After a long really fun day yesterday at TechStars and StartLabs I wandered over to 34-101 to be on a panel for Joost Bonsen and Joe Hadzima‘s IAP class 15.S21: The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans. It’s not really a class about business plans rather a class about starting a business and has been regularly modernized by Joost and Joe. On the panel were the two founders of Super Mechanical (creators of Twine) which is an awesome project that used Kickstarter for its initial financing (and that I’m an excited supporter / customer of.) I had a fun day and wish I had found more IAP courses to help teach and participate in this trip.

After the course finished at 9:30, Joost and I wandered over to the Muddy Charles for a beer. When I crawled into bed at 12:30 my head was full of a ton of awesome ideas that came out of our rambling three hour discussion. I’ve been friends with Joost since the early 1990′s when we first met around the MIT 10K competition and have been a huge fan of his ever since.

Among other things we talked about the startup ecosystem in and around MIT and the evolution of Boston as a region. The comments in my post from yesterday titled I’m in Cambridge, Not Boston were great and stimulated additional thinking on this topic, as did Joost’s experience here over the past 20 years. Joost has incredible knowledge and history of the region and of MIT, which occasionally appears in posts like How Kendall Square Became Hip: MIT Pioneered University-Linked Business Parks but is really apparent when you spend extended time with him talking about MIT, how it evolved, what it is today, who has been involved along the way, and the entrepreneurial community that has evolved around it.

About mid-way through the conversation Joost dropped two phrases on me that blew my mind. The first was “Creative Construction.” As we were talking about startup communities and the new book I’m working on, Joost said “How about a play on words on Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” and call your theory about startup communities “creative construction” instead. After I put the exploded pieces of my brain back together and said “that is exactly fucking right” he went on. “Think of entrepreneurship as a tool of mass construction.”

The play on words is just delicious. And right on – we are talking about an awesome positive force in the world and should be using language that represents that. At the core of our conversation was the notion that an entrepreneurial region like Boston is actually a collection of 100,000 person “entrepreneurial neighborhoods” (that’s what Kendall Square is, as distinct from the Fort Point Channel area, or the Leather District, or what’s going on in Davis Square, or …). And the idea that creative construction drives this – and the neighborhoods are part of a broader entrepreneurial community (in the region) is a construct that resonates with me.

I’m off to HubSpot to give a talk, a swing through Venture Cafe at CIC, and then back to StartLabs for the rest of the day. My three weeks in Boston (well – Cambridge) with a side trip to New York is coming to an end. It’s been amazing, enlightening, educational, productive, and a lot of fun.

Over the last three weeks I’ve had numerous people ask me how my trip to Boston has been going. For a while I corrected them and said “I’m mostly in Cambridge” but gave up. Tonight, after hanging out at the TechStars Boston Mentor evening and program kickoff, I got into a long discussion with a Bill Warner and Ken Zolot about Cambridge, Boston, and startup communities. At some point in the conversation I blurted out “I have no idea why we call this program TechStars Boston instead of TechStars Cambridge.” And then something that I thought was important dawned on me.

My entire entrepreneurial view of “Boston” is centered around Cambridge. I’ve been here for two of the last three weeks (I spent four days in New York). I’m staying in a hotel in Kendall Square across from Google and next to MIT. I’ve spent my days walking to meetings at MIT, Kendall Square, Tech Square, Central Square, and East Cambridge including what I refer to as “the old Lotus building”. I’ve had all of my meals in Kendall Square or Central Square. Other than running, I’ve only been physically in Boston four times – first when I arrived at the airport, then when I took the train to New York, then when I returned on the train from New York, and finally when I spent the morning at Fidelity’s FCAT offices at Summer Street.

Now, I know there is plenty of startup activity in Boston. My old neighborhood near Fort Point Channel (I used to live on Sleeper Street in a condo at Dockside Place) is bustling with startup activity. There’s plenty of stuff on 128 and 495. There’s are other entrepreneurs tucked around the city. But that’s not the interesting story, at least in my mind.

The few square miles in Cambridge around MIT is the white hot center of startup activity in the region. One of my basic principles of startup communities is the need for what I call entrepreneurial population density (EPD) which I calculate as the total number of entrepreneurs and employees of entrepreneurial companies divided by the total number of all employees in a region. Then an even more powerful metric is entrepreneurial density, which is EPD / size of region. A large EPD in a small physical region wins.

Part of the magic of Boulder is the entrepreneurial density of the place. And as I wander from meeting to meeting in Cambridge, running into people on the street who I know, or who I met with the day before, or I who I want to know, reminds me of the dynamic in Boulder. For example, I ran into Matt Cutler on my way to Rich Levandov’s office and we walked over together. I bumped into the StartLabs organizers when going to a meeting with Will Crawford. I saw Joe Chung while hanging around StartLabs. I saw 50+ mentors who I knew last night at TechStars and expect to see more today when I’m there. While having breakfast with Michael Schrage at the Cambridge Marriott Joost Bonsen came over and said hello. At Dogpatch meeting with Yesware I saw Dave Greenstein and gave him a hug for his new kid. And the list of moments like this, which happened with 10 square blocks, go on and on. But when I hop on the red line and travel to South Station, the magic disperses.

