One of the most important threads of discussion focused on retaining entrepreneurial and technically-savvy college students here in Boston by providing them with more visibility and access into the startup ecosystem upon graduation.

The discussion ratcheted up a few notches on Saturday when Mark Zuckerberg remarked, “If I were starting (Facebook) now, I would have stayed in Boston.” (Zuck, of course, dropped out of Harvard to build Facebook from Palo Alto.) The tech press took the remark way out of context, but the hullabaloo threw a spotlight back on the essential question of how to connect talented students to Boston startups.

At the Unconference, Karl Büttner of MassChallenge asked this very question to a group of students from Babson, BU, Harvard, Tufts and MIT and several additional schools. Paul Hlatky, a BU senior, had a nice recap:

We determined the problem to be that students don’t understand the value of a start up life. Then even if they do they have no clue how to get involved. Even if they find great sources like Start Up Digest andGreenhorn Connect students need the validation from their peers and professors to seek out this culture.

On the flip side of the issue, John Prendergast of Blueleaf asked a group of recruiters, undergrad engineers and community organizers how startups can ban together and “Solve the Talent Crunch with Collective Action”.

As any startup that’s tried to hire a Ruby on Rails developer in the last year knows all too well, there’s a major crunch for technical talent. From the startup perspective, part of the problem is that students from engineering and computer science programs aren’t graduating with the technical skills necessary to be productive team members at startups from Day 1.

If a recent grad does have the skills, such as familiarity with Ruby on Rails, she has taught herself with extracurricular projects. More often, recent grads require a ramp up or apprenticeship period of at least several months. Startups simply can’t afford to train new employees that long, nor do they have the resources to find those exceptional candidates via on campus recruiting.

So startups skip on campus recruiting, even as thousands of engineering and computer science students graduate from Boston schools and join the workforce. That’s a shame, because startups so often offer much better work experience for recent grads.

All that said, there are currently several Boston-based programs and events that specifically aim at bridging the student-to-startup gap by raising the visibility and accessibility of startups among students and by accelerating the development of students’ skills so that they are more readily employable by startups.

Here are a few (though by no means an exhaustive list):

• The D8event, produced by Greenhorn Connect and Thoughtbot, which acted as a “welcome wagon for students entering the startup community as developers and designers”. (Evanish tells me the event was very successful and they’ll be producing it again in February.)
• University-backed programs like StartLabs at MIT, which has a startup job fair for MIT students planned for November.
• Workvibe (launching soon) which will show students what it’s like working at startups through digital media.
• Independently-run apprenticeship programs at Thoughtbot, Gemvara and many other startups.

Other university programs like MIT100k, HBS Startup Tribe and Northeastern’s Venture Accelerator act as catalysts for introducing students to the startup ecosystem in Boston, although they tend to focus more on founding startups versus working at them.

These local initiatives have done a great job connecting students and startups, but clearly more needs to be done for Boston to stay competitive. Without indulging too much in self-flagellation, I would like to point out that NYC has done a great job setting up internship programs, like hackNY (also see What is hackNY?) and job fairs, like theNYCStartupJobFair and SA500.

I’ve spoken with a few folks about how to place more students into Boston startups, but – in true Unconference style – I’d like to ask: what do you think? How can we bridge Boston’s student-to-startup talent gap?

“Is it possible that Boston is spawning too many startups?” That’s the question that Scott Kirsner asked in Sunday’s Boston Globe and set off a firestorm of responses from entrepreneurs, VCs and everyone in the Boston startup community. To quote the article,

“Boston would benefit from more talent concentration, where larger teams of skilled technologists, designers, and product developers get together to make a bigger dent in the universe.”

I share Scott’s concern. I know a ton of 2- and 3-person startups in Boston and not nearly enough with 20 – 200 employees. But consolidating the talent at our early stage startups seems to miss the point. We need to bring in more talent for these startups to flourish and expand the community at large.

