A Slow Process of Revitalizing Santa Cruz

Strongly recommend you take the time to read Tom Honig’s recent opinion piece in the Good Times Santa Cruz entitled A Slow Process of Revitalizing Santa Cruz and check out the document he’s referencing that started out on the back of a napkin… where most great ideas start out IMHO :)

As I said in my introduction to the Envision Santa Cruz event in March, though parts of the existing systems that have been around for generations are failing all around us, I see more opportunity than ever these days. Times of crisis present incredible opportunities for those bold enough to take action and present new paradigms.

Santa Cruz is full of such people in fact and I am so stoked and feel so blessed to be among a community of like minded DOERS who are out there taking bold action, creating new paradigms and at very least TRYING to create a better world for themselves and future generations.

Happy Santa Cruz is Indeed Very Happy :)

After a lot of hard work and help from Todd Schafer, Davy and Ruby at Parachute Creative, Nick Sobrak-Seaton and James Lafferty (HUGE PROPS TO JAMES!) Happy Santa Cruz is now a reality. Check out the site at www.happysantacruz.com, let us know why Santa Cruz makes you happy, and spread the love!

Big thanks too to Genevieve Bookwalter with the Santa Cruz Sentinel for doing a phenomenal write up on the cover of the Sentinel Tuesday as well!

(HSC business partner and homeboy Nick is missing from the picture above)

Santa Cruz - Our Quality of Life is Good for Your Bottom Line

Yet Another Win for Geeks in Santa Cruz

Congratulations to Rich, Marcus, Emily and Scott @UserVoice!

UserVoice Raises Funding, White-Labels User Feedback Facilitator

Expect some more awesome things coming from UserVoice and a few other rock’in statups here in town…

Rack One up for Santa Cruz and 12seconds.tv

I thought it worth throwing out there that bootstrapped www.12seconds.tv, out of Santa Cruz, CA, with 1 full time developer, 1 mostly full time CEO, 1 part time UI Designer and an endless supply of good Karma and Community Capital backing them have managed to surpass the likes www.seesmic.com in unique visitors per month… Seesmic, who has been around for twice as long and landed over $14M in funding.

Yes, Seesmic has “changed their focus” recently by embedding their video player on desktops, but IMHO, I would be freaking pissed if I were an investor in Seesmic and be all over 12seconds.tv right now as this is a simple case study in doing more with less and that the people running your business are far more important than business model.

I simply can’t wait to see what continues to go down in 2009. I strongly feel we’re going to see a dramatic shift in perceptions and in the way business actually gets done from a grassroots level. Specifically, count on those who understand that Business is Personal to start exceeding like never before.

Get Customers First and Then Write a Business Plan

This is a blog post from one of my favorite bloggers Wil Schroter, founder and CEO of GoBigNetwork.com. The title says it all, but if you want more details, read below.

Get Customers First and Then Write a Business Plan
Author: Wil Schroter
Thursday, January 22, 2009

If you’re thinking about starting a company, please don’t write a business plan. Stop, put the keyboard down, and step back. You’re wasting valuable time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that you run aimlessly into the startup abyss. What I want you to avoid is the black hole of planning that most entrepreneurs get into when starting a company. They get sucked into a time warp where a formerly great idea gives way to months upon months of “thinking” about the idea instead of just making the damn thing happen.

If Nobody Buys, it’s Not a Business

The first step, before writing a plan, is to validate the concept. If nobody will ever buy your product, it’s unlikely that a business is ever going to form. Focusing on the product first, and more specifically the customer’s willingness to buy that product, is by far the most valuable time you can spend early in your business.

In addition to validating your concept, selling the product early allows you to prove some key assumptions in your plan before you begin writing it. For example, wouldn’t it be helpful to know what someone would pay for your product before you built it? You would be surprised how much information you can gather from potential customers just by asking them what they would pay for a hypothetical product. “If you build it, they will come” might have worked for Kevin Costner in the movie Field of Dreams, but it’s a formula for disaster in a startup.

The Prototype Company

Sometimes finding out early that your idea isn’t as viable as you thought is a blessing. Instead of spending months writing an elaborate business plan on a completely unproven idea, try putting together a “pre-business plan” that consists of only about five pages that quickly communicates your idea and focuses on the key assumptions that drive your business. These key assumptions are often questions like “Will people buy the product as I’ve defined it?”, or “what will they pay?”, or “how much would it cost me to sell this product?”.

Imagine that the first few months of your business are really more like a great big “prototype company”. Focusing strictly on the sale of the product and proving your assumptions, even on a small scale, will allow you to write a far more comprehensive and viable business plan when you are ready to formalize your thoughts. Additionally, you will be able to make much more accurate forecasts on the business when you get a sense for what it really takes to market, sell and deliver the product.

Your Business Plan is Not an Application for Capital

It’s a common misconception that investors want to see a business plan before they will consider investing in a concept. That’s not entirely true. What investors want to see is that you can demonstrate your ability to sell the product to paying customers. Ask anyone (even yourself) who you would rather invest in – a startup company that is making money without a plan or a business plan that isn’t making any money? Writing long, elaborate papers might have impressed your instructors back in college but it won’t win you any points with investors. They want results, not ideas.

Keep the Plan Simple (and listen!)

Despite what you may have heard, most of the best business plans are as simple as possible. It’s far more important for you to demonstrate that you can solve one market need incredibly well than being able to show you’ve thought of every possible market niche and have included it in your plan. Think quality over quantity.

The process of writing your business plan isn’t to show off how much you know about a concept. The most important aspect of writing your plan is to become a voracious listener. Listen to what your potential customers are telling you they want in a product. Listen to what they are not getting from the existing products. Listen to what investors are looking for in the companies they put money into. Your business plan should read more like a record of all the valuable information you have heard, presented in a meaningful way that makes the case for your company’s potential success.

Put Down Your Pen and Pick Up the Phone

You’re much better served to do your business planning by picking up the phone and asking customers to buy than you are in writing an elaborate plan. In fact, the more you speak to people about how they will respond to your idea the more likely you will write a much different plan that is based on real world findings.

Great companies are born from action. Now go sell something!

How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned Through Failure

Was digging through the blog of a new friend (Taylor Davidson) and came across a gem of a posting.  The Slide Deck is below, but the full post is HERE:

Podcast on Economic Transformation in Santa Cruz

This is a bit belated now, but my good friend Alex Lavidge hosted a Podcast last week with me and a few other movers and shakers here in Santa Cruz (@jjneuner and @pkoht), specifically speaking to the work we’re doing here in town to transform the old economic landscape and way of thinking from a grassroots level.

Episode Two – Learning from Santa Cruz, CA and nextspace.us

In all seriousness, if you’re interested in how government and the private sector can work together to make positive change happen, there are no better case studies than the ones Alex is working on in Knoxville, TN and we are actively living right now in Santa Cruz, CA.

Encourage you to give a listen if you’ve got the time.

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