Women’s TechRadio - Episode 13
Sheri Dover |WTR 13
February 11, 2015
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DESCRIPTION: Sheri refers to herself as a “non-tech founder of a tech startup” known as PDX Code Guild!
Sheri is the founder of PDX Code Guild which has a new boot camp class called Get Technical which is for non tech founders of tech startups. Her company is also a full professional services agency in addition to its developer boot camps. She discusses her excitement with the community that has developed surrounding her services.
ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio, episode 13.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology careers.
ANGELA: Now, Paige, we had the holidays recently and I got a tech gift that I want to talk about, but do you have a tech gift that you want to talk about?
PAIGE: Something that’s kind of techy.
ANGELA: Okay.
PAIGE: So I got a (unintelligible), essentially an electric kettle warmer thing. What is is, it’s this four liter container that sits on my counter and I can set it to specific, super specific tea temperatures, like 175 degrees, because I’m a tea nut and tea is very particular about its temperature for proper brewing. This is a problem. A lot of people don’t drink green tea because they over brew it and in too hot a temperature, it’s just terrible. You’re ruining your tea people, trust me. So, I’m just super excited because I’m a tea nut and now I have on demand tea. And it sings the little song when it’s done. It’s adorable, even though it’s like this grey plastic appliance that sits on my counter, I just want to hug it.
ANGELA: Okay.
PAIGE: What about you?
ANGELA: All right, I got a thunder bolt doc.
PAIGE: Oh, jealous.
ANGELA: And it is awesome. I got it all hooked up. It is so nice to just have one plug to plug into my laptop and then I have everything available including my second monitor, which is 28 inches, and it’s amazing.
PAIGE: Yeah, I’ve wanted one of those for a long time. That’s really cool.
So, today we interviewed Sheri Dover. She is the founder of PDX Code Guild. She started as a -- kind of got into technology as a non-technical founder. She’s also a volunteer at Portland Startup weekend and she just has pretty cools things to say about women in tech.
ANGELA: And before we get in to the interview, I just want to mention LinxuAcademy.com. If you go to LinuxAcademy.com/wtr you can save $5.00 a month on your technology education. If you go there, they have a very easy dashboard with step-by-step video courses and downloaded comprehensible study guides. They also have a new course called Open Stack Essentials. It’s 100 percent complete and available on Linux Academy. You can go to LinuxAcademy.com/wtr and that will save you $5.00 a month.
PAIGE: We started our interview today by asking Sheri about PDX Code Guild.
SHERI: PDX Code Guild really harnesses the power of code to empower people in three ways. One is boot camps. You can learn to program so they can have a really useful skillset to find a good job or to do freelancing, or just make cool things.
PAIGE: The boot camps, is the boot camps your major focus there?
SHERI: It was our first focus, and so now we are also adding another class, Get Technical. It is a boot camp for non-tech founders of tech startups, and the idea is to empower more diversity of people to start a tech startup. There’s a lot of benefits to a tech startup that other types of businesses don’t really have. And then the third thing is we have a full-service agency. We have a staff of very talented developers who like to do more than just teach, and so we have an agency to -- we can take your ideas and make it into great software.
PAIGE: Why get technical? Why do you think -- how is that helpful for the diversity and startups? What problem are you actually trying to solve there.
SHERI: So this comes from -- I’ve been involved in the tech startup scene since 2009. You know, the economy had crashed and I really got sold on the idea of tech startups because you’re not limited to your time. You’re not limited to your storage space or how much product you can order in warehouse. It can be rapid growth. And also, it’s really beautiful because no one fails unless they lose their integrity. And these rolls, starting these companies tends to be young white men, and women tend to go into fields that are more limited by their time and their personal resources. They might do handy crafts. They might do a service. They might open a boutique. And I would like to empower women to have that choice of doing a tech startup. In ’09, somebody who was non-technical could do a tech startup because there were a lot of engineers that had been laid off that had severance pay and wanted to keep their resumes active while they rode out the recession. That recession is over and it’s my understanding that right now there are close to 3,000 extra positions for programmers for Portland alone. It’s really hard to get somebody to just give up that good pay and benefits and then the second layer of, if they had given that up maybe they’d want to work on their own dream to work on yours. And so, people that want to do a tech startup really need, at this point, to learn some programing to get started.
PAIGE: What do you mean when you say, failure is only something that happens with a loss of integrity?
SHERI: When you do a tech startup you learn. You have to do -- it so intense to do a tech start up. You learn -- and you have to wear a lot of hats, so you learn about law and you learn about project management. And you learn how to do a startup and if you’re startup fails, in this community you’re seen as somebody who has very valuable experience and knowledge under your belt. No one is expected to succeed more than one in ten times. If somebody were to succeed in their first startup, that would be pretty miraculous, because even a well-seasoned VC that knows how to pick the best, most promising startups is only right maybe one out of ten times.
