Last week a big debate began circling the tech community over women and entrepreneurship. Some said it was still a man's world while others pointed the finger back at women for not having more female risk-takers. This all a few days after an article titled Is There Anything Good About Men, resurfaced the interwebs, then Michael Arrington in this article proclaimed how TechCrunch goes above and beyond to find women in tech we do spend an extraordinary amount of time finding those qualified women and asking them to speak. It was also noted that half executive staff were woman. The conclusion of the article went something like: we try to find women in tech, there's tons of money for them, female entrepreneurs just don't exist. Several times it was mentioned how TechCrunch loves to cover women founded companies but the topic was left open And when you do start your company, we'll cover it. Promise.

There's a million and a half (okay, more like seven) reasons this article on women in tech had me fired up. Our start-up was in the middle of urgent projects so I found a minute to vent on Facebook:

Several inconsistencies in the article had my blood boiling to respond to this topic but I opted not to. I didn't want to get all girly and emotional about it. Then today a follow-up blog post somehow turns the female debate into a mere gimmick for attracting an audience and produce a series of notes on how to blog? Talk about a bait-and-switch. In a follow up post I may explain some of the common tricks to manipulate the crowd so you can see through them more easily in the future. Even the tone regarding covering female subsided, we cover female entrepreneurs whenever we find them.

As a female founder who has survived stealth and bootstrapping I can say from experience its hard. Its incredibly lonely and stressful and the social implications of a woman's personal life are disturbed much more than a man's by being a scrappy and relentless entrepreneur. While I'm learning about revenue models and terms sheets, my friends are having babies. If you are a lady and have ever missed a baby shower for work you know the exact guilt that comes with it. You are that girl.

For the most part I believe that Arrington is right, its just not culturally encouraged for us to take risks. In fact I would say the lack of female entrepreneurs for now has more to do with values two decades ago then current cultural ideals that are being taught to the next generation of business minded ladies. If assuming all of what Arrington said is right (which is possible) and there is this general thirst to collaborate with female entrepreneurs then why has the audience been now diverted to talk about general publicity strategies? Why not organize an impromptu panel talk? How is all of a sudden this meaningful topic actually an example of blogging tactics? Maybe its all a dream within a dream and this another test of audience perceptiveness. Or pickledickness.

Whether or not there is a true desire to have a conversation with women about entrepreneurship, switching the topic is a very man thing to do. As a boyfriend once said to me while I was crying , Its not my problem you are upset, its yours. That's fine, no more crying I'm going back to my desk to work , no more time to respond to Arrington's posts, time to keep building and moving forward the way any entrepreneur would male or female.

If you're capable of seeing past the old stones of Paris and the picturesque rural villages, you'll realize that France is every bit as technologically advanced as any other Western country - more so in some areas. Not only does the country have a higher percentage of homes with high-speed Internet than the U.S. (plus it's faster and costs half as much), it ranks first in the world for number of blogs per Internet user, and has a formidable market of Internet consumers who spent 5.5 billion online in the first quarter of this year.

When I came to Paris in 2006, I had a well-developed idea for a startup and nothing else. It's now been about three years since I joined the fray as an entrepreneur and tech blogger. In that time, I've discovered that the startup scene is infused with passion, energy and a strong spirit of collaboration.

Sponsor

There's a thriving geek culture in Paris, and no lack of software development expertise, thanks to superior universities that produce superior engineers. The startup scene is relatively young, however, which is partly due to some pretty fundamental cultural barriers. But these barriers are showing some wear and tear.

There are numerous events and organizations in Paris that exist solely to foster entrepreneurship and tech innovation, many of which get partial financial support from local, regional and national government. France is not a socialist country, but it's a socialized country, and the French get a lot in return for the taxes they pay.

The Big Players

Silicon Sentier is perhaps the best-known player in the Paris startup scene. It's essentially an ecosystem whose mission is the care and feeding of innovation. Among other activities and programs, Silicon Sentier runs La Cantine, a coworking center, hip geek hangout and bustling hub for Paris tech events and activities: barcamps, workshops, competitions, launch parties, press conferences - you name it.

Cap Digital and System@tic are among a number of tech clusters in Paris. The boards of these organizations include large companies, local and regional government representatives, universities/public research labs and SMEs. Through them, entrepreneurs can hook up with R&D resources in universities and companies, and get access to a robust support network that provides opportunities for visibility, growth and financing.

Fing, another major player, is "an idea accelerator, a think tank and a resource for innovators." Fing may be a think tank, but it fosters startup success in very concrete ways. Startups can submit their projects to Fing, which provides support to over 200 projects a year through events, programs, and access to a large network of resources.

LeWeb, Europe's largest (and the world's second largest) Internet conference is held in Paris every December. It was created and is run by French entrepreneur Loc Lemeur (Seesmic), and it includes a competition for European startups. Yes, it happens in Paris, but it's held in English because it's an international conference. LeWeb is a world-class tech conference, and the speakers on the program are always the crme de la crme of the startup world.

Incubators, Accelerators, Competitions

We have those too. Some, like Seedcamp, Startup Weekend, barcamps and the OpenCoffee Club are imports from other countries. Others are homegrown, like SeedNetworking, the brainchild of some alumni of HEC (one of France's best business schools) and Ecole des Mines (one of the excellent engineering schools), who tweaked the speed-networking concept to get entrepreneurs who need developers and developers who need projects in the same room for some fast and furious face time.

The major engineering and business universities have incubators for students and alumni, though some of them are less Internet oriented than others, and there are a few unaffiliated incubators as well, like Paris Pionnires, which receives both public and private funding and supports women-owned startups, and the incubators of Paris Dveloppement, which is funded by the city of Paris and the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Big names like Microsoft BizSpark and Sun Startup Essentials have a presence here, of course, and The Funded recently launched their Founder Institute in Paris as well.

One thing we are missing here in Paris is longer-term intensive accelerators of the Y Combinator variety, but they exist in the U.K., so it shouldn't be long till they hop across the Channel.

The Funding

The funding landscape is complex from a foreigner's point of view because the government is very often involved somehow. There are public entities that seem to be frequently renamed or merged, as well as semi-private and private organizations, and their activities are all very intertwined with each other. And it's acronym hell. But the bottom line is that there is money for startups, and a lot of it comes from those taxpayer Euros I mentioned earlier. In fact, about three fourths of startup money comes from public funds.

One obstacle startups have traditionally faced here is that public and private funding is largely skewed towards projects that involve an R&D/new technology component. French investors are more risk averse than their American counterparts, and the possibility of a patent is reassuring to them.

And, until recently, business angels have been relatively few and far between. This is in part because the government historically filled the seed-funding void, and that is where people tended to turn. But angels are getting more structured, more active, and there more of them. Plus there's been another important new development: Several highly successful French Internet entrepreneurs-turned-investors, who are considerably less skittish than your traditional French investor, are taking matters into their own hands (Meet France's New and Awesome Super Angels).

The chart below shows the general funding options available to French startups.

Startups can access public funding in a number of ways. A rite of passage for many is to go through OSEO, which will analyze and validate a project. OSEO validation in turn makes early-stage startups eligible for a variety of support services and funding options. OSEO can be involved during very early stage activities, such as business plan creation and feasibility studies. It also provides support and guidance well beyond that phase.

A startup can be designated a Jeune Entreprise Innovante (Innovative Young Enterprise). The JEI program was created in 2004 and is managed by the Ministry of Research. Having JEI status is pretty much a golden ticket to financing, and JEI startups also get tax breaks and other benefits. To qualify, your project has to have an R&D element. There is also the Concours national d'aide la cration d'entreprises de technologies innovantes (National competition to help create innovative technology companies). Winners of this contest can be awarded up to 450,000 for R&D.

