What are the unique characteristics of entrepreneurs? It is a subject that I think about from time to time. Over the years, I identified a few patterns and I use such patterns in judging other people whether they are entrepreneurs or not.

Here are the patterns that I identified and use:

1. Strong will power: Someone who is persistent in his/her pursuit and won’t give up easily, whatever the pursuit might be. It is not entirely accidental that a lot of entrepreneurs are avid long distance runners because long distance running like marathon is more about having a strong mind than anything else.


2. Relentlessly resourceful: Someone who is able to figure out how to make things happen against all the odds. Someone who would try from many different angles and perspectives in order to achieve a goal and take failed attempts as input for finding better ways.


3. Passion. Starting a new business is hard, and you’d better love it for what it is. Having the passion for solving a particular problem and being compelled by the vision of how better the world would be if the business succeeds are the key reasons that one would get up every morning and fight against all the odds to make it happen.


4. Intelligence. Someone who is highly intelligent. Intelligence is the basic foundation upon which everything else is built. Passion without intelligence is called romance. And it is a good idea to stay away from those with strong will power but without the smarts.

Interesting that post from Vivek Wadhwa on TechCrunch about “Can Entrepreneurs Be Made”. I would disagree with Vivek. No, you cannot teach someone to have passion for something. You can not teach strong will power, intelligence or being relentlessly resourceful. I hear about “pattern recognition” from VCs and other people a lot as well. I have never seem anyone use “gene” as part of the pattern recognition. Nobody judges an entrepreneur by whether his father or mother started a business before or not. On this regard, Vivek’s study is flawed as his article is based on survey results related to family genes as evidence to dispute against pattern recognition.

On the other side, is there value to teach entrepreneurship and is there value for programs like Kauffman Labs as Vivek mentioned in his article? Yes, absolutely. There are millions of people who do have the intelligence, are resourceful, have strong minds and have passion for a certain things, but just haven’t made the jump yet. Surrounding them with other entrepreneurs, mentors and a startup atmosphere is the best way to light up their inner fire. For many reasons (not the least that Wall Street and Google hire tons of smart people to golden hand cuffs), only a tiny percentage of “qualified people” (those who have the ingredients to be entrepreneurs) would become an entrepreneur. So there is a large pool of people (in the order of millions) that entrepreneurship programs, ranging from MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship Center to Kauffman Foundation to TechStars, can make a big difference for.

Fred Wilson has a post on this subject as well: Nature vs Nurture and Entrepreneurship. He listed five attributes for entrepreneurs:

1. A stubborn belief in one’s self


2. A confidence bordering on arrogance


3. A desire to accept risk and ambiguity, and the ability to live with them


4. An ability to construct a vision and sell it to many others


5. A magnet for talent

These attributes are very much along the similar lines as mine, though I would disagree with the “stubborn” and “arrogance” thing. Vivek rightfully pointed out “Silicon Valley investors often have a picture in their heads of the type of person who is worthy of funding: young, brash, stubborn, and arrogant”. No. There are plenty of successful entrepreneurs who are very humble and very flexible. It is not about being stubborn. It is about having the strong will power to make something happen. In doing so, many entrepreneurs are perfectly happy for being the opposite of “stubborn” about a lot of other things. It is not about being “arrogant”. Arrogant people are those who haven’t seem enough yet. Good entrepreneurs are confident but also have keen ears and eyes to learn from other people.

Yottaa is looking for a rock star UX architect who can help make deliver an amazing user experience for various web applications.

Yottaa Inc (http://www.yottaa.com) is a Boston and Beijing based cloud computing company building a new generation of cloud services revolutionizing what we know about the Internet. With venture backing from institutional investors and a cross culture team, Yottaa aims to build a new kind of software company that leverages the best of China and US.

We are building some amazing technology that would make life better for millions of web users. We need your help in making the millions of users amazed, by the experience, not by the technology.

Contact coach at yottaa.com if you are interested or have suggestions.

