By: Shane Reiser, Co-founder Startup Genome
http://www.kauffman.org/thoughtbook2015/paths-to-entrepreneurship#startupcommunities
Startup community builders are a special breed of people.
Usually entrepreneurs themselves, these are the people who give their time and money to help other entrepreneurs in their city, state, or country.
As I got to know more startup community builders in different parts of the world through UP Global and now through Startup Genome, I noticed that many were cataloging their local startup community.
This is what they typically did:
- They made a list of local founders, startups and investors in a spreadsheet or on a whiteboard.
- Some included community resources like accelerators, coworking spaces, service providers, etc. Some did not.
- Some asked other leaders in the community to contribute to their list. Some did not.
- After getting busy themselves, many abandoned the project and the list became outdated within a matter of weeks.
Some community builders even took the effort a step further and tried to visualize it, like this:
They ended up staring at a list or mind map like the one you see above, not knowing what to do with it. It simply didn’t help them make decisions.
When we asked why they created such a catalog in the first place, they knew they had a good reason, but couldn’t articulate it. Several said it would help them “identify the gaps in their community.” Exactly how the data would reveal those gaps was unclear.
So, is it useful to track your startup community?
To decide if Startup Genome was worth building, we talked to hundreds of potential users—community builders, startup founders, corporations, etc. We found that if done collaboratively, tracking a local startup community pays off in the following ways:
1. Save the dying startups.
It’s just as important, and arguably more efficient, to help existing entrepreneurs succeed than to focus on creating more entrepreneurs in your community.
Startup Genome tracks leading indicators of a startup’s growth or decline, including web traffic, mobile app downloads, earned media mentions, search engine optimization, and number of employees. When one or more indicators decrease quickly over time, we flag them and investigate.
If we know which entrepreneurs are struggling, we can help them. Reaching out to a fledgling startup and helping it overcome an obstacle could mean the difference between life and death.
“If we know which entrepreneurs are struggling, we can help them.”— @shanereiserTWEET THIS
And when a company dies, it’s important that the people get absorbed back into the startup community. If we know a company is closing its doors, we can help those affected land at another local startup instead of leaving town.
2. Find the success stories.
We can use the same leading indicators to identify growing startups and uncover stories to tell about the startup community. We can feed these stories to media outlets, and before we know it, word starts to spread about the successful startups coming out of our city. A national media outlet writes a piece about a local startup. Investors from out of town start visiting. New talent starts moving in. Students begin choosing to work at startups after graduating. We win. Local entrepreneurs win. The startup community wins.
3. Measure impact.
How do we know if our efforts are worth it? Does our event or program make a difference, or do we just believe it does?
Not all outcomes are measurable, but the data can tell us something. For example, we can track the people who attend events and see if they start a company or get a job at a startup within a year. Did they move to San Francisco? Did they join an accelerator? Did their company raise money? How many people does their new company employ? Did they add a new programming language to their list of skills on LinkedIn? Did they open a GitHub account? Did they go back to school (or quit)?
As community builders, we tend to use feelings when deciding if an event was successful or whether to build a new program. Events and programs often can feel like a good thing, but measuring the results can help us make better decisions about which programs to expand and which to kill. Bonus: those metrics are helpful when pitching sponsors.
4. Raise awareness of programs and services for entrepreneurs.
By maintaining an updated list of programs and services and getting it in front of entrepreneurs on a consistent basis, we can drive adoption of those programs and help more entrepreneurs.
Seems simple, but these important pieces often are overlooked:
- Keep it current.
- Be inclusive. Everyone should help build it. Everyone should embed it on their website and refer people to it. One list>many.
- Make it easy to consume with helpful categorization and filters.
5. Benchmark and compare.
We can use the data to compare our community to others, but we should make such comparisons against a sister city, nearby cities, or communities just one or two years ahead of ours. If you’re Omaha, Nebraska, you have a lot more to learn from Kansas City or Chicago than from San Francisco.
The most useful comparison is against past performance. We can use the data to create an annual report for our local startup community and compare it to last year’s results.
6. Most important reason: Unite (or defrag) your community.
Startup Genome ran an experiment to discover the biggest challenges faced by startup community builders around the world. “Fragmentation” or “silos” was mentioned three times more than the second most mentioned challenge.
The exercise of mapping startup communities can itself be a mechanism for bringing a community together. The map of Omaha on Startup Genome is curated by a dozen people including entrepreneurs, event organizers, journalists, freelancers, corporate partners, people involved with the local accelerator, the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, and the city’seconomic development department. Everyone contributes, everyone is proud of it and everyone uses it and embeds it on their websites.
Another challenge frequently cited in our experiment was a lack of understanding by government and corporate partners. If we track our startup communities, we can use the data to create new formats and visualizations to help others grasp its history and composition.
When they understand, they are more likely to get involved.
Another benefit we’ve observed is the willingness of the community to work together to solve any problems that the data reveals.
How can you get involved?
We invite you to check out your community’s map on Startup Genome. If there’s no curator for your community, be the first. It’s easy. Email shane@startupgenome.com for help getting your community on the map.
Follow Shane Reiser on Twitter: @shanereiser