Private individuals who want a tax break can put money into special investment funds (Fonds commun de placement dans l'innovation) that are meant to be invested in innovative companies. These are managed by various wealth management entities (Conseils en gestion de patrimoine indpendents, or CGPI). The condition for receiving the tax break on these investments is that 60% of the money must go to early-stage, innovative companies, and it must be invested within two years of receipt by the CGPI. OSEO can designate a startup as an Entreprise innovante au titre des FCPI, which makes it eligible for this kind of investment. This designation is similar to JEI but has a broader view of "innovative" and is less strict about the R&D element.

Ple emploi is the government agency that provides unemployment compensation, but it also helps those recipients who are creating a small business or startup by providing extended compensation and breaks on the social charges (retirement, medical, disability, etc.) that businesses normally pay to the government.

Rseau Entreprendre Paris, a network of business owners, and France Initiative, a network of local organizations, are examples of the many semi-private organizations that support startups. They themselves receive both public and private funding, which they use in turn to provide financial support to startups through incubators and other established channels.

I've focused on some options for early-stage startups here, and haven't discussed VC funding or the many organizations here that help French startups expand internationally. For a comprehensive guide (in French) to starting up in France, I highly recommend Accompagnement des startups high-tech en France [PDF], and for an overview of the funding cycle, Exemple de cycle de financement de startup en France [PDF]; both are by Olivier Ezratty.

Photo by Konstantinos Dafalias

The Startups

You may think you've never heard of any French startups, but it's possible that you're using apps you don't even realize are French. If they've picked a name English speakers can pronounce and translated their sites into English, they blend right in. Take Netvibes, the pioneer in the personalized dashboard space, which has been written about a number of times here on ReadWriteWeb. They're going strong, and constantly adapting their platform to users' changing needs for information and social media aggregation. And there's DailyMotion, which is eating into YouTube's market share and had a 70% jump in US traffic in 2009.

There are plenty of successful startups in France that cleverly capitalized on the fact that startups in other countries didn't localize for the French market. The model of Sarenza is similar to that of Zappos, and it dominates the European market for footwear online. There are also original models that are either being copied or stealthily moving into English-speaking markets, like Vente-Prive and PriceMinister. PriceMinister, a site for C2C/B2C sales of new and used goods (at a fixed price) is the top e-commerce platform in France (recently surpassing eBay.fr and Amazon.fr). It has infiltrated the U.K., and I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. were on its radar, where it'll surely give eBay.com some healthy - and much needed - competition. Vente-Prive is a retail site selling designer products at invitation-only online sales. One of the top e-commerce sites in France, it has expanded into other European countries and its model has given rise to some me-toos in other countries.

The French have their share of exemplary startups in the enterprise space as well, including BlueKiwi, an enterprise social platform, and Exalead, which offers powerful and easily integrated search tools to help businesses and institutions get the most out of their information assets. Exalead's true entrepreneurial colors still show, thanks to its internal project incubator, Exalabs. (Exalead was just acquired by the technology giant, Dassault Systems.)

These are some French startups that have made it to the big time. But what about the little guys? All those struggling, bootstrapping, Ramen-eating founders? As a matter of fact, Paris is crawling with them. Some are clearly aiming no further than the French market, but a number of them are out of the gate in at least French and English with a view to conquering the Web. Just like anywhere else, French startups run the gamut from basic Web apps that focus on a specific niche need, to ambitious and powerful platforms that are likely to give the current leaders a run for their money. Here's a list of just a few of our jeunes pousses (sprouts).

(E= in English)

English Attack: Edutainment site that teaches English using Internet content that real people actually use: music, video, gaming, and more. (E)

GameCreds: Impressive social universe for gamers. (E)

Kontest: Ready-made solution for creating and managing a variety of interactive contests to provide user communities memorable experiences on Facebook and the iPhone. (E soon!)

Meetings: Nice collaborative app that manages all activities related to meetings: communications, attachments, agendas, action items, scheduling, etc.

MonArbre-MaTribu: Crowd-sourced reforestation project, very nicely done. One Euro plants a tree. (France only, for now.)

Pearltrees: A bookmarking site with a new approach to organization of content that resembles mind mapping. (Covered previously on RWW.) (E)

Plyce: Feature-rich location-based social network. They appear to be of the opinion that badges and mayorships are so last week. (Gotta like that thinking.) (E)

Regioneo: You know all those cute little French open-air markets where small producers sell their amazing artisanal food products? This site lets you order directly from the producers. (France only, unfortunately).

Synthesio: Web app that provides extensive data from multiple sources for companies that want to track buzz and reputation, and identify trends and influencers. (E and more)

TellMeWhere: A real-time urban guide powered by user recommendations on everything from bars to barbers across the globe. Web and mobile. (Covered previously on RWW.) (E)

Yoocasa: A private online space, developed in collaboration with child psychologists, where families interact in real time through photo slideshows, video chats, interactive games, and more. (E)

Ulule: Beautifully designed crowdfunding platform for projects that are artsy or for the betterment of society. (E)

When I was ready to transition from computer programmer to project manager, my employer, Xerox Corporation, sent me to its huge training center in Leesburg, Virginia. Over two weeks, the people there taught me some of the skills I needed in order to succeed in my new role: managing projects, motivating people, complying with employment regulations, and preparing status reports and presentations. The company also encouraged me to complete an MBA, on a part-time basis, at New York University. It gave me lots of time off and paid for the tuition.

Tech companies in the internet era offer their employees some great perks. But do you think that Facebook, Groupon, or Zynga provide budding professionals with any serious management training? Not at all. Given the way tech companies grow and the HR challenges they face, management training and career development are more important than ever. But few have the timethey are too busy surviving.

Professors Robert Fulmer and Byron Hanson of Duke University's Corporate Education group researched the management practices of 23 leading high-tech firms. Corporate executives in an overwhelming majority, 89 percent, believed that leadership development was becoming increasingly important for their companies; 58 percent ranked this as a high corporate priority. Yet less than one-fourth of the managers interviewed had a clear roadmap for how they could develop themselves, and more than half didn't even know who in their organization was responsible for the development of leaders. The conclusion of the researchers wasn't surprising: many high-tech companies are young, so their systems and procedures for grooming leaders aren't well developed or firmly established.

Maybe this is why so many tech companies suffer from morale problems, missed deadlines, customer-support disasters, and high turnover. And this may be one of the reasons why so many tech startups who succeed in selling their vision and raising millions in financing are just a flash in the pan.

One of the interesting findings in the Fulmer and Hanson research was that more than 70 percent of the tech executives interviewed said that leadership development in technology-driven firms is different than in other industries. The researchers believed, just as I do, that these tech executives were dead wrong. The lessons that leading companies like Proctor and Gamble and General Electric have learned about management development and training apply as much, if not more, to tech companies.

This means that if you're a fresh grad joining a hot new tech startup, you shouldn't expect your managers to train and groom you, or the company to provide you with time off to complete an MBA. You're on your own. If you are working at some of the more established companies, such as IBM and HPwhich do have excellent management-development practicestake full advantage of them. You need to learn all you can.

Many people are born with an innate sense of vision; they readily learn new technologies and master them. Some are very good at communicating and inspiring others. But you can't be born with the skills needed to plan projects, adhere to EEOC guidelines, and prepare budgets and manage finances, or to know the intricacies of business and intellectual property law. All this has to be learned. Some skills can be developed on the job, but this is usually through trial and error.

