Up and Running:

Today the Central Valley Business Times announces a $250,000 business plan contest accepting nationwide entries. Finalists will compete in October. Entrants have to have a convincing business plan and be at least 18 years old. That’s it as far as entry requirements.

“Anyone who has an idea for an innovative new business, and a business plan to match–or who has already started and is growing a business with a promising business plan–is welcome to enter,” says the sponsor, the Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The Lyles Center, by the way, is at California State University, Fresno. Click here for the fully detailed Web announcement. Read down past the sponsorship discussion and the local business justification to the details, including the unusually open entry.

The top 10 finalists will travel to Fresno for a two-day competition Oct. 2 - 3, where they will present their business plans to a panel of judges. On Oct. 4, the winner–and recipient of $100,000 in cash and $150,000 worth of in-kind services–is to be announced during halftime at the Fresno State Bulldog football game.

Entries will be accepted beginning June 1.

Browsing the Wall Street Journal’s online offerings, I just picked up Why Venture Capitalists Don’t Want You to Have a Sex Life. It’s one of several online reactions to John Doerr’s (of Kleinert Perkins Caufield & Byers) much-quoted comment on how many successful entrepreneurs had no lives outside of their work.

The source of all that is an interview published on Venturewire. Specifically, Doerr says:

“That correlates more with any other success factor that I’ve seen in the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. If you look at Bezos, or [Netscape Communications Corp. founder Marc] Andreessen, [Yahoo Inc. co-founder] David Filo, the founders of Google, they all seem to be white, male, nerds who’ve dropped out of Harvard or Stanford and they absolutely have no social life. So when I see that pattern coming in — which was true of Google — it was very easy to decide to invest.”

Final thought: the title of this post, which was also the title of the WSJ piece, is a good illustration of how titles work in blogs.

Photo by Randy Son of Robert, From Why Venture Capitalists Don’t Want You to Have a Sex Life.

Another question in e-mail today that I can’t resist sharing, along with my answer. Here’s the question:

I believe that I have ideas that can make great money in the hands of real entrepreneurs. I do not want to be the one who spends my whole life applying them, writing the business plan, looking for money, finding the right team, etc. How can I sell business ideas or investment ideas without becoming an entrepreneur myself?

… and my answer:

Forget it. The idea has no value. If it’s worth anything, a thousand other people have the same idea.

You don’t believe me? OK, prove it. Prove me wrong. Make your idea work. Find a management team, write a business plan, get the funding, and–whoops–you just became an entrepreneur.

I could go on, I suppose (actually I did in the real e-mail), but this is a better answer. Right to the point. And I have posted on the value of the idea before on this blog, in Ideas are Easy, Doing Stuff is Hard and a couple other posts, and on bplans.com I posted an article in the same general mode called Protect Your Idea.

How’s this for a startup success story? Avaaz.org started 17 months ago. It now has more than 3.2 million registered active members and last week raised $1.5 million in aid for Burmese cyclone victims in three days. Recognizing some problems with flow of aid through normal channels, founder Ricken Patel connected with Burmese monks to distribute the aid.

How did Avaaz do it? By building a state-of-the-art contact management system that was streamlined exactly to its needs, and then building a network of talented campaigners, translators and a technology team from around the world without needing to have a single office. The end goal is something that’s been done before–an online petition and donation site. But in the back end, both from a team assembly and a technology standpoint, Avaaz has innovated to be built from the ground up as a hyper-international and agile organization that can respond to a world crisis in a matter of hours.

It is an organization with a mission:

a new global Web movement with a simple democratic mission: to close the gap between the world we have, and the world most people everywhere want. Across the world, most people want stronger protections for the environment, greater respect for human rights, and concerted efforts to end poverty, corruption and war.

Not that technology doesn’t require a lot of hard work. Avaaz uses an innovative blast engine to fine-tune e-mail messages with detailed testing. And it was built from the ground up to deal almost simultaneously with five main languages and then very quickly with six others. But a lot of its success has to do with the old-fashioned business of saying the right thing to the right people. Since the beginning, it’s focused its efforts on bringing people together around causes that unite, rather than divide. Recently, global warming and political problems in Burma and Tibet. For example, try its video ads.

