What on earth does that title “TBPP” mean, you ask?  I received a nice surprise last week when Jeremy Horn, organizer of the 700-person strong “Product Group” meetup, said that I had been awarded “The Best Product Person of 2010” (after being nominated by Ty Ahmad-Taylor, so TY Ty).

Photo by Jeremy Horn (that's me far left)

As much as I am proud of what Liz and I have accomplished with Aprizi, especially with so little in the way of resources, I’m not sure I deserve such a title, but my fellow NYC entrepreneur Vivek Sharma gave me a smile this morning with this tweet:

Vivek Sharma: @giffconstable Well deserved. Even more than Aprizi it’s the impact you’ve had on how people think about their own products.

In turn I would say that the whole startup community, both in New York and across the blogosphere, my co-founder Liz, and all the people who have given me feedback on Aprizi (which includes Vivek), have made me a better product person in the last 12 months. The learning curve never ends, which is a joy.

This week is going to be a fun one for Aprizi from a product perspective.  I believe that if a feature is non-core, you should question its existence and focus on maximizing the simplicity and clarity of your application.  To that end, we are going to try hiding a big feature to see whether our users care.  What really tickles me is that this is a feature that is very trendy right now, and which popular wisdom thinks is important, but which I have decided is counter to Aprizi’s mission, focus, and effectiveness.  I’ll report back soon enough on what happens.

By the way, I’ve been a regular attendee of the NYC Lean Startup Meetup, and have even become a co-organizer of that group, but it was my first time attending the Product Group. It was a fun, lively, diverse and respectful bunch of people.  The topics ranged from the abstract (“what is innovation and how can big companies accomplish it?”), to the company-specific (Dinevore presented their product and got lots of feedback). If you are into product design and local to New York, you might check it out.

Hilary asked what participation in the hackNY‘s 2010 internship program meant to us at Aprizi.  Here is what Liz and I sent her. We cannot stress enough how important the program is for the nascent NYC startup ecosystem, so I wanted to share these words publicly:

Aprizi was honored to take part in the 2010 hackNY internship program.  Our intern, Julie Dinerman from Columbia University, was fabulous. Her work ethic and pace of learning was quite impressive, and we have components of her code running on our website today (aside: you can read Julie’s final thoughts here). As a small and busy startup, we were also thankful that the program took care of the task of navigating multiple universities and screening students.

hackNY’s importance transcends the literal and direct contribution of the students. The organization is strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem in New York, not just between companies but also between universities! It is changing the recruiting dynamic in a way no single startup could.

This year’s program was not about just 10 students. It was about giving a talented group of young men and women an “in the trenches” window into the reality of startups and innovation which they can take back to their classmates. On the East Coast, where we lack the mythology of Silicon Valley, students are wooed by the big budgets and brands of banks and consulting firms. hackNY is helping to demystify what entrepreneurship is about, making it accessible and real, and elevating startups in the minds of students as a valid and exciting path worth considering.

I just got back from speaking to 100 NYC high school kids about startups. The good folks at Global Kids asked me to say a few words at the NY Public Library Emoti-con festival, and I was more than happy to oblige and talk about one of my favorite subjects. I decided to give the kids some advice should they ever decide to pursue an entrepreneurial dream. The subject matter was a risk with kids this young, because the message could easily be lost, but I long ago decided with my speaking engagements that it is far better to overestimate the audience than underestimate them.

I thought I would share my “draft” from preparing for the talk, so with no further ado:

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I fell in love with startups 16 years ago in my senior year of college, when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. The word “startup” wasn’t even in my vocabulary — my dad was a writer and editor. I discovered this company in Austin, Texas run by wicked-smart kids out of Stanford who were building amazing software, living in this intense culture, and waiting for permission from nobody. Meeting them was like a lightning bolt to my brain. I had to be like them. I literally convinced them against their better judgment to give me a job even though I was totally clueless at the time. I was off to the races and never looked back, though it led me to a path that entailed both success and failure.

