If You Can’t Beat ’em, Regulate ’em

Mobile food vendors have become a fixture here in Nashville, as they have in many cities across the country. They often sell specialized foods, such as Mexican, Indian or good old Southern cooking. But, the Nashville Scene reports that a bill has been introduced at the Nashville Metro that would shut down these entrepreneurial businesses. Why?

Three council members introduced the bill last week after what they describe as a convergence of factors–most notably complaints from restaurants, who, let’s where to buy topiramate face it, compete with these vendors for business.

Although health concerns have been raised as an additional issue, the three mobile food vendors highlighted in the Nashville Scene story actually have a average health score that is only a couple of points different than the city wide average for all restaurants.
This is clearly a case of larger businesses teaming up with local politicians to shut down their smaller competitors. Shame on them!
(Thanks to Bill Hobbs for passing this story along).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here is the original Thanksgiving Proclamation. I am thankful that the ACLU was not around in those days, as this proclamation would never have gotten by them:
“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:
“Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
“And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
“Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3rd day of October, A.D. 1789.”
George Washington

History of a Thanksgiving Icon (well, sort of)

This invention was a reaction to a possible national crisis. To avoid food poisoning, homemakers were over cooking turkeys to the point that they were dry and tasted like cardboard. The California Turkey Producers Advisory Board was concerned that Americans might change to another culinary theme for Thanksgiving if they did not find a solution.
Michael Taylor of the San Francisco Chronicle tells how one Eugene Beal led the effort to save our beloved national holiday:

Trying to solve the turkey cooking problem went on for days and days. Then one day…Goldy Kleaver looked at the ceiling sprinklers and realized they were triggered by flames melting something inside.
“Why can’t we use that principle in the turkey?” Kleaver asked his fellow board members.
…It was Beals who ran with the idea, working with another board member to find and test the alloys that would “melt at a certain temperature,….’
The group spent almost a year testing what temperatures were best suited for the cooking of turkeys.

So how does the little red pop-up actually work? Well, the best place to find out how stuff work is to go to Howstuffworks.com:

A pop-up timer found in a turkey or chicken normally has four parts:
– The outer case (typically white or light blue) (a)
– The little stick that pops up (typically red) (b)
– A spring (c)
– A blob of soft metal similar to solder (d)

popup.gif

The soft metal (shown in gray in the diagram) is solid at room temperature and turns to a liquid (melts) at about 185 degrees Fahrenheit (85 degrees Celsius). When the metal turns to a liquid, it frees the end of the red stick that had been trapped in the metal. The spring pops the red stick up and you know the turkey is done!

Beal sold the invention to a company that was later sold to 3M. But as told in StartupJournal, the little invention that saved Thanksgiving did not always work right. So another company, Volk Enterprises, developed a similar product that would work better.

Tony Volk shifted to a pop-up timer of his own design, similar to the Dun-Rite/3M device. Oldest son Anthony crisscrossed the country pitching pop-ups to processors and supermarket chains. In Turlock, the clan donned sanitary hairnets and put together pop-ups around the kitchen table at night.
The Volk family business was sued by 3M for patent infringement in 1982. After several years of litigation, the two sides negotiated a settlement that permitted them to manufacture pop-ups under each other’s patents. Thanks to Tony Volk’s contacts in the turkey business, his own timer business took off and, a few months before his death from cancer in 1991, Volk Enterprises acquired 3M’s pop-up business.

Sadly, the little red pop-up that Eugene Beal and Tony Volk made possible gets little respect. From StartupJournal:

Yet during holiday food shows and in cooking columns, the pop-up seldom comes in for praise. In her recipe for “Perfect Roast Turkey,” Martha Stewart advises fans to toss the little timer. “An instant-read thermometer is a much more accurate indication of doneness,” avows Ms. Stewart.
Rick Rodgers, author of “Thanksgiving 101,” says he avoids pop-ups because he worries basting will prevent them from popping properly. Sgt. First Class David Russ, a U.S. Army chef from Fort Bragg, N.C., who won the National Military Culinary Chef award in 2004, can’t stand the puncture a pop-up leaves behind. “If you get a piece of turkey on your plate with a hole in it,” he says, “you wonder where it came from.”

