have more experience in strategic decision-making and maintaining competitive advantage in a fiercely hostile commodities market than 2/3 of academia and know precisely what contributes to the local economy.

My conjecture is that if we tell them to keep doing what they are doing and simply replace the drug(s) they are hustling with some other hard good of their interest, we would see a HUGE spike in high growth startups and innovative revivals in mature/dying sectors like manufacturing and retail. Detroit anyone?

My point is that we as a society should not take a position of moral opposition to their current activities but rather praise their resourcefulness and make an attempt to show them the possibility of "legal" enterprises. Based on my discussions with people who have dealt drugs as teenagers, most grew bored with society's traditional models of classroom learning and mind-numbing lever-pulling jobs at minimum wage. Overall, they have vocalized disgust for anything that appealed to authority or followed general consensus.

Conversely, the University of Illinois at Chicago after conducting research on local dealer behavior and impact to the economy found that archetypical drug dealers in depressed metropolitan areas were not motivated to destroy the community but rather (highly) motivated by the same things as "the rest of us" and were simply presented with different opportunities.

My intuition is that drug dealers, regardless of demography, get a high from hustling. This something that I've experienced first hand - a little of which you can read here. There's something about making things happen, making connections, finding a need and delivering on it - and doing so faster, at better quality with the least amount of resource expenditure as possible. Hustling is a form of creating, it is the feeling of being the exception to the Theory of Impossibility, the sense of personal fulfillment when you break the First Law of Thermodynamics: creating matter - economic value - by taking ideas, relationships conversation and resources and rearranging them in a way that only you can. All this to create the existence of dollars in your pocket and happy customers.

There is simply nothing like it. It doesn't matter what you are hustling, simply being in the midst of the process (e.g. "the game", "the grind") is addictive.

This is a good thing. It is at the core of all entrepreneurial individuals that have a chance of doing something impactful and this country has no idea how to channel this type of energy, intelligence and potential. The best that they've come up with so far is ADD/ADHD medicine and sending drug dealers to jail. I have some theories about possible solutions but nothing solidly based in fact.

Except that you could send them to the Foundry.

As I surveyed the landscape for resources/programs that would help me sharpen my talent potential, nothing seemed very interesting. It all occurred to me as another version of a class project: hypothetical and detached. I discovered that there were other students who were going through the exact same experience. This, in part, led to 20 undergrads co-inventing the Foundry with some super cool (and super smart) "adults" about a year ago.

Hustler's like the "realness" of the grind: fear, risk, uncertainty, ambiguity. Everything looked to me like another appeal to authority: some judge or mentor who as no idea who I am or what I've done is in a position to say what is good and what is not.

This is not the way to teach entrepreneurs and it is not the way to allow hustlers and drug dealer to see the possibility of applying their skills, expertise and talents where this country really needs it: job creation.

I think this is why Foundry attracts a certain kind of individual and why graduates weigh in heavily on the cohort formation process: hustlers like being around other hustlers. Iron sharpens iron. We select for people, not for companies because hustlers can hustle anything, whether it's weed and ecstasy or water bottles and recycling bins.

Again, we don't have a resource problem. In fact, I don't think we even have a resourcefulness problem. We have a training problem. Yes it's scary to think about the prospect of training drug dealers to be contributing business leaders. Yes, drug dealers can be dangerous (a function of being in dangerous work) and can smell a feeb from a mile away. The don't appeal to authority (they actually subvert it) or listen to the general consensus about how things should happen. They have a different relationship to fear than most people and definitely not interested in the hokey pokey of Cubiclelandia that modern society has been offering for decades.

Judging by the current state of the union, it seems that even the President agress that we could use less of the lever-pulling types and more of the lever-creating types.

If you are, or know, a 20/30/40-something drug dealer/hustler that might be interest in a new career opportunity hustling something other than drugs and be part of a group where your skills, perspectives and overall approach to life are praised and sought after, Foundry is actively recruiting for people to fill our summer cohort: F3. Feel free to contact me directly or you can submit an application here.

Just leave your drugs and weapons at home - and please don't take my lunch money.