Responsibilities

• Create the vision for the Yottaa user experience, including interaction design, information architecture, and visual design
• Interaction design for various software-as-a-service web applications and web sites
• Work closely with various entities, mark up product features into UI designs, coordinate and collect feedback
• Think from user perspectives and listen to users to continuously enhance the user experience
• Travel and work with cross culture teams in Beijing and Boston

Skills / Requirements

• Experience in user interaction design and visual design
• Background in web development and web design
• Knowledge of various web technologies and their capabilities in supporting user interactions
• Love to take charge of areas from concept to make it happen; Be entrepreneurial;
• Well developed oral and written skills in English. Some knowledge of Chinese would be a big plus;
• Willingness to travel as needed

Location: Beijing or Boston

Nine venture-backed startups IPO’d in 2009, but just one of them was based in Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale security firm Fortinet Inc. (Note that Fortinet is led by Tsinghua University alumni, also co-founder of NetScreen).

Close-by, San Francisco’s Open Table IPO’d in May.

Otherwise, it was all Massachusetts, Chicago, Seattle, and Texas. Massachusetts tops the list in 2009.

2010 should look different as we wouldn’t be surprised to see Silicon Valley-based startups Yelp, Zynga, Playdom, Tesla, Facebook and LiveOps IPO.

However, east coast does have a list of really good firms up and coming, not necessarily achieving stardom in 2010, but maybe in the next 2-5 years? Here is a short list of Boston based firms to watch for in the next few years in my humble opinion:

1. BrightCove: Internet video platform. Jeremy and co have done really well and BrightCove is on the way to stardom (Thanks Dharmesh for the suggestion)


2. Hubspot: marketing automation


3. VisibleMeasures: Internet video measurement. Brian Shin and the team have achieved a lot over the last few years. I’m sure 2010 will be another stellar year for them.

The following companies are fairly new. Some of them are still in stealth mode:

1. Akiba: Database virtualization. I expect nothing less than flawless exceution from my Nexaweb colleague David McFarlane


2. Sonian: email and other messaging archiving. After closing Series A financing in 2009, 2010 is going to be a great year for Greg and the folks at Sonian.


3. Performable: Stealth mode company led by my friend David Cancel. I know David well enough to know that this is going to be a great company.


4. Yottaa: “stealth mode” cloud computing company that I’m personally involved with. I’ve not been excited like this for a long time. There are so many amazing things at Yottaa. For example, this is the place that I have the smallest brain among all team members (but thank god, I found ways to enjoy being the dumb person. A couple of days ago I asked Tony for “business justification” on something he proposed - couldn’t believe how much I sound like the manager asking for TPS report cover sheet in the movie “Office”). I have a hard time catching up with them. Ok, time to really learn some Ruby:-)

What other firms in Boston area are interesting? My list above is fairly biased towards “software as a service” related companies. Please leave suggestions in the comment area. Thanks!

Disclaimer: Part of this post is not my writing, but rather re-posted from http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-no-longer-the-home-of-startup-ipos-2009-12.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Saw this cartoon in the morning today. It is really funny and couldn’t resist to re-post it here:

The World According to Americans

(Credit: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/world-accordign-to-USA.jpg)

The next cartoon is also quite funny:

(Credit: http://kelsocartography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan.jpg)

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a good cartoon for Chinese. So here is one that I sorta assembled (I can think of tons of funny cartoon ideas. I wish i know how to draw them!):

The World According to Chinese

This is my 2nd post in the “Geek’s Guide” series about all the things that entrepreneurs hate to do, are not good at doing them, but have to do them anyway. These things include office space (My first post is on this topic), legal, HR, administration, banking, accounting, insurance, payroll, etc.

I am going through these things myself at Yottaa. This is my 2nd time in going through these things. My first time was around 2000 to 2001 when I started Nexaweb. Nobody was doing blogging at the time. Frankly, I wish I blogged about what I learned at the time. Because when I need this knowledge again, I remember absolutely nothing about these things. —We are genetically programmed to suck at such stuff and our memory got erased quickly even if we force ourselves through a learning process.

Anyway, through Yottaa, I think that I’ve become a semi-expert in these things now. I’m determined to write down what I learned so that they might be useful for my fellow entrepreneurs. This post focuses on banking.