I usually recommend that engineering students who want to become managers and CEOs complete a fifth year of education. There are one-year long engineering management programs which cover such subjects as marketing, finance, intellectual property, business law, and managementsimilar to the key courses in an MBA program; plus tech-oriented subjects like innovation management, operations management, and entrepreneurship. One such program (and there are many) is the Duke Masters of Engineering Management program, at which I teach.

For experienced tech workers in Silicon Valley, Berkeley and Stanford both have excellent executive MBA programs. Berkeley Haas School dean, Rich Lyons told me over dinner, last month, of his plans to make his school the premier training ground for Silicon Valley executives. Boston's Babson College is also launching a program in San Francisco.

But not everyone needs to spend two years doing an MBA. Berkeley's college of engineering is creating a much shorter program targeted at Silicon Valley techies with leadership potential. Under the aegis of Fung Institute Chief Scientist and Director of UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, Ikhlaq Sidhu, the school is developing a professional program in Engineering Leadership. This will meet one evening a week for six months and teach subjects like product management, entrepreneurial thinking, leadership and finance. It will also teach team building, business management, and motivation.

The new Berkeley program is highly selective however. It will only accept 25 candidates in 2011, based on recommendations from senior executives in the valley. Sidhu says that he hopes to address the symptoms of engineering without leadershipwhich include organizational indecision about new products and services; unresolved conflict between product management and engineering; and superficial technology strategies. Berkeley will likely expand this program significantly over time and add many others. After all there is a great need.

Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com .

TUAWNotre Dame embarks on a paperless course with iPads originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shared by Jesse Stay
Amen Nick!

Jason Calacanis appears convinced that entrepreneurs are at risk of partnering with Facebook, claiming that Facebook will steal any startup's technology. This follow's Facebook's recent announcement that the company would be offering support for any Y Combinator startup who wanted to contribute to making the web more social.

While the clip is entertaining, many of the commenters on Hacker News were skeptical about Facebook's interest in stealing ideas (aka. features). As one commenter wrote, This sounds completely bizarre. If your ideas are such that they can be stolen and executed upon by others trivially, than a job at Facebook (with a signing bonus) is pretty damn impressive exit.

Any even more skeptical commenter, Paul Graham (who is also the founder of Y Combinator), was effective at getting Jason Calacanis to prove that his video was nothing more than linkbait, stating:

Paul,

Respectfully, it is not linkbait.

This is my honest opinion based on Facebook's track record. I would give the same advice to any startup: don't trust Facebook and don't give them any access to your startup or plans.
Period. End of story.

If an entrepreneur needs any evidence of the trustworthiness of Facebook, simply talk to folks inside of Quora, FourSquare, Twitter and Zynga (among others). I'm sure you've spoken to folks inside these companies, like I have, who are infuriated with Zuckerberg's blatant stealing (without innovation).

At every chance they can get, Facebook has simply stolen. Given their scale, bringing them inside the incubators is, well, mind boggling.

If you're a startup company you should be avoiding Facebook and their staffers.

I'm sure you have great intentions PG, and you know I respect all that you've accomplished, but don't dismiss me. I really don't need press because, to a certain extent, I am press.

Add to that the fact that I'm massively overexposed (especially here on HN), and you're claim that I'm link-baiting feels disingenuous.

Like you, I love startups and entrepreneurship. I only want to see folks do well and not get ripped off by Facebook, which I consider the most unethical company in technology.
One only need to look at the mountain of lawsuits they've generated for proof of this.

Facebook's long list of lawsuits are not from ambulance-chasing law firms mind you, they are by PARTNERS and FRIENDS of Zuckerberg's! Oh yeah, a lot of the lawsuits and complaints are also by privacy groups and government agencies trying to protect citizens.

If Zuckerberg has no problem screwing his friends, partners and customers, what do you think he will do to a three-person startup that might innovate its way into being competition for him?

I fear you've made a big mistake letting the fox into the henhouse.

Startups: listen to PG on everything since he's brilliantbut take my advice on this one.
best jason

While Jason has a legitimate argument about the company attempting to compete with other companies, none of those other companies shared secrets with Facebook. If the company wishes to incorporate a feature and knock out your startup, you should know that your startup wasn't anything more than a feature to begin with.

Historically, the only legitimate claim that Calacanis can make is regarding Quora, who has had much of their product duplicated by Facebook. Foursquare, on the other hand, was never an inside company though. If you are a startup that's looking to launch a feature, then yes, be concerned about Facebook. However if you are a legitimate entrepreneur, you'd be smart enough to realize that you'll need to bring more to the table in order to have any sort of acquisition (and even more important, build revenue).

You can watch Jason's entertaining video below.

Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn't matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich.

For the most part I've sat on the sidelines over the years during the endless debates about how we need to do more to encourage more women to start companies. What I mean by sat on the sidelines is this until today I haven't really said what I felt. Now I'm going to.

Here's why. Yet another article, this time in the Wall Street Journal, takes a shot at us and others for not doing enough to help women in tech. Says Rachel Sklar, a perennial TechCrunch critic:

Part of changing the ratio is just changing awareness, so that the next time Techcrunch is planning a Techcrunch Disrupt, they won't be able to not see the overwhelming maleness of it, said Ms. Sklar, referring to the influential tech conference.

Yeah ok, whatever Rachel. Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak. Where do we end up? With about 10% of our speakers as women.

We won't put women on stage just because they're women that's not fair to the audience who've paid thousands of dollars each to be there. But we do spend an extraordinary amount of time finding those qualified women and asking them to speak.

And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference.

What's The Real Problem?

I could, like others (see all the links in that Fred Wilson post too), write pandering but meaningless posts agonizing over the problem and suggesting creative ways that we (men) could do more to help women. I could point out that the CEO of TechCrunch is a woman, as are two of our four senior editors (I'm one of the four). And how we seek out women focused events and startups and cover them to death.

But I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm going to tell it like it is. And what it is is this: statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs, because the press is dying to write about them, and venture capitalists are dying to fund them. Just so no one will point the accusing finger of discrimination at them.

That WSJ article also criticizes Y Combinator for having just 14 female founders out of their 208 startups to date. But I know that Y Combinator wants really, really wants female founders and that there just aren't very many of them. I know this because Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston has told me how excited they are to get applications from women, and that they want to do everything they can to get more female applicants. What they probably won't admit, but I suspect is true anyway, is that the rate of acceptance for female applicants is far higher than for male applicants.

The problem isn't that Silicon Valley is keeping women down, or not doing enough to encourage female entrepreneurs. The opposite is true. No, the problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs.

Why? I was asked that question as part of a New York Times interview earlier this year. I dodged it completely, and referred them to Cyan Banister, the founder of Zivity, instead:

Q. Do you anticipate that there will be more companies led by women at the TC50 and Disrupt this year?

A. Women are really tough. I have no idea why. We invited a team founded by a woman to Disrupt. But they canceled. There just aren't a lot of female tech entrepreneurs out there relative to the number of men, I think. We celebrate the ones we find whenever we find them. There's a chance we'll write about what they're doing, simply because they're a fairly rare thing in our world. But it is really hard to find female entrepreneurs in tech, in my experience. I really think this is an industry-wide problem.

Q. How do the female tech entrepreneurs and investors in your community feel about this situation?

A. There's a fascinating company, Zivity, it's a venture-funded, adult photography community yes, they put up pictures of naked women online it was co-founded and is run by a woman, Cyan Banister. She wrote me in response to a post about women who are entrepreneurs, saying, basically, though these are not her exact words, women [stink] as entrepreneurs a lot of the time because they are nurturing and not risk-taking enough by nature. She also said when men roll the dice and take risks, that society doesn't punish them at all, and it's in their nature to take stupid risks.