Jason Evanish and others have done a great job at starting to build on-ramps for college students and recent graduates to engage in the community and find their first real jobs at Boston startups.

We need more efforts like Greenhorn Connect to convince promising young talent to join startups and stay in Boston. One good idea that I’ve discussed with a few people is starting a competitive internship program that matches top students with funded startups.

But there’s another pool of talent that’s even bigger than the students we have here in Boston. As John Prendergast rightly observed, “The larger issue is that startups compete with large companies for talent.”

Large companies in Massachusetts employ at least 15,000 software developers, according to one conservative estimate. Large companies, like IBM, Oracle, SAP and EMC, have the brand visibility and on-campus recruiting budgets to dwarf startups. Yet even if 5% of these developers made the leap to startups, it would have a huge positive impact on our ecosystem.

Recruiters often try to poach from large companies but I have heard mixed reviews of the results they deliver. Dharmesh Shah has come out swinging with HubSpot’s Prison Break recruiting campaign, but that was a solo effort, albeit a very savvy one.

Recently, Jon Pierce and I decided to collaborate on works.ee, a community project that’s launching soon to help address this challenge.

There is an acute talent crunch in Boston, but consolidating early-stage startups will only get us so far. A healthy ecosystem needs many, many early-stage startups to pursue scores of qualified opportunities. Instead of consolidating the startups we have, let’s help them to flourish by tapping new sources of talent.

This post originally appeared on Bostinnovation and generated many comments from the Boston startup community. Check out the original post and join the conversation at http://bostinnovation.com/2011/10/19/how-boston-can-find-new-talent-without-consolidating-startups/.

There’s plenty of mythology about startup jobs. The media portrays a culture where you’ll be overworked, earning a “Ramen-profitable” salary and then suddenly rich as a space-exploring web baron when Google comes around with a big check, 20-year old magnum of champagne and diamond-encrusted Vespas for you and your team.

None of these are true, of course, but in debunking these myths we learn what it’s actually like to work at a startup. Many bloggers have already done the hard work of debunking, so rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ve collected the best of them here, with a focus on working at a startup, rather than founding one.

Myth #1: It’s About Hard Work; Don’t Expect to Have a Life.

Reality: It’s About Results and You Need a Life

GigaOm lays out why it’s more important to be effective than to put in face-time at a startup. Employees need a work-life balance to achieve their best, while results speak louder than appearances. You can have more flexibility in your schedule, as long as you deliver. (For example, take HedgeMage on HackerNews, who worked evenings so she could take her kid to speech therapy classes in the afternoon.)

Startups are forward-thinking companies and understand, as David from 37Signals says, that there’s not “a direct correlation between the number of hours you work and the success you enjoy.”

Myth #2: It’s a High Risk Gamble. Startups Are Always Running Out of Cash.

Reality: Valued Skills and Strong Networks Are The New Job Security.

In today’s economy, there is no such thing as job security. Lay-offs at even the most stalwart companies are commonplace. For example, Chris Dixon saw his fellow HBS grads lost jobs at Fortune 500s such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Ford. Meanwhile Mike Champion saw first-hand how IBM’s decisions on “when to hire and when to cut staff were driven by its own internal logic more than external results.”

Today we have Career Security, which comes from having skills, such as fluency in the latest programming languages or online marketing tactics. When you have skills that the job market values, you’ll never be out of work for very long. Startups are prime territory for developing these skills because they aren’t locked-in to yesterday’s technology for building or marketing products. As a startup employee, you benefit by developing fluency early on the technology adoption curve.

Finding a great job often also depends on who you know. The startup community thrives on professional networking and, in Boston anyways, you can build a strong and expansive network very quickly. In just one summer, 19-year old Babson undergrad Ryan Dawidjan basically met all the players in the Boston startup community. Not everyone is as much of a hustler as Ryan, but the community is incredibly open and welcoming.

