All in Teaching
When the city announced its 11-point plan to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in NYC, it was met with quite a bit of skepticism for the few in the startup community who bothered to notice it. Most of the existing entrepreneurs who didn’t need a financial downtown as an excuse to start a new company didn’t take the two minutes to read the city’s press release because they were too busy working on their businesses. Much of the plan centered around taking those that had been laid off from Wall St and helping them start their own businesses.
I think the reality is that the mindset, DNA, and maybe more importantly lifestyle of somebody who worked for a big bank and didn’t leave until they were forced to doesn’t exactly overlap with what is needed to start a company—and I’m not sure that a 6 week training program can change that.
However, what I realized this morning is that there are extremely specific needs at many well funded startup companies that aren’t being met. For example, I’ve talked to at least four startups in the past two weeks that needed someone to run their web marketing—but not write site copy or do branding work. They needed some hardcore quants to test strategies for loyalty and affiliate programs, measure ROI on paid search, etc. Frankly, fine tuning the web marketing strategy and lead conversion of an e-commerce company is not unlike managing a portfolio, trading or doing financial analysis. It’s putting a person in front of a set of quantitative tools, analyzing large pools of data, goal seeking, and optimizing. It’s the kind of thing that, if you were awesome at it, you could walk into any startup that sells anything, pitch your ability to add directly to the bottom line and pretty easily get hired to do it.
What I’m saying is, there are lots of opportunities at the startups we already have, and skillsets that are scarce. Instead of creating more startups, why don’t we make sure the talent pool is deep for the existing startups that already have some traction and funding. Let’s create more product managers and web developers, not more entrepreneurs. While the job market is difficult right now, there are a ton of opportunities in startups that aren’t getting filled because they can’t find a specific skillset. If someone were to train themselves to be a web marketing analytics ninja, they’d get hired in a second. How to you get that skillset to a former financial analyst?
I don’t know if programs like Jumpstart NYC are going down to this level of detailed skills training—and the reason I don’t know that is that their classes are closed. You have to attend in person and there’s no materials or courseware on the web. Why not just release all the materials in public and record the classes to put them up online?
Contrast that with how it looks like we’ll run our little learning Python experiment. We asked the community for feedback on what books do use, how to structure it, and even for people to join Julie Steele and I in our little quest to learn how to program. We got lots of feedback and we’re going to do the whole thing in public. We’ll probably just get a little group of 5-10 people together, but we’ll share everything we’re doing so that others can follow along with us or even find the materials in the future and maybe add to them.
Not only would that increase the number of people who could possibly learn—like those who couldn’t make it in person—but it will be available for others to not only find it later, but to add best practices and materials to it as well. I don’t think a big top down program could be dynamic and flexible enough to teach people the specific, detailed skills that are immediately useful to startups. Group learning and public materials could get all these Wall Street tech guys working on trading systems coding iPhone apps faster than a city program could.
In any given week, I meet with two or three entrepreneurs who want to talk with me about their business--just to get some feedback. They know that I used to be on the venture capital side and vet business plans and ideas on a regular business. I'm happy to do it when I take some interest in the idea, mostly when I feel like I can add some value. Plus, I feel like it's actually useful for my own business--to see what technologies and processes other people are using and to help generate new ideas. I've been very fortunate to learn from folks like the guys at Union Square Ventures, to see successful companies get launched and grown, and to have the opportunity to run a business on my own, so I do feel like I have something to add. That's why I'm teaching entrepreneurship at Fordham University.
However, I'd imagine finding me as an up and coming entrepreneur must feel a little bit like finding the A-Team--especially if you weren't in established innovation networks. You can't even go see Mr. Lee at the Chinese laundry first. (If you don't get it, you didn't grow up in the 80's.) I don't put myself out there as an expert for hire or have a fancy nickname for myself like Dr. Startup. In fact, a lot of really good people in NYC to talk to about your startup idea are totally under the radar--just helping give feedback to whoever just happens to stumble into their network.
On the other hand, a lot of the people most above the radar on this kind of thing aren't exactly people I'd recommend to go see. I have to assume every city has this, but I like to call them the "Venture Vultures"--various startup strategy folks with murky resumes who will promise to connect you to capital, technology help, strategy help who simply don't have a lot of there there. In the Web 2.0 boom, tons of people hung up shingles offering to up startup businesses, and I'm hoping the recession will weed out most of these folks, because I think a lot of them do more harm than good. When entrepreneurs with real potential run into these pseudo-virtual incubator strategy consulting types and get bad advice or no real results, and that's who they see trumpeting themselves in the community, it gives the community a bad name.
The reason why these folks can self-promote their way to noteriety, however, is because of an educational vacuum for new businesses in NYC. If you had an idea for a new business, or you had already built a product, service, or technology and you needed business strategy help, where would you go? What about if you were a student?