I didn't respond to that. I didn't want to jump into that debate. And I guess I still don't.

Is Cyan right? I don't know, I'm from Mars, not Venus and I cannot speak intelligently about the nurturing and risk tolerance needs of women. But I will say this. The next time you women want to start pointing the finger at me when discussing the problem of too few women in tech, just stop. Look in the mirror. And realize this there are women like Sklar who complain about how there are too few women in tech, and then there are women just who go out and start companies (like this one). Let's have less of the former and more of the latter, please. And when you do start your company, we'll cover it. Promise.

An interesting paradox in the technology world is that there is both a shortage and a surplus of engineers in the United States. Talk to those working at any Silicon Valley company, and they will tell you how hard it is to find qualified talent. But listen to the heart-wrenching stories of unemployed engineers, and you will realize that there are tens of thousands who can't get jobs. What gives?

The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers. And engineering is an up or out profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are. Why would any company hire a computer programmer with the wrong skills for a salary of $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduatewith no skillsfor around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don't carry any technology baggage. As well, the older worker likely has a family and needs to leave by 6 pm, whereas the young can pull all-nighters.

At least, that's how the thinking goes in the tech industry.

Professors Clair Brown and Greg Linden, of the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics and census data for the semiconductor industry and found that salaries increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but that these increases slowed after the age of 40. At greater ages still, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education. After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lowerby 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDsthan the salary of those younger than 50. Curiously, Brown and Linden also found that salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than increases for those with bachelor's degrees (in other words, even PhD degrees didn't provide long-term job protection). It's not much different in the software/internet industry. If anything, things in these fast-moving industries are much worse for older workers.

For tech startups, it usually boils down to cost: most can't even afford to pay $60K salaries, so they look for motivated, young software developers who will accept minimum wage in return for equity ownership and the opportunity to build their careers. Companies like Zoho can afford to pay market salaries, but find huge advantage in hiring young workers. In 2006, Zoho's CEO, Sridhar Vembu, initiated an experiment to hire 17-year-olds directly out of high school. He found that within two years, the work performance of these recruits was indistinguishable from that of their college-educated peers. Some ended up becoming superstar software developers.

Companies such as Microsoft say that they try to maintain a balance but that it isn't easy. An old friend, David Vaskevitch, who was Senior Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft, told me in 2008 that he believes that younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative. But there is a lot they don't know and can't know until they gain experience. So Microsoft aggressively recruits for fresh talent on university campuses and for highly experienced engineers from within the industry, one not at the expense of the other. David acknowledged that the vast majority of new Microsoft employees are young, but said that this is so because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with. It was all about hiring the best and brightest, he said; age and nationality are not important.

So whether we like it or not, it's a tough industry. I know that some techies will take offense at what I have to say, but here is my advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey:

1. Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; or jump ship and become an entrepreneur (old guys have a huge advantage in the startup world). Build skills that are more valuable to your company, and take positions that can't be filled by entry-level workers.
2. If you're going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you. Even though you may be highly experienced and wise, employers aren't willing or able to pay an experienced worker twice or thrice what an entry-level worker earns. Save as much as you can when you're in your 30s and 40s and be prepared to earn less as you gain experience.
3. Keep your skills current. This means keeping up-to-date with the latest trends in computing, programming techniques, and languages, and adapting to change. To be writing code for a living when you're 50, you will need to be a rock-star developer and be able to out-code the new kids on the block.

My advice to managers is to consider the value of the experience that the techies bring. With age frequently come wisdom and abilities to follow direction, mentor, and lead. Older workers also tend to be more pragmatic and loyal, and to know the importance of being team players. And ego and arrogance usually fade with age. During my tech days, I hired several programmers who were over 50. They were the steadiest performers and stayed with me through the most difficult times.

Finally, I don't know of any university, including the ones I teach at, that tells its engineering students what to expect in the long term or how to manage their technical careers. Perhaps it is time to let students know what lies ahead.

Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com .

Onlineuniversities.com, an online resource for students interested in going to college online, has done a nice thing for small business owners: they've aggregated a series of interesting talks on entrepreneurship given at TED conferences. TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an organization that holds several conferences a year featuring top speakers from the arts, technology, politics and science.

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Star Wars. The original Star Wars. Perhaps those movies were defining films of our time. Though the first title (aptly numbered Star Wars IV) was filmed in the late 1970s, it continues to define movie nerddom today. Of course, Star Wars has seen somewhat of a renaissance due to the licensing of the intellectual property for the creation of video games like LEGO Star Wars and the continual memeage (is that a word?) of Yoda and Darth Vader quotes.

Nonetheless, it, like any good story, is successful in no small part due to the parallels in life that can be drawn. Much like how Office Space taught me about Public Relations, Star Wars taught me about entrepreneurship.

Don't doubt me. The nuggets of wisdom are strewn throughout. In fact, I've developed my entire professional life around Star Wars. ¹ You don't believe me? Check this out.

Always Two There Are, a Master and an Apprentice

No matter how good you are in your professional life, there is always someone better. Yoda reminds me that, there should always be someone I look up to for learning. Sometimes this person (or people) is better than you at what you do. Other times, this person (or people) is someone who excels in a complementary way.

One of the founders of WP Engine, Jason Cohen, is one of these guys. Jason is amazingly technically (if I can keep him away from Javaisms while writing PHP code) and is the brainchild behind our infrastructure. More importantly, the dude is one of the savviest businessmen around in a completely unassuming way. He is not the guy who is going to walk into a meeting a toot his own horn like some investors or entrepreneurs do. He simply is and carries chutzpah. I have not known Jason very long but in the time I have, I've developed a real appreciation for him.

Likewise, Geoff Livingston has become a close friend but he's also an incredibly focused entrepreneur. I've known Geoff since his early days where he was running a social media PR firm out of Alexandria, VA. Geoff and I became close but it wasn't until I lived with him for six months in 2008-09 that I realized the drive this kid had. He frequently asked for my advice on things that were happening professionally, all of which will remain off the record in the circle of trust.

However, he has demonstrated since that he knows how to make tough decisions and go after what he believes in. Earlier this year, Geoff co-founded Zoetica to assist non-profits and socially conscious companies in their communications efforts. His drive has led him to lead in the CitizenGulf effort to raise money for oil spill cleanup in the Gulf, and to raise awareness and change in the policy world.

His dedication to his cause is something I'm watching and learning from.

Yahoooooo! You're all clear, kid. Now let's blow this thing and go home

Remember when the Death Star invasion was happening in Star Wars IV? The X wings were being pursued down the trough by TIE fighters. Darth Vaders fighter was on the hunt to blow Luke away. Han Solo brings his Millenium Falcon into play at the last minute and with some perfectly timed shot, knocks Vaders fighter into oblivion allowing Luke to handle his business and blow the Death Star away.

In business, the ultimate goal is always to have an exit. If it's not, you're holding it wrong. You don't want to stay in a job forever. You may want to delay because you have more you want to do with the startup before selling it, but at the end of the day, if you're putting blood, sweat and tears into a startup you want the big pay day at the end.

This is what drives many entrepreneurs to settle for less money in exchange for more equity in the startup. Get less cash now for way more cash down the road.

Like the Death Star invasion, startup mode will have you fighting a guerrilla war at times fighting for your survival skirmishing to get a leg up. Once you're clear and have done everything you can to get the company to a specific place, cash in! Blow this thing and go home. Live to fight again another day.

Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?

One of the more hilariously ridiculous quotes from Star Wars IV came from Leah when Luke rescued her from being executed by the Empire.