The technology used is all LAMP (linux, Apache, PHP and mysql, a strong combination of open-source, readily available software).

And it also takes funding. Ricken arranged some major funding in the beginning, to get Avaaz going–including the Soros Foundation and the Gates Foundation. However, the organization is now funded by its more than 3.2 million members, which is another major achievement. Here’s more of the history:

Avaaz.org was co-founded by Res Publica, a global civic-advocacy group, and Moveon.org, an online community that has pioneered Internet advocacy in the United States. Our co-founding team was also composed of a group of global social entrepreneurs from six countries, including our Executive Director Ricken Patel, Tom Perriello, Tom Pravda, Eli Pariser, Andrea Woodhouse, Jeremy Heimans and David Madden. Avaaz is lucky to have the founding partnership and support of leading activist organizations from around the world, including the Service Employees International Union, a founding partner of Avaaz, GetUp.org.au, and many others.

Here’s another specific number: in its 17 months, Avaaz members have taken 6,345,719 (as I write this) actions. Actions are things like making a donation or signing a petition. Avaaz’s goal is to be member-funded. First it had a campaign that was tremendously successful just getting e-mails, petition, 1.7 million members just on Burma.

Question, from an e-mail: When Do I Hire A CEO? It’s a good question, and it comes up a lot, so I want to answer it here. First, the background, from the same e-mail:

I’m an engineering inventor currently working for a big corporation. I have no previous business experience other than what I’ve gained from my current job. My research tells me that my invention has sustainable competitive advantage. I’ve written a business plan that I think supports my idea. I’m ready to try and interest people to fund the project. Probably $1 million initial funding.

Of course nothing is ever as simple as it seems. I don’t know the person who asked that question, or his or her background, so I have to do some guessing. What I end up with is a series of reactions: Choose your answer from the list of possible answers. And I can’t make all the possible answers consistent with each other. Sorry.

1. Are you sure you’re not underestimating yourself? One classic model for the entrepreneurial invention-driven startup is run by the hard-driving passionate inventor-entrepreneur. The investors hope the original founder can accommodate others in the team, listen to advice and step aside as the company grows so big that it requires more management skills than plain passion. Maybe you should rewrite your history to make yourself more like the CEO. Most people who end up as CEO start out like you say you have, with “what I’ve gained from my current job.” Humility is nice, but self-confidence and competence are nice, too.
2. Investors don’t want to invest in ideas without teams to run them. The business plan development period is the time to build a team. If you’re not the CEO, whom do you know that would want to team up with you and enhance that business plan? Do you have somebody who can manage, somebody who can sell and somebody who can produce? A team normally includes several people with different skill sets, but–and this is really important–all of whom believe in the venture and are prepared to jump on board as soon as it is financed. They should join in the plan development and join in the meetings with investors. You don’t hire a CEO at this point; you find a potential CEO to join the team, contribute to the plan and put his or her résumé into the appendices.
3. You might be recruiting a CEO to be hired after funding, but you don’t want to hire anybody before you have money to pay. Get the commitment to join now, then the funding and then do the hiring. Find the people now. If they don’t buy into your idea, keep looking. If they’re not excited by the opportunity, then keep looking.
4. Watch for clues. If you can’t find anybody who really wants to join you, then there’s something wrong here. Why not? Have you overvalued your idea? Is this an early warning that investors won’t want it, either? Better to deal with that now, before you’ve invested too much of your time and energy, than later.
5. There’s a site called partnerup.com that is focused on exactly your problem, finding suitable partners and co-founders and, in your case, that CEO. I’ve dealt with the organization, I like the people, and I’m optimistic about the basic idea. It may not have critical mass yet in all areas, but it’s worth a try.

So there are some possible answers to that question. Take your choice, as many of them as work for you.

In the wake of last week’s Moot Corp competition in Austin, Texas, I picked up the list of feeder competitions that lead to the Moot Corp. Winners in these competitions are invited to compete at the Moot Corp.

