Jeff Amerine

Techpreneurship, with Jeff Amerine

(Jeff Amerine is an IA advisor, entrepreneurship educator, and officer with the University of Arkansas Technology Licensing Office. Each Thursday, his Techpreneurship blog will appear in INOV8. Drop him a line in comments.)

Infomercials, cure-all spamercials, amazing get-rich quick schemes clutter the Internet, our in-boxes and the airwaves.  We’ve become numb to the relentless barrage of “sounds too good to be true” messaging.

I suspect you’re thinking, “where is this knucklehead going with this stream of consciousness?”  Well, there is a point to this particular rant.  At the risk of pointing out what should be obvious to all techpreneurs, I am preparing to sermonize a bit, and I’ll apologize in advance.

Integrity matters, that is my topic this week… As techpreneurs, we continuously claw our way across a minefield of scarcity.  The scarcity of funding, scarcity of talent, scarcity of customers, and scarcity of time define the daunting challenges all early-stage ventures face.  I’ve seen this sometimes cruel gauntlet bring forth the best and worst in entrepreneurs.

The process tests our integrity and our ethics.  We must pass that test to be successful techpreneurs.  Here are some situations that should have only one obvious answer that we can all use as an integrity “gut-check.”

• Say whatever you have to say to get that first round of investment.
• Everybody exaggerates product/service performance claims.
• The business plan is a marketing document; it doesn’t need to reflect reality.
• We have a patented product (when in fact the product is patent pending – big difference).
• We have negotiated a license for the intellectual property (when in fact only discussions have taken place).
• We have X, Y, and Z Fortune 500 customers (when in fact all that has been done are free pilots).
• We have invention-assignment agreements in place with all employees (when in fact the documents weren’t done).
• Just give the early employees stock options that vest over a really long time that have no acceleration clause.  It won’t matter from a dilution standpoint, because we’re going to sell out way before the options vest anyway.

You get the picture.  Aside from the ethical issues, the really foolish aspect of these sort of willful misrepresentations to investors, customers or employees is that they WILL find out the truth!

When they do, the offending techpreneurs may as well leave the country.  Even though the start-up game spans many industries and has many players, the word gets around on “bad actors,” and it sticks.

Once you happen to get a label as someone loose with the truth, that radioactive half-life may as well be forever. Integrity and character are worth far more than any wealth or short-term advantage gained by deception.

Sermon complete.  Please share with me some positive and negative examples of good or bad ethics and integrity you’ve seen in the start-up game.

How strong is the connection between innovation and geography?

David Luberoff addresses the issue for Xconomy, and reports on a new policy brief issued by Harvard’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.

An excerpt:

If the relationship between an abundance of smaller firms and urban success is real, Glaeser and Kerr ask, then why are some regions more entrepreneurial than others? One possibility is that there might be particularly high returns for entrepreneurs in particular places and in particular industries.

Arkansas has made strides in recent years in its nurturing of entrepreneurs and technology commercialization.

How closely connected is Arkansas’ regional economy with its level of entrepreneurship? Tell us what you think in comments.

Jeff Amerine

Techpreneurship, with Jeff Amerine

(Jeff Amerine is an IA advisor, entrepreneurship educator, and officer with the University of Arkansas Technology Licensing Office. Each Thursday, his Techpreneurship blog will appear in INOV8. Drop him a line in comments.)

Folks, this week I decided to do something entirely different.  The proliferation of social media has created an amazing way to do polling, focus groups, and in general to tap the “wisdom of the crowd.”

So this week, in a completely unscientific way, I decided to pose some discussion points I’d like all of you to consider.  Take a look at the points below that relate to creating a sustainable environment for business creation, and let me know what you think the priorities should be:

• The federal government needs to provide more incentives for new business creation.
• The federal government needs to increase the H1B Visa program so the U.S. can attract and retain the best and brightest from around the world.
• Venture-capital firms should be excluded from pending taxation changes for carried interest that are aimed at hedge-fund managers.
• Corporate-tax rates should be lowered to attract new businesses to the U.S.
• Technology commercialization should be streamlined in U.S. universities and federal labs to promote faster business creation.
• Large companies should develop a culture that nurtures and encourages managerial and technical talent to strike out on their own to create new businesses.
• Angel networks that invest in high-risk ventures should receive state and federal incentives.
• Federal and state governments should provide both “carrot and stick” incentives to steer new business creation in a direction they think best serves the common good.
• Solving the “health-care cost issue” will help foster new business creation.
• As techpreneurs, we need to treat our careers as our own personal firm.  We are the CEO of our own destiny, and we should expect nothing other than what we can create through our own wit and hard work.

I am taking no position on any of these points.  I am very interested in learning from the “wisdom of the crowd.”

Please let me know what you think, and don’t hesitate to offer up your ideas for how we create a sustainable environment for new business creation….

IA client NanoMech of Springdale got some good PR over the weekend. KATV ran this piece Friday night, focusing on NanoMech’s use of nanotechnology to “save lives, money and the environment.”