The takeaway from this quote is pretty simple never let anyone denigrate what you do as an entrepreneur. There will always be second guessing and there will always be other entrepreneurs who feel like thy know better and can offer advice. You know your company better than anyone else. You know your decision-making fiefdom better than anyone else. Own your offense and maintain confidence in what you do, and what you are building.

Luke, there is another Sky.walker

The dying words of the Jedi Master Yoda. These words were the clue to Luke that he had a twin. That there could be another Jedi candidate. That there could be another Skywalker to defeat the evil Empire.

In the Lean Startup mode of starting businesses, the idea is to fail and fail fast if you're going to fail at all. That way, if you fail and fail quickly, you can learn quickly without having put a lot of time and effort into something that will never work. Taking lessons learned, you can move on to the next startup and try again. Keep in mind that, statistically, 9 out of 10 companies fail. There is nothing wrong with failure as long as you realize there is another around the corner.

There is another Skywalker. There is another idea. There is another startup. And there may be another failure.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

We don't know specifically what Chewbacca was talking about when the Millenium Falcon's hyper drive system failed. If there are any Wookie translators in the audience, please step to the front of the room. However, we can deduce that, based on what we know of Chewie, that he was doing tactical consulting.

In other words, it's my opinion, that Chewie was making sure Han knew that there was a lot of problems with the Millenium Falcon and it wasn't like they had the money to fix the bucket of bolts. Chewie was suggesting solutions for Han to fix problems quickly without spending a lot of money. I mean, can you imagine if Han had to take a VC round to fix the Falcon? What would the valuation on that sucker be anyway? I'm sure it would be a diluted round.

Instead, Chewie was helping Han realize what he needed to do to fix the problem on a budget. Maybe even in bandaid fashion. As entrepreneurs, use your creative juices to find ways to self-fund and not take stupid money just so you can extend runway. Find ways to be revenue positive now instead of later. Find ways to cheaply outsource problems so core team members can focus on the core solutions.

See?

See. Everything you need to know about entrepreneurship can be learned from Star Wars. It's a geek favorite for a reason. I'm sure there are lessons you have learned as well. Feel free to share those.

In the meantime, may the Force be with you.

Photo by xtyler

It's a rich resume with one unifying theme: data. Few people have spent as much time as Fayyad ruminating on this one subject. From finding volcanoes on Venus to creating better algorithms for ad targeting, Fayyad has made a career on crunching massive data sets and creating elegant algorithms to make sense of white noise. It's somewhat ironic then, that for a man who lives in data, there is actually very little known about what makes Fayyad tick as an entrepreneur and how he shaped the companies he worked for.

In a rare video interview, SGN founder, Shervin Pishevar, recently spoke to Usama Fayyad in Jordan for TechCrunch TV. During this entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur fireside chat, Fayyad opens up about his obsession for data, how he sold his company to Yahoo (after the 6th offer), how Yahoo made an $800 million mistake (that may have triggered the giant's ugly tumble) and how he almost became the CTO of Google.

While there are golden nuggets scattered throughout this interview, the discussion on Yahoo is particularly rich and focuses on the rocky period leading up to Microsoft's now famous (and failed) takeover bid.

Fayyad describes a torn management team that was searching for direction and clear priorities. At one point (presumably mid-2007), Jerry Yang, then CEO, tried to reassemble a list of 7 priorities, ranked according to importance. One of the top debates was whether Yahoo should focus on becoming an ad network or an ad exchange. Fayyad, the chief data officer, thought it was a misplaced debate, that Yahoo should be paying more attention on the growing gulf between Google and Yahoo's revenue per search (RPS).

At the time, Yahoo was making roughly 1/6 the money that a search on Google was making, he says. Fayyad was ready to go to war, with roughly a dozen development projects lined up to close the gap. According to his calculations, through these initiatives, Yahoo would have pulled in $800 million in incremental revenues within the year.

Those close the gap plans were never fully executed, as management went a different direction- still captivated by the prospect of gold at the end of the ad network/exchange rainbow. As Fayyad explains:

I was on the camp that said ad exchange is the wrong thing for Yahoo to do, primarily for two reasons: because Yahoo is a big publisher itself so it's a competitor so how could it run an exchange, can we expect Google to put its inventory on Yahoo, or Microsoft? The other one was that, exchanges as we all know, publishers will never put their premium inventory on exchanges they only put their crap inventory, so to me an outlet of crap inventory is not necessarily a very interesting thing.

But at the time, through a debate between the execs, it was decided that of the seven priorities, of the company, CTG or close the gap fell from #2, which is where i thought it should be (#1 being business up, site up meaning the site is up) it fell to #7, while ad netowrks and exchange taking up 2 and 3. So to me that bypassing of 800 million revenue of extra cash in the handslike i said 20/20 hindsight at the time people were very worried that we would lose the opportunity to take the leadeship in ad network and in ad exchange and they valued that much more than immediate cash. Now me being the pragmatic, startup scruffy guy, I wanted the cash in the bank, give me the cash and then later let me fight my war. I claim and this is my explanation, once we missed that 800 million in additional revenue, stock goes down, Mr. Ballmer shows up, bad offers, cycle, cycle, cycle, expectations of the street goes down, and it was a really bad spiral that the company got into.

Assuming Fayyad's $800 million estimate is correct (it's not that outlandish when you consider he grew Yahoo's behavioral targeting business from $20 million to $500 million in four years), that's a fascinating what if scenario. There's no doubt that Yahoo could have used that cash in hand while it chased the two birds in the bushes.

Interestingly, despite his deep disappointment with the reorganization, he stayed on a little longer after a talk with Yang. The soon to be ex-CEO convinced Fayyad that a new strategy was underway. And indeed, that summer Yahoo rolled out an exciting vision at a splashy corporate event. Yahoo even tapped Steve Jobs as the keynote speaker, to deliver his inspirational story about how he turned around Apple. Unfortunately, for Fayyad, expectations never quite lived up to reality, as he says in an almost plaintive tone: We came up with a beautiful plan and there was no execution because the company had gone through so much turmoil.

In total there are roughly 30 minutes of footage of Pishevar's interview with Fayyad, which I've divided into five topics: the development of his startup, how he made the case for data at Yahoo, that $800 million-dollar mistake (see above), his brush with Google and finally his latest venture, Oasis 500, a startup accelerator for entrepreneurs in the Middle East. If you want to see parts one to five from end to end, check out the last clip.

Watch out: The globe trotting Pishevar, who has just wrapped up a tour of the Middle East and is preparing to meet new entrepreneurs in Asia, will be submitting future entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur videos to TechCrunch TV.

In part one of this series, Fayyad talks about how his early years at NASA influenced his ideas on data and how DigiMine came together.

Fayyad discusses how made data/analytics matter at Yahoo:

If Fayyad took a left turn, he could have been the CTO of Google. In this clip, he recalls a conversation with Sergey Brin, when Google was in its infancy. The blunt Fayyad told Brin that Google had no business plan.

In part five, Fayyad discusses his new investment fund Oasis 500, which will help budding entrepreneurs in the Middle East. Although entrepreneurs have decent access to VC money in this region, there is very little capital available for young companies.

Parts one through five:

Scott Cook is co-founder of Intuit, the company behind QuickBooks, Quicken, and TurboTax. He now serves as the chairman of Intuit's Executive Committee, and is a mentor to entrepreneurs at the company.

