How one teacher made a huge difference in my life

Clayton Leach - teacher at Schuylkill Valley High School

Most of us have that one teacher who really made a difference in our lives. Mine was Clayton Leach. He was my typing and accounting teacher at Schuylkill Valley High School, in the late 80s. In Internet terminology, he was the one teacher who applied adaptive learning to my educational experience (more on that later). He was also one of those people who always set the bar for what was possible much higher than where I wanted to comfortably put it, but where I had a feeling that I could reach, if I really gave it my all. He did that for many students who entered his classroom over the years.
I first met him in my typing class. Since I had been fiddling with computers for several years, I was already pretty good with QWERTY keyboard. He quickly realized that, and started giving more challenging assignments (numbers, characters, complicated letter types, etc.) He could have just taught me the same material, on the same schedule, as everyone else in the class, but that wasn't his style. He saw potential, and felt obligated to help it be attained.
I took his accounting class at about the same time. In retrospect, I have no idea why I'd take either of these classes. It was probably to take it easy, if I remember correctly, because 16-year-old Dave was pretty good at math and methodical tasks. But when I started, I quickly accelerated through the first several classes. Mr. Leach immediately took the same approach as in typing, and told me to do a chapter per class, when the rest of the class was spending a week on the same content. He quickly had me finish the entire first book, and proceed on to others. When I asked him if I could take it easy, at some point, he was upset with me! He challenged me to compete in the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) regional and state contests, and I ended up winning one of them (regional, I think).
This approach to teaching is now framed as Adaptive Learning, with companies such as DreamBox Learning, Grockit and Knewton leading the way. But great teachers like Mr. Leach made it work before it had a 15-letter name. He saw potential in students where the students didn't recognize it in themselves, and he then made it appear. He did it through sheer will, encouragement, and love -- he wanted to see us achieve our fullest potential, and for many students, I believe that their lives are markedly better and fuller for having learned from him.
Q: So, how did this impact my life? A: In pretty much every possible way. Before Mr Leach's accounting class, I had been applying to school as an aerospace engineering undergrad (I have no idea how I picked that either :-) ); after his class, I enrolled as an Accounting major, and later became a CPA. I did that for several years, and then pursued my MBA at The Wharton School and made a career transition to product development at Amazon.com. I later spent several years working in the microfinance sector, help build the JibJab team, and eventually started my own venture-backed business (TeachStreet), where I spent the first few years doing the accounting and payroll, growing the team and business, and often emptying the trash cans.
Mr. Leach was one of those people who taught me much more than any single subject. He taught me to always do a lot more than the minimum, and that pretty much any opportunity is available, if I was willing to put in the hard work to achieve it. He taught me to do things that I enjoyed, and to have fun doing it (yes, his classes were fun). He reinforced the importance of friendship, and unwavering commitment and support. He was a truly great teacher, and I'll remember him always.
To honor Mr. Leach, I aspire to treat my co-workers and employees similarly, by setting high goals (that I know/believe they can achieve), providing assistance when needed, and operating with a hands-off approach that allows for mistakes. Everyone needs the room and support to realize their potential, but they also need a kick in the pants every once in awhile. I'm so appreciative of the kicks that he gave me; they made my life so much richer.
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This blog post is part of the Vittana "Make a Difference" blogger challenge. The contest invites bloggers from around the world to discuss various ways to make a difference in the world, as well as share stories on who or what has made a difference in their lives.
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Schuylkill Valley teacher Clayton Leach

TeachStreet Labs launches Road Trip Planning app

We've all heard about Google's famous 20% time, right?  It always seemed like a nice idea, but wasn't one that we worked into TeachStreet's routine.  Then, we got a taste of Startup Weekend hackathon energy, and wondered if we could smash together the 20% time and Startup Weekend ideas, and come up with our own TeachStreet Hack Week creation.  So, we did!

We asked everybody on the team to come up with project ideas that we thought we could create during a 4-5 day hackathon.  Pretty much everybody submitted ideas, and the winner was the OnTheWay app.

