Welcome to Las Vegas Startups

Originally posted on VegasTech.com here.

Just a few days ago, it was announced that StartupBus has selected Las Vegas as one of ten cities to be selected as starting points for the 2012 StartupBus campaign to the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, TX. This is amazing news and yet another external recognition for VegasTech.

The goal of StartupBus is simple: get on a bus, pitch ideas, form teams, and build something. All while moving at 60 miles an hour toward Austin. Once in Austin, the teams have an opportunity to pitch in front on an amazing panel of judges.

The bus will be leaving Las Vegas on March 6th at 8am, arriving in Austin on March 9th, with pitches to occur on March 11th at 3pm in Startup Village.

If you are a hacker (coder), hustler (bizdev), or hipster (designer) and want to be on the bus, please go to StartupBus.

You can connect with the StartupBus community on Twitter at @TheStartupBus and @VegasStartupBus.

It’s been a big couple days for the team behind Rumgr: Dylan Bathurst, Ray Morgan and Alex Coleman. They officially launched Rumgr and they announced their first round of funding as well. This is the first Startup Weekend Las Vegas company to get funding. I still remember when I heard Dylan first pitch the idea. It’s come a long way since then.

As part of their official launch they’ve added some great new features like splitting comments and offers into two distinct actions. This might seem like a subtle change, but it’s a really smart move for Rumgr since it also sets the stage for them to build in a number of other features around paying for an item based on the offer that’s accepted.

I also love a number of the website features that have been added to Rumgr.com as they seem to have embraced what Mark Suster has recently called a Web Second, Mobile First strategy. As I think back on my chats with Dylan and Ray I think they’ll continue this thoughtful approach on what to add to the app and what to add to the website that will make Rumgr work better on both platforms.

According to Techcrunch, Rumgr raised $500k from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, Zappos CTO Arun Rajan, Fred Mossler, and Andrew Donner, CEO and owner of Resort Gaming Group.

Congrats to Dylan, Ray and Alex on their official launch and funding. All of Vegas Tech is looking forward to where they take the app from here.

Fred Wilson, VC blogger extraordinaire, recently completed a great series of posts talking about the management team of a startup and how that management team evolves throughout the life of a startup. He describes the stages as Building the Product, Building Usage, and Building the Business.

Here are my 140 word summaries of his posts for those too lazy to read the whole posts:
The Management Team – While Building the Product – A small team that covers product, design, and software engineering skills all focused on working together to get stuff done.

The Management Team – While Building Usage – Grow the engineering/product team and find a good leader to manage the engineering team. Then, find someone for each area of the startup company: customer support/community, marketing, business development, sales team (maybe), and maybe Business Operations/HR/Finance/Legal.

The Management Team – While Building The Business – Build a management team starting with a senior management team. Find a partner in the company building process. Define company culture. Enjoy the challenge…it’s hard, but fulfilling.

This is some really good insight. I can think of startup companies in Las Vegas that are in all of these stages. Although, most of them in the Vegas Tech community today are in the Building the Product stage with some in the Building Usage and Building the Business stages.

I love the way looking at these stages can help to focus a company that lacks focus.

For those like me that weren’t able to make it to LaunchUp Las Vegas last night, the good people at Mustache Power Productions recorded and streamed the event for us to enjoy. I’ve already watched it and it was a really high quality event with some interesting info. I was sorry to miss it. Here’s the video:

One highlight of the event for me was definitely hearing some more of Tony Hsieh’s stories. It’s a shame to only have Tony on stage for 20 minutes. He probably likes that short time frame, but Tony has far too much good information to only have that short of a period. I’d prefer an entire day seminar from Tony on things he’s learned running startup companies.

Daniel Wu also provided some interesting insight through a story of entrepreneurs who didn’t cross all their t’s and dot all their I’s when they started their company and then ran into trouble later about who owns what. It’s nice that a lawyer mostly avoided the jargon and told stories to illustrate what’s important.

The three companies that presented were: Tracky, VoteGiant and Xoom Data Services.

My favorite part of the Tracky presentation was when David Gosse talked about a geo sensitive tracky at an event where you could talk about the event. Could be interesting. Although, we kind of already do that with Twitter and hashtags.