In this video, we sit down to discuss the making of great corporate leaders. Cook says that for any company to continue to flourish and thrive, it can't rely on its first product, its first customers, its first employees. Continual entrepreneurship is necessary to reengineer success. Entrepreneurship isn't easy, says Cook. But the internet, mobile phones, and app stores now enable far more entrepreneurship at a far more rapid scale, so more ideas can be tried, winnowed, iterated, and win. It's a thrilling time.

Cook is also focused on entrepreneurship in the developing world. Intuit has become active in India, creating an entrepreneurial center to hire, train, and develop Intuit employees there, with the hope they will become the entrepreneurs who invent new businesses for the developing world.

That's why Cook carries around a bare-bones mobile phone, in addition to his smartphone: it's the phone most of the world uses. Right now it's just a phone, and you can't get information on itbut Cook's working on changing that. It will either be a big hit or a total bust. This could change life for 4 billion people.

More info:
Intuit web site: http://www.intuit.com/
Intuit profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/intuit

I do not watch, read, follow, or care about the news. I'm talking general news. You know, stuff on CNN or KSL 5 (local NBC affiliate).* And I'm not exaggerating. I don't care about it. Not one little bit. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

Extreme News Delay

I found out about the Haiti earthquake 2 days after it happened. The oil leak in the Gulf? Like over 3 days. Mosque new Ground Zero? Couple days delay. I asked Amy what other major news stories I might have missed, and she said like the kid that killed Natalie Holloway killed another girl in south america. I have no idea who Natalie Holloway is, or for that matter, that sadly, she is dead, or that she was murdered by someone doing more killing. Local things like flash floods in Draper, UT last week (just over the hill from me) or car accidents or this or that I find out the next day best case scenario, if ever. If I didn't follow twitter and friends on FaceBook, I'd probably never find out this stuff. And know what? I don't care. Maybe that sounds harsh. Let me explain.

News Junkie

I haven't always been this way. There was the time during the gulf war of 2003 when we bought a TV just for cable news coverage and put Iraq maps on the wall of Secure Offer (precursor to Doba) to track the invasion. Time when I got way caught up in the 2008 electionand actually closely followed/cared about politics for a bit (whole other series of posts, no, actually an entire book on that subject. Politics. Blah.) And the time that was the proverbial straw that broke my back when in September of 2008, the Hanks family embarked on our Great American Road trip to South Dakota and points in between.

The News is making me feel like I'm dying.

If you remember, that's when the economy was rocketing off a cliff and down to the depths. Bailouts, buyouts, massive failures of massive businesses. Work was stressful, road trip was stressful, and I was following all of this newsthis massive flood of negativity and drama and emotions and interruptions to my vacation, and to my life, and to what I saw as my world. One night I told Amy, I think I'm having a heart attack. I couldn't breath. I had pretty severe pain in my chest. It came and went a few times on that trip. Went to the Dr. after I got back, he said, you're having Panic Attacks. Put me on some meds (I took once or twice if I remember). And that's when it all hit me: The news is making me feel like I'm dying. WTF is up with that?! And it's all coming from things that I have no control over whatsoever. Could they affect me? Yes. Can I do anything about it? No. So then why care. Why put it in my head? Why let it impact at all? Until it does, if ever. So I decided to bail on the news.

Addicted to News?

It was really hard to disconnect from the news. Part of my daily routine was to check MSNBC.com several times a day for news, and I'd watch the nightly news a few times a week. I couldn't stop checking the MSNBC site. I finally edited my computer's host file, added in all the major news sites, and assigned them bogus IP address.

Safari can't connect to the server stopped the news dead in it's tracks, and I quickly broke my news habit.

Now I find that I shun it. Airport TV on CNN? I sit far away. People start talking about something in the news? I just disconnect from the conversation. People tweet too much about the news? Unfollow.

I Do Not Care

Here's the brutal, honest truth: While I can feel sad/sorry/empathy for the people in Haiti, I do not care about the earthquake. Nothing I can do about it (I did donate some $ to the cause). Natalie Holloway? Too bad, it really is. It's sad. But do I need the sadness of that in my life? All of these things don't impact me. 99.9% of the news DOES NOT IMPACT YOU. Unless you hear it, and put it into your mind, then it does impact you. Cause it's in your head, in your frame of mind, playing with your emotions. Why bother then? When I had a brush with death and a boulder hit my leg, that's news that matters to me. If your house burns down, you won't need KSL to tell you about it. You don't need CNN either, to debate and dispute and report and opine on a bunch of crap they drum up for ratings, TO SELL YOU ADVERTISING. All the rest of this stuff is smoke and mirrors and garbage drama that I do not have time in my life to bother myself with. Life is too short to be interrupted by all the things media companies choose to sensationalize, and I'd even say, traumatize you with.

So disconnect from the world of news. It's incredibly liberating. You'll have a lot more time and energy and cycles for what really matters.

* Technology news, ecommerce news, etc. I follow extremely closely as it matters intimately to my company, my job, and my career. More on where I get that targeted, filtered news in another post.

Silicon Valley's vitality depends on a constant influx of bright people who challenge its inhabitants to work harder and think smarter. And, as I noted in my last post, America's economy depends on startups to create jobs and innovation. Skilled immigrants have provided both. So, given the miserable state of the economy, we should be laying out the welcome mat for the world's best and brightest. Yet we're doing the exact opposite. Meanwhile other countries have figured out the secret of the Valley's success and are laying out their red carpets and welcome mats, not only for the foreign skilled workers we're turning away but also for our techies.

Fifty-two percent of Silicon Valley's startups from 1995 to 2005 were founded by foreign-born workers. And in 2006, 26% of America's global patentsincluding 40% of those filed by the U.S. government, 72% of Qualcomm's, 65% of Merck & Co.'s, and 64% of General Electric'swere invented wholly or partly by foreign nationals residing in the U.S. You would think that we would develop policies to bring in more of these people. Yet, sadly, the only immigration legislation our political leaders have been able to agree on, unanimously, is to hire 1000 more border-patrol agents and to fly drones on the Mexico borderlike the ones we use to kill terrorists in Pakistanto keep the nannies, gardeners, and farm workers out. Ironically, to pay for all this, the new border-security law levies taxes on companies that the bill's sponsor, Senator Schumer (D-NY), calls chop shopsbecause they bring in tech workers who compete with Americans and supposedly take their jobs away. These chop shops are Indian companies such as Infosys, Tata Consulting Services, and Wiprowhich have the best employee-training and -development programs, and are amongst the best-managed companies, in the world. They compete head to head with American chop shops such as IBM Global Services and Accenture, and increasingly with management consultants such as McKinsey & Co and The Boston Consulting Group.

I am opposed to illegal immigration and believe that H1-B visas should be abolished. (If we need skilled workers, bring them in as permanent residents, so that they have the same rights as Americans and can switch jobs if an employer underpays them.) But the political debate has degenerated into nothing but racism and xenophobia. Some politicians are simply pandering to uninformed sectors of their electorates.

Meanwhile, countries such as Russia, Singapore, and Chile are doing what they can to build their own Silicon Valleys. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev visited Silicon Valley last month, to let American techies know that they are welcome to move to his new science park. Singapore has long been offering visas and incentives to any skilled worker who moves there. And Chile has launched the most ambitious program of all.

In addition to the incentives that Chile has been offering established tech companies, it took my advice and announced an ambitious new program for bootstrappers, called Startup Chile. In return for hanging out in one of the most beautiful places on this planet, Chile will provide fledgling entrepreneurs with a grant of $40,000 to help them cover expenses for six months ($40,000 goes a long way in South America, by the way). As well, they'll provide the entrepreneurs free temporary office space; connect them with mentors, VCs, and angels; and help them settle in. They are also pumping money into local VC funds to ensure that the capital is there for the most promising companies.

