Posts Tagged ‘startup’

We love startups and entrepreneurship communities that help startups become successful. Startups are usually all about innovation and approaching existing problems in a new way … And if you’re familiar with SoftLayer’s “Innovate or Die” motto, you know that we’re cut from the same cloth. We’ve partnered with incubators like Tech Wildcatters to provide up-and-coming companies with a year of $1,000/mo hosting credits along with a little SoftLayer expertise sprinkled in for good measure, and we are happy to support community partners like non-profits and user groups where new ideas are born every day.

Given our commitment to the startup community, when we heard that a sponsorship opened up for the September 13 WebInnovatorsGroup quarterly meeting, we jumped on the chance to get involved. WebInno events are fueled by a long-standing community of Internet and mobile entrepreneurs founded by David Beisel, and while I could tell you everything I know about what they’re doing in Boston, the best person to hear from is David himself:

Boston + Entrepreneurs + Technology + Beer … It was a no-brainer for us to be a Gold Sponsor of WebInno31.

Visit WebInnovatorsGroup.com to learn more about the WebInno community or head straight to the WebInno31 registration form to reserve your spot at Royal Sonesta Cambridge on Tuesday, September 13, at 6:30pm.

-Kevin

P.S. If you have a startup community or an ongoing event like WebInno that SoftLayer can be involved with, leave a comment on this blog or let us know on Twitter: @SoftLayer

I’ve been on the hook for a 3 Bars | 3 Questions interview for a few weeks now, and I finally found a few minutes to chat with Kevin about what’s going on in the world of SoftLayer Community Development. In the past two months, we’ve cranked everything up to 11 with the unveiling of our Technology Incubator Program and the Technology Partners Marketplace. Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about:

Over the past few weeks, we’ve posted video interviews and guest blogs from a few of our featured Technology Partner Marketplace participants, and you can expect to see more where that came from as we sign on new partners with killer applications and services that we can share with our customers. If you want to be one of those new partners, fill out our quick application, and we’ll get the ball rolling!

I’m looking forward to the next installment of “3 Bars | 3 Questions” because “The Mitch” – the man, the myth, the legend – will be in the hot seat.

-@PaulFord

We recently announced a partnership with the Tech Wildcatters Incubator Program, a Dallas-based “microseed” fund and startup accelerator, and we couldn’t be happier with the results we’ve seen thus far. Much of the press coverage of the sponsorship focused on the $1,000/mo of cloud, dedicated or hybrid hosting solutions we offered the program’s startup companies, but the most exciting aspect of the relationship thus far has been getting to engage with the participating up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

Having been in their seats about six years ago when SoftLayer was born in a living room, the SoftLayer team is especially qualified to give insight about the struggles and successes of running a startup, and that aspect of our partnership is where we hope to provide the most value. Over the past few weeks, we’ve met with the current Tech Wildcatters participants and seen some of the amazing ideas they have in the works, and we’re pumped to see them succeed … By all accounts, we can’t really call SoftLayer a “startup” anymore, but our investment in this community reinvigorates the startup culture we’ve tried to maintain as the company has grown.

Recently, I had the chance to share a few “Keys to Success” with program participants, and since those thoughts might be interesting for other startups and small business users, I thought I’d share some of the highlights here. There are no “guaranteed win” formulas or “super-secret secrets to success” in business (regardless of what an infomercial at 3am on a Tuesday morning may tell you), but these ideas may help you position your business for success:

1. Hire people smarter than you.
Your goal should be to get people on your team who can handle specific responsibilities better than you can. Just because you’re running the business doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it, and the best people to learn from are brilliant people.

2. Hire a diverse group.
Different people think differently, and different perspectives lead to better conversations and better business decisions. Filling your organization with one kind of employee will lead to a lot of “That’s the best decision ever” moments, but whether or not that “best decision ever” decision is good for anyone else is a crap shoot.

3. Founders should put skin in the game.
With all of the startup company trials and tribulations, you want everyone on your team to have a vested interest in the business’s success. Clock-punchers and coasters need not apply.

4. Boot-strap the beginning.
Along the lines of the previous recommendation, if you’ve remortgaged your house or sold your car or maxed out your credit cards on a new business, you’re going to care a lot more if it fails. By boot-strapping your initial financing, you become even more accountable for your success.

5. Operate with financial sense, operational sense and common sense.
Balance your business responsibly. If you disregard any of those “senses,” your tenure as a small business owner may be relatively short-lived. When it comes to financial sense, I also recommend that you invest in professional accounting support and software to save you a ton of headache and heartache down the road when it’s time to go after “real money.”