I’m really excited to see that Vote Giant got their beta out the door. I’m sure they’re sitting their a bit embarrassed by the features that are missing or not fully polished on their beta, but I LOVE that they just kicked it out the door already, warts and all. Someone on Twitter described it well:

Listening to @votegiant at #launchuplv they’re like a mashup of Pinterest & SurveyMonkey with Omniture like backend analytics

— Jeremy Hanks (@jeremyhanks) January 19, 2012

I must admit that I need to dig into Xoom Data Services a bit more. I love the idea of easy, fast, secure, encrypted large data file transfer. I just don’t quite understand how the technology completely overcomes the issues related to this process. I think the fast encryption part is really smart. It seems that the bottleneck is still bandwidth, but maybe I’m misunderstanding exactly how they’re doing it. As someone who writes about Healthcare IT a lot, I’m interested in how they can make this seamless encrypted file transfer a reality.

Entrepreneurial community expert Brad Feld recently asked entrepreneurs around the world to submit a 500 to 1000 word essay to him on what makes your entrepreneurial community unique. Working with a few other local VegasTech members, I put together the following draft. (Once finalized, I’ll update this post.)

Thanks to David Gosse, Jennifer Gosse, Mike Manzano, Shaun Swanson, and Mark Johnson for input. If you like it, thank them. If you don’t, blame me.

A Brief History of VegasTech, aka 10 months is 5 years (with apologies to Stephen Hawking)

In April, 2011, 12 people gathered at The Beat Coffeehouse in downtown Las Vegas, attending the first Las Vegas Jelly, a casual co-working session. Designed to bring together the technical / startup / entrepreneurial minds in Las Vegas, it began modestly. Just four short months later, attendance regularly topped 150, including 70 gathered in a room designed to hold maybe 30, to hear local startups practice their pitches.

Since the beginning of 2011, a loosely-knit community of DOers have combined and collaborated to bring the following to Las Vegas:

• Startup Weekend (June and November)
• Las Vegas Jelly (weekly)
• Ignite (quarterly)
• Delivering Happiness Inspire (quarterly)
• /usr/lib (a tech library / co-working lite space open daily)
• Ruby Users Group (weekly [note: pre-dated VegasTech, but stronger now])
• Mobile Monday (monthly)
• LaunchUp (monthly)
• LV Night Owls (irregularly scheduled)
• vegasstartups.com
• VegasTech.com

Though there are a number of individuals responsible for the success of the community, ask anyone and one name will be mentioned as the instigator of this movement: Shavonnah Tiera. Shavonnah attended a Startup Weekend in late 2010 and wanted to bring that to her hometown of Las Vegas. Undaunted by the then lack of a tech community, she forged ahead and found people to help, sponsors to sponsor, and a venue. The first Startup Weekend Las Vegas in June would prove to be a critical juncture in Vegas tech history. Well-attended (the event sold out) it proved that great ideas and execution could come from the locals. There was a tech community in Las Vegas, and the people in it had finally found each other.

As these events were forming, discussions between the various organizers started about how to coordinate efforts and bring things together under a single umbrella. The initial intent was simple: make sure events didn’t collide and split up the community. After some discussion, a decision to use the web site VegasTech.com was made; #VegasTech had already been in use as a Twitter hashtag for some time, and there was a lot of momentum behind the name.

The Jelly remains the key event and speaks to the vibrant VegasTech community. Each week, 25% of attendees are new faces. Another 25% attend semi-regularly, and the other 50% are diehard regulars. So the community is clearly still growing. And all of this came via a dedicated set of volunteers. Not one of the efforts thus far has been paid — it has all been done in the spirit of giving: from building the VegasTech.com web site, to providing experienced mentors to newly formed startups, to planning and executing a social media strategy.

During this time, some 20 community leaders have emerged to drive the various events above. More have asked how they can help.