A handful of entrepreneurs have already signed up for the program, and Chile's minister of Economy, Juan Andres Fontaine, is coming to Silicon Valley on Sept 21 to meet two dozen more entrepreneurs who he hopes will return to Chile with him. (Here is the link to apply.) Chile wants to lure hundreds of entrepreneurs, eventually.

Seems too good to be true, doesn't it? No obligation to stay; no equity ownership in return for the money; no onerous contracts that promise a pound of fleshas VCs typically demand. Why would Chile do this? Because they're betting that if they get enough smart, talented people there, three things will happen: first, many of the entrepreneurs going there will fall in love with the country and decide to stay; second, they will enrich the local ecosystem by teaching local entrepreneurs about global markets; and third, their tech community will develop stronger links to the world. Who knows, a couple of startups may also hit home runs. After all, isn't this how Silicon Valley left tech centers like Boston in the dust and became the world's tech leader?

Chile's strategy of attracting skilled immigrants makes a lot of sense when you consider that it costs practically nothing compared with the billions that regions invest in creating industry clusters. The fact is that smart people, when given the education and means to innovate, make the magic happen. And that's what makes the American immigration policies so troubling: we're chasing away the highly educated and experienced workers who could be boosting our economy. They are instead turning countries like China and India into major tech centers.

America won't always be the place to which the world's best and brightest flockthey will go where they feel the most welcome. And it won't be long before Senator Schumer or his successor has to sponsor legislation to offer chop-shops incentives, like those Chile is offering, to bring skilled workers to the U.S.

Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com .

Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

The problem with five jam-packed days of panels and events is that you can't do it all. Presentations and business meetings for the 93rd annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), which was held in Denver earlier this month, ran concurrently from 7 a.m. until, for some, after midnight. I hustled from my booth in the exhibit hall to sit in on sessions across the different groups, but especially to eavesdrop on discussions among attendees and peek over their shoulders as they tapped silently on their iPhones. Below are five key messages I overheard in Denver.

1. Boots on the Ground

"I have to be on the ground, witnessing events with my own eyes ... [War reporting] is not just a cocktail party -- you can't just drop in." - Anne Garrels, former foreign correspondent for NPR

Garrels commanded the room during a keynote address that saw her recount harrowing experiences during her six years as an embedded journalist during the Iraq War -- including false accusations made on her Wikipedia page that she believes could have gotten her killed.

In the face of "raw information" quickly disseminated through new social mediums, Garrels emphasized committed, responsible, on-the-ground reporting. "Having knowledge to put events into context is really key," she said. "Otherwise, information is pretty hollow."

2. Editing Skills to Pay the Bills

"We need to get our students to think of themselves not just as reporters, but as editors." - Eileen Gilligan, assistant professor, SUNY Oswego

Gilligan said the above during a session about teaching convergence in the midst of a climate of ambiguity surrounding priorities in journalism education. Her session, "Teaching through Transition," presented data from several research studies conducted by AEJMC members that revealed an alarming disparity between the skills needed in convergent newsrooms and the core curricular priorities in U.S. journalism schools.

The data underscored the importance of superior storytelling skills. But interpersonal skills (such as the ability to develop sources), news judgment (the right story, the right way), and multi-tasking (the hardest of the three) were cited by news directors as necessary traits to succeed in converged newsrooms. Gilligan said the most meaningful feedback was that editing is a core skill for current students and future journalists.

3. Social Media Everywhere

"Social media showed me that people don't just care about the news, they care about the people who write it." - Arizona State University student Sebastien Bauge, as quoted by Serena Carpenter in her presentation in the AEJMC social media competition

Social media was popular during the conference, both in panels and in practice. One session, "Social Media in the Classroom", shared how instructors incorporate these tools in their courses. Examining Twitter updates during current events -- like the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year -- and hashtagging course names for classroom conversations were among the suggestions discussed. One course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invited Pizza Hut's public relations coordinator-turned-"Twitterologist" as a guest speaker to discuss corporate social media strategies. Mich Sineath, who tweeted for @AEJMC during the conference, called it the "hands-down BEST panel of #AEJMC10."

Social media happened to me, too. When inside the large, glass-walled room for Poynter's News University presentation (and announcement of its new syllabus exchange program), I tweeted from @CQPJournalism that it was one of the most well-attended sessions I had seen. Within minutes, professor Jake Batsell of Southern Methodist University responded that he had at least "40+" attendees for his panel on creating and running multi-platform student news websites. Turns out, Batsell was sitting two seats away from me.

4. Entrepreneurship the Answer?

"I'm not even slightly interested in saving the industry." - Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University

The lack of viable business models that can sustain an increasingly complicated news marketplace was still the elephant in the room this year, especially in light of the fact that the conference showed that traditional news jobs continue to disappear. In fact, panelists for the "New Media Economics" panel admittedly had little to offer in terms of successful strategies. Gillmor, author of "We the Media" and a forthcoming book called Mediactive, went on to say, "I've given up the idea that the industry wants to be saved. We've moved on."

By that Gillmor meant that the news industry should look toward new types of social and media entrepreneurship. He explained that journalists and entrepreneurs must have an appreciation of risk and be attuned to the current media culture.

"Innovation," he said, "is doing something better than how somebody else is doing it."

5. Enrollment Changing Along With the Industry

"Everything is changing, not dying" - Guy J. Golan, chair of the new Political Communication interest group

During the conference, I frequented the Starbucks on 16th street, just across from the Sheraton Downtown Denver Hotel. It was a place to refuel, charge my laptop, and access free wireless, which was not available in the conference rooms nor in hotel rooms. When I reached over to unplug my laptop, Golan handed me my cord and we chatted about the conference. He corrected my assertion that the common perception is that the news industry is "dying" and yet enrollment rates are rising in journalism schools.

It's the PR and advertising programs that are gaining students, he said, along with niche beats like sportswriting and political coverage. That was an interesting distinction to note. It was also borne out by some of the association business that was taken care of during the conference: political communication and sports communication became newly-minted interest groups this year, and the Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk Interest Group (ComSHER) was raised to division status at the conference.

Golan, currently a "free agent" professor, interviewed for work during the conference job fair, along with the many grad students I ran into at a school-sponsored evening social. He said there are "lots of jobs, and lots of candidates" in the world of journalism and communications education.

Christina Mueller is an Assistant Editor in the College Division of CQ Press, a division of SAGE Publications. She comments at @CQPJournalism and blogs for the journalism and mass communication line of books. The opinions of this post are that of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of SAGE Publications.

Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

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Listening to good entrepreneurs make their pitch is great fun. How well, or poorly, they align their passion and persuasiveness to the product details reveals a lot. Are they pushing an idea or telling a story? Is it all about their own charisma or is the innovative idea the real hero? Are we having a conversation or am I being sold? How will they get me to "get it"?

All these entrepreneurial issues resurfaced during the recent Fortune technology conference in Aspen. There was no shortage of either articulate entrepreneurs or provocative ideas. So as Osman Rashid, who co-founded Chegg.com, described his new digital textbook startup Kno during a coffee break, I peppered him with questions. His idea was undeniably clever, but aspects of his business model weren't clear to me. He had his elevator pitch answers down pat, but I wanted to learn more.

Unprompted by me, Osman whipped out his smartphone and handed it over. I was watching a decent video clip illustrating his product's features and functionality. I could tap to hear testimonials. I could tap to play with a simulation of the software. In a matter of moments, the device had transformed Osman from an entrepreneur I was having a conversation with to a guide and narrator of an interactive experience. My focus and attention alternated between what he said and what appeared onscreen. Sometimes he'd take, touch, and hand back the device; other times, I'd point to something onscreen and ask another question.

