I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write a blog post in over three months. I’m talking about an actual post with career updates and discussion of the latest events, not book reviews or educational posts that I’ve had in the can for the better part of a year. Usually when there’s this large a gap between posts, there’s either a complete lack of activity – like the deep pandemic period four years ago – or, there’s so much activity that there isn’t time to write.
It’s actually been an odd mix of the two – first, the former, and then in the last couple of months, the latter. On April 4, my contract was terminated by the university. The way things were handled by my former client when they broke my contract – I was a contractor, not an employee – was confusing to students and my former colleagues and a personal slap in the face. It was a fitting end to what had been one of the most frustrating experiences in my professional career.
There are a number of lessons to be learned here, and I’ll tell you how I’m going to utilize these lessons:
Forever Riding the Coattails of Early Successes
For two years, I fought against an institutional inability to critically examine current programs to identify areas for improvement. You’d think people espousing “innovation” would welcome new ways to serve their audience. The programs I specifically dealt with were developed two decades ago – the undergraduate program was opened in 2004 and the community program curriculum hasn’t changed significantly since I went through it for the first time as a student nearly a decade ago.
Any change I attempted to make to the undergraduate program was placed under a microscope – everything from increasing and broadening the number of recruitment funnels to bring in new students and businesses to supplementary offerings to and perks for current students. Lots of things have changed since I was an undergraduate at that institution 20 years ago and a program constantly talking about “innovation” should adapt to the times and the shifts in audience. Unfortunately, everything I proposed was either micromanaged to death or shaved down to bare bones.
One of the things that I kept hearing was that the program had “75 students” in it at some unspecified point in the past. I had a feeling that this was an exaggeration but I set it as my three-year goal to fill the building to that extent. What I found out later from other faculty previously and currently working with the program was that there were probably 20 actual students taking the class back when it was a “club,” with another 50-60 hangers-on involved with those first 20 students’ businesses. This lines up with what I experienced as an outsider occasionally interfacing with students in the mid-2010s.
The problem with the “75 students” thing was that most of our current founders were solo, meaning that to fill the building with that many students involving having 60 businesses enrolled in the program. Meeting with this many students took an extraordinary amount of time out of my week, and I was only designated 75% time – 30 hours per week. Add to this outreach and recruitment, teaching, and developing curriculum, there wasn’t any time left for other mandates I was given.
There was also this misplaced expectation to generate an unreasonable number of big name, venture-fundable businesses. Most student ideas aren’t “big picture” – most are trying to fix problems closest to them, and most of those solutions involved lifestyle businesses. Small and medium-sized businesses produce ALL net jobs created in the economy, and were the types of businesses we should be encouraging. I saw the program as a way to teach entrepreneurship skills to students who, in the future, may develop something that exits for multi-millions or billions. Their first, second, or third business may not make it, but giving students the skills to develop those business will guarantee something awesome in the future. It seemed like vanity metrics were the focus there.
If I had to guess, I believe that more venture-fundable businesses will leave the program from my cohorts than have graduated from the program in the two decades prior to my tenure. I could already see that happening with a handful of students involved in the program who have already received term sheets or are in talks with VCs in Chicago and on the coasts. Most of the success stories that management wanted to highlight have either shut down or are still rolling along without a successful exit over a decade later. Very few have exited in 20 years.
I blame a lot of the problems in this area on the “advisory board” who are wined and dined twice a year, populated almost exclusively by people who are just there for the prestige of sitting on an advisory board. This board doesn’t put apply any pressure to improve or innovate as they fall further behind their competition. If they are pushing back, it’s not moving the needle at all. The only thing that seemed to move the needle was if another institution is doing something, and the desired outcome is to merely one-up that institution. That’s a sign of a struggling organization.
Lessons learned: Healthy organizations practice what they preach. Healthy organizations are willing to pivot when necessary. Healthy organizations don’t rest on their laurels.