I intend, in my own small way, to honor the two entrepreneurs who saved Thanksgiving. In my Thanksgiving blessing I will give thanks to Eugene and Tony, and for the legacy of moist birds they left behind.

Entrepreneurial Finance Around the Globe

The Milken Institutute has released a report titled “The Best Markets for Entrepreneurial Finance.” While this is an interesting study to consider, it is not the complete picture. The measure of access to capital that is used in this study to compare the financial climate around the globe really measures external financing and is too heavily weighted toward equity financing to accurately measure the real nature of entrepreneurial financing.
Almost four out of five start-ups in the US use some combination of self-financing and/or friends and family. The next largest source is debt financing. Less than one percent use equity financing. I do not know if this reflects entrepreneurial financing in the rest of the world, however. That would be an interesting study that might better explain why the US can lead the world in entrepreneurial activity, and yet ranks only fourth on this index.

Courage

Our favorite coffee-shop-to-be continues to have challenges in their start-up. Jason offers the lessons he has learned thus far in this post. It seems that every developer dreams of having a Starbucks in their building, which makes getting a fair lease difficult, at best, for small businesses like Jason’s.
The key virtue for a start-up entrepreneur is courage.
Courage to stick to your vision.
Courage to be true to your word and to your principles.
Courage to do the right thing, even if it takes you down a more difficult path.
Jason is showing us true courage in his start-up efforts. No matter what the end, he is already a success.

Make Mine a Pepperoni Pizza

There is a great post at LocalTechWire.com (via NDE) on the engine of entrepreneurship: Junk Food!!

It is my sincere belief that the rapidity with which an enterprise creates value is directly related to how well it stocks the company kitchen. And, the lower the nutritional value of the food choices, the greater the intellectual property produced.
I have spent time in a variety of industries: software, hardware, compression technology, storage technology, outsourced manufacturing and digital media. What do they have in common?
They all run on junk food.

My partners and I had a weekly ritual that centered around junk food. Every Friday we would have our partners’ meeting over lunch. We always had the same meal; pizza with lots of meat toppings. Not very healthy, but it made some of our more difficult meetings a little more enjoyable. It was our comfort food after a long week.
When I was on the road visiting our various operations across the state, I started every morning with a Hardee’s biscuit with egg and cheese.
What junk food is your entrepreneurial fuel?

New Entrepreneurship Information Source

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has introduced their new site called eVenturing. It will include original content created exclusively for the site by entrepreneurs based on their own experiences, as well as an aggregation of some of “the best of the best” existing articles and tools. Each month, a new content collection will be posted, rotating among subject areas of particular interest to entrepreneurs on the path to growth (e.g., finance, people and human resources, sales and marketing, products and services, operations and strategy, culture and leadership). The first of these collections is on pitching angel investors. The site also features a link-blog to identify the latest information on different aspects of entrepreneurship.

Sweat Equity

It is not uncommon for entrepreneurs to use creative, non-salary means to attract good talent. After all, cash is a precious resource in any start-up. One common way is to offer key employees some form of equity in lieu of salary.
Red Herring reports on a new twist to this strategy. More and more experienced executives, including middle managers, are actively seeking opportunities to work for less than market pay if they can get a “piece of the action.” They are becoming known of as angel employees.
While this is a great way to save cash and lower the breakeven point, it does have the potential to make things complicated. All of these managers are now shareholders and have legal rights. The more partners in the deal, the more complex things can become. I would only recommend this strategy for businesses with a clear and relatively quick exit plan. I would not recommend this for entrepreneurs who plan to build and hold their business. It is a recipe for too many headaches with so many added equity holders.

Entrepreneurship Education Helps Low-Income Kids

A new Harvard study finds that entrepreneurship education for low income children has an impact.

(A) multiyear Harvard study indicates that learning entrepreneurial skills may keep low-income students in school and on track for college. The program may be particularly effective for Hispanic students, who have the highest rates of dropping out of high school.
A study begun in 2001 by a Harvard researcher indicates that the National Federation for Teaching Entrepreneurship program and its focus on business-development skills improves reading scores among Hispanics. Like other students in the program, it also raises Hispanics’ interest in attending college.

I hope to see some of these kids in my classroom in a few years!
(Thanks to Jose Gonzalez of Conexion Americas for passing this along).