The object and our interaction with it became an intimate part of our conversation. We couldn't have discussed either Kno or his answers to my questions the same way without it. An idle part of me wondered how cool it would be if our conversation (and my questions) could be recorded and time-stamped along with what was appearing onscreen. Osman refused to allow his smartphone to decay into a sales tool or product pitch although those elements were baked into the material and instead used the device as a medium to both reinforce his conversation points and invite new questions and comments from me.

I can say without hesitation that this felt technically and interpersonally different from "laptop-on-the-table" presentations I'd experienced 1,000 times. We were standing up, drinking coffee, chatting, and taking turns holding, viewing, and manipulating this device. The kinesthetics, eye contact, questions, and interruptions revolved as much around the device as us. We would have been worse off without it.

Not ten days later, I was at a Venture Cafe gathering by my MIT office. It's a place where entrepreneurs and VCs alike come to socialize and impress each other. I struck up a casual conversation with an aspiring biotech entrepreneur. Not two minutes into our talk, he took out his iPhone to animate a technical point about his company's planned product. He handed it over to me. I thought it fascinating and asked if he might forward that animation to my email. He could and did.

Again, the nature of the questions and our conversation made his iPhone a focal point of our interaction. I wouldn't have learned nearly as much about his company, or him, if we had just been talking. The "hand-it-over" nature of the iPhone made it feel more like a value-added conversation rather than a scaled-down presentation.

I looked around. No one else was interacting this way.

Elevator pitches are important. The ability to boil down the essence of your innovation into a tasty forty-second sound-bite remains essential. Only now, the pervasiveness, ubiquity, and visuality of mobile devices quantitatively and qualitatively changes the ecology of interpersonal interaction. It's no longer about what you say and how you say it; it's increasingly about what you hand over.

What do you hand over that transforms the conversation? What do you hand over that visually and interactively adds value to your spoken words? What do you hand over that complements and supplements your pitch? What do you hand over that invites and inspires the curiosity you want? What do you hand over that makes you more persuasive? These are the questions that will increasingly shape tomorrow's rhetoric of innovation. The design challenge here is fantastic: how do we use mobile devices not to better connect us to digital networks but to better connect us with customers, clients, and prospects.

Of course, the technical beauty of these media is that unlike the words one speaks the imagery one sees onscreen can be emailed, Facebooked, forwarded, or LinkedIn as desired. "Hand-it-over" innovation pitches can be seamlessly slipped wherever your prospects desire. Indeed, an excellent measure of "hand-it-over" effectiveness is whether the person who you "hand-it-over" to actually asks you to send what they've been seeing and interacting with.

My professional bet is that "hand-it-over" innovation pitches will double smartphone and mobile device sales worldwide. Entrepreneurs, salespeople and innovators alike will socialize with at least two devices in the backpacks and breast pockets one for their personal/professional use and the other to "hand over" for interpersonal play.

"Hand-it-over" conversations seem destined to create new genres of salesmanship and interaction. It will become an innovation best practice. In fact, people will be surprised, and disappointed, if you don't have anything to hand over.

(Editor's note: Jason Cohen is an angel investor and the founder of Smart Bear Software. This story originally appeared on his blog.)

I recently reviewed hundreds of startup pitches at Capital Factory, an early stage accelerator program for tech startups. Of those, almost none had unearthed 10 people willing to say, If you build this product, I'll give you $X.

Think about that: Hundreds of people were ready to quit their day jobs, burn up savings and risk personal reputation - all without identifying ten measly people actually willing to pay for what they're peddling. Short-sighted, no?

Put simply: If you can't find ten people who say they'll buy it, your company is bullshit.

Aren't you sick of every startup blogger on Earth badgering you about this? Steve Blank says get outside the building, Eric Ries says seek validated learning, Sean Ellis says seek product/market fit, Drew Houston says the only way to learn on a $0 budget is to talk to people.

I say find ten people who say they'll buy.

But entrepreneurs are still not listening. They repeat these mantras at Lean Startup Meetings but don't do it.

They're understandably scared of being proved wrong, especially now that they're all worked up about the new business idea, having told friends and family they're doing this.

But jeez people, you're not even trying. And worse, you're inventing lame excuses for why you're not trying.

I'm scratching my own itch. Since I'm my own target customer, I already know what to build.

Phooey! By definition, if you're a startup founder you're explicitly not your customer.

Scratching your own itch is how all three of my companies started, but it's only that the start. It's the spark of inspiration, not the strategy. It's the grain of sand tickling the oyster, not the pearl.

I challenge you to find one founder of a real business who thinks I'm the customer is the only market validation you need.

There are millions of potential customers, so it doesn't matter what only ten of them think. I need to just start; later I can survey and learn something statistically significant.

If there are millions, it's trivial to find ten. If you can't find even ten, then either there aren't millions or those millions aren't interested in you.

Businesses don't start with millions of customers, they start with one, then ten, then a hundred, and then a thousand. But most don't get past ten. If you haven't gotten ten to at least say they'll buy, where do you get your hubris to proclaim that thousands actually will buy?

My customers can't understand mock-ups. I have to build it first.

You shouldn't need screenshots or PowerPoints to convince someone in your target market that what you're doing is compelling. If your concept is so esoteric that you can't describe it in 30 seconds at a cocktail party, it's either too complex or you don't understand it yourself.

Even if I concede that some folks can't grok mock-ups, remember that your first customers will, by definition, be early-adopters who are OK with alpha software. If you can't find a few of those and get them excited about your product, maybe your product isn't exciting.

I suck at sales/marketing; I need to build a product so compelling it sells itself.

The world is filled with decent products that make no money. Need empirical evidence? Here's a list of the top 100 Twitter clients. Here's another.

Now how many do you suppose are decent pieces of software that basically work? (My guess: 80%) How many do you suppose produce any revenue? (My guess: 5%) Finally, how many do you suppose produce enough revenue that, after hosting and marketing expenses, results in a profitable company where the owner doesn't need a day job? (My guess: <1%)

Conclusion: If your goal is a business (not a hobby), building charming, novel software isn't enough. Ability isn't enough. It's fun and exciting, but it won't create a business.

Writing code might be what you love, so you myopically decide that's what you'll do. But what you should do is just the opposite: Attack the part of the business you're least sure of and least qualified for.

If you're still not convinced, think of it as project risk management. In a big software project do you tackle the high-risk, ill-defined stuff first, or do you postpone that to the end? Obviously you address the unpredictable stuff first most of the project risk is due to the unknown, so the earlier you can sort out uncertainty the more time you have to deal with the consequences.

I'm making the same argument, except the high-risk unknown is everything that's not code. Your code will be good enough; it's the other stuff that will probably sink your ship unable to find customers or unable to convince the target audience they should open their wallets. There's no sense in postponing it.

My friend/brother/co-worker/dentist thinks it's a great idea.

Your mother thinks you're smart and good-looking, but that doesn't mean I do.

It doesn't matter what non-entrepreneurs think because they're not versed in product/market fit, squeezing blood from evanescent budgets and using Facebook for advertising. In fact it only barely matters what real entrepreneurs think. (They might not be expert in your problem domain. They could have outdated notions. They might be biased against certain ideas and technology.)

The only thing that matters is that people are willing to give you money. Business experts can argue all day long that it makes no sense to buy shoes over the Internet, but as long as people give Zappos $1 billion per year, it doesn't matter what experts say.

When ten people say they'll give you money if you build this thing, that's the only validation that counts.

Tags: customer surveys, product research, Venture Capital