A Penny Wise, A Pound Foolish
I have never seen an organization spend money (and attempt to pinch pennies) in the ways my former client did. They would spend an exorbitant amount on the big events – award dinners, board meetings, and the like. Then, management would turn around and try to cut a couple thousand dollars from an ideation event budget. Nothing made any sense, and I was never given budgets for anything – just a “yes” or a “no” regarding funding for something, which could change based on the day of the week.
What’s hilarious about this is that I completed a rather expensive and unnecessary Entrepreneurship Center Management Certificate program last fall, and one quarter of the course involved budgeting as part of running an entrepreneurship center. I was running completely blind on revenue and expenses when running a program like the one I ran, so I had to make up numbers for the exercises they assigned based solely on my experiences running entrepreneurial programs and events in the community. Even with this roadblock, I easily completed the course with flying colors and got my certificate.
Money would be thrown at anything that could one-up our center versus the other four complementary centers across the state, especially the one at the rival university. I found that this was the key to getting anything funded – as long as the rival was doing it, they would throw money at whatever I asked for. Does this money spent improve the outcomes for the students? Not really. Doesn’t matter.
The flip-side of this was the strange penny-pinching for staffing and ideation events – things that actually helped our students and grew the program rather than showing off in front of other institutions. Students from that rival institution actually visited our building during my tenure on my invitation and positively commented on the homey, community feel we had in our building versus their brand-new innovation center. Their building – which my former client wants to copy – is a large concrete and glass building with office and classroom space. Functional but somewhat sterile. In their desire to replicate other institutions, they doesn’t understand that they have an amazing resource in the student coworking space but they squander its potential.
However, the student coworking space desperately needs work that my former client just won’t pay for unless a disaster occurs. The first floor needs better cooling which could be accomplished with larger, better air conditioners installed in the walls of the classroom and the group coworking room. Most of the radiators on second and third floor have a defect that will eventually flood the building as has happened twice previously. There’s a ton of deferred maintenance that has to be tackled soon, including water damage inside and out.
Unfortunately, I doubt most of this will be fixed. I got a ton of pushback for merely wanting to install a doorbell at the front door of the building so I could know when students arrived for meetings, as I wasn’t allowed to keep the front door unlocked during normal business hours. The basement of the building is huge and could easily be converted into workspaces and a second classroom, and the kitchen could be retrofitted as a commercial kitchen facility for $20,000 for future food startups. (I had an intern research this because it so irritated the administrative assistant in the main office who took months to do basic administrative things asked of her.)
Lessons learned: Spend your organization’s money like it’s your own. Make sure it lines up with your organization’s mission and vision. You never know when a donor will disappear or pass away.
We Don’t Want to Serve Those Kinds of People
In my first month as program director, I started the arduous task of rebuilding the program from 10 students up to the nearly 70 we had participating last spring semester. My first event was to open up the building to the public and throw a cookout – something I was told was demanded in previous years but was never actually accomplished due to lack of resources. I worked with my Marketing Director at the time and business coaches at the time to create something that would draw in students. We were able to bring in nearly 100 students and community members over the course of 3 hours with the smell of burgers and brats cooking and the sounds of people enjoying yard games.
I was tasked by the former Executive Director of the department to “make the place buzz.” He was impressed with the activity and told me as much. Unfortunately, my former direct supervisor was not impressed, demanding to know “who are all of these people” in line for lunch, talking with program staff. This should have been my first clue how the next three semesters were going to go.
My next order of business was to create new funnels to draw people into our programs – specifically for the undergraduate program. I came up with the idea to attract people with side hustles, knowing that there were probably a large number of people on campus who had side hustles in addition to their academic schedules or university jobs. When we opened registration, the first session filled in less than 10 minutes. I added a second session, which filled in about half an hour. Even though my undergraduate incubator staff and I were doing a great job fielding questions, we were told that more experienced faculty needed to attend the following semester. I agreed to this.
We did even better in my second semester – first session filled up in 5 minutes, second session in 10 minutes when opened, and third session filled in about an hour. You would think that this is an obvious slam dunk and something that should be pursued by more faculty than just me, especially because most of the people attending the program were graduate students and faculty, which could be an amazing funnel for both the graduate/faculty incubator and other community programs, potentially expanding those community programs beyond what already existed. However, this wasn’t the case.