Unique Characteristics of VegasTech

And now, very much patterned after one view of Boston’s tech community (http://greenhornconnect.com/blog/bostons-startup-identity-embracing-who-we-are) VegasTech:

1. We’re giving. Our community started from giving and that will always be an underlying strength.
2. We work 24/7 like our city. From late hours at /usr/lib to the Night Owls group, there’s something going on late night quite frequently.
3. We’re very casual and informal. Just as you can go to most of the best restaurants in Las Vegas in fairly casual clothing, we embody that by not having a lot of process or structure around our events. Want to come to the Jelly and talk about something? Just do it. Want to put on a new event? Likewise. There’s no master committee to answer to.
4. We mix business and pleasure more than is usual. Business meeting over your sixth beer at 2:30 in the morning? Sure.
5. Our entrepreneurs are natural gamblers. We are risk takers. We push the envelope.
6. We have a sense of humor that makes it all worth it.
7. We do. Also known as JFDI. We don’t wait around and have a bunch of committee meetings.
8. We’re open to learning from other cities and intentionally bring in the best minds from other places.
9. We’re very adept at social media. In fact, our community probably wouldn’t have formed without it. We network on it, we share tips on it, and we always tweet with the hashtag #VegasTech so everyone knows what’s going on.
10. We share and help each other. We support each other’s ideas and companies for the overall benefit of the community. If one wins we all win. When a new site or app is announced, we ask “How can we help?” and “Can I get a beta invite on TestFlight?”. This applies both within the direct tech community as well as with our supporters. Our downtown venues where we hang out support us as well.

Things we could do better

1. Integrate new leaders into the community.
2. Respond more effectively to offers of help.
3. Give structure to those who prefer structure.
4. Ensure adequate supply for funding for deserving companies.
5. Founder speed dating.

Posted by Rick Duggan — rick -at- vegasstartups.com

For those of you in Las Vegas Tech that aren’t familiar with Switch, you should know about them and what they have available. Luckily there are a number of Swtich employees that are regularly attending the Las Vegas Jelly events so you can meet them there. Of course, you could also hit up @MissyByte on Twitter and I bet if you sweet talk her make a professional request, she’ll give you a tour of the SuperNap to see some of the really cool things they’re doing with data center, clouds and colocation in Las Vegas. Just wait until after CES since I’m sure Switch is swamped with all the tech people in Las Vegas for CES. Once you get a tour, you’ll see that big internet companies like Google, eBay and HP have presences in Las Vegas in Switch’s data centers.

For those of you less interested in Data Centers (I use to be a data center guy in my past life), you should check out a page on Switch’s website called INNEVATION.com – The “New Nevada” Nexus. At first glance the page probably looks a bit obtuse, but I can tell you there’s been quite a bit of thinking going on behind that page.

Switch isn’t quite ready to give out all the details of INNEVATION and all their plans and aspirations to help out the Vegas Tech movement, but I think they have the potential to do some really good things for Nevada. We’ll have to see all the details once they make their official announcements.

Yes, Switch has been generally kind of quiet in the past. They haven’t been the biggest Las Vegas tech cheerleaders in the past for a number of reasons (some of them likely contractual). However, this recent story in the Economist about Switch and diversifying the Nevada economy might be one indication that Switch is ready to help wave the Las Vegas entrepreneurship and Las Vegas Tech flag. I think Switch will be one of many strong VegasTech and entrepreneurship voices that are emerging. So, keep an eye on what they’re doing.

John’s Note: I got the following email and was asked to get the word out about this Angel Investing Seminar in Las Vegas.

Dear VVA members and friends:

The Vegas Valley Angels are hosting an all-day Angel Investment workshop on January 17th. I think you and your associates would find this very interesting. We encourage all members who haven’t attended this specific workshop to attend.

This workshop, Angel Investing: Best Practices in Investing in High-growth Companies, is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of angel investing for private investors. The full-day seminar is a balance of expert presentations, panel discussions and small group case studies.

This workshop will cover:

• Investment goals and portfolio strategies
• Deal sourcing: Getting to see the right deals
• Essential tasks in proper due diligence
• Structuring deals/term sheets
• Valuing start-up companies: Art or science?
• The post-investment relationships between angels, start-up companies (and in some cases venture capitalists)
• Angels and advisors – bringing more than money to investments

Attached is more information about the workshop, including the registration form.

Our instructor, John May, is one of the most knowledgeable persons on the subject of Angel Investing. John’s bio is attached[see embedded PDF below].

The event is sponsored by Brennan Capital Partners, the premier local investment banking practice, and Cane Clark, a law firm specializing in Entrepreneurship and Securities Law. Representatives from their firms will also be assisting in the presentation of the workshop.

We hope you can come and please forward this to anyone else you feel might be interested.

