Horizons, Chapter 7
At the beginning of Week 7, Horizonites took part in their final formal lessons with our excellent teachers — Moose and Lane. Moose emotionally taught his final lesson on React Native, remarking at the end how much he had enjoyed teaching the class.
Students created their final project for the class of the program — Ho Ho Ho, a Yo! Clone.
After completing this project, students picked what teams and projects they’d like to start work on for the next week or so. Some students were asked to undertake real client projects, ranging from a health insurance app to a scholastic gaming app to a social media app. Some students chose to continue their hackathon projects and make them great, viable products to release.
Horizonite Louis and Horizons Founder Edward brought some of the class to a Bastille Day celebration on South Street.
Speakers this week
BOB MOUL — CLOUDAMIZE CEO
Bob is in many ways the mayor of the Philly tech scene and has had decades of experience as the CEO of several successful companies of all sizes. He’ll have a whole lot to share.
Bob Moul is a Philadelphia tech CEO with 35 years’ experience ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Bob is currently CEO of Cloudamize, a leading cloud infrastructure analytics company. Previously he was CEO of Artisan Mobile, creators of the industry’s first mobile experience management platform (acquired by TUNE), CEO of Boomi, pioneers of middleware for cloud computing (acquired by Dell), and president of SCT’s $300mm global education solutions business (acquired by SunGard). He also enjoyed a 19-year career at EDS where he held senior management positions including director of operations in Hong Kong and China, and executive director of its federal government business in Australia. Bob is an active advocate for entrepreneurship in Philadelphia. He is aformer chair and president of Philly Startup Leaders and serves on the board of directors of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), the Philadelphia Alliance of Capital and Technology (PACT), Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Academies Inc., and USA250. He was named a 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist for Philadelphia, the 2013 Small Business Person of the Year by the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and one of the most influential business people in Philadelphia by both Philadelphia Magazine and the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Bob came to Horizons to speak about his experiences in tech. From an early age, Bob knew that the conventional education process was not for him. He did not attend college and instead found a job at a top tech company of the time. His relentless willpower and determination to succeed brought him from a low, non-technical position in the company to a senior level position over the course of his 19 years there.
Since then, Bob has moved on to found numerous companies.
Entrepreneurship in Philadelphia
Bob started with an Edtech startup. After some time, he sold it. When the check came, he couldn’t believe that he had created so much value and that someone had actually bought it.
Next, he created Boomi to solve on the big problems in cloud computing. He built the first middleware layer in the cloud and sold it to Dell in 2010.
Shortly after, he started another company called Artisan Mobile. This, however, was a spectacular failure.
Since then, he’s worked as the head of the Philly Startup Leaders, an organization that brings startups in the Philadelphia area closer through events, panel showcases, and collaborations. He became the head of PSL just one year ago, and for the past 6 months has worked tirelessly as the CEO of Cloudamize, a platform that helps you leverage actionable analysis that empowers you to make data-driven decisions with confidence and ease throughout your entire cloud journey.
Thoughts on What Makes Highly Effective Entrepreneurs
- Unrelenting positive attitude
- High energy / strong work ethic
- High pain/stress/risk tolerance
- Supremely confident but self aware (people who are tuned into themselves and can learn)
- Wildly optimistic but always questioning
- Tenacious but willing to pivot
- Focus on results vs being right (are we solving the problem? Are we getting results?)
- Accept full accountability
Some career thoughts
- Generalist (athlete) vs specialist (looking for generalists if hiring)
- Smart vs effective
- Trade experience for salary every time
- Take the hard jobs no one wants — that’s the fast way to learn
- Be a learner not a knower (ability to ask the right questions)
- Get experience selling (all of you should get the experience selling)
- Keep your burn rate low!
For tech folks
- Tech (coding languages, databases, frameworks etc) come and go
- Develop your business skills as well as technical skills
- Everything is not black and white — decision making often involves constraints and compromises
Interview Advice
When Bob interviews people, he asks situation questions — What have they actually done?
On day, I took my team out to lunch. I noticed the waiter, James, was very good at his job. Very personable, hard working. I asked him “What are you doing waiting tables? What was your major in college?” He answered that he was an international music history major, or something worthless. I asked, “Have you ever considered a career in tech?” His response: “Well, what do you have in mind?”. I knew I loved this guy. He became one of the top performers in my company very soon. He crushed every set of goals I set for him and quickly earned numerous raises, surpassing what he ever could have made as a waiter.
