A RocCity Entrepreneur

Always Have A Top 5 List - It can take you where you want to go

At work, wherever we work, most people have a set of generic goals, objectives and expectations.  Some of these goals or objectives are short term in nature, like make 20 new calls, develop a new feature or patch production servers. While some are more long term, like get promoted, launch a new product, make a million dollars, or start your own business.  

For me, the biggest challenge isn’t having enough goals or objectives to work on, but understanding how to equally divide my time and attention across both short and long term goals and objectives effectively. 

What effectively means to me, as a measurement may be different than what it means to anyone else.  Success and progress towards success are critical units of measure and help determine how effective I am in managing time and effort across short and long term goals.

Setting a goal to make a million dollars is great, but it doesn’t get me any closer to making a million dollars.  In order to be successful and reach that goal there are likely hundreds of incremental goals that need to be reached.

This is where a Top 5 list comes into play.  At any given point in time, I have 5 very specific long term goals that I am working towards.  This list reflects where I want to go in my professional life over the coming months and years.  Creating the list is the easy part, but how do I know if I am doing what I need to do each day and each week to get there?

Recently, I began to create a daily Top 5 in addition to my long term Top 5.  If one of my Long term Top 5 goals is to successfully raise money for a startup, each day I’ll create 1-2 daily steps objectives which will help get me closer to getting to that goal.  

At the end of each day, I know that I have taken positive actions towards reaching long term goals.  This allows me to build momentum and logically allocate time and energy in the right areas.  

So with this system, making a million dollars is no longer just an item on my “bucket list”.  Its a series of daily, weekly and monthly goals and targets that if I hit, could allow me to make a million dollars in the future.  

With this system, I align short term everyday actions with longer term objectives to get me where I want to go effectively.  Without making the connection between short term everyday actions, with long term goals and objectives, it is difficult if not impossible to manage time and effort across your goals.  

I have never been more confident that I can get exactly where I want to go.  If you want to stop thinking about where you want to go, and start doing something to get you there, this is a good start.  Set up your long term Top 5, then set your daily Top 5’s to help you get you there effectively.   It works.

Thanks for reading, I hope this helps.

Technology providers, Time to get Proactive about Security

Do you build, create, enable or support technology solutions?  If so, odds are your customers trust you, and look to you for guidance and support on how leverage technology to achieve their business goals.

The vast majority of technology providers, be it web and application developers, managed service providers or consultants do not take a proactive approach to data security.  After spending several years with a managed service provider, I understand first hand some of the challenges in changing this mindset.  It comes down to time and money.  Most mid tier players do not have the internal resources like CISSP’s or security professionals.  Those are the resources you need to take a proactive approach to Data security. 

Now 5 years ago, the chances that a small or medium sized businesses network or website would be the target of hackers or a malicious attack was slim to none.  On the off chance the network or website was hacked, it was almost always a disgruntled employee or a revenge plot.  

Today, as attackers get smarter and the value of data increases the small and medium sized business is a direct target for most malicious attacks.  From a hackers perspective, why would they spend months breaching a large global company when they can easily breach a small or mid sized business in the matter of minutes.  

So the threat has moved from the IT guy you pissed off, to the real bad guys who know how to hijack an application or network and make off with highly valuable data, IP, trade secrets and customer information.

What is surprising to me is not that threats have moved from the big leagues to the mid market, but that technology providers in the mid market have been slow to layer data security into the design, development and services delivery process.

Application developers and designers should have an application and data security feedback loop in place as part of their development life-cycle.  What does that mean? Professional Developers should have a feedback loop in place where they create a spec, an application and database design, then leverage Application and Data Security partners to ensure the design supports security.  Today security is an afterthought and as a result, almost every website that is being developed is vulnerable to hackers and attackers.

Network Engineers, System administrators, and IT service providers most times don’t consult security experts during the design process.  Data security is something that comes after the servers are built and the systems are deployed. This makes protecting the network far more difficult down the road. 

Moving past the design and deployment processes, once Networks, Websites or web applications are live and in use, most providers in the middle tier do not proactively offer managed data security to customers.   

Data security, when done correctly is a full life-cycle process of continuous assessment, remediation, re-assessment, validation of risk reduction and ongoing security monitoring.  Every patch, update, change in code, addition of a web form, etc. could create new vulnerabilities which need remediation to ensure security.

For IT providers, there is really no reason or excuse not to proactively layer data security into every level of the organization.  There are plenty of partners, who offer managed and white labeled data security offerings.  These offerings not only increase the bottom line by allowing for ongoing remediation and services, but also protect the providers from huge blows to reputation.  The truth is, most customers are willing to pay for proactive security.  Why? Well CEO’s like to sleep at night and with the cost of a breach coming in at up-words of a million dollars, their business may depend on it.  