If things go as they normally do, these venture competitions will be held again for the next venture competition season, beginning this fall and running through next April. If you have connections with any of these, it’s a great experience; I recommend you get into it. Normally you do have to have direct involvement with an MBA-level program, ideally as a student. If you aren’t a student but know somebody who is, you can become involved by recruiting that person onto a team, because each team normally has to include one MBA student.

Idea to Product Competition
Early November
Hosted by The University of Texas at Austin
Contact info@ideatoproduct.org

The John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge
Early December
Hosted by the Brisbane Graduate School of Business
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Contact Belinda Hopgood at b.hopgood@qut.edu.au

Georgia Bowl
February
Hosted by Kennesaw State University
Contact Charles Hofer at jrmh@bellsouth.net

Cardinal Challenge
February
Hosted by the University of Louisville
Contact Van G.H. Clouse at clouse@louisville.edu

UC Spirit of Enterprise MBA Business Plan Competition
February
Hosted by the University of Cincinnati
Contact Charles Matthews at ecenter@uc.edu

FGV Latin Moot Corp Competition
March
Hosted by Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Contact Laura Cristina Pansarella at cenn@fgvsp.br or Rene Jose Rodrigues Fernandes at rene.rodrigues@fgvsp.br

Northwest Venture Championship
March
Hosted by Boise State University
Contact Kent E. Neupert at kneupert@boisestate.edu

Camino Real Venture Competition
March
Hosted by University of Texas at El Paso
Contact Nancy Lowery at nlowery@bnsl.org.

Thammasat Asia Moot Corp® Competition
March
Hosted by Thammasat University, Thailand
Contact Bill Randall at info@asiamootcorp.org.

McGinnis Venture Competition
March
Hosted by Carnegie Mellon University
Contact Art Boni at boni@andrew.cmu.edu

CEDIC New Venture Championship
March
Hosted by the Center for Economic Development, Innovation and Commercialization
Contact Gary Cadenhead at cadenheadg@mail.utexas.edu

Venture Challenge
March
Hosted by the Entrepreneurial Management Center
San Diego State University
Contact Sarah Bonura at sbonura@projects.sdsu.edu

IBK Capital-Ivey Business Plan Competition
March
Hosted by the Richard Ivey School of Business
University of Western Ontario
Contact Eric Morse at emorse@ivey.uwo.ca or Ellen Brown at embrown@ivey.uwo.ca

Wake Forest MBA Elevator Competition
March
Hosted by Wake Forest University
Contact Donna Fulp at Donna.Fulp@mba.wfu.edu

Lunar Ventures
March 28 - 30, 2008
Hosted by Colorado School of Mines
Contact Gary Cadenhead at info@8clunarventures.com

Rice University Business Plan Competition
April 3 to 5, 2008
Hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship
Rice University
Contact Brad Burke at rbpc@rice.edu

Stuart Clark Venture Challenge
April 3 to 5, 2008
Hosted by the Asper Centre for Entrepreneurship
University of Manitoba
Contact Rob Warren at Robert_Warren@umanitoba.ca

Utah Entrepreneur Challenge
April 5, 2008
Hosted by University of Utah
Contact Leonard Black at Leonard.Black@business.utah.edu

New Ventures World Competition
April
Hosted by the Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Contact Glenn Friendt at friendt2@unl.edu or entprenshp@unlnotes.unl.edu

New Venture Championship
April
Hosted by the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship
University of Oregon
Contact Marianne Rosen-Murr at mtmurr@uoregon.edu

Uniandes Moot Corp Business Plan Competition
April
Hosted by Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Contact Rafael Vesga at rav@adm.uniandes.edu.co

OFC Venture Challenge
April
Hosted by Clark Atlanta University
Contact Mohammad Bhuiyan at 404-880-8657 or ofcvc@hotmail.com

USF-PSI International Business Plan Competition
April 24 to 26, 2008
Hosted by the University of San Francisco
Contact Mark Cannice at cannice@usfca.edu

Pamela Slim of Escape From Cubicle Nation called it an “Exceptionally rich and juicy post on becoming ‘lifestyle entrepreneur.’ ” I agree, and thanks to Slim for pointing it out.

