and Denver Startup Week. In Denver, at the 16th Street Mall downtown, there were Denver Startup Week banners on every light post. I would be ecstatic to see something like that in Dallas down Main Street early next year for Dallas Startup Week.
If you can get the community of the city involved in promoting the entire ecosystem here, you can have a great impact on the city. Think about exposure. (Dallas suburb) Frisco has stuff of its own going on, but it’s a branding opportunity. The Dallas Cowboys haven’t been in Dallas since the ’60s. We can build a brand around the Dallas ecosystem, and as long as each city is represented in the ecosystem, everyone benefits. We could feature Richardson startups in Dallas Startup Week. Frisco’s great for consumer web; Uptown is great for mobile. If we highlight each of those strengths in each city, I think they would be happily on board.
I led #BigDOCC—the Big Denver Open Coffee Club—my version of the Boulder Open Coffee Club, and ran that for three years. You have this cross-pollination. We are starting that here, a north and south #BigDOCC. (This time the D is for Dallas.) We’ll have two of each of the events and bring them to the communities where they are.
X: You’re also starting a Dallas version of #BigDNT. What is that?
MS: Four hundred and fifty people go to this every Tuesday. Six startups get six minutes to pitch. Five minutes for Q and A, and no investors in the room—just peers, people who use technology, giving them feedback on their business model and ideas. It’s a different stress. It’s not about tens of millions of dollars in the room. It’s about, ‘will my idea actually work?’ Denver does one; Dallas could use that model for both north and south so that we cover both sides in the metro area. I also met a guy in Fort Worth moving back to town, and he wants to try to do something similar in that part of the region. We get all three of those going, there’s going to be great opportunity.
In Denver, we have the Denver Founders Network,sort of “entrepreneurs unplugged.” We bring in founders to talk to (startups), ask them questions. It may be that their experiences can help startups innovate on their own. Startup Grind, run by Lee Blaylock, is doing some of that. I’d be happy to help him with that.
X: Should there be more of a connection between the bigger businesses and entrepreneurs?
MS: Sure, smaller companies become great companies. Look at Adobe, Microsoft, Facebook; they play a big part in startup companies. [Dallas area companies] Travelocity, Match.com, and Hotels.com? I haven’t seen them very present in the startup community here. That would definitely help. American Airlines, Frito Lay, it would be great to see some of their employees in the events rather than just sponsoring them.
X: There are a lot of academic institutions in North Texas: Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Dallas, Texas Christian University, Texas Christian University, the University of North Texas. Should they be part of creating this entrepreneurial ecosystem?
MS: One of the things they do is put cheap labor in the market. When you’re building an early-stage company, bringing in talented developers for university student salaries is a big benefit for the entire community. When you’re at a startup, you can’t afford people out in the market. When you’re looking at ecosystems, you really want to see a hub and spoke. But education institutions see themselves in the middle, as the hub. The community has to be at the center of it. The schools are just a part of the ecosystem—an important part. I haven’t seen that work together well here. We need to gather students from all of these colleges and universities and do an event together. They are not being tapped. We need to turn up the burners.