What is the first thing you should do when you close financing? Well, even before the unbelievable party that you are going to throw:-), you’d better have a bank account that you can deposit the money. How are you going to do that? The followings outline the considerations you should think about from a banking point of view.

1. Account types: banks offer many types of accounts, ranging from checking accounts, simple saving account, and money market account to more sophisticated investment accounts. It is helpful to know the differences between these account types.
   
   
   At minimum you need a checking account which permits unlimited transactions in and out. But checking accounts do not bear Interest. Interest bearing accounts include saving accounts, money market accounts and so on, but they only permit a limited number of transactions per month. For example, saving accounts only permit 6 transactions per month by legal regulations.
   


2. Liquidity vs. investment: The money you raised will be consumed over a period of time. During the period, you want to make sure that cash is available when you need it. On the other side, it also makes sense to consider some form of “investment” for the portion of your cash not needed initially.
   
   
   There are many forms of investments banks offer, ranging from simple saving accounts, money market account, CD account, to even more sophisticated ones. Different type of investment service has different risk/reward profiles. For example, simple saving accounts are the safest (insured by FDIC), liquid, and yield interest but the current interest rate is very low (0.25% for example). Money market accounts are not FDIC insured but they are safe as long as the bank itself is safe. Monday market accounts provide liquidity and offer better interest rate than simple saving accounts. CD accounts may offer even higher return but typically require you to commit to a certain period of time (6 months minimum, typically 12 months), during which there is no liquidity.
   
   
   The common choices for startups I have seen are to stay with simple saving accounts or money market accounts.
   


3. Banking fees: banking services normally charge fees. Such fees are part of the banking cost that you should take into consideration. Most banks may waive such fees if you maintain a certain level of account balance.
   
   
   Some banks give you “earning credit” for your checking account balance. “Earning credit” is different from “interest” that does not generate additional cash, but can be used to offset some of the banking fees. If your balance reaches a certain level, you could have enough earning credit to offset all your banking fees.
   


4. Online banking service: Most banks provide online banking service that you access and manage your accounts from a web browser. Nevertheless, it is still a good idea to check it out to make sure such service is available.
   


5. Do you need equipment financing or loan from the bank? Most banks do not offer equipment financing or loans to startups (they typically require a long credit history, revenue, etc in order to be considered for loans). The only exception is Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Even SVB is nearly impossible to get a loan for young startups, but they at least offer you a glimpse of hope.
   
6. Do you need international banking? This one is tricky as it highly depends on local regulations. You would most likely choose another set of banks in the other country. In Yottaa’s case, we need banking in China because we have a team in Beijing. Fortunately, Bank of America provides banking operations in Beijing so my life is slightly simpler (Still work in progress. After a few weeks, I have not been able to move capital yet. So I’m very much homeless in Beijing:-) Any tips would be appreciated!).

Which bank should you choose? It depends on what you need. In my case (for Yottaa), I evaluated a few banks and eventually picked Bank of America. There is no way that Yottaa can get a loan from them, but it is ok because Yottaa does not plan to get a loan. The other attributes of Bank of America make them look like a better choice for Yottaa(lower fees, better service and engagements, international presence, I love their account service team, etc).

Though unemployment rate is hitting 10%+ in US, things are looking up from what I see:

1. IPO market start to open up for venture backed startups: A123 System, LogMeIn, SolarWind, etc.


2. Notable M&A exits: Cisco/Tanderberg ($3B), Cisco/Starent ($2.9B), Cisco/ScanSafe ($160M), Cisco/DVN($40M), Compuware/Gomez($296M),HP/3Com($6B), Google/Admob($750M), EA/Playfish($300M+)…


3. Good activities from VCs: Though the VC industry is still showing signs of struggling in general, quite a few VCs are quietly doing lots of things including raising new fund (notably Andreessen & Horowitz) and doing deals. Another notable example that I love is Founder Collective launched by folks like Chris Dixon. I myself saw quite a few good Series A deals done over the last 4 months.