PAIGE: So, it’s the skills and of the time and effort and that integrity that you’re developing in trying is enough of a success to say it’s not a failure?
SHERI: Exactly. And your Rolodex, your connections have expanded once you’ve gone through that.
ANGELA: So is the PDX Code Guild somewhere that somebody that has a failed tech startup could go? Like, are you a place where they could feel comfortable and expand on their skills so that they can maybe try another?
SHERI: Yeah. Yeah, maybe somebody who -- you know, maybe that could be a place, but I think our target market is more people who are doing their first tech startup, maybe their second, and really they don’t know how to work with developers. They don’t have the funding to hire somebody to build the MVP. And I think just writing a resume, or a thesis, or business plan, there’s a lot of value in writing your MVP yourself.
PAIGE: And for those who don’t know, MVP is minimum viable product.
SHERI: Right, once you have that, and once you have the language of programming, you’re probably going to be far more successful attracting a team of developers to work with you, or attracting funding.
ANGELA: Is there a particular startup that you have helped or have seen somebody do after going through your PDX Cod Guild?
SHERI: There is. There’s one that I’m particularly proud of. One of our students, Matthew, had an idea of -- coming into the class he had the idea that he wanted to build an app that would help homeless people find services. He did his services and he found that homeless people do have smartphones and that he could make an app that would have in real time locations of shelters and how many beds are available and what the rules of that shelter are, so that somebody wouldn’t have to walk from shelter to shelter to find a place on given night.
ANGELA: That is amazing.
SHERI: So he started on that as his capstone project at Code Guild and then he went to startup weekend and he won. And then there’s just -- he had executed so well at startup weekend that he has had so much help and mentorship from the startup community in Portland that -- that was in November and he’s still going strong. He’s working with the Portland State University business accelerator, a global expert on mobile apps, Mercy Core has offered to mentor him and the list is endless, and he’s building it.
PAIGE: So you mentioned startup weekend, and I know you’re involved there. Can you talk a little bit about what startup weekend is ands your role with them?
SHERI: Yes, so startup weekend is a 54-hour weekend, immersive education experience. It’s life changing. I am completely addicted to volunteering for that. I’ve been doing it since 2011, because every weekend people leave that saying this has changed my life. You start out Friday night with an idea. You pitch for a minute. The 12 teams that get the most audience votes form. You learn how to kind of share your idea, how to build a team, how to work with a team, how to do custom validation, how to respond to the customer validation to build something that people are interested in buying, you build your minimum viable product, and then you pitch to a panel of judges Sunday night. And it shows people, not only the steps to doing a startup, but they can do it. A big part of the Portland startup ecosystem and all of the accelerators and incubators are involved as sponsors, and they like to come and see how people work under pressure so that can think about if any of those are people that they’d want to recruit to their accelerators.
PAIGE: And is that mostly for tech startups?
SHERI: Mostly, although not always. We’ve had food startups. We’ve had clothing startups. But it does need to be something that you can build a minimum viable product in 54 hours on.
ANGELA: And how often does that happen? I that like a once a year thing or is that every weekend?
SHERI: Globally there’s several every weekend. In Portland we do a generic startup weekend every November and April. Those sale out. They always sale out, usually three weeks before the event.
ANGELA: It’s a paid thing. You pay to attend it?
SHERI: It is. Yeah, it’s usually -- if you -- if you get the early bird it’s usually around $65.00 and close to $100.00 if they haven’t sold out before we go off of early bird. Occasionally there are scholarships. Students get half off and there’s usually -- we really value diversity and so we always have some scholarships for women and people of color. In the winter and in the summer we usually have one other vertical. Last year we did startup weekend access. And the idea for that was to send the global best practices for making startup weekend accessible for people of differing abilities. And then this year we’re doing startup weekend Latino. One of our organizers is really linked in to the Latino community and so he wants to empower more people of color to feel like they can do a startup too.
PAIGE: Why do you think it is, I mean looking at, you know hearing that you’ve got to do these different scholarships and everything to encourage diversity, like and you were talking earlier about that women more typically startup service or brick and mortar type of startups, what is it about tech startups is a barrier for women?
SHERI: You know what, a lot of women just haven’t been invited. So, this is my theory, but in the 80s the computers were locked in our brother’s rooms and we were told that’s not for you. It was a marketing -- I think it was a marketing thing by the computer industry to say that this isn’t for secretaries, this is for boys. And so that really, really stuck, and so women dropped out of technology and a lot of us were invited back through the men in our lives. I’m one of a group of many women, surprisingly, who were invited back because we had sons really young, and our sons helped raise us. And we’re like, look mom we can view source and see how web pages are made. And mom can you help me do this, let’s do this. And so that’s how I came back into it. I was locked out of the room. I was told I couldn’t have a computer. And I had a son young that taught me everything I know about technology. And then just before the recession, or right when the recession happened there was an economic development director in Corvallis that invited me to help him recruit laid off engineers from HP to do tech startups. And so that was really what brought me back to technology.