Doing a startup means creating something from nothing. You are literally trying to build a company from scratch, and it’s incredibly difficult. A lot of people fail. But here’s the redeeming part: it is incredibly creative, because you are building something new with your own two hands. It is incredibly motivating, because you are your own boss — you have freedom to do what *you* think is right. And it is fun because you get to tackle a new challenge every day. There are safer ways to make money, but if creativity and independence ring true in your soul, and you think you might be inspired to create your own company some day, here are a five pieces of advice I’d like to impart.

1. You need to be independent and resilient
Most people think doing a startup is crazy. You are working insane hours. You are not getting paid. You have no assurance of success. Sounds nuts, right? So to do a startup, you need to love working for yourself. That freedom, that independence, is incredibly inspiring and energizing, and you will need that energy because if something needs doing, guess what — there is no one else to do it. No job is too small. No job is too menial.

You should also expect that people will be tremendously skeptical of what you are trying to do. If people thought your idea was great, they would have already done it. You hear a lot of people saying “that will never work” — and you have to push through it. A startup is an emotional rollercoaster with incredible highs and lows. It can be a battle with doubt and fear of failure. You need to have a resilient “whatever it takes” attitude to get through it all and turn your dreams into reality.

2. Work on something you love
People do their best work when they are having fun, and there is no room for anything but your best work. The only way you can have fun working insane hours while the sky is about to fall on your head at any second is to love what you are working on. You might create something to solve a problem you yourself are facing, or you might just have a vision about an area of life or business that you are really interested in. The cool thing is that computers, the Internet, and mobile phones are literally changing everything around us. Everything is technology these days. The world is ripe for innovation. Pick an area where you have passion, because you’ll need it.

3. Your first idea is probably going to be wrong
When you first have that “wouldn’t it be awesome if we could do this!?” moment, it will feel brilliant to you at the time, you need to remember that you are probably wrong. You might be hugely wrong, or just a little wrong, but if you look at successful startups, it’s not actually about chasing the original idea, but rather relentlessly chasing something that people really want to use. So expect that your idea, while probably a great start, will need to evolve. The best way to evolve is to get out of your own head and talk to people. Don’t be afraid that someone will steal your idea. Your problem is going to be getting someone, anyone to care. So talk about your idea. Make a pretend version on paper and show it to people. Once you actually make something, get people using it as early as possible. Get feedback. Synthesize what you learn with your creative vision. Evolve and make something truly amazing in reality, not in theory.

4. Find great partners
You cannot do a startup alone. It is too hard, there is too much work to do, and no one is great at everything. You want to find people who complement your skillset, who share your passion, who work as hard as you, who support you when you’re down, who you enjoy being around, and who you trust. Finding people like this is incredibly hard. You really want to get to know someone first. Startups can take years to fully get off the ground, so if you are not sure about someone, trust your instincts and spare yourself the heartbreak and pain.

5. Find great mentors
Surround yourself with people who are better and smarter than you are. Figure out who would make an amazing mentor and chase them — chase them hard. Show them why you are special and why they should help you. You will find that the entrepreneurial community is really supportive, because everyone, no matter how big and successful their company turned out to be, has been through hard times. They’ve been two people, slaving away while everyone else said they were nuts. While you are inevitably going to have to learn a lot the hard way, having an experienced voice and sounding board can make your life so much better.

So those are the five things I wanted to impart today: be strong and independent; work on something you love; let your idea evolve into something customers love; choose your startup co-founders carefully; and find experienced mentors to help you along the way.

Matt Blumberg of Return Path and Michael Karnjanaprakorn of All Day Buffet just added their thoughts to blogosphere commentary on the revival of the NYC startup scene.  Here’s what I’ve been thinking about: it’s all about the young dreamers.

People talk about the cost of living in New York, but that is a red herring.  Artists, journalists, stage actors, and writers flock to the Big Apple and they make ends meet.  It is simple: if you want to make it big in those fields, New York is the center of the universe, at least in the US.  They come to fight for their dreams, and they put up with a lot of struggle and hardship in their quest.

