In October 2015, Kevin was invited to speak at the Jacksonville Community of Entrepreneurs (JaxCoE)’s Innovation Connection Conference in Jacksonville, FL. Details of the event and audio were shared on the Tech Ranch blog and you can read them here, but we thought we’d share the text of Kevin’s closing statements here on his blog.

He said:

I’m going to actually take the platform that everyone’s said, and I’m going to actually try to present something that’s way out there. Tech Ranch was born out of tragedy. I lost a friend, and it so severely, deeply wounded me that I actually had to go do something different. I had a very normal founder kind of career until this young woman decided to commit suicide. In that tragedy and in the struggle that I had in dealing with that, I actually started having to really look at what the world could look like. I’m not an overly religious person, but I want to say this, because it actually speaks to what I want to point to, for all of u,s and not just in our local community, but actually something that’s quite profound. In the Lord’s Prayer, it actually says, “On earth as it is in heaven.” There are writers right now like Peter Diamandis that are actually saying within the next 20 years, all the world’s problems could be addressed. All the world’s problems. Can you imagine that? Within two decades, all the world’s problems could be addressed.  The thing that I think is quite profound is that we actually live in a period of time where it might actually be possible.

So my prize in all the entrepreneurs that I hope to touch, in all the work that I hope to do in my lifetime, whatever I have left, is, I say, 100,000 solutions to world problems. Part of it is having Jacksonville stand up and actually say, “Hey, wait. We’re going to actually do this. We’re going to actually create this collaborative environment that’s really going to support entrepreneurs.” If we have that soft landing for the pioneers who actually don’t make it – sometimes – every once in a while – I’ve been close to bankruptcy twice during my career, and that’s not a very nice place to be. The idea is if we can actually have this group of people come together and work with each other so that there are softer landings when there are failures, and there is someone to pick you up during that Thursday night when you’re trying to figure out, “How am I going to pay my employees tomorrow morning?” Only an entrepreneur is going to be the entrepreneur that that person needs to talk to because it’s the only person that can understand. I hear the echo of my mother’s voice saying for the first 10 years of my entrepreneurial career, even after all the money I made, she said, “Kevin, don’t you want to go get a job?” We have to actually presence this idea of entrepreneurs supporting entrepreneurs to create the cooperative world to then go do what we need to do to discover in the next 20 years how we can actually solve all of the world’s problems.

 

Thanks to Jacksonville Community of Entrepreneurs (JaxCoE) for the invitation!

 

Kevin travels often and when he does, he frequently has the opportunity to interact with local kids. In this video, he speaks with the children from the atacama7.com group of entrepreneurs in Antofagasta, Chile. The video is in Spanish*, but you can see how well Kevin connects with the kids, even if you don’t speak the language.

*Translation coming soon!

Emprendedores del Futuro – Kevin Koym from JuanLeonel on Vimeo.

Of all the books I have read (and there have been many) this list encompasses the thirty-six that were most life-changing for me. If you’ve read any of them, please let me know what you thought of them. From the list, which are you inspired to read first?

[Read more…]

Here’s a great article of 6 things that help being productive.  I find this list od link insightful = especially #4 – spending more time eliminating distractions versus just working faster.

1. Manage Your Mood
2. Don’t Check Email in The Morning
3. Before You Try To Do It Faster, Ask Whether It Should Be Done At All
4. Focus Is Nothing More Than Eliminating Distractions
5. Have A Personal System
6. Define Your Goals The Night Before

via 6 Subtle Things Highly Productive People Do Every Day – Business Insider.

There’s a recent article that several people have forwarded to me given that it rings true to what I am talking about around the Tech Ranch Austin all of the time…  Called Getting your startup out of Starbucks, James Reinhart has a point that he’s singing to the choir (me) about.

The whole point here about this idea is that although certain entrepreneurs might be able to be successful in working out of coffee shops 100% of the time, I’ve seen a need that for tech entrepreneurs that are building companies (not just freelancer businesses) need a dojo / community of practice / incubator to really make things happen fast in their businesses. Working in at a coffee shop alone (or just working out of their houses) limits what’s possible for the company.

I am going to take my own spin at James’ list of four points, and add three that I see a specific spin at around the Tech Ranch Austin.

1.  Not as productive.  Distractions abound in a coffeeshop or at home.  Either way, if you are constantly being distracted, you’re not going to be able to get into the deep concentration that you need for thinking and cranking in building your startup

2. Virtual tools are poor substitutes to the office. Humans have been getting together working around specific physical locations since the beginning of history.  Humans have evolved to work together. As James points out, virtual tools are poor substitutes for face to face interaction. Use virtual tools as supplements, not substitutes to having a real office.

3. Separate work from play. I love my work around the Tech Ranch (and many of the startiups that I’ve been a part of over the years)…. Yet, I’ve learned the hard way that its critical to separate work-play from just the play of being at my home or being at a coffee shop for just having a cup of coffee with a friend.  Make sure to separate your workspaces from your pure playspaces, and your brain will have more capability to produce.

4.  Cheaper than a $4 latte. So anyone that reads my twitter feed knows that I love mochas.  Yet in trying to work at a coffee shop, buying a bunch of lattes or mochas, you’re going to spend more money than you will for having an office or access to one of the new type of incubator or co-working spaces that are developing around Austin or around the world.  And if you are at the Tech Ranch, you’re sure to get caught up in some strong biases towards even higher quality coffee than you’ll get at many coffeeshops!

5.  Leverage the community. Heard of the “water cooler effect”?  That is, at a larger company how stuff happens around the water cooler where two people randomly run into each other and then some new idea comes out of that interaction?  These types of interactions can happen anywhere… but in an environment like at Tech Ranch, we’ve wired the place to produce daily random productive interactions.  Community members around the Ranch know that creating the water cooler effect is one of the reasons that they are there…. and so its natural that we see interactions every day that are producing results that would not have happened any other way.

6.  Leverage experts. Around many of the accelerators like YCombinator or Tech Ranch we’ve collected experts that have a lot of scar tissue… who’ve been there, done that, and perhaps they’ve learned the hard way… An environment like Tech Ranch might just create the right conversation with the person that’s been there and screwed it up before so that you, in building your startup, can avoid the pitfalls, and learn from their mistakes without having to make your own mistakes. (and I say this as an entrepreneur that’s been screwing up things since 1994.  Let me tell you- I can help keep your startup out of some of the screwups that I’ve done).

7. Leverage both. Ok, so as I write this, I am sitting in a coffee shop, having a mocha, and enjoying having a slight different change of pace.  There’s no reason to have a strick either or decision concerning being in an incubator / accelerator and enjoying a coffee every once in a while for a change of pace.

The real challenge is moving as quickly as possible with as few resources as possible in building out your company.  Come try out the Tech Ranch and see how it effects your progress on your startup. Or, if you have one of these places in Central Texas or around the world, initiate a conversation with us.  We’re putting together the playbook that shows how to take these interactions to the next level. As well, for the entrepreneur at the Tech Ranch Austin we’re fairly liberal about making the risk and barrier for entry low (we ask for 30 days notice).  In 30 days at one of these locations, you’ll notice a major positive difference.  That’s my commitment to you at the Tech Ranch.  Building a company alone and isolated is hard.  Come crank on it with others to really make things happen fast on your startup.