PAIGE: We actually had -- I think our very first guest had a really similar story where she, you know, it was having her son ask about computers that got her back into computers. Do you think, like how is that being a mom and kind of having to teach yourself, or how did you help your son answer those questions?
SHERI: You know what, I was a student, and I used my student loans to get a Gateway computer with a cold support membership. And he was 12 years old and he spent hours on the phone to the technicians asking them everything. They were so kind. They would talk for hours with this kid and coach him and mentor him.
ANGELA: That is adorable.
PAIGE: That’s fantastic.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: You’re a mom and you’re starting a startup, and I know that a lot of women who I’ve talked to speak about, they’re like, oh I’d like to do something like that but the work life balance is -- Like, I’m really scared of that. How has that effected your life?
SHERI: SO, I have a personality type where I love to work. I really throw myself into what I’m doing, and my family is used to that. But I’m always really quirky and I do things that make sense to me, not the way people do things. And so, my two that are at home now have been unschooled and so they just come with me. Over the years, they actually have been right alongside me doing all of my startups with me. And so my work life balance is simply having my kids with me. And I’m not ashamed to be a mother. I’m not afraid of being mommy cast because I’m refuse to be. And my kids having grown up in this world of entrepreneurs, they know how to behave and be an asset.
ANGELA: So, you say unschooled. Does that mean that you took them out of school to do more of an apprenticeship?
SHERI: What happened is, actually I was a grad student and my kids were going to public schools. And one of them got a teacher who was ready to retire and I needed to take my youngest out so that I could teach her to read myself. And that just worked so well for us. And at the same time we -- my oldest who was at the top of her class wasn’t allowed into Algebra because they didn’t have enough room. And so they both decided to come home and it just fit our lifestyle, because they had useful things to do. So they made brochures for me, and they manned the cash register all winter and did customer service and marketing when I did an indoor boutique. One of my early startups was a public market, because I saw that there were people in Corvallis that didn’t really have an outlet for a job or a business and I wanted to do a nano-incubator for very small business. And in the winter we would do a boutique. So my kids just kind of took charge and did a lot of managing the (unintelligible) and helping people get set up. It really felt natural for us.
ANGELA: My son is the only one in school. He’s in kindergarten. They actually teach reading in kindergarten now, which is crazy. It’s no longer fun and learning how to socialize, it’s you have to start learning right now. And he’s having some adjustment issues. And so I am -- I had originally thought that I would homeschool, and so all of that really interesting to me. I feel like, being this is our family business he could definitely benefit from that kind of experience.
SHERI: And he can. My experience is that as long as you provide them with an enriched environment they -- just like they have a drive to learn to walk, they have a drive to learn about the world. And so give them an enriched environment and the freedom to pursue what they’re interested in. My youngest has built a community of 20,000 followers on a fan page. She’s working on building a product line that she’s going to launch in the next couple of months. And that’s all on her own. Nobody has asked her to do that.
PAIGE: Really, to me, you and your kids exemplify work life integration. And our heritage is that the blacksmith wasn’t just a blacksmith from 9:00 to 5:00. You don’t have to have that if you have a healthy integration of your work in your life.
SHERI: Thank you for verbalizing that. That’s it. It’s integration. I don’t -- balance doesn’t work for me, integration does.
PAIGE: Yeah, I mean I hear from educators all the time how much they feel hand strung because they can’t just do more of that enriched environment. You have to teach to a test. And I’m not saying that necessarily wrong, but it can’t work for everybody.
SHERI: Right.
PAIGE: So, I always like to ask one more question, and I think for you I’m kind of like -- what is spinning your gears? What is the thing that you’re working on now that you just can’t put down?
SHERI: You know, it’s Code Guild. This is my baby. One of my Facebook friends posted about how they felt about work and I reflected on that and I realized that instead of it being a struggle for me to go to work daily, it’s a struggle for me to stay asleep because I’m so excited about Code Guild and this community. I love that -- I threw a part and these wonderful and amazing people have chosen to join me. This party called Code Guild. And it take a lot of discipline for me to just sleep, because I wake up every morning really excited about how we’re building this and the empowering of people that we can do through this.
ANGELA: Well, that was another great interview on Women’s Tech Radio. Remember we’re on Twitter @heywtr. We’re on Tumblr, heywtr.tumblr.com, and you can email us [email protected].
PAIGE: More information about our guest including links to her social profile can be found in our show notes at jupiterbroadcasting.com alone with our iTunes link and our RSS feed. You can also find us by searching for us in your favorite podcasting application.
Transcribed by Carrier Cotter - [email protected]