It's a pretty simple idea -- that is, when you go on road trips, you almost never know about the great stuff that you're racing by at 70 miles per hour.  I mean, just in Washington we have the World's Largest Shoe, The World's Largest Frying Pan, and much more :-)  Plus, why eat at a terrible restaurant (the first you could find), when instead you may be passing withing a stone's throw of a 5-star rated gem, that's been frequented by many of your friends?

So, we built it -- or, more specifically, the team built it (while I dug out of my backlog of email, projects, and more). Of course, that didn't stop me from lobbing in my opinions at every available instance, but people very quickly told me to talk to the hand.

I'm really proud of what the team came up with.  Go give OnTheWay a try.  Just enter in your starting location, your destination, and then check out the interesting roadside attractions.  We hope you love it!

Join me Oct 3 at Seattle's Social Innovation Fast Pitch event

As you may have heard by now, Social Venture Partners is bringing an innovative program to Seattle, called Social Innovation Fast Pitch (SIFP).   SIFP is an innovative training and fast-pitch forum highlighting New Ideas for Social Impact.  I am signed up to mentor one or more of the contestants, which I’m enthused to get going on later this week.

SIFP has been incredibly successful in other cities over the past three years, and they're on a fast path to make it equally if not more successful for the Puget Sound region, starting on Oct. 3.     And for the first time in the northwest, the fast pitch program is available to both for-profit and non-profit organizations, highlighting the growing trend of social impact startup investing alongside with building sustainable and innovative non-profit organizations.

The benefits to the SIFP contestants goes far beyond simply winning one of the cash prizes and include such things as direct mentoring from successful entrepreneurs, networking with other civic minded leaders, and introduction to a peer group in Seattle that is working hard to make out region a leader in forward looking social alternatives. The format of our SIFP program is optimized around this concept, with a heavy emphasis on coaching and mentoring, and with the Oct 3 event time split equally between the fast pitch program and casual discussions in a tradeshow-like format.

SIFP just announced their exciting list of 54 quarterfinalist contestants, selected from the 120+ who applied.  The fourteen who end up on stage will be exceptional; hopefully one of them will be an organization I mentor.  Take a look at the list and you'll see a number of well-known organizations, plus many you've never heard of.  All are innovating for the benefit of the Puget Sound region.

The SIFP program and the grant fund are paid for by a combination of ticket sale donations, corporate sponsorships, and donations from individuals and foundations.  SIFP’s plan is to have the entire event self-sustaining within three years.  To do so, they really need a great turnout this year so that news of this innovative model of social innovation and community engagement gets around.  LA's fast pitch program is a success we'd love to have here in Seattle - they are expecting 1,000 attendees in their third year of operation!

Would you join me in supporting these social innovators by attending the event on Oct 3?  You can make a $100 donation to get a ticket here.  100% is passed through to the people you’ll see presenting that evening, and you’ll even get to vote via text messaging to determine the “Best Pitch” and “Most Innovative” of the finalists.  This promises to be an inspiring and fun evening.  Hope to see you there.

Onward!

Juggling flaming chainsaws, while on crack

OK -- I admit that I've never done crack.  And I'm not much of a juggler, even with tennis balls.

But, of late, I've felt like I'm standing on a stage in front of hundreds (my family, friends, co-workers, the Seattle (and broader) tech community, aspiring entrepreneurs and others) juggling an increasingly daunting mixture of flaming chainsaws and barking poodles, while balanced on a unicycle, all while on a crack high.  Overly dramatic? Yes.  Any less true? No.  

The feeling (fear) reminded me of Jerry's blog, The Monster in Your Head -- I was letting the monster win.  Thus, Jerry's last post was especially relevant, specifically this bit of wisdom from the Bene Gesserit (and that other Child of Dune, Brad Feld... and, Jerry, of course):

I read the above a few days ago -- it resonated, but didn't sink in.  Then, last night, my wife helped simplify the situation even further, by asking a few clarifying questions.  I won't share them. But, I'd highly recommend that you get your own 'wife'.