Over the next 12-24 months, more than 85% of all organizations in the U.S will experience a data breach.  If those are your customers, odds are they are not going to be happy with you.  Do yourself a favor and start working with a trusted data security partner, like UberGuard.

Thanks, 

Mark 

Mark.Lucas@UberGuard.com

Thanks for reading, I hope this was helpful.  I am working with UberGuard, a full service Data Security partner.  We work with partners and customers to implement proactive full life cycle approaches to Network and web security. 

Success breeds Success, Rochester’s Startup Ecosystem

When it comes to building out a killer startup ecosystem, success breeds success, money makes money, and successful startup executives, exit and make more startups.

The challenge comes before the initial success, before the money and before the successful exits.

It takes work, commitment, talent and the right culture to start the momentum moving forward.  Almost everyone I talk to locally in Rochester agrees that the climate is ripe for creating a successful startup hub in our great city. Every day I learn about more people who share the passion for developing Rochester’s startup ecosystem.

We have so much going for us in Rochester.  We have more tech talent per-capita than almost every major startup hub in the country including San Francisco, NYC, and Boston.  Rochester also has a much lower cost of living than Startup hubs in Tier 1 cities.  This gives us a real competitive advantage.  

It’s when I talk to folks who have left Rochester, for other Startup hubs that I learn some of the things that could be holding us back.  Some of the Rochester’s greatest Entrepreneurs, Founders and executives have left the market for various reasons.

The number 1 reason Rochester loses successful start-ups and Entrepreneurs is culture.  Not just the professional culture but also the capital culture.  The most important indicator of any startup hub is the proliferation capital and talent after a successful exit.  

Where is Tom G. today? Where is David Koretz today?  Where are the founders of Digsby today?  Not in Rochester.  I have tried to dig in deeper to understand why and some of the answers are interesting.

The Work Life Balance in Rochester is one major challenge we have to overcome. In the Valley or NYC, the work life balance is drastically different for startups than it is or was in Rochester over the past 5 years.

The perception from the outside, is that professionals in Rochester value personal time highly.  From the perspective of Founders and Venture capitalists I’ve talked to, most Rochester based employees have the expectation that they will be working from 8 to 5 with weekends off and that’s very important to them.

So if there is pressure from the top to stay late, work weekends and bang shit out then employees quickly get burnt out and start thinking there bosses are “slave drivers”.  

This is a tricky subject though.  Because personally, I do value my family and personal time, but I am also very passionate and competitive, so if there is shit to do I am all about getting it done.  But, I think a lot depends on why you are working where you are working.  If you are working to pay your bills, and not because you love what you do, then odds are 5pm and weekends never come soon enough.   

The major cultural difference is that in Rochester, there is a larger number of people who are working to pay the bills.  Whereas in the major hubs a higher percentage of people are working for passion.  

So what can we learn and what can we do to change the perception that some Venture capitalists, Entrepreneurs, and business executives have about Rochester? 

My thoughts are that we need to bring more awareness to the giant culture shift that Rochester is having.  The old guard is turning over to a new, younger generation of professional.  With this change I see a huge number of professionals that will help shift the culture, and enable us to change the perceptions that hold back capital and expertise from pouring into the region.

I would love to hear others thoughts about building momentum for Rochester’s startup ecosystem.  We want startups who are successful to stay here, reinvest time and equity here, and help us build on our successes.

I think our culture is getting to where it needs to be to make that happen.  I also think the responsibility lies within us all personally.  If you are at a job, working for the man just waiting for 5 o’clock to come, find something you are passionate about and do it!  Life is too short.  

Thanks for reading.

Mark S. Lucas 

mark@mysudo.me

Glorified press coverage aside. Startups are hard.

Startups are hard. Anyone who’s actually started one, worked at one or funded one knows that.  But for the rest of the world who only read about them in blogs or in tech news outlets, it’s very easy to get the wrong impression.  

Technology publications, blogs and other media outlets paint a glorified picture of what startup culture is like.  The stories and posts we read about cover incredibly successful ventures, insanely large fund raising rounds, and successful exits.  This leaves potential entrepreneurs with a distorted sense of reality.   

The mainstream tech media only covers the 1% of startups that actually make it, and are successful.  It is rare that you hear about the other 99% of startups that fail.  With such a disparity in coverage, its hard for new comers to understand the full scope of failure.   

Whether you are a developer, a marketer, a designer or a business executive taking an idea from concept to execution will be the single greatest challenge you will ever face.  The rewards for those who succeed are great, but the misery and financial loss for those who don’t can be incredibly harsh. 