4. China’s growth rate is going to be 8%+, despite its target of “only” 7% early in the year.

Coincidentally, my friends at RTMAsia reported that “Since September, RTM Asia has seen a strong uptick in US technology vendors looking to expand, with many putting Asia-Pacific expansion in their 2010 plans”. They included am impressive list of activities that they are involved with (I’m not sure whether I can disclose their list or not).

If the tide is turning, it would be great for everyone. On the other side, we shouldn’t read too much into it . At my new company, Yottaa, in some sense, we don’t really care whether the tide is turning or not. Startups like us do what we need to do no matter what.

Do you see the tide turning?

An interesting benefit for me in starting up Yottaa is to become a semi-expert in unexpected domains such as startup office space in Boston area, banking, HR and administration etc. I’ve learned some tips and thought they might be useful for my fellow entrepreneurs. This post focuses on office space.

1. Stay virtual for as long as you could

When I started Nexaweb in 2000, I rented an office almost immediately - 849 Mass Avenue in Central Square, two rooms, right above Starbucks! It was a fantastic startup office! Starbucks was our conference room and we had so much coffee! The rent was about $2000/month, which really hurt when we had no funding.

In contrast, we deliberately decided to be virtual when we started Yottaa in early 2009. For a long time, Yottaa conference room #1 was my dinning room. Cambridge Center Starbucks served very well as Yottaa conference #2, and BeanTown coffee house in One Kendall Square is conference room #3. I loved these places and am very sure many more conferences yet to be had at these places going forward.

Being virtual is a great experience that I recommend highly for the initial phase of any startup. Zero rent obviously helps. It is cool and fun to be working in coffee shops. More importantly, it helps build the culture by forcing the team to be diligent and creative about team work and collaboration, molding the “lean mentality” into the core DNA (caution: Starbucks coffee cost adds up quickly!). Further, the big deal in my opinion is that it indirectly influences an entrepreneur to be social. Asking someone for a cup of coffee to talk about your idea is natural if you are spending 60% of your time in coffee shops anyway. I’m very grateful that so many people had coffee with me over the last 6 months. These conversations helped transform the idea of Yottaa from my initial “huh?” to something truly exciting.

When does the “virtual phase” apply? You and your co-founders know each other well and know how to work together. If not, “virtual workplace” may not be a good fit. In any case, make sure that you have Skype chat and face-to-face sessions on a weekly basis.

2. Move into a “shared workplace”?

At a certain point of time, “being virtual” loses its appeal, especially if you have new team members or the “virtual phase” has been too long. At this point, you could consider a “shared workplace”. “Shared workplace” fits best for teams whose size is under 3 people. At above 3 people, you should consider option #5 “get a room” or option #4 “get a few desks”.

Here is a good list of shared workplace in Boston area:

1. Beta House (in Central Square): occupies two stores in a house with a balcony and sun roof. Interesting folks to socialize with;


2. Dogpatch Labs: I’ve not been there yet (though it is very close to Yottaa Cambridge office). But I know some very cool people there and would look forward to checking it out;


3. Cambridge Innovation Center’s (Cambridge Co-work Center, C3) - it is more expensive than most other places, but the environment is a notch above most others.

3. Get a few desks from another company (”sublet”)

An alternative to shared workplace is to get a few desks from another company who has some extra space. This is not a bad option and has its own appeal: you have your own desk and you know who comes in and out in the office (which shared workplace does not guarantee so).

This option applies to small teams as well as bigger team. If you are interested in this option and are looking for space for 4 to 10 people, I know a few great choices in Boston and Cambridge. Ping me if you need an intro.

4. Get a room!

There is a list of fully furnished office choices in Boston area that fit very well for lean startups. You can start with one room and grow to a few rooms. The office space is fully furnished and managed - all what you need to bring is your laptop.

The top three options in Cambridge area are:

1. Cambridge Innovation Center: CIC is at Kendall Square area in Cambridge.


2. Interact Business Suites: InteractSuites is located at Cambridge Galleria area, close to Lechmere T station and very accessible.


3. Regus: Regus has an office in Central Square as well as in Charlestown.

Among the three, I highly recommend InteractSuites. It is an obvious choice if this category fits what you are looking for.