Bob feels that the internet has truly eliminated all non-value add people in the supply chain. The premium that we place on degrees is only to the extent that employers put on it.
Experience as a CEO
Bob has learned a lot while CEO of a few companies now. He has learned how to manage his time very, very well. He has a daily planner where he disciplines himself to write down his to-do list every day. He rewrites things from the previous day so that he has to keep track of not only what he gets done but what he wasn’t able to do the day before.
He has learned that he is most creative in the morning, so he works on all of the creative things he has to do in the morning. He saves all calls for the afternoon and batches them all together. However, even as a CEO, he takes meetings from every person that asks. He is not the kind of guy to have ideas in his head all the time but rather is open to hearing ideas. When he hears a good one, he’s the guy that wants to help you run with it and says “Let’s do it”.
He stressed the importance of “The Power of Now”. If something comes up that you can easily get done in a few minutes, do it. Don’t worry about it — just get it done. That’s one more thing to cross of your list for the day easily and painlessly.
Lessons in Company Management
- Annual goals/objectives(company, team, individual) are critical
- Quarterly reviews
- Monthly status
- Weekly Schedule Reviews
- Daily Standups
- Board Mtgs/Monthly Calls
- KPIs/Dashboards
Bob has learned that it is critical to check in with people at intervals keeps people on task and productive.
Lessons in Hiring/Firing
Bob has learned a lot along the way in the hiring and firing process. First, he must set goals and objectives for hiring people and how he wants them to perform in the company. He keeps feedback on all his hires in a folder. He has tough discussions before he hires them and makes expectations clear for the job. He creates performance plans for them, and if they severely underperform, he has learned that firing fast is the best way to do it.
He has a defined process in firing people. When he sees early indications, he has the tough conversation — “You need to improve in this or you’re fired”. If they do not improve, the process is much easier. He has learned that giving people warnings has worked well for him. Ex-employees have commented that “Even though Bob fired me, I’d work for him again”. The reverence that his employees have seem to be a direct result of the respect that he gives each and every one of them.
Thoughts on the Philadelphia Startup Scene
Bob loves Philadelphia for startups. There is a very vibrant scene here that is extremely underrated. The city has a fund called “Startup PHL” that has around $6million that they use to fund startups brought to Philly.
If you want to learn more about the Philadelphia Startup Scene, to go www.phillystartupleaders.org. Everything you need to know is on that website.
Philly has the highest ratio of quality of life to business opportunity. You can actually have a life here and a family, while running your own startup or finding new and exciting business opportunities.
Book Recommendations
- The Drunkard’s Walk: the Commoner’s Guide to Randomness
- Brunicelli’s Dom: How He Built a Duomo in Italy
DANIELLE STRACHMAN — 1517 FUND
Danielle invests in great young entrepreneurs as a General Partner at 1517 Fundand was previously at the helm of the Thiel Fellowship.
Danielle is a General Partner at 1517 Fund, which supports teams with pre-seed and seed funding for technology startups. Their focus is on makers, hackers, and scientists interested in working outside tracked institutions because they believe that the path geared towards higher education is not for all. 1517 motivates people to work on what they’re passionate about, to learn by doing, and to create new technologies.
In 2010, during the founding of the Thiel Fellowship, Danielle joined to lead the design and operations. She is the visionary behind the Thiel Summit series that has been attended by some 2000 young entrepreneurs. Previous to her work with Peter Thiel, Danielle founded and directed Innovations Academy in San Diego, a K-8 charter school serving 350 students, with a focus on student- led project based learning and other alternative programs.
Her Story
Danielle Strachman grew up pretty poor, and despite her work with the Thiel Fellowship with Peter Thiel, she did go to college. She was passionate about teaching, but she knew that she didn’t want to be a typical teacher. She started a tutoring business and loved it, but when her boyfriend moved to San Francisco, she decided she would move with him.
Shortly after arriving in SF, she realized she didn’t know if she could make it work. She ended up crying most days. She saw a post about the Thiel Fellowship and thought, “Wow, that looks cool”.
She interviewed and got the position. After some time in the foundation and after she had become a leader within the organization, a friend called her, “You’ve got to get over here. The Thiel Foundation has lost their mind”.
Danielle learned that if you see something you really like (a company) contact them. Don’t ask them that they have everything they need.
When she went to interview for the position with Thiel, he came to the interview in a 3-piece suit because he had a board meeting about an hour later. It was very unexpected.