Myth #3: The Pay Sucks.

Reality: Most Base Salaries Are Comparable, While Equity and Promotions Put Startups Ahead.

Mid-to-late stage startups pay a base salary that’s comparable to big companies, perhaps 10-20% less than market (at worst).

Early stage startup offset lower pay with greater slices of equity. There are definitely risks at the early stage, when most startups fail. However, these risks are off-set by greater equity. As Simeon Simeonov demonstrates, if you can pick early stage startups reasonably well over the long term (Sim takes a 10-year timeframe), your earnings will be comparable to having worked at big company, after taking option grants and taxes into consideration.

The key thing to remember, though, is that startup employees get potentially lucrative stock options, opportunities for accelerated career advancement and the existential benefits of working at a startup, like an inspiring mission and passionate workers, that are much, much harder to come by at a big company.

“So, how do you like your job?”

The Gallup-Healthways organization has been asking that question to 1,000 American adults everyday since January, 2008. The response?

Americans now feel worse about their jobs — and work environments — than ever before. People of all ages, and across income levels, are unhappy with their supervisors, apathetic about their organizations and detached from what they do. And there’s no reason to think things will soon improve.

Hmmm… not good. As working adults, we spend more of our waking hours at the office than anyplace else. Studies show that our well-being and productivity hinge on our happiness at work. Along with our current economic doldrums, we’ve hit a low point in worker satisfaction.

The study also finds that the leading cause of this dissatisfaction among workers is the sense that their individual contributions don’t matter to their company’s ultimate success or failure. Interestingly, when Gallup asked workers what determined their happiness, a “sense of purpose” far outweighed financial incentives and other factors. Past the paycheck, millions of workers are asking themselves, “Am I really making a difference at my company?”

That’s a nearly impossible question to answer when you are one of many thousands of employees at a big company. Individual contributions are lost in layers of middle management and heavily sanitized financial reporting. But, at a startup, the question, “Am I making a difference at my company?”, is not only easy to answer, the answer is typically a resounding “YES”.

There’s a well-founded sense among startup employees that their individual contributions do matter. In nearly every role, at nearly every stage of development, startups are filled with employees who appreciate and champion the link between their efforts today and the impact they have on the company tomorrow.

These days startups are hiring talent, especially in technology and design, to accelerate their progress. This is especially true here in Boston. Many of the most talented and promising candidates come from large technology companies along route 128 and our universities.

Boston startups are offering technology and design talent high salaries, excellent perks, passionate coworkers, and, most importantly, a bright and shining sense of purpose. So why don’t more technology and design professionals along Route 128 and students consider startups as viable next steps in their careers?

Many perceive startups as high risk and low compensation. Yet this is not universally true. In fact, mid-to-late stage startups offer salaries comparable with those from much larger employers. And while early stage startups do pay less, they also offer significant equity. Venture-backed equity is often a worthwhile trade-off for even the highest paid technologist or designer.

Meanwhile big companies aren’t the bastions of job security they once were. Last year the Fortune 500 shed 80,000 jobs, while the Inc. 500 created over 300,000. At a time when major corporations are laying off workers, startups are hiring.

Also startups aren’t as visible as big companies, who send legions of recruiters to university campuses and leverage their well-known brands. I believe this is the real reason why more employees at big Boston area companies and students don’t consider startups.

Perhaps large company employees and university students have seen “The Social Network” or read a profile of a startup found by Scott Kirsner in the Boston Globe. But that’s really not enough to know the advantages of working at a startup – the team, the culture, the perks, the purpose.

At workse.ee, we’re delivering a new way for big company employees and university students to see what it’s really like to work at a startup. We’ll be premiering a series on featured startups soon and (shameless plug) hope that you’ll join us by subscribing here.

All of us in the Boston area startup community have an interest in growing our community with more talent. Let’s turn down the poaching and enlarge the pie by reaching out to large companies employees and students.