6. CBNO – Challenging But Not Overwhelming
You can always do something more for the business. You and your team should be maximizing your efforts to grow the business but not at the expense of burning out. If you’ve got “skin in the game,” your threshold for what is overwhelming may increase, but you have to understand the need for balance.

7. Have fun and make money.
In that order. If you’re not having fun, it doesn’t matter how much money you make. Startups are run by passionate people, and the second you lose that passion, you lose a significant piece of what makes your business or idea great.

I touched on about a dozen more points when it comes to how to orient your business to your customers, but I’ll save that bit for later.

CBNO

-@lavosby

To borrow a phrase from my favorite movie from the time period in question… a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… budding entrepreneurs had a few options for starting a business. Our options back then were pretty simple:

• Newspaper Route
• Collecting Pop bottles – if you don’t remember bottles made out of glass, don’t worry about trying to understand this one.
• Lemonade Stand

Lucky for me, I grew up in a family business and did not have to worry about starting a business since I had one already – I was head dishwasher! Aside from that, my biggest concern was what bait to use to catch the bass that hid under the dock near our restaurant and when the parking lot would empty out so we could play baseball under the street lights. Of course, I did wash my share of dishes and bus an equal share of tables over a 13 year period. Still, life was pretty simple back then. Comics were $0.25, a pack of gum was $0.10, and you could go to a movie and have a drink and popcorn for about $3.00. A former colleague of mine would fondly refer to these as the salad days. But, times have changed… a movie is easily $20 and I am not sure any comics exist under $3.00. There are also very different “start-up” options available to the current generation of 10 year old entrepreneurs. Mom and Dad may still be out there shuttling kids around in the rain to deliver newspapers, or carving up and decorating an old box to sell lemonade (I did that too, but that was to raise money for Jerry’s Kids) to people wandering past a sidewalk-based store front, but I doubt it. I can’t in fact remember the last time that I saw anyone undertaking such a venture. Instead, it seems that this generation has fully grasped the value of the Internet. Whether it is our youngest blog contributor, or our youngest customer – a 13 year old web host who’s Mom did her part by setting up a PayPal account for him to run his new business. Not to be outdone, we have a slightly older generation of entrepreneurs that have taken inspiration from a number of areas, including turning hobbies into viable businesses. Take a look at www.mmoguildsites.com as an example.

The mantra at SoftLayer has always been to enable business through innovation and by empowering the customer with our delivery of Serverless IT to businesses everywhere. But, I am not sure that any of us ever envisioned the impact that this approach and vision would have. Who knows, we might be helping to stimulate the ideas that could lead to the next Microsoft, Google, or Apple.

So, here’s to entrepreneurial spirit at any age! And if you are one of those young entrepreneurs out there, best of luck and please continue to create new ideas. We are all relying on you. SoftLayer will continue to do its part to help you make your ideas real.

-@gkdog

What in the world is going on? There are people out there who are always determining that we must be labeled something. The Early 2000s was the dot.com era, then there was the bubble bursting era and it seems now that we live in the “Web 2.0 Era”. Whatever label is put on any era there are always head-scratchers out there who catch someone’s eye and this has definitely caught mine. In a recent article on webware.com, one of the brightest, high-flying Web 2.0 companies is now up for sale oneBay. Per the listing, these are the following attributes that make Xcellery an excellent Acquisition target (outside of the “buy on the cheap from ebay” thing):

• The startup was ranked among the Top 5 at the Office 2.0 conference.
• Approx. 10,000 subscriptions include paying customers on SalesForce.com/AppExchange
• Huge waiting list for Xcellery Enterprise Edition (XEE) customers
• State of the art technology: C#, ASP.NET 2.0, AJAX, MySQL/SQL server
• Two years development time was invested to build Xcellery
• Xcellery is integrated into SalesForce.com/AppExchange including a payment system with PayPal
• www.xcellery.com has reached a PR five and is in the top three when searching for “Online Excel” and others
• The founder team is interested to stay on board and help continue the venture

What this tells me is that no matter how technology changes our lives and how optimistic we are about conquering the world, underlying fundamentals of business are the key to any company’s success. We (Softlayer) host a tremendous number of web 2.0 firms and are excited to see the growth and opportunities that are presented to many of these companies. After all, our customers’ successes equate to a long-term relationship with us, so we are rooting for all of you.

So Web 2.0′ers, as we all set our sights for greatness, don’t forget — old school business-fundamentals drive a lot of the abilities for us to be innovative and ground breaking!

Keep thinking!!

-Sean