These folks may not have been the traditional fit for the existing programs which, as I discussed earlier, were designed years ago for venture-scalable businesses and less so for lifestyle businesses. Rather than adapting for the audience we had, I was told point blank by my former direct supervisor that “maybe we don’t want to serve those kinds of people.” I felt my jaw hit the floor – people who would benefit from a low-cost, express version of Lean Startup education to fine tune community businesses being completely ignored because they don’t fit the exact profile being sought by management.
Several undergrads ended up joining my program through the side hustle program. Several joined because I tabled at events at the college because nobody else wanted to do that because it “wasn’t their job.” Several others joined because I visited different student clubs and organizations. Almost nobody joined because I visited classes – something that management demand I spend hours doing. The majority came from ideation events and pitch competitions, something that wasn’t folded into the undergraduate incubator program until my final semester mostly due to attrition.
Lesson learned: “Those kinds of people” are everywhere, and a taxpayer-funded organization should be courting them just as much as others.
A Single Door Slams Shut, A Dozen Windows Open
When news leaked to my students regarding how I was treated on the way out, I received nothing but support from the highest-achieving students in the program, most of whom I’d recruited into the program. I really appreciated the connections that I received from them, and it’s helped me decide what my next moves will be. As news spread to the entrepreneurial ecosystem that my former client and I had parted ways, numerous people reached out with ideas and opportunities. I received a fantastic reception at EntreFEST from the statewide startup community, including former colleagues. My former client’s management thought I could be removed and deleted from the entrepreneurial ecosystem as they’ve attempted to ostracize people in the past – it backfired horribly on them this time.
Speaking of EntreFEST, I gave a talk on creating startup communities wherever you are. I had a much larger audience in my session this year than I did last year, and overall, I feel like the conference was better this year. There were fewer choices during each breakout session, and I actually found things to attend nearly every single breakout session. I got a chance to reconnect with a bunch of folks from across the state, including some newcomers from western Iowa. I had an absolute blast at EntreFEST, even though it was in Cedar Rapids this year.
Receiving the kind of warm welcome I did during EntreFEST and since my separation from my former client, I’m benefiting once again from all of the seeds I’ve planted over the past decade. The same sort of things that gave me the opportunity to teach and run the undergraduate program are the same things that will carry me on to the next thing, and the next thing after that, and so on. My former client wasn’t my eventual destination – even before my separation, I was starting to see the writing on the wall that what I thought was going to be potentially five years to make a difference was starting to look more like 10-12 years, if that.
I don’t think they will ever find someone to lead my former program. They’ve burned nearly every bridge in the community – nobody qualified to run that program will work for the amount I was paid with no benefits and no path for advancement, and most everyone knows how I was treated. Unfortunate for them, but a great opportunity for another organization to fill the gap in the coming years.
Lessons learned: Continue planting seeds, even beyond the point that you think you’ll need them. Also, keep your mind and your eyes open. What may seem like a comfortable destination may just be a stepping stone to greater things in the future.
What’s Next?
Not having the stress and unreasonable workload of my former client on my plate allows me to finally act on a number of projects that I’ve wanted to launch into but haven’t had the time or energy to start or complete. I did take a couple of weeks off at the beginning just to process the quick shift of my time and energy – it’s the first time I’ve dropped a client like that, and that one singular client took up the vast majority of my time, so it took a few days to decompress and reorient my work (along with meeting with legal counsel to figure out issues related to my release.) Since then, I’ve had the chance to travel across the Midwest, both on business and for personal reasons.
One of the trips was to the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan – a trip I hadn’t been able to make since 2021 due to the schedule demands of my former client. I missed my cider friends these last couple of years, and I’ve made so many new connections in that realm since my last trip to western Michigan three years ago. Many of them were there, some in the steward room and others judging. The competition was run by a new group and even though there were a few growing pains, I thought things were run quite well. I’m looking forward to returning next May.