The other day I ran into Jon Pendergast, CEO at Blueleaf and organizer of Boston's Lean Startup Circle. Jon is one of the smartest guys I know in the Boston startup community and is very generous with his insight. We got to talking about his next hire, a sales rep. He was looking for someone who would "lay the track, not just drive the train."

Having done high velocity sales at a few startups, I could relate to what he said. At a startup, sales is about more than forging strong customer relationships and closing deals, though obviously those are still important. Sales at a startup should also capture customer intelligence and help translate it into a repeatable, scalable sales process. Since sales reps are up close and personal with customers everyday, they are in prime position to understand customer buying behavior and design the sales process accordingly. 

In other words, a startup sales rep should survey the land and lay the track, between customer interest and purchase, along the path of least resistance.

That may seem obvious, but it's actually quite a contrast to how the typical sales job description reads. At large companies, sales is "all about execution around a series of knowns", as Steve Blank says. The sales process is in place, tested and proven over a significant group of customers. The sales rep is responsible for executing that process with as many leads as he or she can manage. Customer buying behavior is well-understood and the process is designed to flow from "qualify" to "close" smoothly. In other words, sales reps at large companies have a singular focus: stay on the rails. 

Contrast that with the role of a sales rep at a startup. The founders have a cursory understanding of their target customers and buying behavior, perhaps validated against a few early adopters. The path of least resistance between customer interest and purchase is barely mapped. The tracks are stockpiled at the station.

In the past couple of years, I've worked at companies at different stages in their development of a repeatable, scalable sales process. While my preference is at the earlier stage, it was also instructional to see a sales organization scaling from the inside.

Altoghether, it's remarkable to me how well my experience aligns with Steve Blank's classic slide:

At Wattzy and Daily Deal Advisors, my partners and I founded Scalable Startups. We drove customer validation at the earliest stages by interviewing early adopters, experimenting with features/pricing and closing one-off deals. We had a good sense of our customer, but only a cursory understanding of how they would purchase. Incidentally, this was by far the most challenging stage.

At Performable, I joined a team at the Transition stage and we began to lay the tracks of a repeatable, scalable sales process. We used scorecards, won/lost deal templates and recorded calls to capture customer intelligence and (re)design the sales process accordingly. The learning at this stage was intense, along with the pressure to hit closely-watched revenue milestones. 

At Hubspot, which acquired Performable, I joined a Large Company, where the sales process was firmly established. There was an extensive training program, with classroom instruction and quota ramp-up. We had word-by-word voicemail/email sequences and daily activities to log in a CRM, which were closely monitored and benchmarked by sales managers. It was remarkable to see this well-oiled sales machine from the inside.

If they had one thing in common, these companies shared an intense focus on the customer, despite differences in stage. As the sales process became effective, the role of the sales rep transitioned radically from customer validation to business model execution, yet the focus remained on the customer.

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me." [The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993]

“This is what customers pay us for–to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We’re supposed to be really good at this. That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to customers, but it’s hard for them to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s great!’” [Fortune, January 24 2000]

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” [Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998]

"I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” [On Bill Gates, The New York Times, Jan. 12, 1997]

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

From The Wall Street Journal on his retirement as CEO of Apple.

Big news! Performable was acquired by HubSpot yesterday. 

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/16/hubspot-acquires-marketing-software-startup-performable/

The terms are largely used to categorise intellectual property, particularly computer programs, according to the licenses and legal restrictions that cover them, in the free software and open source communities, as well as the broader free culture movement. For example, they are used to distinguish freeware (software gratis) from free software (software libre).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre

My back porch in East Watertown, MA. Great sunlight from 11 - 3pm in the summer, but my neighbors are right on top of me. 

Today, I decided to lay the lattice work and plantings for a grape vine arbor for privacy, as well as grapes for snacking (wine would be awesome... but maybe too ambitious) and grape leaves, which I can use for traditional Armenian recipes.