At the time, they only had an application online. Danielle inquired about this. Thiel, “Well. We are figuring that out.”
“How about I go home and write up a needs assessment. What you’re going to need for that program?”
Shortly thereafter, she started Thiel foundation summit to bring more people into the community of entrepreneurs and innovators. At the last summit, there were 450 people in attendance.
Danielle felt that there was still more that she could do. So, she went to Peter Thiel. Pitched the idea to fund young entrepreneurs. Everything has been starting up. PennApps, Horizons, etc. Way more programs would be afoot.
She founded the 1517 fund. She gives $1000 to young founders to start something. They also have a larger grant program. Already, she works with 50 founders.
Success Story
One person that she funded was Max Locke. He brought an idea for freight shipping to her. After a few weeks, she checked in with him. He had built a landing page and had the opportunity to pitch in front of Tech Crunch Disrupt. He got to pitch in front of big people like Marissa Mayer and Keith Rabois. Today, his office has over 12 people and always accepts her calls.
What to Look For
Danielle stressed a past history of execution. Is this person coach able? Has this person had internships in other places? Have they had any mentors?How jazzed is this person to do something?
The best founders are part ADD and OCD. Someone who likes to bounce around and do a lot of different things but also seeks a high level of perfection and excellence.
She looks for people who are easy to work with, because it isn’t enough to be able to build something, you have to be able to work well with other people in order to build truly brilliant things.
To the day, she will answer any question that young founders may have. She believes that this synergy is what will lead to great success. The fact that the biggest tech companies of today, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. were all started by people under the age of 22.
“If you’re young and you’re starting a company and it doesn’t workout, youcan learn a lot from the process.”
Advice to Young Entrepreneurs
She’s found that success is a longer term thing. Not sharing what’s not going well is one of the biggest mistakes people make.
All young people should find a mentor. Try cold emailing people. It is much harder to say no to 18 or 24 year old for these requests than 40 year old.
Don’t say, “I’m in stealth mode”. Comes off as arrogant. Ideas are really cheap. All about execution.
Student Question: How do you not listen to what other people tell you that you should do? The idea of the “Quarter Life Crisis”?
“I upped and moved to California. The doctor I was working for at the time still thought I was moving to grad school. I found that changing my mindset was the best decision I could have made. Instead of being scared of this move and almost hiding it, I embraced it. I found confidants, people that I could really talk to.
“I viewed a lot of things as experiments. Becoming an adult doesn’t mean doing things that you don’t want to do. You don’t have to follow what everyone tells you to do. I want to feel viscerally excited to start my day every day.
This mindset isn’t only true for work, it’s true for romantic relationships, volunteer work, etc. I decided to change my mindset with making plans with friends because I started hating scheduling things with friends. I completely resented it because it felt like something I had to do. So, I did an experiment. I told my friends that I’m not going to schedule anything because I didn’t want to feel the pressure of having things that should be relaxing on the calendar weeks in advance.”
Question from Student: Many people don’t trust young people starting ventures. How can I as a young person deal with this?
“First, the media can tear you down later.
“Ageism is definitely a thing. I really wish age or gender didn’t matter. Reporters are in the business of getting clicks. Be careful. I’ve found the best people are heads down and working.
“Things that feel both exciting and scary are what I likes the most. I always ask myself, ‘Am I both excited and scared right now? Good.’
“If you are a mission driven person, where excitement is the long term goal, do things today that are going to serve that longterm goal.”
Recommendations
Read:
- Zen and the Art of Making a Living
2. Ovservant mind — very impactful for education
3. Learn about Daoist Thinking, Doing everything and doing nothing.
4. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
5. Zero to One — not quite practicing what he preaches but still a good read
…and download the Calm app. Meditate every day. Check in with yourself.
Final Notes
One piece of advice to young people: Why are you doing it? There are people who jump onto entrepreneurship bandwagon because it’s a bandwagon. Why would anyone want to make an app for picking laundry detergent? Why are they really doing this? If it’s a problem that you cannot get out of your head, then work on it.
To the ladies especially. Really don’t be afraid to put yourselves out there. Guys go in there. Really hung ho about it, attend office hours. Get out there and get yourself out there. Let people know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
And of course, our weekly update of people sleeping.
Coding is no joke!
Stay tuned for our update of chapters 8 and 9 for more information on the interesting projects horizons students are working on!
Thank you for reading.
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Horizons is a technology school that finds the most promising young people around the world and gives them all the advantages they need to launch their successful careers in tech.