I remember when the Boston VC community moved from downtown Boston to Waltham. I understood it was an effort to create a “Sand Hill Road” like venture community but the big miss was that an MIT student couldn’t hop on a bike and ride to Waltham like a Stanford student could with Sand Hill Road. And it’s no surprise that downtown Palo Alto, which is even closer to Stanford, is an attractive place for VCs to hang out. The snarky message when the VCs moved to Waltham was that they wanted to be close to their fancy houses and their private golf clubs and the entrepreneurs could come to them. It’s no surprise that many of these firms have relocated to Cambridge, recognizing that they should be in the middle of the entrepreneurial energy.

I’d suggest to the Cambridge and Boston startup communities that they should think of themselves as two separate but related communities. Even within Boston, it seems like there are different startup communities in downtown, 125, and even 495. I think that thinking of it “Boston” is a mistake.

In my world view, the entrepreneurs drive the startup community. Focus on entrepreneurial population density and entrepreneurial density – and make sure your geographic region is small. Over time, linking the critical mass together in a larger region (e.g. Silicon Valley or Boston) is fine, but the real power comes from the startup communities with the largest EPD in small physical regions which are big enough to have critical mass.

I’ve been a big supporter of the Startup America Partnership since its inception at the beginning of last year. The organization is now a year old and is starting to really have some impact. I’m psyched about the groundwork they’ve laid down and their plans for 2012.

One of the initiatives I’ve been very involved in is Startup Colorado which we launched a few months ago. I also gave my first Startup America webinar today to a bunch of entrepreneurs who are members of Startup America Partnership about fundraising. And there’s a lot more coming to entrepreneurs who are members of the Startup America Partnership.

So – sign up now. If you are a Colorado-based company, this will automatically get you into the Startup Colorado infrastructure as well at the Startup America Partnership. If you are in any other state, you’ll be part of the whole Startup America Partnership as well as your state when they launch (if they haven’t already).

My simple appeal to all entrepreneurs in Colorado – please sign up. There is no cost to you. There are tons of benefits. It helps us more efficiently connect with you and engage you in the Colorado startup community and we want to show the world how powerful the startup community is in Colorado. Plus, I’m now in a heated match for the number of startups – competing with David Cohen and the other TechStars Managing Directors (David Tisch, Katie Rae, Andy Sack, Nicole Glaros, and Jason Seats.) You wouldn’t want them to show me up, now would you.

Sign up. And help everyone in America win as we create more and more entrepreneurial companies together.

I’m deep into writing my latest book. For now, the title is “Startup Communities: Creating A Great Entrepreneurial Ecosystem In Your City.” I’m open to different titles – if you’ve got ideas just put them in the comments.

Following is the current table of contents. It’s still pretty dynamic as I’m adding stuff while I’m writing. I’ve also got a bunch of guest sections coming from all over the US (I’ve got a dozen so far) so as they come in, I’m trying to fit them in (which often generates a new, or different section). If you are a leader in your entrepreneurial community and have something you want to add, email me 500 – 1000 words.

I’m looking for feedback on this table of contents. If anything jumps out at you as wrong, unclear, in the wrong place, or missing, please leave me your thoughts in the comments.

My current goal is to have a first draft ready for circulation finished by 12/31/11. I plan to have the book published and available by 2/29/12. I’m self-publishing this one so there will be no delay in getting it out. I also plan to price it low so it has the potential for broad distribution.

Comments of any sort are welcome and encouraged! The table of contents, as of today, follows.

Foreword

The Boulder Entrepreneurial Community

• Boulder As A Laboratory
• Before the Internet (1970 to 1994)
• Pre Internet Bubble (1995 – 2000)
• The Internet Bubble (2001 – 2002)
• The Beginning of the Next Wave (2003 – 2011)

Principals of a Sustainable Entrepreneurial Community

• Led By Entrepreneurs
• Have A 20 Year Commitment
• Welcome Everyone Into The Entrepreneurial Community
• Engage The Entire Entrepreneurial Stack

Leaders vs. Feeders

• What’s A Leader?
• What’s A Feeder?
• Entrepreneurs
• Mentors
• Government
• University
• Investors
• Service Providers
• The Importance of Both Leaders and Feeders

Keys of Leadership Culture

• Inclusive
• Mentor Driven
• Non Zero Sum Game
• Porous Boundaries

The Power of Accelerators

• The Story of TechStars in Boulder
• TechStars Impact on Boston
• TechStars Impact on New York
• How Accelerators Are Different Than Incubators
• Why Incubators Don’t Work

Classical Problems

• Patriarch Syndrome
• Complaining About Capital
• Reliance on Government
• Short Term Commitment
• Bias Against Newcomers
• Feeder Control
• Artificial Geographic Borders
• Risk Aversion
• Fear of Failure
• Zero Sum Game

A Different Example of University Involvement

• Silicon Flatirons
• The Components of CU Boulder
• Why They Don’t Work In Isolation
• Why The Community Matters Most
• The Real Value – Fresh Blood Into The System

Entrepreneurs vs. Government

• Bottom Up vs. Top Down
• Micro vs. Macro
• Action vs. Policy
• Impact vs. Control
• Self Awareness

Boulder’s Great, But What Are It’s Weaknesses?

• Parallel Universes
• Integration With The Rest of Colorado
• Lack of Diversity
• Space

Community Power

• Give Before You Get
• The Power of Apprenticeship
• Everyone Is A Mentor
• Embrace Weirdness
• Be Open To Any Idea
• Be Honest

Myths About Entrepreneurial Communities

• We Need To Be Like Silicon Valley
• Venture Capital Matters
• Angel Investors Must Be Organized

How To Get Started

• Do or Do Not, There Is No Try
• Resources