How hundreds of coffee meetings have paid off for TeachStreet

Even though I keep my list of blog subscriptions pretty small, I've been weeks behind in my blog reading. Partially, that's because I feel like I see most of them in Summify (yes, I LOVE Summify!) and my tweet stream, but I sometimes miss the really good posts.

In that vein, I just read Mark Suster's post about the Importance of Doing 50 Coffee Meetings, as a way of expanding your network.  After reading it, while walking the dog, I thought about how many of the successes in my last 4+ years with TeachStreet have been the result of non-agenda coffee meetings and the like.  Many people look at these types of meetings as "the wasted-time-stuff-that-biz-people-do", and I admit that I sometimes feel that way about them too.  But, another way of looking at them is as the types of things that 'create luck' for those who are willing to put in the effort.  They're not activities with fairly-certain-outcomes, like writing code (where there's a definite output) or testing a paid-search-campaign, and that's what makes them so exhausting, at times.

If it helps, I thought I'd share some of the outputs of those types of random meetings -- I bet that none of these wouldn't have happened without the hundreds of meetings:

• Our first $100k angel investor came from a friend's intro; the investor met me one time, and called me a few days later with the news of his investment. Upon hanging up the phone, I actually screamed out loud.
• Almost all of my angel investors were originally soft-pitched over coffee, as were many non-investors; more often than not, the non-investors helped with other introductions, ideas or questions
• I originally met Daryn (our CTO, and the person I consider my TeachStreet partner) via a random networking meeting, where I met he and David Geller, as they were working on EyeJot. And, I'd bet that more than 75% of our employees were introduced, or met, over coffee and/or network introductions.
• I met Joe Heitzeberg, over coffee at Macrina, to discuss a role he had open at Snapvine; by the time of the meeting, I had already decided on TeachStreet, but it's a relationship that's grown since 2007.  Oh, and he introduced me to our accountant, who's just awesome.  
• The idea for TeachStreet crystallized over a coffee discussion with Jason Kilar, while we were discussing a pre-Hulu startup-idea that he was starting to accelerate toward
• While not a coffee meeting, we ended up licensing our software to a company in Australia; they found us because of a video presentation I gave at a Seattle Tech Startups event -- they caught the piece of the video where I said that "we'd be open to licensing our software", and reached out (note -- I also fielded ~30 of these international outreaches from others, that all went nowhere...)
• I met Dave McClure years before any startup notions -- he was on the Board of Unitus (a microfinance organization, where I was the guy responsible for marketing); as fast as he could spew ideas, I was sitting on the fringes of the meetings implementing/testing them.  That relationship took off quickly :-)  Dave turned into a great friend, one of my earliest investors, and biggest advocates (and out of that grew uncountable press/blogger introductions for me, and referrals of Seattle-initiated-startups, by me, to 500Startups) 
• Out of a coffee-request overload, we created Hops and Chops, as a way to consolidate many of these conversations, and enable even greater early-entrepreneur interactions.  Entire startups have been assembled there, and numerous friendships have deepened.
• We recently got one of our first exclusive-lead bus-dev deals done, in days (after multiple attempts with the company), after a coffee meeting where I helped them with some candidate sourcing
• Finally, one of my very first startup inspirations/enablers was Andy Sacks' Open Coffee, that he's been running, at Louisa's on Eastlake for 4-5 years, without fail.  And, as I look back, that's where I met Tony Wright for the first time!

This is just a sample.  As I sit here thinking about this, I feel like I could keep rattling off examples for hours. You just can't know where these meetings will lead you.  It's important that you try to be selective (because the meetings will multiply, as people find you helpful/accessible), and do your best to limit them (maybe one per day?), but you absolutely need to put in the time.

Quite simply, TeachStreet wouldn't exist if I hadn't.