Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum was great - Dennis Wood from vSpring came
The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum was excellent, as usual. Dennis Wood from vSpring spoke about the process of hiring the right people at the right times in a startup's life. It confirmed some of the things I already knew (in a tech startup, at the beginning all you need is a couple of awesome technical founders and a visionary CEO who's not afraid to go out and make connections, sales, etc.)
Dennis Wood's story is pretty cool. He moved out from CA to SLC to work on an executive search firm startup with his friend. After landing a few major deals (a Coca-Cola executive and a few other big companies' executives), he started to get more attention in the press, etc. He knew some people from the venture capital firm, vSpring, and after hearing them talk over and over again about how important human capital is (ie solid management), he called them up and said, "If you think human capital is so important, why don't you have somebody in the firm who's sole role is to hire management for the companies in your portfolio?" They liked his pitch, and hired him. The rest is history - he's a really nice guy.
He and I sat at lunch together at the UVEF before he gave the keynote address. Before the meeting started, we all go around the room and talk about why we're there and what we're working on. When time came for me to stand up, I said, "I'm with the CEO club at BYU and I'm spearheading an effort to reach out to software entrepreneurs and connect them with the resources/tools/contacts they need to start and build great companies." After the meeting ended, several people came up to me to express their interest in what I was doing.
Business cards from investors and entrepreneurs flooded my wallet. I think I've hit a nerve - and it's really exciting. Today I went out to give my first announcement to a CS class (looking for software entrepreneurs). 5 people responded! In just my first announcement! If I can get the info for 5 software entrepreneurs or future-entrepreneurs every time I make an in-class announcement, we can find some great talent on campus, and help them build some awesome companies. Facebook came out of Harvard, Google out of Stanford. Some awesome software/tech/web companies have come out of BYU also - Omniture for example. I'd like to see the next big thing come out of BYU, and I know the ideas and the people are here. I just have to look hard enough, and I'll find them.