Dear VVA members and friends:

The Vegas Valley Angels are hosting an all-day Angel Investment workshop on January 17th. I think you and your associates would find this very interesting. We encourage all members who haven’t attended this specific workshop to attend.

This workshop, Angel Investing: Best Practices in Investing in High-growth Companies, is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of angel investing for private investors. The full-day seminar is a balance of expert presentations, panel discussions and small group case studies.

This workshop will cover:

• Investment goals and portfolio strategies
• Deal sourcing: Getting to see the right deals
• Essential tasks in proper due diligence
• Structuring deals/term sheets
• Valuing start-up companies: Art or science?
• The post-investment relationships between angels, start-up companies (and in some cases venture capitalists)
• Angels and advisors – bringing more than money to investments

Attached is more information about the workshop, including the registration form.

Our instructor, John May, is one of the most knowledgeable persons on the subject of Angel Investing. John’s bio is attached.

The event is sponsored by Brennan Capital Partners, the premier local investment banking practice, and Cane Clark, a law firm specializing in Entrepreneurship and Securities Law. Representatives from their firms will also be assisting in the presentation of the workshop.

We hope you can come and please forward this to anyone else you feel might be interested.

Sara in the City visited Downtown Fremont recently and put together a nice video looking at the Las Vegas co-working space, /usr/lib/ or Tech Library if you prefer, and even talked with a few of the Las Vegas startup companies that spend time working in the /usr/lib.

I love hanging out at the Las Vegas Tech Library. It’s a cool place to hang out and work. I’ve also used it a number of times when I wanted to do a business meeting with someone downtown. It’s a really great addition to Las Vegas.

A recent NCET blog post commented that the 16th Annual Small Business Survival Index has ranked Nevada as the second best state for Entrepreneurship. Probably the biggest boon to Nevada’s high ranking for entrepreneurship has to do with no state tax. No state tax is such a compelling reason to do business in Las Vegas. Nice to see Las Vegas getting credit for being a great place for entrepreneurship.

I also loved this tweet from David Gosse about Nevada ranking second for Entrepreneurship.

Nevada ranks second in entrepreneurship friendliness – ncet.org/nevada-ranks-s… #VegasTech – I think we’re #1!!

— David Gosse (@davidgosse) December 19, 2011

Nevada as the #1 state for entrepreneurship sounds right to me too! In fact, I had the choice of living anywhere in the world and chose Las Vegas (technically Henderson for those keeping track) as my home. I love it here.

In an article that came out today on Forbes, they highlight the various areas of the country where a “Silicon Valley” like environment is taking shape. As they say, ““Silicon” is no longer literal, but a metonym for the entrepreneurial spirit that’s fueled the region’s growth for decades.”

Here’s their section on Las Vegas startup companies and entrepreneurial spirit:

Silicon Strip (Las Vegas)
Shoe retailer Zappos has been based in the Las Vegas suburbs for nearly a decade, but it’s finally getting some company, thanks in part to CEO Tony Hsieh. His Downtown Project is making plans to turn Las Vegas into a meta-incubator of innovation and ideas: With $350 million committed to seed businesses and build infrastructure, it’s almost as though the city itself is a start-up. “In the last six weeks, at least four tech start-ups moved here from other states,” Hsieh explains excitedly. “We’re building this community from scratch—it’s Sin City to Sim City.”

This entrepreneurial renaissance is also evocative of a co-working space, where like-minded organizations come together to build a community. But what unites the diverse ventures—from robot maker Romotive to local marketplace Rumgr—isn’t their industry, it’s their founders’ desire to be part of the reinvention of a city.

Forbes is definitely right about Las Vegas building a real community of tech startup companies. It’s been amazing to watch the community finally come together. My only complaint with their description of the Silicon Strip is that they’re missing a lot of the other things that are happening in Las Vegas. Certainly Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project has been extremely visible and is a fantastic part of what’s happening. However, it is only one part of the amazing things that are happening in the Las Vegas startup world. I hope that Forbes will dig a little deeper to see a lot of the other things that are happening in the Vegas Startup world as well. A few announcements that I know of in the January-March time frame are going to be huge.

The best part of it all…we’re only at the beginning! The description is right that the Las Vegas Startup scene is like a startup and we’re starting to see lots of awesome iterations happening.