The post she referred to is “Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Complete Guide and 40+ Resources” by Skellie on Anywired. From the introduction:

The goal of a lifestyle entrepreneur is not to amass a huge fortune, but instead, to achieve certain definable goals and, beyond that point, to ensure business does not interfere too much with the enjoyment of those goals.

In this article, I’ll be outlining the primary steps to becoming a lifestyle entrepreneur, followed by 40+ educational and practical resources you can use to get started.

She defined three types of lifestyle entrepreneurs: Time minimalists, nomadic entrepreneurs and doing it for love. She also gets into how, what tools to use and lots of tips. Like Slim said, it’s very rich.

Sun Microsystems and Mashable.com are teaming up to offer you some early startup publicity on a new site that will feature a series called “The Startup Review.” They plan to feature one startup per day, based on “the same general editorial decision-making process” Mashable typically uses. You submit some standard info plus “CEO’s 100-word description.” Also, you make sure your website is cool and available to the editors.

What will it matter? Honestly, that depends on various factors. It’s too early to tell how much play the posting will get. At the very least, you’ll have an external web reference that you can use to add credibility.

And after all, what do you have to lose?

As far as I can tell, it depends on whom you ask. Some say it was a life-changing experience. Some say it was exhausting. The startup weekend program gets a few dozen people together for a long weekend, during which they create a new business. In a recent one they ended up pitching Guy Kawasaki when they were done. There was very little sleep, a lot of work, lots of creativity and collaboration, and lots of real thinking about what makes a startup go. Here’s more from the website:

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54-hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, the weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating. It is known for its quick decisions, “out of the box” thinking, unique facilitation technique and letting the founders show what they can do. The program has already met with success in Boulder, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, Houston, West Lafayette, Boston, D.C. and more.

If that sounds interesting to you, I suggest you browse to startupweekend.com and take a look. I found the videos alone entertaining enough to make it hard to pull away from that site and get back to work.

Look for Jake Weatherly there

One of the next ones happening is Portland Startup Weekend, here in Oregon, May 23-25. You can use that link to get more information and to register. And our own Jake Weatherly, Palo Alto Software’s star nice person, is already registered and will be there with sleeves rolled up, ready to work. I’m looking forward to getting his feedback, which I intend to share here.

The schedule also includes San Antonio, Texas, May 16-18; Memphis, Tennessee, May 30-June 1; and Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 20 -22.

Launch Silicon Valley 2008 is accepting executive summaries for about one more week, until May 9. This is the best kind of venture contest — sponsored by venture capital for venture capital — looking at what it wants to be the best and most interesting startups around. Organizers want startups that are already launched, that have something to show, but haven’t been around very long.

The prize? The right kind of audience. Journalists, other opinion makers and, generally, people with money to invest.

For more information, go to launchsiliconvalley.org.

Sun Microsystems is hosting a free startup camp in San Francisco next Sunday and Monday, May 4 and 5, with an open agenda. The press release (yes, I admit, I’m taking this and one post tomorrow from a release) calls it an "un-conference event." The following is from that release:

an un-conference networking event to hear from some Web 2.0 authorities, meet other startups and apply to Sun’s Startup Essentials Program. The event also includes Speed Geeking, where startup founders can compete in the Best Startup Contest by presenting a 5-minute pitch of their business to VC led groups of peers. Confirmed guests include: Pete Cashmore, Jonathan Schwartz, David Berlind, Om Malik, Matt Marshall etc. This event is a great way for startups to network and discuss ideas.

The website for that is http://startupcamp.org/ .

When you want to take a moment for thought, do some long-term thinking, and focus on the kind of trends research that can help to generate new ideas, take a look at the (newly-redesigned) Emergent Research site featuring a nice collection of reports and research on the sources and impacts of social and business change.

Our focus is the global intersections of social and demographic shifts, technology, marketing and economic decentralization.

I discovered this by reading Steve King’s Small Business Labs blog for some time. Steve is part of Emergent Research, and he posted today about the redesign. I’ve used his posts several times for my posts, I like his work, so I visited.

The research is a special treat. If you have any interest in trends affecting small business and entrepreneurship, look at the studies in the Research and Reports section, on the right top. I particularly like the one on the new artisan economy. The two trends pieces are excellent, and there are also several on the future of small business.