More Thoughts On The Minnesota Start Up Scene

I am not exactly sure how to start this and many readers of the blog may need to be caught up on this topic.

The short version of a long story is a I wrote a blog post that my friends at Minnov8 posted last Friday. It was an honest assessment of what I think about where we are as a tech community. I am a bit of an outsider but have a perspective that needed to be shared.

I was really shocked at the reaction to the post which you can find by clicking Minnesota Startup Community: The Time Has Come For Less Talk and More Walk

Lots of comments, Tweets and quite a few one on one and small group email.

A lot of people are saying, “Way to go Paul!!!”. Well, I appreciate the acknowledgement but I already knew others were thinking this too. It just happens that I was the one to say it out loud at the right time and the guys at Minnov8 trusted me enough to post it.

So the blog post was Friday and then the Minnov8 gang and I did this podcast Saturday morning Minnov8 Gang 64: “Less Talk, More Walk”

Be sure to check out the comments on the first blog post as there are a lot of people weighing in with great ideas and opinions

So now that everyone knows what I think (for better and worse) I want to lay out a challenge:

We need to work together.

There are a lot of strong voices who while want to get the ball across the goal line have different ways of doing it.

To bring it back to Gopher football, some want the spread offense to come back. Others want the power run game. A few want the pro set we have now.

Others are sitting in the press box giving commentary, a few acting as cheerleaders and a bunch of fans in the stands watching to see what happens. Some are supporting loudly, others waiting to get excited and more than a few with their arms folded, skeptical and unwilling to get involved.

To some extent everyone has a role.

My fear is that we have a lot of coaches, no head coach and no athletic director (these do not really exist in this scenario) and some people who would be like the board of regents who for the most part are not active, at least not visibly.

We need the coaches to work together. We need them to play off of each others strengths and plug holes that exist. We need conversations to be productive and when we disagree we need to be civil.

I will say this again, if we do not do this now we will in the future say we missed out on an opportunity just like many if us are now looking back saying the same thing.

It’s time to move forward friends, are you going to play or sit in the stands?

Comments

[Jason Baker]

Why is it when we talk about MN startups we are so focused on web development and social networking efforts? With all due respect I think too many people who talk about MN startups are involved in these specific types of technology startups. Every week I hear about cool new MN companies focused on green technologies, manufacturing, biomed, etc. Just because it's hard to get your BestSiteEver.com app launched in MN doesn't mean this is a bad location for startups.