I spent a decent amount of time with the folks who have created a Canadian counterpart to the American Cider Association, as I’m interested in expanding Cider Finder to Canada once the app comes out of beta. It was great to have some deep conversations with them about the future of the app and the business, including the potential to begin importing select Canadian ciders from Ontario into the United States. I’ve started to research what this would take to make a reality – hoping it will be a reality by 2025.
I don’t have a ton of travel lined up, which is a nice change from last winter and spring, when I was on the road and in the air so much. I just arrived home from the Rally Innovation Conference in Indianapolis. I was asked once again to serve on the committee to choose finalists for the pitch competition at the event and was granted a complimentary ticket – I just had to get myself here. Barring another stomach bug that I picked up during last year’s conference, I have a number of things to accomplish this year. I’ll cover this event in full in a post in October.
Also, they had FREE COFFEE – obviously, they read my previous blog post.
In mid-October, I’ll be heading to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival. I have a ticket for Friday, October 11 – I don’t want to overdo it, and I’ve heard that it’s pretty overwhelming on your first time there. I’ve wanted to go to GABF for years, and in 2020, it was slated to line up perfectly with Denver Startup Week. Unfortunately, those events didn’t happen that year, and they don’t line up at all this year.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m taking a year off from Denver Startup Week. The energy was really subdued last year, and they’re cutting the event from 5 days to 3 days this year, focusing primarily on others to do the heavy lifting of scheduling their own events, rather than bringing in thought leaders from around the country to participate in specific events. I’ve logged onto their Web site a couple of times, and the event listed are underwhelming. Even the keynotes look dull. I get the feeling that the event didn’t get the funding they needed this year and I wonder if the organizing team has changed – stuff like this happens when the torch gets passed.
So, I’m glad that I was able to snag a ticket to GABF this year. I picked this year to definitely attend because there is supposed to be a strong cider showing, and it would be great to give Cider Finder a test at a large event like this. I should have the app to the point where it could handle input from a large event – pray that the server doesn’t break under the weight of this test. Either way, I’m hoping to run into a number of friends while I’m out there.
Biggest news of all: EntrePartners is expanding its offerings this fall! First, we’re running a new event based on Startup Weekend but meant for people who have existing startups, side hustles, and the like. We’re calling it Follow-Up Weekend and holding it the last Friday-Sunday in September, the 27th through 29th. The great part about this event is that there isn’t a ton of work that needs to go into planning, since it basically follows the Startup Weekend model, minus the elevator pitches and voting on Friday evening. More info will be posted on the ticket page as we get closer to the dates.
Also, I’ve found office space in downtown Iowa City to create the EntrePartners Innovation Center – 900 square feet of office space for Coworking + Accountability and a separate 100 square foot room that I’ll be transforming into a podcast recording studio. Coworking + Accountability takes traditional coworking with lots of desks in a room together and adds a kind of accountability support group for new entrepreneurs, to light a fire under them and help them succeed. I’m capping the in-person membership at 10 businesses to start and I’ll add an online support group later in the fall. Most of the 10 slots have already been filled, and I will probably have a waiting list by the time I get the keys on September 1. I’m so excited to build out this facility and to bring the kind of community atmosphere I created previously to a new audience.
However, to run these programs, I’m going to need to raise a bit of money. I’ve started the fundraising process, reaching out to local businesses and high-net worth friends in the area. My budget for the next 12 months is $25,000; with a decent amount off-set by usage fees at the Innovation Center. Businesses can join for $25 a month, and the podcasting studio will be available for $50 per hour for non-members. Members can use the facility for free during off-hours. If you’re interested in donating to our nonprofit, take a look at our rate sheet and send me an email or message.
I really feel like I’ve been handed a fantastic opportunity to make a difference in my local entrepreneurial ecosystem through what my friends in the startup community have referred to this summer as The Change™. Being able to bring together people of all stripes who want to build amazing things that fix our biggest problems. However, it’s going to be a tough slog as we get established. Entrepreneurship isn’t easy, but the rewards are limitless.