If we really wanted to improve NYC's ability to support innovation, more so than money or space, I think putting more effort into educating students about entrepreneurship would be worthwhile. The bottleneck for creating new companies in NYC isn't desks or angel capital--we have plenty of both--it's the fact that there just aren't enough entrepreneurs with good ideas who know how to execute on a business. We need more students learning the technologies that allow innovation and more students taught how to turn their passions into ideas--and then into businesses (or just find their passions in the first place).
EDIT: Let's be clear on what I'm saying. I think NYC is a great place to start a business--I just think that not enough of the best local minds are in the mindset that such an endeavor is possible or worthwhile. On top of that, those that really want to learn need more access to the experienced people who can teach them best practices. I actually think the infrastructure for a startup here in NYC is pretty good--we're just not getting enough new entrepreneurs at the top of the funnel. New York City schools don't exactly pump out lots of students with the business or tech wherewithal (or interest) in starting a new company (athough perhaps that might change now that they can't just assume they'll get hired by big banks anymore). NYC students are taught how to work for big companies, not to start small ones.
I'm specificially interested in programs for students. It's an entirely different thing to take someone who has already established themselves in a career and help them with a new business idea. They at least have networks. They know people in their industry and they have a sense of how to create value.
I want to meet whoever is working with local students. In fact, Fordham has generously donated space for about 100 people during the day from 9-5 at their Lincoln Center Campus on Tuesday, April 28th to bring everyone educating local students interested in entrepreneurship together. I'd like to hold a small conference to share ideas, solutions, best practices, and step one is figuring out who is out there.
If you are involved with a university incubator, tech transfer office, entrepreneurship program, degree, or certificate, or if you just teach students in programs and subjects likely to create innovators, please get in touch with me.
I've created a form to gather all the interested parties. Even if you can't make it on that day, please let me know who you are and what you do.
I just had a guy stop me in the hall at SXSW. We passed each other in the middle of a session block so it was obvious where I was coming from.
"Hey, did you just come from a panel that sucked?"
"Yeah."
"What was it?"
I think that's how a lot of people were feeling. Except for Leah Buley's panel, I haven't seen very many "amazing" mentions in my SXSW Twitter stream.
There's definitely something in the air here this year that hasn't been here the last two--or something lacking, rather. I feel like people are waiting for something--perhaps a little expectant--both the attendees and the panels. The assumption that something amazing would happen simply by getting a critical mass of creative people in Austin for a few days... just... well.. hasn't really panned out before.
Maybe it's Twitter's fault. People have been asking and wondering what the killer app of SXSW was going to be this year--as if what happened in 2007 with the Twitter explosion just happens every year. The idea that the gods of SXSW just magically pick a startup to bless each year is kind of silly.
Get over it: Twitter was *the* perfect app right at the right time at the ideal venue--stars aligned, lightning strike, never going to happen again.
And the panels... Well, they just seem kind of... tired. I've never been picked to be on a panel, but if I was, boy would I go out of my way to setup something exciting. I'd be doing cartwheels on the panel...getting up from behind the panel and walking through the audience. INTERACTING (since this is SXSWinteractive, right?) I don't feel like many of the people I've seen have been particularly appreciative to get their spots. A lot of people say that if you've been picked before, you've got a good chance to speak again. Maybe that shouldn't be. Maybe we should do a clean slate next year--all new, first time voices--unless you totally rocked your panel so much that no one said it was bad and people were talking about it for days--and maybe that's like 10 panels... tops.
The economy has forced people to rethink their businesses to focus on the bottom line. How do we drive revenue, drive adoption, focus, focus, focus? That is, except for companies that got a bailout.
Perhaps SXSW is the victim of an emotional bailout--the carryover of buzz from the past, because I don't see it refocusing itself on the bottom line: amazingness. People here seem to be waiting for a government bailout of a billion amazingness points instead of creating amazingness on their own.
I'm going to be spending more time with the education track folks in the next day or so, because they're fighting a good fight and I think the kinds of teachers that are here are the really passionate ones... but if I run into another social media marketing expert looking for the next killer SXSW app, I'm going to throw up the ribs I ate for lunch the last two days.
Fred Wilson recently wrote about whether or not entrepreneurs need a college education. He wrote, "Education is critically important. But you don't have to go to school to be educated and if being an entrepreneur is your goal in life, that's even more true."
The other day I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who works in the food business. She runs a cafe in a high-end, high-visabilty retail store--the flagship location for a very successful business. I assumed she had a degree, but it turns out that she didn't. She simply started cooking--went to Rhode Island and studied by working with some of Nantucket's most successful chefs. She learned how to run a food business firsthand.
Still, those stories are the exception. People in most industries expect you to have a degree, and the stats show that you're more successful with that piece of paper than without.
However, the question gets a little trickier when it comes to whether or not you need that piece of paper from an Ivy League school or whether your local state school will do just as well. Do you need an expensive degree?