I remember watching Aaron Patzer’s talk about Mint.com (based in Silicon Valley).  His first hire was a young engineer dreamer who was “sleeping on a cot” at a friend’s apartment near Stanford, making a pittance working for 3 startups. Aaron hired him for $36K a year. Is New York attracting kids like that?

It used to be that a smart engineering graduate would go to Silicon Valley to chase a dream. They only came to New York to collect a big, safe paycheck.  New York’s effort has to be on attracting the first type, not trying to convert the second (a completely different personality type from “entrepreneur”).

The trend appears to be quite positive, and it is amazing what a difference just a few years can make.

More young dreamers are attracted to the energy, density and diversity of New York, and more importantly, they are starting to believe that they have a shot at success here.  The number of good early-stage investors has risen.  There are great customers, advertisers, and media partners here. There is a growing startup support network.  There is growing media coverage of hot local companies.  Perhaps even the city itself is starting to realize that it should not sit passively while great homegrown, successful startups pick up and move out to CA.

Edit Update: on the support network front, one of the things about Silicon Valley I appreciated most in terms of startup “community” was not the social events, but rather the number of experienced entrepreneurs around who were willing to mentor younger, less-experienced folks.

New York obviously cannot wave a magic wand and create an ecosystem of big tech companies that spawn little ones, but its tech startup sex appeal is growing and it is great to see the community pitching in to help.  The city needs to lure the dreamers, make them believe, and keep them!

As for me personally, I’ve now done startups in Austin, Silicon Valley and New York, and I am really psyched to be based in the Big Apple for my latest venture.

Additional Update: great post by Charlie O’Donnell on NYC gov and startup community

Image attribution: New York City Skyline from mikeleeorg, Flickr

As someone who has done startups in New York, Silicon Valley & San Fran, and Austin, I find the topic of location very interesting.  Fred Wilson and Chris Dixon just gave a talk at  Clickable (embedded below) on why the New York startup scene is special, and I had a few reactions:

• New York would benefit from a better, more entrepreneur-friendly angel pool. A lot of New York angels basically come right out and say “You don’t want to take money from me” because they are going to screw you on terms.  In general, Silicon Valley angels have a much higher respect for aligning investor and entrepreneur interests, and I think this is largely because so many SV angels are former entrepreneurs themselves. It’s a chicken and egg problem that would be solved by a few more big, local exits. [update: I think this is changing and improving]
• I completely agree with Chris Dixon that while New York is very design centric, there is a big difference between making something pretty and making something usable (ideally you have both, but they are different). New York is amazing at pretty, but would benefit from a deeper HCI community.  A counter point that can give New York an edge is that Silicon Valley suffers from UI designer “herd mentality”, often driven by the latest design look to come out of Apple.
• I also agree with Chris that many good engineers have been ruined by the investment banks culture, dev processes, and paychecks.  I do believe that it is possible to scale a good engineering team in New York, although I will admit that at Electric Sheep we built a solid team by hiring all over the country and letting people work remotely.
• One area where I think New York is particularly weak is affordable sys admin talent — and I’m not just talking about a support role but people who understands infrastructure and designing/building for scalability.
• I used to say that New York was also weak on the legal side, in terms of law firms that got tech startups both in terms of legal needs and pricing policies, but I think Gunderson and Lowenstein seem to be filling that gap.
• I agree that New York is a big pond with lots of ambitious, bright people and far greater diversity of industry.  That big pool of talent is a rich source to pull from, especially in sales/BD, but the downside is that few understand what “startup really means” (espcially in terms of the rollercoaster) and that can be a big adjustment.
• New York does have one very interesting talent pool that is created (rather than ruined) by the investment banks, and that is the “analyst” two years out of college.  These are young men and women who understand how to work hard, focus on details and quality, think analytically, research intelligently, and basically go to the wall to get something done well.  By two years in, they are also jaded and ready to try something new, energizing, and more fun / meaningful.

Good food for thought. Thank you Clickable for sharing the video!

Fred Wilson At Clickable’s Interesting Cafe: What Makes The NYC Startup Sector So Great? from Max Kalehoff on Vimeo.