Now it’s not all bad, in the last 5 years we’ve seen the barriers to starting software/internet startup dramatically decrease. While that means you need less capital to actually start something, it doesn’t mean its gotten any easier to succeed.  

I believe in following dreams, finding your passion and committing to developing ideas you believe in.  So to try and fail, is better than to never trying at all.  At the same time, I know that the ups and downs of startups can take there toll on anyone.

In order to be a great Entrepreneur you need to have great vision.  In essence, you need to see what others can’t see.  You need to look past how things work now, and envision how they should or could work in a future you create.  But, it doesn’t end there. 

No one ever created anything worthwhile alone.  So to have even a remote shot at being successful, Entrepreneurs have to build strong teams that can help execute the overall vision.  That’s not easy.  It requires an ability to successfully transfer ideas, passion and overall vision and rallying the team around a greater purpose.

This whole process requires an incredibly wide range of skills and an innate ability to find and persuade talented, likely gainfully employed people to stop what they’re doing, stop getting paid, and help you turn an idea that does’t exist into a product that works.  This is not something everyone can do.

Leading a team of people to a desired outcome is difficult, even when they are being paid good money. But entrepreneurs are creating something from nothing. This means they have to find, convince, motivate then lead a capable team of talented people, they are not able to pay, to a desired outcome based only on a vision.

So if you have Entrepreneurial qualities and you want to launch a startup. Consider asking yourself some critical questions…Do you have a clear vision and a greater purpose for starting this business? Are the challenges you solve something that you are personally passionate about? Will enough people or businesses care you built a solution?

Don’t make startups any harder than they already are.  Make sure you read everything you can get your hands on from founders, venture capitalists, mentors and startup advisors who have succeeded.  Make sure you ask your self and have good answers for the the questions above before you start down any path and finally, don’t do it alone.  Make sure you have 1 or more complementary co-founders to help you navigate the dramatic ups and downs of the startup world.

Thanks for reading, hope this was useful.  

P.S. Sorry for any grammer or spelling oversights…it was a long busy week! 

Mark@mysudo.me 

What’s really the deal, with Daily Deals?

So what’s really the deal, with Daily Deals…

The daily deal space is literally exploding.  There are well over 500 daily deal providers all fighting for your attention, and your email. It’s a highly competitive business climate dominated by those with the deepest pockets. With IPO’s and strong sales in 2011, the deals space is hear to stay, at least for the time being.   

So what’s the deal, for real.  Why are the Groupon’s and Livingsocial’s of the world willing to shell out close to 20 bucks to acquire your email address?  Why is it so critical that you download the latest mobile app., and why are free online services like Facebook valued in the billions of dollars.

The answer quite simply, is because you’re the Deal.  YOU, and your data is extremely valuable, and marketers, advertisers and businesses need a way to get you to walk in the door and spend your money with them.   

So for a daily deal service, social application or mobile coupon site, YOU are the deal.  You’re the product, you’re the meal ticket, you are the only reason they exist and your data is what creates such extreme wealth for the founders, investors and shareholders of successful web and mobile companies.  

It occurred to me, maybe because I’m bias or maybe because I’m a realist, that an entire Personal Data industry is being built on the backs of people.  Daily deals, free self expression apps, location based services, and mobile apps sometimes are cases of the top 1%, profiting from the 99%.

Why is it that where I am, what I like, what I am doing, what my intention is, is making extremely wealthy people, even more wealthy, all while taking money out of my pocket and the pockets of local mom and pop’s business owners for the favor? It just doesn’t seem to make sense to me.  

It’s kind of crazy when you think about the model.  It’s like an extremely wealthy individual driving up beside you in a Bentley, rolling down the window and asking for the money your pocket, to tell you about exclusive deal. Sure, why not we all like deals. So you give him the money from your pocket, he tells you about the deal, and you buy it.  The wealthy guy leaves in his Bentley, drives down to the local business owner who by the way is getting into his 1998 Honda, and says, great news! I just sold 40 bucks of your product for 20 bucks, let’s see 10’s mine, so here’s your 10 bucks! Great doing business with you.

So with the all the marketing hype peeled away, its really less deal than we think. It leaves the two most important players in the value chain, the consumer and the local business, paying for wealthy man’s caviar, for a great deal on burgers. That’s not innovation.    

Innovation is connecting consumers to businesses in a way that benefits both groups and rewards them equally.  

I am extremely passionate about this topic, and it’s my goal to bring a fair, transparent business model to market.  It’s called mysudo.me, an innovative platform and business model that allows consumers (users) to realize the economic value of their data in a private and anonymous way, while allowing businesses (marketers) to use that data in a meaningful way. 

I hope you stop by our blog @ blog.mysudo.me and sign up for our beta @ www.mysudo.me

Thanks for stopping by! 

Mark@mysudo.me