Given the rising cost of a college degree and the current economy, more and more students are thinking about what the ROI of their education will be. Does it really pay up to go to a "better" school? And what does it even mean for a school to be better?
If you're going to school with the goal of getting a good job, that would imply that graduates from better schools get better jobs--whether that means more responsibility, more pay, faster progression, or even more happiness.
Unfortunately, no one really tracks this.
US News & World Report tracks statistics like the percentage of professors with terminal degrees and what percent of the alumni base give back. Given that we know that not all PhDs make the best teachers, and the alumni giving rate is a function of salesmanship of your alumni relations office more than anything else (or performance of your school's basketball team) then can we really count on these kinds of surveys to accurately measure the best schools? They certainly aren't taking outcome--what happens to someone 1, 5, 10, 20 years after they graduate--into account.
So who knows that? Anyone with a critical mass of resumes who understands different industries, job titles, etc. would know part of it--but you would also want more information. Imagine if, after analyzing resumes, you could survey your alumni and ask them if their degree led to their success?
Imagine students had that information even before they chose their college!
These are the kinds of things we're thinking about at Path 101 and we're looking to work with schools who want to get at the hard facts. We're building a database of over a million resumes and analyzing careers. We have a number of schools that have over a few thousand resumes represented in our database already and the results of how those resumes compare to their peers in the same industry are fascinating.
If you work for an alumni organization and you'd like to work with us to understand whether or not you are producing successful alumni, especially relative to your peer institutions, please contact me at charlie@path101.com.
Check out our presentation on this topic:
I've been watching TeachStreet because I'm obviously interested in the education market, but they also participated in my Blogger's Challenge review thing, so their kind donation has bubbled my opinions up to the surface of my blog.
Right now, TeachStreet has a little bit of a chicken and egg issue--not enough classes listed in every area and therefore not enough of a critical mass of students I'd imagine. Part of the reason? This is covered in their note to teachers who discover themselves on the site.
"Please know however that we searched for your information the "old-fashioned" way, with people-power, not with bots, spiders or by paying for your information off of a list."
Hmm... I don't know about that. I mean, I understand the intention there--quality control--but that's just the hurdle that being an aggregator entails. At least with something like Indeed.com, you have a high confidence that if there's a job out there to be found, it's on Indeed. That's a very powerful marketing message and it drives site traffic. Just being "all the classes we found so far" isn't going to be enough to drive people away from industry specific sites, like Media Bistro, or people who have established reputations around online learning, like the Learning Annex or University of Phoenix.
This got me thinking... Is the current set of existing classes really all there is to the learning market? For example, I currently teach entrerpreneurship for Fordham University as well as for ITAC's FastTrac. I often meet up with other entreprenuers to go over their ideas, pitches, etc. I don't currently do this for money, but I might do this for charity. Either way, whether the money goes in my pocket or in someone else's, the point is that, under the right circumstances, everyone is an educational resource. The question is how do you pull this people into the market and organize them?
My point is, to set up a class in TeachStreet, I needed an established class. That might seem obvious, but I also think it might be a missed opportunity. What if I could just put myself in as an expert in some topic areas (maybe it could suck in my LinkedIn profile and provide some suggestions) and then have students indicate what they might like to learn from me. (And what they might pay) With an easy plugin to a webinar or free conference call number, I might get roped into sharing my expertice at a regular time--i.e. teaching a class!
This could really expand the market size, and create a much more fluid market for community learning.
Otherwise, I think Dave and company are going to have to turn on those bots and spiders, because if you're not the place to find every single last class, and you're not where the classes are actually taking place (doesn't seem like they're hosting the content) then you're a marketplace... and marketplaces need lots of liquidity. By helping knowledgeable people create classes, you'd be "securitizing" previously illiquid assets.
The other thing I think TeachStreet needs to focus on is who their customer is. At Path 101, unlike Monster, we think of the job seeker as our main priority--although after a dozen or so years, apparently Monster is now thinking about them as well. We're building our site on the idea that if we're a place for seekers to go, and we can learn about them, the recruiters will follow.
How does that work in the education market? Something tells me its all about the teacher here--that these education sites need to be a no-brainer for every teacher to list on immediately. Plus, it can't just be about traffic at first, because a new site won't have any. I don't know exactly what it is--perhaps they should build some kind of a survey tool, where teachers--even ones who teach at the Learning Annex--can send their students to in order to give more in depth feedback. If I kept my reputation here as an instructor, I might as well list all my classes here. I, for one, would definitely send my students and my ITAC class to the site to look me up and rate me--if it was a lot more instructor-friendly than rate my prof sites.
Anyway... TeachStreet is certainly a good start--very cleanly designed and easy to navigate, but I really want to see what direction they're going to take this, because there's so much to be done here, but it is really going to take some disruptive ideas.