Entrepreneurs, investors and other stakeholders often ask me how we can take steps to strengthen Milwaukee’s startup community. Below are a few common principles I’ve embraced and we practice at Startup Milwaukee. 

1. Be a Connector - whether you can introduce a startup to their first customer, a founder to a co-founder, a investor to a potential investment opportunity, etcetera.  Don’t be afraid to make connections between others who’s interests might align. 
    
2. Be a Mentor - whether you’re a successful entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur it’s essential you take the time to mentor your peers. As an entrepreneur, some of the best advice you can receive is from your peers. 
   
   
3. Give Unfiltered Feedback - it’s easy when you see a product that’s less than stellar or a business model you know won’t work presented to avoid giving critical feedback to the entrepreneur who presented to you. Don’t hold back entrepreneurs need to be pushed out of their comfort zones and challenged on their assumptions. Great entrepreneurs will enjoy the feedback, lousy entrepreneurs will probably not… ;) 
   
   
4. Pay it Forward - always pay it forward, give on to others with out expecting things in return. 

These are my thoughts on how we can build a stronger startup community in Milwaukee. Share your ideas with me, matt@startupmke.org! 

If you’re an entrepreneur there’s a 99.999% chance you have limited time & resources. You might have been led to believe that the application of certain processes:LEAN Startup, Customer Development, Agile Development, etc. will increase your chances of success. I don’t think thats necessarily true; name a fortune 1,000 company created from a business plan book or business model canvas and I’ll buy you a coffee….

For now, I’d suggest reading “Agile is a Sham” below.

I’ll write more on this in the near future; email me w/ any feedback: matt@cordio.co!

williamedwardscoder:

thats SCRUM and TDD and all the rest; it is all those new ways of managing development projects and being super-productive and modern and buzzword-compliant; all the sprints, scrums, playing cards crass commercial nonsense.

The management pitch is that by getting programmers to follow some process rote you will get good, predictable results out.

See, the thing is, the success of the coding-part of a project is dependent on the calibre of the engineers doing that coding and not the process they follow. 

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Milwaukee is often called “The Brew City” here is an interesting fact; recent research conducted by StartupMKE has identified more Tech Startups than breweries in the Brew City. In fact, tech startups, out-number breweries by at least 3 to 1! Definitely some food for thought…

To learn more about this research contact Matt Cordio, Co-founder & Director of StartupMKE. Email: matt@startupmke.org Twitter: @MattCordio

Source Data:
Brewery List | Startup List

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